Grateful Reflections on Experiences that Changed Me by Don Evans

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Don, welcome your energies as a cocky, confident teenager out in the world!”

append delete Floyd

Hi Don - As you described Robin's invitation above, I was reminded of a recent experience of being out with a group of attractive young women. Now 47, I was surprised to find myself physically confident among them in a way I certainly never experienced as a teenager, or even decades after.

Age brings confidence, as does 19 years of love of a wonderful woman. But it seemed to me there was something more in this experience. I had no desperate need to fly away out of my body. I was less repulsed by the experience of being a physical being - a man even - than I had in the past.

Many years ago, I was privileged to attend one of your workshops on the theme of the Puer Aeternus. Part of the reason I didn't feel confident in my body was that I didn't want to be in it. My spirit wanted to be free - to be unconstrained by the realities of physical existence.

Finding myself present in a surprising way with these young women I realized that indeed I have over the years been surrendering the puer. Gradually letting go of the need to fly and settling slowly into my body.

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append delete #1. Don Evans

Since some other readers of my book will be reading what you’ve said, I’ll direct them to page 105, from which you uote. Also, for their sake, I’ll say a bit more about Puer Aeturnus (Eternal Boy). It’s the title of a book by someone who many regard as the best Jungian after Jung: Marie Louise von Franz. She describes a temperamental tendency that dominates many spiritually-inclined men in various ways. Her account consists mainly of detailed reflection on Exupery’s story about “The Little Prince”
When I first read the book over twenty years ago I immediately identified myself as a puer and I committed myself to her "cure": The main work for a puer is not acquiring more heavenly experience but rather EMBODYING what they already have in ongoing, everyday commitments to a job, a mate, a long-term creative project or vocation, and a meaningful life here on earth.
Ten years later, however, although I thought of myself as no longer a puer but a reformed puer, I had to acknowledge that my puer tendency was still messing up my love-life! Not until the events of January, 2012, beginning with Robin's invitation to me, was the core-puer in me successfully evicted: I finally gave up my longing that some day I would meet the one ARCHETYPAL WOMAN who would complete me! Since for me that addiction had been shaped by severe traumas when I was an infant , a great deal of very specific bodily-emotional-spiritual work had to precede the eviction!
So I recommend von Franz's book to any "Mommy's Boy" (and also to any "Daddy's Girl") who is reading my book. She provides an illuminating perspective on oneself and a relevant summons to embody our spirituality. But for me, and perhaps for you, embodiment involves more than von Franz's insights. It requires unique bodily-emotional-spiritual work by the individual in relation to their particular life-history.
I don't know, Floyd, what personal work has gradually enabled you to change in the ways that you describe, though I'm sure your love for your wife is part of it. And, unlike my state ten years ago, you don't seem to be kidding yourself!

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