The Inner City
I'm a revelation, spreading out before your eyes
And you find me beautiful and irresistible
A giant creature that forever seems to grow in size,
And you feel a strange attraction,
Ooh, ooh the air is vibrant and electrified,
All the sounds that you hear,
And the air that you're breathing is me,
Yes I am the city, you let me be.
- Abba
Any lived-in place contains a multitude of histories: one of the land itself, another of its cultivation and conquest, and yet another of the people who lived there. But underlying the physical and time-bound geography is a psychic landscape, composed of myth, legend, and fairy tale.
One of the grand invitations of myth is to inhabit every character, to identify with both the god and the demon - and find them in yourself. Jumping into the skin of the empress, the giant, or the sacred deer, allows you to 'take on' some of their powers and perspective.
Landscape, too, is a 'character' in myth and legend, and creates a particular atmosphere encoded with meaning. In the Mahabharata epic, Arjuna and the Pandava brothers are banished to the forest, away from the 'civilised' world. In Hindu culture, the forest is a place of renunciation, asceticism, and spiritual growth. Arjuna surrenders to his fate, practices austerities, and becomes equal to the great sages, or rishis. Little Red Riding Hood also goes to a forest, but in her tale the woods are a liminal zone, the abode of predators. The forest represents shadow, desire, temptation, and all the hazards of the dark. Stay on the path! her mother warns, and she does - until the Big Bad Wolf lures her from it. The meaning of a geography shifts according to the culture in which it exists, and draws from a more primal history of human struggle and belief.
Landscape and setting provide the atmosphere and potentials of a story; they reflect what the characters must face or master if they are to adapt and survive the tale.
Likewise, the spaces we inhabit become characters to us, coloured with memory and meaning. As in myth, we can look at how we experience and interpret our environment as a reflection of certain aspects of ourselves.
We can cast ourselves as the heroine, and see our surroundings as the place we've been brought to that will reveal our potencies - and our shadows. The city, the suburb, the village, the land, is our psyche turned inside out.
The following prompts are a tool to discover what your view and experience of an environment reveals about you, and the interior spaces you might need to tend and grow.
*This will only be effective if you respond to the prompts first - and candidly - before reading the explanation at the very end. The juiciest truths can be found when meditating on places you really didn't like, or where you felt out of place. They tend to carry the greatest transformative power.
Answer these quickly and instinctively; don't think too much.
1. Have you ever lived in a place you didn't like, where you felt 'out of sync,' or that you knew you couldn't handle for the long term? What was your chief complaint? What were your recurring gripes about it? List 3-5 things. Think more in terms of qualities or attributes: greed, apathy, shallowness, conservatism, hedonism, etc.
2. Now try to distill your strongest 'dislike' into one word.
3. Is there a place where you lived that you loved? What were its most endearing features? And if you had to sum it up in one word, what would it be? Think in terms of a quality or virtue instead of a concrete 'thing.' Example: "Cozy and domestic" over "It has a lot of quaint little houses."
4. Finally, briefly describe your ideal city. Put another way: if you could design a perfect city, what would it be? Make a quick verbal sketch.
5. Now, fill in a few details. Think of the city as having 3 'layers,' beginning with the heart or centre of the city and moving out in concentric circles. Make a list:
a. Name the most important thing to have at the very centre of this city. Is it markets, art museums, business and finance, churches, schools, playgrounds, parks, residences, etc? What does your ideal city revolve around? (Don't think practically, just answer according to your preference.)
b. What is one layer out or just beyond the centre? What's important to have there?
c. And what is just beyond that? What is at the periphery of the city, around its edges?
6. Now we’re going to shift from spaces and buildings to the more functional aspects of the city. The following is a list of not-so-sexy elements that cities might need to sustain themselves. Which of these, in your opinion, is essential for the smooth functioning of a city, but that you didn't consider in your previous responses - and that you would not like to be in charge of implementing? Choose one:
Construction/ Infrastructure
City Planning
Zoning
Welfare and subsidised services for those in need
Law enforcement
Budget/Allocating resources
Communal spaces
Government/Leadership and representation
7. What do you fear most would encroach on and 'ruin' your ideal city? What element might destroy its beauty for you? Think more in terms of qualities or attributes: greed, apathy, shallowness, conservatism, hedonism, etc.
8. Name one final thing you would want to give your ideal city that you might not have thought of before. (You're gonna have to dig for this one.) Again, think in terms of a quality or attribute. A few examples: great leadership, connectedness to the land, a vibrant creativity, ambition, etc. What is the one shining power you would bless this city and its inhabitants with?
