The Practice of Writing
“I write to discover what I know.”
Flannery O’Connor
A creative practice is one path of connection to the unconscious. For as long as I can remember I have written; in diaries and journals, bits of poetry, pieces of memoir, stories in varying shades of truth and fiction, along with psychological papers and essays. I have written something nearly every day most of my life. For many years I have considered writing to be my spiritual practice.
Writing and rewriting for me is a discipline, a comfort, a torture, a riverbed that winds between consciousness and unconsciousness, a bridge of connection with others, an isolating echo, a way of owning and opening myself.
Jung begins his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, by describing his life as a story about the individuation process. He gives us the equation - my story is my truth. As conveyors of emotional truth, stories reach across time, across racial, religious, and cultural divides. The Self as an ordering principle infuses narrative reflection.
In the words of James Baldwin, "One writes out of one thing only--one's own experience.
Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop,
sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate
out of the disorder of life that order which is art."
The Practice of Writing
Writing groups with a Jungian bent that contemplate the creative process and honor story as a vehicle of reflection and connection. Five weeks through different lenses: feeling, imagining, remembering, dreaming and being. Writing as a path to individuation holds our uniqueness in a noncompetitive spirit.
Contact
Jane Platko at Jdav77@aol.com
781 643 0781
