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| Starry Night (Vincent van Gogh) |
I can only gaze with wonder and awe at the depths and heights of our psychic nature. Its non-spatial universe conceals an untold abundance of images which have accumulated over millions of years of living development and become fixed in the organism. My consciousness is like an eye that penetrates to the most distant spaces, yet it is the psychic non-ego that fills them with non-spatial images. And these images are not pale shadows, but tremendously powerful psychic factors.
The most we may be able to do is misunderstand them, but we can never rob them of their power by denying them. Beside this picture, I would place the spectacle of the starry heavens at night, for the only equivalent of the universe within is the universe without; and just as I reach this world through the medium of the body, so I reach that world through the medium of the psyche.
~ C.G. Jung, (from Edward Hoffman's The Wisdom of Carl Jung)
I'm going to start by telling you something about me; in my profile I talk about how I've basically spent my entire life studying psychology, and there's a very good reason for this. It's because I was looking for a way to fix myself. I had a difficult childhood, was bounced from home to home and family member to family member. Though I didn't realize it (because I'm an INTP and don't really have access to my feelings) I never understood how much this wounded me until I was already well into adulthood, but I suffered. Between that and being an introvert in an extroverted culture that looks down on introversion (this was before being an introvert became trendy with the popularity Susan Cain's book Quiet) I felt that there was something fundamentally wrong with me and was desperate to fix it.
“Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering”
― Carl Gustav Jung
I tried everything: individual therapy, group therapy, inner child work, affirmations, subliminal learning, neuro linguistic programming, and many more, too many to remember. I delved into Jung's work back in the 90's though it didn't “take” then. I had to wait until around 10 years ago for me to really get into it. By this time I had given up on psychology being able to do anything beyond very surface, psychological band-aids. No matter how many times you look in the mirror and tell yourself how awesome you are, you know the truth. You can't cognitive-behavioral-therapy your way out of what you know. So I gave up trying to fix myself and decided to become a librarian.
And then Jung re-entered my life and... I changed. For the very first time, something worked! It didn't work the way I had planned or wished (it never does) but I could feel it, I could see it. Other people could see it! Because the thing that was missing was the depth. The only way you can fix a problem is to go where the problem actually exists, and psychological problems, the serious ones that affect the entirety of one's life, are rooted in the depths one's psyche, or mind. Therefore, the only way to fix them is to go into the depths of the psyche, that is, the unconscious.
Into the ultraviolet
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| Reptiles (MC Escher) |
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
― Jung
The problems we have in our lives are just symptoms of issues in the unconscious, the deep layer underlying our conscious self, our “I.” If I fall in love with a terrible person and my friends tell me he's terrible, and give reasons why and then I'm like “Oh, he's a douche! I'm going to break up with him!” that's a problem on the level of consciousness and can be solved on that level. If, however, I refuse to listen and insist that he really does love me even though he's physically and emotionally abusive, then that's probably a problem that originates in the unconscious. The only real way to solve a problem is to go where it is. The unconscious is where our most tenacious personal problems exist, the only way to truly solve them is to work with it.
The inner, subjective world and the outer, objective one are mirrors of each other. Just as there are lands and peoples, an entire universe, in our outer reality so too are there lands, peoples, planets, and worlds within. It's a strange, magical reality, a true mirror to the rational, logical reality of the daylight world of consciousness but it's no less real, and no less powerful. We have people and things in our outer, objective reality that we need to deal with. In that situation, we need to work on the outer level. However, we also have people and things - that is, complexes and archetypes - in our inner, subjective reality that we also need to deal with. We use our conscious mind to deal with outer reality. We need to go into our personal unconscious to deal with inner reality.
“Everything you do here, all of the houses, everything, was fantasy to begin with, and fantasy has a proper reality. That is not to be forgotten; fantasy is not nothing. It is, of course, not a tangible object, but it is a fact, nevertheless. It is a manifestation of something, and that is a reality.”
― Jung
Jung compared these two worlds - outer, objective reality and inner, subjective reality - to the two poles of the light spectrum, the infrared and ultraviolet ends of the spectrum. At the infrared end is the body; instincts, physiological symptoms, physical perceptions; the “real world” expressions of the archetype. At the opposite end is spirit; ideas, dreams, fantasies, religious imagery, complexes; the psychological, ultraviolet end of the human psyche.