Inner City Decoder Ring…
1. This is your shadow. Or better put: These are the elements of your shadow a particular environment 'activates' in you. We often react negatively to aspects of ourselves we have disowned, or consider unsavoury, and towards which we feel shame or loathing. We have essentially split them off and buried them in our psyche, and then 'project' them on to people and places that seem different or alien to us. We have banished them as 'unlike' us, but, paradoxically, are deeply intimate with their essence. Analyst Jack Sanford describes the first aspect of the shadow (we'll get to the second in question #7) as, "the dark side of the ego, which is carefully hidden from itself and which the ego will not acknowledge unless forced to by life's difficulties."
Recognising how your environment might correspond with some hidden (or not so hidden) aspect of your interior life can be difficult and create a lot of resistance in us psychologically. But it can, in the words of Jungian analyst Robert A Johnson, "yield some of our greatest insights, force us beyond ourselves, and destroy naive and inadequate adaptations." The question to ask is: What, in your own psyche or internal dialogue do the 'negative' aspects of this city or landscape make concrete and real? What exiled part is it mirroring?
2. This is the most salient element of your shadow, the 'juiciest' aspect for you to work with at this time.
3. These qualities are all about resonance and comfort, and likely mirror some of your strengths and tendencies. That's a good thing; we need them for a sustainable, pleasurable existence. But they’re likely elements you seek externally instead of generating them for yourself. It will be important to cultivate them in your current life circumstance. For example: if you mentioned a vibrant arts scene, and plenty of parks and green outdoor spaces, then it will serve you to find or generate creative community or ways to connect with nature. These are the elements about which you need to be more proactive in experiencing and integrating - wherever you find yourself. In some way you have let others and external elements carry your own potential. These are gifts and powers you need to own now.
4. The ideal city is pointing you toward the kind of environment that will support your flourishing. You can use this in evaluating any circumstance or place in which you are thinking of living.
5. The 3 'layers' reveal the top 3 things that bring you alive. You feel open, connected and vibrant when these elements are present in your life. You will need to interpret and translate your responses here; think about what these elements represent. For example: if you placed a university campus at the centre of your city, then learning and education in community are paramount. If it's bars and clubs, then socialising and fun and stimulation are what's truly important. Do some free-association on each if you want to go a little deeper with what your responses really mean to you.
6. We all have blind-spots. Your answer here corresponds to some of the root/foundational/practical aspects of life that you tend not to address. This is something your environment has to teach you, and that would be good to cultivate now. This is a part of life you might neglect, but that needs your engagement. Flourishing and autonomy will follow. This is an aspect of your life that lacks 'flow', feels stagnant, imbalanced, underdeveloped, or stuck. By creating flow and fluency in this realm, you will find other parts of your life tend to open up as well.
Construction/Infrastructure: The body, health and maintenance of the physical self, movement, diet, finding sustainable rhythms and healthy practices, the senses, sex and sensuality, being comfortable in one's skin. Nourishing the body. Accepting ageing and death as a practice to enrich the present; holding all life stages as sacred and offering wisdom and gifts. Defining beauty and health for yourself apart from cultural ideas and prejudices; Appreciating the life force and unconscious processes of the body; loving the yin aspect of the body, that which is soft, vulnerable, sentient, hungry, fallible, penetrable, violable; appreciating the yang and that which thrives on effort, growth and pushing through; wonder at the body. Embracing the body as part of the self, but not becoming overly attached to its form.
City Planning: Vision, dreams, connecting present action with future consequence, clarity of direction, and skilful, practical means of how to get there, taking the whole into account instead of the whim of the moment, becoming a master of time, having a goal, but enjoying the process; having great intent but yielding to outcome, taking the lid off your dreams, dreaming your own dreams and not those programmed by the culture or your family, defining for yourself what success really mean, allowing for curiosity and reality-testing in the process of making.
Zoning: Boundaries. Giving and receiving, defining clear boundaries for the self in the world that allow you to be both safe and adaptive, individuation, decluttering the mind or releasing intrusive thoughts, making the mind your own; creating containers and rituals for productivity; possessiveness, inclusion and exclusion, isolation and accessibility; relational skills. Warmth and compassion, true empathy. Boundaries that are clear at first, and once met, can then move.
