Through a Jungian Lens

Om Mani Padme Hum - Buddhist Mantra

Today is the day. This afternoon I join into a community of like-minded souls that have adopted a Tibetan Buddhist (mahayana) view of the world. This act of taking refuge is not about becoming Tibetan, or a monk, or a lama or about becoming anything more than myself. Taking refuge is in a way, finding that space within myself that is the bedrock of who I am as a spiritual, ethical and whole human that recognizes that I am not alone but am held within the collective of humanity, a child turned adult of a culture that extends back millenia carrying the heritage of the past into whatever the future holds for myself and all of humankind. Of course, I have had to think long and hard on taking this step. I had to come to understand exactly what taking refuge meant both within the Buddhist frame of reference and within the frame or through the lens of how I see and know the world and myself.

Taking refuge – refuge being a physical place of safety, or a mental state of being in which one can find protection. Why do I need to take refuge, to find this place both internal and external in which I can be safe? I guess I would have to say that it is about creating a space and place for my soul/psyche to nurtured and mature, a place that will act like a protective shell in a world that has little concern for the truly spiritual and psychological well-being of individuals. In psychological work, there is a need for a place of temenos, a sacred space/place/container in which one can risk facing inner demons with the purpose of finding personal healing and mental and spiritual health

Today I will take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Taking refuge in Buddha is a state of mind, not some external God to whom one prays. The Buddha is that state of mind that “enlightened” or in Jungian terms, one in which the psyche has individuated into a state of wholeness (holiness) where self and other are seen as inseparable parts of a whole.  Dharma is the path – the teachings and practice.  One can’t know everything or how to get there on one’s own. If there was a book with all the questions and answers to guide us through every situation in life, it would be a big help. But information is not enough, we also need help in developing the practices to make our lives better and to heal our souls which enter the world bruised. Tibetan Buddhist teachings come first from the work and the words of Siddhartha Gautama (Shakyamuni Buddha). These teachings have one goal in mind, that of waking up to the fullness that is enlightenment or nirvana. C.G. Jung is not in the same league as Buddha, but he did work and put forth his ideas within the context of a modern western world culture for the same purposes. The goal, consciousness a consciousness that is both personal and universal. Sangha is the community that exists within which one finds support for this journey of dharma towards awareness, consciousness, wholeness.  Community is important in helping one stay strong as well as helping us get back up off our knees when we fall on our journey. In spite of the fact that the journey is individual, the fact that one can know that in spite of doing this lonely work, one is connected to others and held within a family of spirit, a family of intention. In Jungian psychology, there is a hint of this when one joins within a collective such as a Jungian Society, when one takes part in workshops and seminars where the spirit is uplifted and the hard work of individuation is supported.

So, in a way, taking refuge is like adding another layer, adding another dimension to the work within which safety and support are held sacred.

New Life Out of the Muck - Samsara and the Journey to enlightenment

I was thinking of a friend, Walt, who is continuing his journey as he battles cancer. While I was going over the notes I made from the Guy Corneau presentation in March here in Calgary, I found something that I need to revisit for my own process. This post is dedicated to Walt and all others who find that they are struggling with living and perhaps with dying. That said, here are my notes from the first session of the presentation:

• The “body understands our feeling more than it understands what has happens to the body” – what we “feel” about an injury or an illness has greater impact on the body than the actual illness or injury.
• “Illness has improved my life”
• “creating an alter reality, a preferential reality is needed for rejuvenating the self”
• We are “walking tentatively in life behind our many protective layers”
• We “need to be rooted back into life”
• “listening to the psyche, living authentically
  • Believe in life
  • Dare to live
  • Leaving darkness
  • Giving up pretences
  • No energy to push and deny
  • Intimate choices – new life or death/darkness
• “using active imagination to create a positive vision for self
• “daily practices honouring body, mind, soul and spirit”
• “daring to risk when there is nothing to lose but darkness and fear”
• “we have a subscription for unhappiness that we find hard to cancel”
• “healing comes from inside – thoughts, feelings, needs, beliefs

This is what I will use as the base for my post. It is also what I will need to use to create my own preferential reality. What do I want, really want for my self, to honour my soul and spirit? I need to address this clearly so that I can talk clearly about this need and in speaking clearly I will be able to chart the steps needed to get there. With a plan I can then be honest with my self and

others rather than continually saying “I don’t know” every time I am asked “What do you want?”