For example, the Mother archetype can come to us physically, through an outer person, or the urge to nurture, or maybe a constant hunger. If a person has Mother hunger and she keeps trying to stuff it down with food, or find some person to provide the mothering she missed, this is an attempt to work with the archetype on the infrared side, the side of instinct and physical reality. The ultraviolet side of the archetype would be dream figures, an inner image of the Mother, or the feeling of love, or a lack of it; the complex. A complex is an aggregation of feelings, thoughts, images, and expectations around the nucleus of an archetype; it's our personal, individual psychic expression of it. This is the end we need to work at.
We have to work on psychological problems on the symbolic level, that’s the level you need to be at in order to make deep, lasting changes. If we work on things on the conscious level, the infrared level, we just keep repeating them over and over, never changing or growing out of them. This is because we need to become conscious; those contents of the unconscious that are pushing upwards need to be brought into the light. Unless we deal with the problem on the symbolic level we don’t increase consciousness. Compulsions, obsessions, even physical problems like illnesses or even accidents, are our unconscious attempts to try to solve these inner problems but unless we increase consciousness we will never change. However, if we do manage to do so we can, and will, change. Not by getting rid of the problem but by growing out of it; in comparison to our new, larger personality what was once a huge, looming dragon becomes a tiny little gecko. The Self wants to help us, wants to increase consciousness in us, and through us the world. That’s exactly why we get problems. Our problems are the Self's gift to us to help us grow, to become more and more whole. These problems are the catalyst that allow us to bring more of who we really actually are into the world.
The realization and assimilation of instinct never takes place at the red end, i.e., by absorption into the instinctual sphere, but only through integration of the image which signifies and at the same time evokes the instinct, although in a form quite different from the one we meet on the biological level.- Jung, “On the Nature of the Psyche”
Psychologically the archetype as an image of instinct is a spiritual goal toward which the whole nature of man strives; it is the sea to which all rivers wend their way, the prize which the hero wrests from the fight with the dragon.
This process isn’t about becoming spiritual. It isn’t even about becoming a better person, though that’s not an uncommon result. Spirituality isn’t a prize that once you get it everything is perfect and you are perfect and you live in a permanent state of nirvana. Spirituality is about learning to recognize the sacred that already always surrounds us. Spirituality is just learning to see the soul of the world, a soul that also lives in us. We are imperfect, as the world is imperfect. Learning to swim with the currents of life, to let them flow into you and back out into the world, to do so cleanly and with awareness, regardless of our circumstances, that is spirituality.
The thing to remember is; everything is spiritual practice. You don’t have to make it spiritual, it already is. And the harder the thing is, the more it challenges you, the better. It is literally like working out; the harder it is, the more consistently you do it, the stronger you get. You have resistance to going to the gym - who doesn’t? - that’s spiritual practice. You find yourself in a situation where you can get a huge benefit if you cheat? Spiritual practice. You need to develop one of your scary cognitive functions, huge spiritual practice.
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
― The Gospel of Thomas
This process isn't about becoming a perfect human being with no flaws or failures. It's about how owning every part of ourselves leads us to wholeness, to integration of all of our orphan parts. Even now sometimes I feel like the lowest, worst person. I have so many flaws; I’m lazy, unreliable. Struggle to relate emotionally to others. Sometimes I feel like the biggest failure on the planet, that I've disappointed myself and everyone around me. And yet.... I’ve also been graced with moments of such joy, and such connection - a sacred joy, and joyful connection - brief as they may have been. We don't become “better” people, we learn how to better become who we truly are. Jung said that “the privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” It is only by becoming who we truly are that we open ourselves up to connection with the sacred source of life.
We hold tightly onto nothing; not power, not honor, not adulation, not wealth, not even love. We hold these things gently, like a small, delicate bird. Maybe the bird lands in our open hands. Maybe it doesn’t. The point isn’t having the bird, it’s being present, regardless of what birds may fly to us. It’s experiencing our lives fully. And that includes the ugliness… especially our own ugliness. By experiencing all that life is, by accepting all that we are and that others are, we clear away everything that was blinding us to this world soul. The dark side of God wants to be known as much as the Light but it’s a very difficult and dangerous task. If we don’t do it right destruction could result. But, if we don’t even try then that possible result will become a certainty, both for ourselves and the world. The light needs the dark. They are two sides of the same golden coin.
The greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This ‘outgrowing’, as I formerly called it, on further experience was seen to consist in a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person’s horizon, and through this widening of view, the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out when confronted with a new and stronger life-tendency.- Jung
Everyday spirituality
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| Gallery (MC Escher) |
“If we can stay with the tension of opposites long enough — sustain it, be true to it — we can sometimes become vessels within which the divine opposites come together and give birth to a new reality.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz
This isn’t to say that paranormal events can’t happen; synchronicities remind us that the world is alive. But it’s not something that we should rely on. It’s a gift, not something we should, or even could, trap, enslave, and put to work for us. To use the unconscious in such a way is as shameful and loathsome as it is to use another person. Nature is not here for our use but to manifest the beautiful and terrible glory of God… as is the unconscious, as are we ourselves. To use it for such an ignoble and grotesque purpose as to puff up our insignificant egos is disgusting, and the very definition of sin. And it’s why we’re all in the situation we're in today, with humanity on the brink of self-annihilation.
“Faith, hope, love, and insight are the highest achievements of human effort. They are found - given - by experience. But what will he do when he sees only too clearly why his patient is ill; when he sees that it arises from his having no love, but only sexuality; no faith, because he is afraid to grope in the dark; no hope, because he is disillusioned by the world and by life; and no understanding, because he has failed to read the meaning of his own existence?”
― Jung
The drive of egotism is, at it's root, a holy desire. Every time we want to be the best, most loved, richest, most popular, or successful, or whatever, what we're really searching for is the Self. This is the golden prize, the heavenly kingdom, that is the goal of every myth and fairy tale. But, because we refuse to accept our legitimate suffering, to do the hard work necessary to redeem our own portion of the sacred, that holy desire turns into something foul and capable only of bringing unnecessary suffering and destruction. Sensation’s divine gift is faith, trust, assurance. For intuition it's hope, aspiration, direction. Feeling's gift is love, connection, cherishing. And thinking, at it's highest level, gives us insight, wisdom, and vision. Peace, hope, love, and wisdom; these are our birthrights. But we will only bring these into the world if we are willing to do our work, and suffer our legitimate suffering, the suffering which belongs to us and is ours.
“A complex can be really overcome only if it is lived out to the full. In other words, if we are to develop further, we have to draw to us and drink down to the very dregs what, because of our complexes, we have held at a distance.”
― Jung
Spirituality isn’t easy. God isn’t a big daddy in the sky who makes everything nice for you if you’re a good little girl. It’s hard. Jesus called on us to follow him, to do as he did. He chose to let himself be crucified. We, too, face the same moral choice; we, too, must allow ourselves to be crucified, must suffer being hung up, pulled in opposite directions, to hang there and hang there and hang there. Suffering is a natural, normal part of life, not something to be avoided. Unnecessary suffering should be avoided but necessary suffering - suffering which is yours, which belongs to you - requires that it be lived out, drunk down to the dregs, in order for you to fulfill the task you were born for.
Trials are a way of making us worthy; making us strong enough, skilled enough, clever enough to succeed at our goal. Each trial teaches us something, makes us stronger, strong enough to overcome the next trial, which prepares us for the one after. The struggle is hard, it’s painful. Whatever the thing in your life is that you least want to do, that is probably the one thing you should do. When difficult, traumatic experiences come to us, accept them for what they are: opportunities to bring you closer to the purpose that you alone can serve.
What about suffering in late life? As Eddinger points out suffering in any age can be understood by the ego as the attempts of the Self to incarnate. The way it feels to the ego when we’re suffering is unpleasant but it’s often simply God trying to incarnate. It means this process trying to occur from below so to speak, because the ego doesn’t know the intention of the Self. If the ego knew the intention of the Self it wouldn’t hurt so much. Jung writes about this; he says as we extend our consciousness into the unconscious we contact spheres of a not yet transformed God, so as the ego in later life brings this material up and thinks about it and articulates it, that helps to transform the Self or helps to transform the as yet unconscious God, or aspects of the Self.- Lionel Corbett
It is hard to accept: the fire has to burn the fire, one just has to burn in the emotion till the fire dies down and becomes balanced. That is something which unfortunately cannot be evaded. The burning of the fire, of the emotion, cannot be tricked out of one’s system; there is no recipe for getting rid of it, it has to be endured. The fire has to burn until the last unclean element has been consumed, which is what all alchemical texts say in different variations and we have not found any other way either. It cannot be hindered but only suffered till what is mortal or corruptible, or, as our text says so beautifully, till the corruptible humidity, the unconsciousness, has been burnt up. That is the meaning, it is the acceptance of suffering.”- Marie-Louise von Franz
Everything is part of spiritual practice. The MBTI gives us an idea of what it is precisely that we as individuals need to do, what’s the crap that we’re personally avoiding. Maybe our spiritual practice is enduring the awkwardness and humiliation social interactions, as is my case. Yours will be unique to you and your type. Whatever it is, we need to do it and do it and do it, and cook ourselves in all those negative emotions. As we do so we cook out the bad water, the unconsciousness of the Unconscious, leaving behind only pure, clean, nourishing water.
