Oh Rats!

Why do I fall asleep at work and in class, but when bedtime comes around I have the energy of a thousand suns? Just as well I've got loads to blog about and I´m not fond of counting sheep.

I got a new job two weeks ago as an auxiliary English teacher at a local private school here in Mexicali, with the prospect of a regular teacher´s position for next August. I´m learning a lot about treating children and their parents that I hope will come in handy when I graduate. Although it´s a bit frustrating, a lot of my students and their families have serious emotional problems, and I can´t help them out because of work limitations. Still, it´s something I have to get used to and I know full well I´m not going to magic away everyones problems. What would be the point of that?

This Wednesday I went to an interview at the local office of the Federal Electorate Institution (IFE) since I applied for a job as a District Councselor (sort of an impartial observer for elections), and I nearly got it as well, until the interviewer realized I was only 22. I hadn´t noticed that by law you need to be 25 for that position. 3 measly years can make all the difference. Still, I made a good impresion and there might be something for me there in the near future.

On Monday I had a presentation at Uni about Jung and the collective unconscious. His ideas really hit home, even though they´re considered pseudo scientific mumbo jumbo by a lot of people. As part of the presentation I charted out a visualization exercise through one of the most common archetypes: The Tree of Life, mainly the Hebrew edition, adding on archetypes at certain sephirot.

The trip starts of at number ten, the earthly Malkhut, where the traveler takes off his or her mask of the Persona off and observes it, trying to decipher his or her true nature. From there the traveler moves on to Yesod, the moon to take a glimpse of his or her personal unconscious (obviously this isn't as easy as it sounds and should have hours of visualization dedicated to itself, but we only had 40 minutes for this class). This was one of the hardest parts of the exercise, and I lost quite a few people at this stage. They were told at the beginning of the exercise that they were free to stop whenever they wanted and a lot of them did. One girl even left the room, but she didn´t share her experience with the rest of the class. Shame.

After a short pause, we moved on to Hod, Mercury´s Sephira to visualize the intellect, ideas, and profesional motivations, as well as giving a bit more importance to the Roman deities and the ideals they represent by mentioning a statue of Mercury and started representing the Sephirot as houses.

The next Sephira was the solar Tiferet, which I really didn´t know what to do with. I guess I should have said something about personal renewal, beauty and the ideas of time, but oh well. I instead prompted the class to think about solar deities like Jesus and Ra.

We quickly moved on to Netzach, Venus´s Sephira. Here the traveler could find any female figure of importance to him or her, as well as the Ego for women and the Anima (the female aspect of a male´s unconscious) for men. The men in the group were accompanied from this point onwards by their Anima. The group was given a few minutes to converse with whomever they met at Netzach before moving on to Gevurah, Mars Sephira, where the opposite happened: men met their Egos and women were joined by their respective Animus (the male face of a female´s unconscious), who would accompany from there on. Also, travelers could meet any male character of importance to them. I´m considering that perhaps I should have left the Anima and Animus for Binah and Chesed respectively, but it´ll have to wait for next time we use this execise.

Instead, since the travelers were now armed with their Anima or Animus Ilad them straigh to Daath, to face their Shadow, their repressed selves. This, strangely, went over better than facing their unconscious. Maybe my classmates are too blind, or more developed than I give them credit for. After Daath it´s smooth sailing, we made a sop through the accepting Keter to admire the complete Self before travelling back down to Malkuth to pick up our masks, considering wether we really need them or not.

And oh dear, it´s two a.m. and I have to be up in 4 hours....!