Prajna Paramita - Tibetan Buddhism

I found this image somewhere on the ‘net a few weeks ago and thought it would be a good image to use today. Tonight I go to the Marpa Gompa sangha for an evening of meditation and reading from a book called The Jewel Ornament of Liberation, by Gampopa. I missed last Thursday’s session because of fatigue and wanting to spend some precious time with my wife while she was in Calgary. I don’t want to miss tonight’s session as on Sunday I will be taking refuge.

For those who don’t know what refuge is in terms of Buddhism, it is the process by which one becomes a Buddhist. I am becoming a Buddhist following the Karmapa school of Buddhism, a form of Tibetan Buddhism. What is important to note is the fact that I am not becoming a Buddhist monk. My hair stays on my head and I continue to wear normal clothing and lead a normal life. What changes is the addition of a spiritual dimension that has a form based on the eightfold path, which is divided into three main sections called prajna, sila and samadhi. I have borrowed from Wikipedia (edited of course to highlight the keys for me and how this will help guide my “process” of becoming a healthier human.

• Prajna is the wisdom that purifies the mind:

1. viewing reality as it is, not just as it appears to be;
2. intention of renunciation, freedom and harmlessness.

• Sila is the ethics or morality:

3. speaking in a truthful and non-hurtful way;
4. acting in a non-harmful way;
5. a non-harmful livelihood.

• Samadhi is the mental discipline required to develop mastery over one’s own mind:

6. making an effort to improve;
7. awareness to see things for what they are with clear consciousness, being aware of the present reality within oneself
8. correct meditation or concentration

I will keep an open mind about this process and listen carefully to my own inner core when there is anything that doesn’t seem to fit. I will be looking very closely at how Jungian psychology and Buddhism mirror each other. And likely, that will be done here in the future as my experiences with Buddhism become deeper rather than just depending on information from books.

Free flowing after a winter being ice-bound

A photo I took a few days ago shows a scene from Fish Creek. My last series of photos taken of the creek showed the scene in ice and snow. Now the waters race with abandon as they engage in a dance of sorts that takes them from here to there.

In working with the human psyche, there are seasons where one feels too contained and restrained as though one, like this creek, has fallen under the spell of winter and has turned to ice. It is a cold, dark and constricting place which almost feels as though one struggles even to breathe. Then, as if by magic, light emerges to melt the ice, to banish the cold and dark into a corner for a while so that a new season can begin.

Signs of Spring

It has been a while since my last post. There is no “good” reason for the delay other than to say that my head, heart and spirit were lacking. Sometimes it is just enough to wake up, make required connections with the outer world and then just go blank.

This has been my story for much of April as anyone who reads here regularly will have noticed. Usually I write almost every day. It goes with the practice of reading, taking photos, playing music, meditation and taking care of the body. Yet, there are times when it seems all that one can do is breathe and wait for something to shift.  Breathing is the issue, and that issue is mirrored by a resurgence of my seasonal allergies which has me again taking allergy medications which leave me in a bit of a zombie state from time to time.

Today, I changed residences in Calgary. Today my wife returned to our home in Saskatchewan after six days in Calgary with me. Perhaps today will be that shift that is needed, that I have been waiting for. It is raining and puddles are growing, the spring melt has now built small soggy ponds – all signs that spring and new life are here. Now, to see if that new life manifests in waking up and investing in becoming more present.

Tonight I head out for week four of the five week seminar which is focusing on James Hollis’ book, The Eden Project. I will leave much of the “settling in” process to tomorrow as I figure out what is missing and what I need to purchase to begin to treat this new basement suite as my sanctuary. And then, on the weekend I am taking part in Michael Conforti’s workshop with respect to dreams here in Calgary. It is time for me to leave the lethargy and claim my own space in life.

Rescuing soul and spirit from the detritus of daily living

The process . . .

Yes, the process, the analytical process that I am currently engaged in is taking up much of my time. For those who are not aware, I find myself in analytical sessions three times a week. This is how I am spending my time at this point since my resignation as a university instructor. Added to the process is an engagement in almost any and every Jungian seminar and workshop that dares to surface and make itself known here in Calgary. I am currently engaged in a seminar series that is studying James Hollis’ book, The Eden Project which is focused on magical other and the quest for the holy grail, the return to the Garden of Eden, to the womb of the Great Mother. In ten days I get to take part in a two-day event with Michael Conforti. It sounds busy enough, but I still find myself saying “more, more, faster, faster!”