Welfare and subsidised services: Getting beyond tribal thinking in regards to resources, abundance, the sense of having enough to give; extending one’s sense of family, of who and what is ‘dear’ to you; understanding there is no ultimate immunity or protection from larger forces, systems, and natural laws; seeing oneself in the other; meditating on common ground instead of difference; empathy; questioning the freeness of one’s will; acknowledging the role of luck, chance and privilege in one’s ‘destiny’; Unity, connection with the whole, tithing, giving what one can, tapping into the many ways to give - material and non-material, thinking of one's possessions and wealth as transient, giving as an act of creating flow, being generous with creativity, respect, compassion, the benefit of the doubt.
Law enforcement: Attuning with your own values and principles, going beyond right and wrong and determining what is aligned with transcendent values and truth, living one's values, bringing them into the world, questioning authority and conditioned rules, defining for oneself the 'rules' by which you wish to live; awakening from herd-mentality; seeing through ‘displays’ and uniforms of power and into what they conceal; Self-parenting, discipline and structure as that which creates mastery and freedom, moving beyond binaries, beyond good and bad; holding oneself to a higher standard; making your insides match your outsides; living your truth; becoming transparent.
Budget: Resources, the valuing of money, time, and attention. Discipline in regards to assets, the content of your days, and where you put your focus. Knowing your limits and means and not living beyond them - on all levels, the emotional, physical and spiritual. Not lending or borrowing: authority, love, self-respect, dignity, self-worth, power, control. Honouring limits so that you always have enough. Being kind to your future self. Resourcefulness and creativity over acquisition, doing more with less, getting clear on your priorities and making sure you have the funds, time and drive to put them first. Becoming conscious of where you are wasting your energy in thought, word and deed.
Community Spaces: Finding ways to feel unity and connection, holistic thinking, respect for the next generation in your present actions, a sense of lineage and legacy, questioning all group-think, getting out of the 'hive-mind,' finding real and tangible ways to experience community beyond the internet, seeking elders, living such that you can become a wise elder, making cross-generational, cross-cultural, cross-gender connections. Group ecstasy. Embracing all your internal parts and selves and growing empathy for the other. Receptivity. Discernment in merging.
Government/Leadership: Owning your capacity to lead, to be counted, to have a voice, finding new, sustainable forms of leadership in your work and life, parenting the inner child, being willing to stand out, to be decisive, discerning, enlisting the help of others, delegating, knowing that the collective can accomplish great things, faith in the gifts and good will of others, holding oneself to a higher standard of word and deed, studying great leaders, bringing out others' gifts and employing them for a worthy task.
7. This is the second aspect of the shadow, what Jack Sanford describes as, "that which has been repressed in us lest it interfere with our [ego] and, however devilish it may seem, is basically connected to the [the essential, or Higher Self.]"
Meaning, this is a quality you and others might have deemed 'negative,' that can be transformed into a power. Once recognised, it can be used to self-realise. It's a kind of primal 'fuel' for getting us closer to our authentic self, and what it wants to do in the world. For instance, if you said 'greed,' then see if you can enlist this quality, with all its drive and aggression and hunger, for a higher purpose. Or if you said ‘apathy,’ think about how neutrality and detachment serve you in your life. As Sanford says, "In a showdown, the [Higher Self] favours the shadow over the ego, for the shadow, with all its dangerousness, is closer to the centre and more genuine."
8. This last is an inherent gift you possess, but have yet to fully own and live - what Jung called, "the gold in the shadow." We tend to project onto and admire in other people strengths and powers we ourselves have buried and disowned. From analyst Robert A. Johnson: "If you find the gold in someone, he will resist it to the last ounce of his strength. This is why we indulge in hero-worship so often."
This is about recognising your high worth and value. Perhaps it's a potency you expressed once as a child and for which you were punished or shamed. Our light can require as much courage to own and give as our dark. By making contact with the gold and bringing it into your life, you will find a new vitality, a new source of creativity. Chances are you’ve already felt the way it sometimes spontaneously 'pokes' through all your defences. It's what you are and do when all the filters fall away. If you have exhausted your ego, and are seeking change, find ways to embody this quality, one small step at a time. You may cringe away from it at first. That's good! To expand the exercise, take a close look at the people you admire and see if they all share a certain quality. Therein lies the 'gold' for which you need to dig.
The most important part of this exercise is to bring its revelations into your world, especially if you find yourself in a place you don't like. Recognise its light and dark in you. Once again, take on the heroine's perspective; see your environment as the space that's giving you everything you need to grow and transform. That way, whether you stay or go, you'll know you extracted its gifts and wisdom.
