Our Inner Sailors

And back to the story of Jonah, from which I cannot keep away.

A comment in a bibliodrama on Jonah chapter 1 led me to notice how we can read the story as symbolic of our inner processes.

The boat is akin to our psyche, our whole system. Jonah’s falling asleep in it represents repression and denial, two mechanisms that manage to keep us asleep even during powerful storms. They keep us blind to our own inner crisis, which then ratchets up, higher and higher, in a bid to get our attention.

The captain would normally have nothing to do with a passenger asleep in the bowels of his ship. However, he is thrown off kilter by the storm and – in an example of a topsy-turvy order of things, where those above descend below – he leaves his usual post to come down, find the offending sleeper and urge him (1:6): 

"What do you mean, O sleeper? Arise! Call upon your God! Perhaps God will give a thought to us, that we do not perish."

No answer from Jonah.
Symbolically, the captain is the superego, the voice of our conscience. When it sees that the boat, i.e. the psyche, the self, is cracking apart, it tries to take charge of the situation through the means with which it is familiar: rousing words, intstructions, and commands.
But this is not a language that the repressed awareness can even hear. It continues to sleep.

It is only when the sailors arrive, and plead (1:8):

"Tell us, we beg you, for whose cause is this evil upon us? What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?"

that Jonah finally responds, replying (1:9):

"I am a Hebrew; and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who has made the sea and the dry land."

He is connecting to his identity and to a higher power. This leads to his suggesting a solution. He is now in charge, and knows what to do. This is the healthy ego, the functional self that rejects both the id’s denial and the superego’s unbearable pressure, and listens to intuition that helps the divine voice to come through and give aid.

Our captain, the voice of reason, our adult voice, cannot actually speak to the parts of us that are in distress, that are childish, unreasonable, shut down. If we shout at a child acting from within emotional baggage, we may have all the reason in the world on our side, but they will not hear us. It was the sailors’ approach in a respectful manner, as equals, their actually showing interest in Jonah and his personal history, that successfully elicited a response. Their warmth of approach, their genuine humanity (expressed even more strongly when they do not want to throw him overboard, even to save their own lives) give him the space to wake up to his true self, connect to his identity, connect to God, and get back in the saddle.  

We need to find those sailors inside us – the compassionate voices of our inner loving parent, our inner kind therapist, coach and friend – that can hear us and want to understand who we really are, without judgment. It reminds me of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov's story of the Turkey Prince, or (the Option method for treating autism), in which the wise adult figure descends “under the table” to the child's level, in order to genuinely understand and create an atmosphere of trust. This allows the prince to eventually come back up to sit at the table.