The best definition of wisdom actually, which at first I thought was the most naive definition, is the definition of Meister Eckhart, but it’s the hardest of all to achieve. His definition is that wisdom consists in doing the next thing you have to do, doing it with your whole heart, and finding delight in doing it. I find that’s probably the most profound definition but the hardest, because usually what you have to do next is some crap that you don’t want to have to do. So that’s very hard to get to. But if you do get to it, then it has a certain meaning that we’ll perhaps come to.- Lionel Corbett
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| Hand with Reflecting Sphere (MC Escher) |
One of the major difficulties that we have is the ego thinks that ego knows how the individual ought to be. But we are not who we think we are. It’s very important for us to let go of our ego ideas of who we think we are and not have too fixed a smaller self-concept because we need to discover more how the Self thinks the ego ought to be. So the function of old age is the culmination of this lifelong process of clarification, what Freud and Scott Maxwell calls “discovering your essence,” and making conscious all your disparate parts of yourself with the aid of ego consciousness, or, as Jung says, helping the creator to become conscious of his creation. Or developing the ego into a model of the Self, which it really is, or as he quotes Silesius: “I am God’s child and son and He is mine.” That’s what that means psychologically. The Self that’s present at birth can become more conscious of itself throughout life. Then psychological development and spiritual development are absolutely synonymous, only the words are different, but the process is the same.- Lionel Corbett, “Jungian Views on Aging”
Question: Why do we humans live for so long? This has always been the case; among hunter-gatherers, barring accidents or illnesses, people generally lived to around age 85. We can assume that our hunter-gathering ancestors were the same. But why would this be so? Nothing exists in nature that doesn’t serve a purpose. Like tails on humans or feet on whales, if a thing doesn’t serve the animal it evolves out of existence. So why do women live nearly half of their lives unable to give birth anymore? Why do men live so many years after their ability to out-compete all those strong, young men wanes? If the tasks of youth and adulthood are work and family, what does it mean that we live so many years, decades even, after continuing these tasks is feasible? What are the tasks of this final stage of life?
Our first task of the second half of life is to develop the parts of ourselves that we were never really able to, being so busy living our lives. In the first half of life we develop our stronger, easier functions. This happens naturally; that which you are good at gives you pleasure, and brings rewards, so you keep using it. This continuous use develops these functions to higher and higher levels of proficiency. Those functions that are weak, difficult, and awkward to use are avoided, becoming more and more anemic and atrophied. But these unused parts of ourselves eventually press for recognition; that which has been kept in the darkness longs for the light.
Like a person who only exercises the right side of their body, something starts pushing us to work on the left. Those functions we’ve worked on for so many years start to bore us, like reading the same book, or playing the same video game for decades. We start itching to stretch ourselves beyond that which has become stale and overly familiar. Previously avoided parts of us become wondrous, exciting new lands for us to explore.
“The fruits of biological life are children, but the fruit of psychological life, especially in late life, is meaning.What old people have to do is make meaning and make culture, make new ideas, not compete with the young. They have a different responsibility, and their fecundity is a spiritual fecundity and the production of new meaning.”
― Lionel Corbett
When unsuccessful it can lead to mordancy, regret, stagnation, even despair. But when successful it leads to acceptance, and allows for further development. By looking back over our lives we learn what our nature really is. And here’s the thing; if we don’t undertake this difficult and harrowing task it will still lead to bitterness, emptiness, and despair. You can’t actually avoid it, not without paying an even greater price. These are the bitter, ill-tempered aged; moody and dejected, fixated on all that they've lost. Jung wrote that life’s natural upward movement in the first half of life keeps us optimistic and generally moving forward. But, in the second half, unless we have contact with the sacred the slow ebbing away of vitality leaves us stranded in a sour, barren old age.
“Tears, sorrow, and disappointment are bitter, but wisdom is the comforter in all psychic suffering. Indeed, bitterness and wisdom form a pair of alternatives: where there is bitterness wisdom is lacking, and where wisdom is there can be no bitterness.”
