Sulfiati Magnuson's Threshold Counseling

02/01/2025

Michael Meade, poet and mythologist, is a fountain of wisdom, especially in our dark times. This clip gives context for these intense times.

07/19/2024

Why I watch the RNC Convention
07.19.24

It’s not that I enjoy watching train wrecks! As a former producer of large scale corporate events, I’m in awe of the masterful stagecraft of this convention and the brilliant composition of the building blocks that force the only possible conclusion: join us and you will be happy, rich, oh so safe and “one of us!”

My professional training, my deep spiritual roots, my personal experiences with all the Abrahamic religions and the wisdom I now receive from the pulpit of my Episcopal church all encourage me to deeply and openly listen first, especially if I disagree with a speaker.

This requires setting aside my own agenda or perspective, and forces me to above all be curious, without assumptions. I’m grateful to my Imago Relationship training for the tools to do this. In my psychotherapy practice, I have been forced to become a compassionate witness as I’ve listened to people disclose their deepest shame, including a murder committed as a gang initiation, helpless rage at injustice or abandonment, theft, vengeful jealousy or their deepest fears and nightmares, personal or existential. Empathy is the food for healing.

Perhaps the hardest part of this task is the simple, everyday witnessing of people everywhere who are unaware of the consequences of their actions to themselves or others – family or strangers, the environment or upcoming generations. This blindness is the toxic fruit of not feeling our intergalactic homogeneity, of never having been loved or protected, of being a stranger to kindness and above all not having a relationship with something larger than one’s self.

I love people’s stories! People only do what makes sense to them. Being curious about the how and why of that is fascinating to me, and it creates a non-defensive connection. It is a relief to not be afraid, or angry or to have to be, “right.” I have to giggle because at my age, I think I present as pretty non-threatening anyway, so people are more likely to be genuine and often vulnerable with me – another gift of aging.

My homework now is to find someone different from myself, and engage with them, to listen first, and then maybe we can find a tune to sing together a song without words.

Small acts done with kindness, everyday, one moment at a time assuages my personal grief and relieves me of my sadness, as does finding a new recipe for baba ganoush (with pomegranate molasses) or a new pattern for an afghan for a grandson, or weaving brightly colored yarn onto the branches of the tomato cages in our garden plot.

We may not be able to see or feel what it will look like, but I do believe as Julian of Norwich said, “All we be well.”

And, please forgive me if any of this offends you?

05/04/2024

Yesterday I attended this presentation on "Extinction Anxiety." It's powerful and sooo relevant. The presenter is my good friend and mentor, Randyy Morris, Ph.D. (The link to the recording will be available on the West Mass Jung Society page.)

The Jung Association of Western Massachusetts presents
The Therapeutics of Extinction Anxiety: A Depth Psychological Approach.

As a culture we are swimming in a psychic soup of apocalyptic stories, images and symbols of nuclear war, social injustice, anthropogenic climate change, and global pandemics. As a result, we are experiencing high levels of anxiety about the human future, which I am calling ‘extinction anxiety’. This anxiety is so strong and pervasive that mighty engines of cultural repression are at work to numb our feelings and prevent recognition of the object of our fear and our worst nightmare — the extinction of the human species. But if we are willing to turn toward this psychic soup, if we can learn how to ride the dark emotions that arise rather than turn away from them, then, I suggest, we will be given the seeds of a new revelation. I want to make the claim that apocalyptic imagery and extinction anxiety are promptings from the sentience of the earth herself, inviting human beings to walk through a threshold toward personal, cultural and planetary renewal. Jungian depth psychology offers a therapeutic frame of reference to understand how to navigate these rough waters with courage, resilience and grace.

Randy Morris, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus at Antioch University Seattle where he taught in the BA Liberal Studies Program for thirty years and was the coordinator of the Psychology and Spiritual Studies concentrations. Prior to his career at Antioch University, Randy taught K-12 students for 10 years, including 3 years at the Hiroshima International School in Hiroshima, Japan. He was a vision quest guide for many years and is a Certified Sage-ing Leader with Sage-ing International. Currently he is the Co-President of The C.G. Jung Society of Seattle, bringing the insights of depth psychology to bear on global rites of passage and the dark night of the species soul."

11/15/2022

06/06/2021

Yup! And what a process!

-David Bowie

04/16/2020

We Were Made for These Times
By Clarissa Pinkola Estes

My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.

You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.

I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.

Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.

In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.

We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn't you say you were a believer? Didn't you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn't you ask for grace? Don't you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.

What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these - to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.

Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.
There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.

The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.

04/12/2020

This Easter morning, this year, today, these words of Richard Rohr hold special meaning for me, perhaps for you too?