So, into the container I have added a fairly intensive immersion into Buddhism through reading, reading, meditation, listening and attending a Sangha here in Calgary. My “extra” hours are filled with Trungpa, Chodron, Karthar, the Dali Lama and anyone who crosses my path through the library and the Sangha. The day after the Conforti adventure, I take refuge and accept the precepts; in other words, I am becoming a Buddhist in name as well as in spirit. For those who have been reading here, this probably will come as no surprise as I have often written about concepts and reverberations that come out of Buddhist teachings.

Of course, it isn’t all about Jungian psychology or Buddhism during this “sabattical” from ordinary, daily living and working. I do take time to take photographs, to walk, to cycle, and to play my guitar.  After all, there are a “lot” of hours to fill in a day.

It really isn't black and white, it just looks that way.

I have no wish to be more than I am for to wish to be more, is to wish to be other than myself. To believe that I am more than I am is hubris.

I have no wish to be less than I am for to wish to be less, is to wish to be other than myself. To believe that I am less than I am is hubris.

Hubris is defined as overconfident pride and arrogance. Immediately most of our political leaders, corporate leaders, social leaders come to mind. But o course, these are the people in the spotlight. Within each of us, hubris rears its ugly head. The moment we think ourselves “better than” an other or others, we are under the spell of hubris. We are in a state where we can’t see the other or others with any clarity at all, for to see them and ourselves as we really are would dispel the attitude of hubris. Understanding this, one is then led to acknowledge that adopting the opposite belief, that of being “less than” an other or others is also an act of hubris. How many of us cherish our wounds, savour the pain as we come to believe that we have the greatest wounds, take the most pills, suffer the most, have the heaviest load to carry? We wear our negated worth with pride demanding that all take note of our “greatness.”

That said, I do want to “be.” But what is it that I want to be? It might sound quite simplistic, but the truth is, I just want to be me whatever and whoever that might be. I want to know me, not just the leftover edges of various shadows and actions and projections and distorted memories that have collected in my cerebral data banks called my brain. Each of the facts as I know them of who I am are not much more than subjective illusions. I know that I am not a hero or a saint. I also know that I am not a demon or a coward – but I don’t know the essence of who or what I am. Perhaps it is because I am not as singular as I have been lead to believe. Perhaps I am only an temporary presence in a temporary form of something that is timeless and formless.

Now if I could rid myself of these vague thoughts and intimations I might just be able to be someone  special perhaps a real saint or a real intellectual or a real artist. But even looking into a mirror tells me the lie of who and what I am for the eyes and face staring back are constantly shifting as time passes, if time passes. I just keep shape-shifting. So I learn silence and drop pretense an disguises and leave the hoarding of fame, fortune and infamy to others. And as for me, breathing is enough.

I am finding Hillman’s book to be quite challenging and fascinating. He is forcing me to rethink my own muddled ideas about self, and to look at the culture in which I was born and raised. As I read daily in newspapers, editorials and in the social media of Twitter and Facebook, we are, as a culture, caught in a vortex of energy that wants release, wants to escape the messiness of a world we have created. We have “Occupy” movements, we have loud and sometimes violent and destructive protests hoping somehow that we can change the world we have created. But, can we change this bed we have created for ourselves without changing our sustaining myth as a culture? That is the critical question. Certainly, we cannot change that myth if we don’t know what that myth is.

Toby Keith with American troops celebrating a culture of heroes and herosim, celebrating a single-minded myth of the world.

“Were we to be interviewed by an aboriginal anthropologist from Australia for our “dream,” our “Gods,” and our “cosmology,” this would be the story we would tell. We would tell of the struggle each day brings to Ego who must rise and do battle with Depression and Seduction and Entanglement, so as to keep the world safe from Chaos, Evil, and Regression, which coil round it like an oppressive Swallowing Serpent. This gives account to our inquirer of our peculiar irrationalities, why we sweep the streets, why we pay taxes, why we go to school and to war – all with compulsive, ritualistic energy so as to keep the Serpent at bay. This is our true cosmology, for Ego, who changes rivers in  their course and shoots to the moon, acts not out of hunger or Gods or tribal persecutions, as the inquiring aboriginal might imagine in his savage mind, so inert and lazy bound to the maternal uroboros, with his “weak ego.” No, our civilization’s excessive activism is all to keep back the night of the Serpent, requiring a single monotheistic single-mindedness, a cyclops’s dynamism of all the God which She and Ego have partaken together at a Western banquet lasting three thousand years and perhaps now coming to it indigestible conclusion as Ego weakens in what we call “neurosis| and the swallowed Gods stir again in the imaginal dark of his shadow and of her belly. Ego and Unconscious, Hero and Serpent, on and Mother, their battle, their bed and their banquet – this is the sustaining myth we must tell to account for our strange ways: why we are always at war, why we have eaten up the world, why we have so little imaginative power, and why we have only one God and He so far away.” (Hillman, Senex & Puer, pp 144-145)