— Jung
At the end of every stage of life we are required to give something up, so that we might attain something new. Just as an infant needs give up the bottle and diaper to become a toddler, we need to let go of that which cannot be, which is no longer good for us. In this way we are able focus on that which we can and should be. Our elder years, from approximately 65 to 85, are as long as childhood. This time wouldn’t exist if it didn’t serve an important purpose; the development of spiritual meaning, a spiritual life. The spiritual gifts of peace, hope, love, and wisdom, which are only attained after our long battle with the formidable dragon of our fears.
The purpose of our maturation is to enable the Godhead to rejuvenate, if we could only understand that. When we are born God is old; when we grow old, God becomes young; and when we die, God experiences rebirth. And this goes on and on, but not in the sense that the Godhead is feeding on us, but the whole thing is rather a natural process which is not yet too well understood. It is absolutely essential that, particularly in old age, we do not lose or have lost our connectedness with the Godhead for otherwise we not only deprive God of our share in His rejuvenation, but may actually disturb the cosmic ecology which, in turn, affects us. Ideally, so the voice says, we gain wisdom as we grow older, but only few people do. To accumulate knowledge per se is not all that important; what is important is that we are connected with the Godhead or the Divine, and let it live within us, even though it is also outside of us. Belief in a cosmic Supreme Being or Power constellates the inner child and thus furthers the divine rejuvenation process. If we ignore the divine element, it sinks into itself and ceases to be conscious of itself. As we grow older we often lose the child, and as we lose the child we are apt to simultaneously sever our ties to the divine. There was also some indication that the birth and the death process are actually the same except that as little children we seem to be contained in the Divine element, whilst in old age we are apparently expected to be a container for the Divine element.
- Lionel Corbett, “Jungian Views on Aging”
Before the existence of ego there is no consciousness; despite it’s many shortcoming there can be no consciousness without ego. By going through this process, it’s the ego that allows the Self to constantly get born. Our purpose is to give birth to God, as God gave birth to us. If we do everything right, when we die God is reborn. The Self gives birth to ego in childhood, then ego, in it's turn, gives birth to the Self in elderhood.
“For the alchemist the one primarily in need of redemption is not man, but the deity who is lost and sleeping in matter. Only as a secondary consideration does he hope that some benefit may accrue to himself from the transformed substance as the panacea, the medicina catholica, just as it may to the imperfect bodies, the base or 'sick' metals, etc. His attention is not directed to his own salvation through God's grace, but to the liberation of God from the darkness of matter.”
― Jung
Increasing consciousness redeems the God that lives within us. We must bring Them into the world, no matter how difficult and painful it might be, thereby also redeeming the God that lives in the world. Individuation is the goal; it is incarnation on the one hand, and differentiation on the other. It's rebirth, both of oneself and of God. New images continually rise up from the unconscious as revelation. Through these images new consciousness is possible, and this new consciousness is what makes this whole process take place. What does that mean for you? What is the flower waiting deep in your soul to bloom into the light? What is the unreconstructed part of God that you are being asked to give birth to? This is reunification of divine unity, the re-establishment of Totality. The rebirth, not only of ourselves but also of God.
The losses of old age, which seem very painful, actually enhance our own differentiation. As Jane Will writes, we have to take back our projections from the world. We project onto the world the way we think it is. When all those things die off those projections have to be taken back, and we see things the way they really are. We have to find what was lost on the outside, symbolically, on the inside. That’s the idea of finding the whole world in the microcosm, or, as the Gospel of St. Thomas also says; whoever finds himself is superior to the world.- Lionel Corbett, “Jungian Views on Aging”
Links
Jungian Views on Aging
The Self
The flower of humanity
Sources
Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy
Marie-Louise von Franz, “The Hidden Source of Self-Knowledge,” Dreams
CG Jung (from John Beebe's Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type)
A huge debt is owed to analyst Lionel Corbett. His talk “Jungian Views on Aging” (from the Jungianthology Podcast) forms the basis of the final section. I doubt this would have been written, or at least it would have taken me a long time to figure out, without it. We stand on the shoulders of giants, and hopefully provide a platform from which future generations can surpass us.
A huge debt is owed to analyst Lionel Corbett. His talk “Jungian Views on Aging” (from the Jungianthology Podcast) forms the basis of the final section. I doubt this would have been written, or at least it would have taken me a long time to figure out, without it. We stand on the shoulders of giants, and hopefully provide a platform from which future generations can surpass us.
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