Through a Jungian Lens

“. . . the deity which humanity experiences immediately in its soul is one whose life is made up of those unreconciled opposites which must be reconciled in human consciousness.  The reconciliation of these opposites in human consciousness is the only meaning of true human suffering and all that gives it dignity.  To deny the soul its natural access to God is thus for Jung to debase it, and to deny the soul the suffering of the divine self-contradiction is to trivialize the reality of those who suffer it consciously.”  (Dourley, Strategy For a Loss of Faith, p. 55)

Finding dignity – that is a good way to describe what I am trying to do in writing this blog and how I am trying to live in the second half of my life.  Finding dignity is not simply choosing to see one’s self with dignity; finding dignity is a process – a journey.  No one can give dignity as a gift to another person.  Dignity can only come from deep within the self.  And this is where religions fail to meet the spiritual needs of anyone who has “awakened” to the fact of “God within.”

This season has been unusual as far as weather is concerned.  This area is considered semi-desert country with cacti growing wild on the sides of the hills just to the south of my home.  Somehow, the rains don’t seem to be letting up as precipitation is now more than 300% more than normal. One positive to take out of this is the presence of rainbows such as this one I captured two days ago.  I love how light and water combine to create something so beautiful.  Rainbows are one of those things from nature that screams out that there is a God at the centre of the universe.

“Since the center of the psyche is both the center of the individual life and of the universe, its nature is always to transcend the approaching ego, even as it demands the ego drawing near . . .” (Dourley, A Strategy For a Loss of Faith, p. 48)

Where I, as a normal man, would put God at the centre of the universe, Jung puts the psyche in that place.  And within that individual psyche, the God and Goddess united.

“Union with the God who is at the center of the psyche relates the individual to all that flows from such a center, but, by implication, without the same total embrace as the center itself would have.  Unqualified relatedness to all points on the periphery would mean unqualified unity with the center, held exclusively by the divine.” (Dourley, A Strategy For a Loss of Faith, p. 48)

Now, this is quite a stretch, to see that I, as an individual, have a psyche that stands at the centre of the fullness of the universe.  That makes me wonder about that centre and about relatedness.  If my psyche is at the centre, where is your psyche located?  The answer has to be, if one is to follow Jung’s reasoning, that your psyche is at the centre of the universe as well.  The divine within the centre of my psyche, is the same as the divine at the centre of your psyche.   This almost seems to defy logic as I try to follow this.  What kind of universe must this be if every spot in the universe is also at the centre of that universe?  It has to be a universe without boundaries, a non-physical universe, a universe of possibility that predates creation.

The only way to bend my mind around any of this is to allow my sense of being an individual, to encompass the idea that I am also part of the whole and not separate from the whole.  If I am not separate from the whole, that I am not separate from God.  I am within God, God is within me.  Just one important caveat to add: I am not God.

I am bringing another photo from a file I have set up called “anima.”  I took this photo about eight years ago while travelling through the Canadian Rocky Mountains.  For those interested, this particular site overlooks Canmore, Alberta.  As with a few other “anima” photos I have presented here, I am continuing with the use of “blue” in order to evoke the Great Mother, Gaia.

If Gaia was able to take human form, then I would see her as standing on the heights looking down at all that she created with a sense of sadness.  There is little doubt that “man” has run wild in his dominion over her creations.  Consciously we know that every act we perform effects the whole in some manner.  There is no escaping this fact.  Yet we bury our heads in hopes that if we “don’t know” that somehow we won’t be held accountable, that somehow what we do will slip by without affecting the whole, without being noticed.  This is where we get into our biggest troubles – the disconnect with our own soul, our own spirit.

So what do we do?  What can we do?

“All that Jung offers, and it may be as much as can be offered, is the suggestion that the individual stay in conscious dialogue with that inner power which is the source of the world’s religions.  Perhaps the only hope in the end is the inner dialogue carried out on behalf of the emergence of the safer myth.  Jung valued the individual’s contribution to its emergence as the greatest contribution one could make to humanity.  More, Jung implies that fidelity to this inner voice is fidelity to a power whose ultimate intent is personal vitality, the integration of the individual’s multiplicity through the balance of inner opposites, and a progressive empathy for the world beyond.”  (Dourley, A Strategy For a Loss of Faith, pp 136-137)

So this, then, is my task – do the work of journeying towards wholeness, living the journey, and sharing this journey here.  There is more, but for now, it is enough.