Man in the moon - son in the mother

I have been spending a lot of time going over and over James Hollis’ little book called The Eden Project and have been fascinated at that quest to return to the Garden of Eden, that place before consciousness that as humans we somehow project onto our significant others. Of course, as a man, I look at this dynamic and understand it viscerally as a return to womb, not the physical womb of mother, but the womb of soul that is embodied by the Great Mother.  I realise that I, as a man that carries this unconscious desire to connect with and be subsumed in soul gets played out in my relationship with my wife. Of course, there is a lot of magic in this and therein lies the biggest danger, disappearing into this web of magic so that I forget who I am and who my wife is.

Following the thread of the quest for wholeness that is the theme of Hollis’ book, I turned to James Hillman’s book, Senex & Puer in hopes of perhaps finding something there that would shed a little more light on the topic. I had expected to find something of clarity but found instead a whole new arena of confusion and messiness to consider, that of the larger nature of the Great Mother:

“We are so used to assuming that the some of the great mother appears as a beautiful ineffectual who has laid his testicles on her altar and nourishes her soul with his blood, and we are used to believing that the hero pattern leads away from her, that we have lost sight of the role of the Great Goddess in what is closest to us: our ego-formation. The adapted ego of reality is in her “yoke,” a meaning of Hera, just as the words hero and Hera are taken by many scholars to be cognate. When outer life or inner life is conceived as a contest for light, an arena of struggles, success versus failure, coping versus collapse, work versus sleep, pleasure vesus love, then we are children of Hera. And the ego that results is the mother-complex in a jockstrap.” (Hillman, Senex and Puer, p 141)

The Eden Project thus takes on a deeper layer for me, one that goes beyond relationship and projections, a mythological level that defies neat and clean answers.

Descent into the feminine and the Magical Other

“We can anyway not rid ourselves of complexes until they have given up on us. Their decaying time is longer than the life of the individual personality, since they continue in a kind of autonomous existence long after we have left th scene; they are part of the psychic inheritance of our children and their children, both natural and spiritual. The complexes are our dosage of sin, our karma, which if given up is really only passed on elsewhere.” (Hillman, Senex and Puer, p. 129)

Complexes and archetypes sort of blend in and shift shape as though the boundaries are porous. As I am learning to understand, they aren’t all that clear as each complex bumps into and merges with other complexes as though in a stew of sorts. The same seems to happen within the domain of archetypes where the shape-shifting makes them tough to contain, let alone name. As an example, Eros is considered to be the oldest of the gods yet also the youngest of the gods, the eternal youth from which life emanates and yet also the same youth who is eternally reborn. He is both the seed (masculine) and the container (feminine). On the complex front, the mother complex is twinned with a father-complex and is combined with the great Mother Earth archetype and the Father Sky archetype, a curious blend of personal complex, cultural complex and historical genetic memory as well as primal numinous image. Both are then combined to create a holy union of masculine and feminine that somehow end up being the holistic Self. Tell me you aren’t confused, that things aren’t definitely blurry. I have to admit that I am still in the dark and that it gives me a good feeling to be there. This is a cosmos that is far beyond the capacity of ego and intellect to really “know.”

It’s enough for me to realise that how I am in relation with another person is more about my history as it is about my present. My relationship to Other is a mixture of my relationship to my own unconscious contents (stuff of which I might never become aware) as well as to my relationship to community, to culture and spirituality; and, my relationship to the other person who also has his or her own history, etc., as well as a relationship to self, community, culture and spirituality. When all is said and done, I don’t really know the Other as the other person doesn’t really know him or herself. There is really nothing objective about objective reality, it is all about fuzzy projections.