Critique – Part III: Critique Within

Light in the Cavern

The process of writing a memoir may be one of the most personal critiques of all, a sort of out-loud dialogue between a part of you that is cognizant and another part that’s not yet awake, like a quest to kiss Sleeping Beauty into wakefulness.

Perhaps it’s a quest to expose a lie we’ve been telling ourselves. Or perhaps a lie someone else has told that we have believed deeply enough for it to become embedded. We’ve kept it solidly bound it up between the pages of a book that seemed finished and writing memoir is opening the book again and declaring, Not quite finished yet!

For me writing memoir was about critiquing a story that my life had no value, and that as a person I was completely unlovable because that’s what my father communicated to me. That narrative began to challenge me in a way that I couldn’t ignore. The challenge set me on a research project trying to discover how it’s possible for a father to hate his own child. I searched through five years of his WWII journals and followed where they led. They led to healing.

Another way to engage in internal critiquing, or in other words, intentional reflection, is to keep a journal. And here, it’s important to note that a self-critique is not just digging into negative aspects of our lives, it’s also identifying the positive things that are under-recognized or completely overlooked. Many times “Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” So says Marianne Williamson in her book Return to Love. The powerful self is a whole new frontier requiring a pioneer commitment. And that’s not easy.

Critiquing or self-reflection of the kind we are speaking of requires pursuing a creative dialogue with ourselves, in which questions challenge the status quo and have the potential to thrust us into unchartered territory. Whether the vehicle we use is memoir, keeping a journal or some other kind of reflective conveyance, we would do well to equip ourselves with a toolkit that fits the quest.

Working with dreams is like having one of those old miners’ lamps that light up deep, hidden caverns. Dreams are the language of the unconscious and so taking some time decoding that language can prove to be helpful in self-understanding. There are many theories about how to do dream work. For me the most simple tool is the one many Jungian followers have spoken of. In this method “you are everyone and everything,” meaning that we can see aspects of ourselves in every person and perhaps every thing or image in the dream.

Working with dreams is not the only tool available. Spending time in nature, meditating on the images found there is not only soothing and enlightening, it also puts us in a context with all of creation, which brings a sense of the authentic self and can even speak of purpose.

There are also a variety of practices to help you draw from the reservoir that lies below the surface. For example, the book, The Soul’s Slow Ripening by Christine Valters Paintner suggests an outing of meandering with a camera, even a phone camera will do. Being drawn to particular images and focusing attention through the camera lens indicates that something may be “speaking” to a deeper part, a part that oral language may not be able to reach. Paying attention to those signals and others like them can be a miner’s lamp as well, showing what was previously obscured.

What do you do to self-critique or self-reflect so that your soul can grow?

Writing Prompt for the Week: Through the Camera Lens