Holding the Pain
Richard Rohr

“It is spiritually wise to stay with your pain – whatever it is – until you’ve learned its lessons. When you can hold pain consciously and even trust it, you are in a special liminal space where you have the real likelihood of breaking through to a much deeper level of faith and consciousness.
“As a transformative image of holding pain, picture Mary standing at the foot of the cross. Standing would not be the normal posture of a Mediterranean woman, who is supposed to wail and lament in this situation. Instead she’s patiently, at great cost, holding the pain, in complete solidarity with the mystery of it all. She does not resolve the problem; she holds it and allows it to transform her. She is moved to a new level of existence.
“Jesus on the cross and Mary standing beneath it are classic Christian images of transformation. Neither of them transmit their pain. All the hatred, accusations, malice – none of it is returned. They hold the suffering until it becomes resurrection!
“The natural human response is to try to fix the pain, to control it, or even foolishly, to try to understand it. That’s why Jesus praises faith more than love. Faith is the ability to stand on the threshold , to hold the contraries in the darkness, until you move to a deeper level where it is all from Love, and back to Love.”

04/09/2020

This post is from Terry Banen, a friend of mine from Kampala who was the medical authority at the US Embassy there. He speaks of a wide view of the impact on our souls of COVID-19. It's not a short piece, but neither is the path we are now on."

"Two of my favorite books are written by Primo Levi, an Italian Jew who was a leftish, atheist who survived a couple of years in Auschwitz. He wrote two truly great books: "Survival at Auschwitz" and the "Drowned and the Saved" and what makes his books remarkable, as a companion to Elie Wiesel, is that he gets into the psychology of survival. He explores, why those who survive the camps (those who can swim and survive) and who drown and why this occurs. His conclusion is that you have to have meaning in order to survive. Levi was in line to be gassed yet he never gave up his atheism. His goal was to survive simple to "bear witness" and to tell the world of the horrors of the Holocaust. But there's more to Levi than that as he goes into the basic nature of human cruelty and goodness. These are essential books to read.

""We now face a pandemic that will not be a Holocaust but it will bring out the best and the worst in human beings. Levi taught that to survive you must live on to bear witness so that we are prepared for the next pandemic and the upcoming economic depression. How you act now and in the future will not only define you as a truly self examined human being or as a failure. Please take care of yourself and your family, first and foremost. Prepare for a long period of time in which we will have to deal with this plague. But balance your needs with the needs of the community as your actions will make a difference. Not just now, but how you act now will define you for the rest of you life.

Our lives, for the most part, are truly banal and shallow. Now is your time to become a fully self actualized human being that acts of wisdom and grace will define you.

"Do your part. Stay in, if so directed. Do whatever you can to protect yourself. Resolve your emotional baggage and forgive those who you feel have transgressed your space. Just be the best a human being you can be. Don't be selfish. Be kind and reach out to one another if you need to vent or if you are feeling isolated.

"Let's not fail as a human species. Let''s defeat this pandemic through insight, wisdom and mutual kindness."

04/06/2020

This morning, as I walked through our living room here where the news was on, I heard the reporter talking about the impact on our "Last Responders," those who work with the dead and and those who morn them. How appropriate a phrase to tag them on the other end of the First Responders. Honor our dead, and our grief that arises is one of the oldest rituals or ceremonies we have as humans. The familiarity of those rituals is an element of what makes them so comforting. Not so now, where "funerals" are held over the phone, or FaceTime or Zoom. So, personal rituals are having to replace the comfort of the hugs of large gatherings, the scent of mounds of flowers, the soft light of candles, or the joy of balloon launches, the nurturance of music, the sound of throwing of dirt on a lowered coffin, or the symbolic placing of a stone on a grave. We are being forced in this area, like so many others, to be creative, to honor what is within above all else, and perhaps to find a way to concretize our experience of loss with a new ritual, or art work, dance or song. My heart goes out to all of you who have lost someone in the last month, and to all of us who dread what loss the next month will bring.

04/04/2020

Finding sources that point the way to a greater understanding, a deeper love and longing, feed my heart and soul. So, I offer this morsel to you.

Solitude is one of the most precious things in the human spirit. It is different from loneliness. When you are lonely, you become acutely conscious of your own separation. Solitude can be a homecoming to your own deepest belonging. One of the lovely things about us as individuals is the incommensurable in us. In each person, there is a point of absolute nonconnection with everything else and with everyone. This is fascinating and frightening. It means that we cannot continue to seek outside ourselves for things we need from within. The blessings for which we hunger are not to be found in other places or people. These gifts can only be given to you by yourself. They are at home at the hearth of your soul.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from the book, Anam Cara
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

Co. Galway / Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill