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marybellefrey's picture

Allen and Kaufman

Allen has turned my world upside down -- or more accurately, stood me on my head. For a good part of the last ten years I have been reviewing my life, looking for continuity and meaning. Last year I was given a book that deals with the symbols of astrology and the esoteric tradition from a Jungian point of view. For the first time in my 70 years I felt that someone was talking about my life; it helped me see some direction or meaning. But Allen makes me realize that I have been looking for a narrative, a linear, chronological, 'masculine', left-brain construct with myself in the foreground. I am on my head because she makes it so clear what the holistic, multi-dimensional, 'feminine', right-brain mode actually is --- AND its practice. All the bits and pieces of my life are rearranging themselves in a great 3-dimensional patchwork. Even my understanding of the Jungian analysis of symbols is changing: the direction and significance I had taken from it are becoming a fluid pattern of relationships and balances, with myself, strangely, sometimes present, sometimes not. Reading, writing, and speech are primarily left brain. I have read about the right-brain qualities with that left brain and it is all very theoretical. Allen is the master prestidigitator: flip! flop! and here I am on the other side of the corpus callosum. Not quite at home yet, but eagerly anticipating making our heritage (the human heritage) of both sides of the brain truly mine. Kaufman's dilemna might look very different from the right side of the corpus callosum.

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