http://jungiancenter.org/blog/ This is a supplemental site to jungiancenter.org. If you have found this site through blogging, check out our Web site. Here you will find a full description of the Jungian Center, who we are, what we do and what we offer. en Copyright 2004-2005 jungian@jazvt.com jungian@jazvt.com Ublog Reload 1.0.5 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=50 Materialism, Scientism and Jung’s Empiricism

“What most people overlook or seem unable to understand is the fact that I regard the psyche as real…”
“The ‘reality of the psyche’ is my working hypothesis, and my principal activity consists in collecting factual material to describe and explain it. I have set up neither a system nor a general theory, but have merely formulated auxiliary concepts to serve me as tools, as is customary in every branch of science.”
“You seem to forget that I am first and foremost an empiricist,…”

Jung struggled throughout his life to be understood for what he was—a true scientist—and for what his empirical method told him was true—that the psyche is real. Why was this? Why such a struggle? And why is this? Why is it that many people (especially in academia and science) still regard Jung as a “mystic,” not a scientist? Why do so many still fail to understand Jung when he spoke of the psyche as real? Even at the Jungian Center, where one might expect to find people open to and interested in Jung’s ideas, I frequently find blank expressions on students’ faces when I speak about the reality of the psyche.
This blog essay considers Jung’s dilemma in trying to get people to understand how he worked and what he found in his explorations of the inner life. We will begin by examining the dominant philosophy of our culture (materialism) and the “knowledge base” of our society (scientism) and then we’ll consider Jung’s form of science (empiricism) and how it differs from scientism. Finally we will examine Jung’s concept of the psyche, its features and centrality to Jung’s psychology.

Materialism: Why Few People Regard the Psyche as Real

The etymology or origins of the word “materialism” go way back thousands of years to the Indo-European root ma. “Matter,” “material,” “money” and “mother” all come from this root, all of these words referring to that which has physical form or substance. We got our word “materialism” from Latin materia, the “-ism” coming along in the 18th century as part of the Enlightenment’s quest to escape the ideological clutches of the Church.
Dictionaries amplify the root meaning of “materialism,” defining it as:
“the belief that all action, thought and feeling can be explained by the movements and changes of matter;…”
“the tendency to care too much for the things of this world and neglect spiritual needs;…”
“the ethical doctrine that material self-interest should and does determine conduct.”
“the doctrine that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications…”
“the doctrine that consciousness and will are wholly due to the operation of material agencies…”
“a tendency to prefer material possessions and physical comfort to spiritual values; …”
“a way of life based on material interests.”
The astrophysicist Bernard Haisch defines “materialism” as “… the belief that reality consists solely of matter and energy, the things that can be measured in the laboratory or observed by a telescope. Everything else is illusion or imagination….” The underlying assumption here is that “… everything will eventually be explainable in terms of electrical currents, chemical reactions, or yet-to-be-discovered physical laws—mind and spirit are mere epiphenomena.”
I think the most overarching definition—the one most closely related to our purposes here—is the description of “materialism” as “the present-day physical model of reality that matter is all there is and all there can be.” Intangibles like ideas, love, beauty, spirit, aren’t real. This denigration of intangibles has some serious implications, which we will consider below. Before discussing them, let’s examine some of the components of materialism.
Two of the most important elements of materialism are reductionism and randomness. Reductionism is the belief that a complex system (like a living being) can be understood by reducing it to its constituent parts. You want to understand an ecosystem? Just identify all the various parts of it and study each one and presto! You’ll have it figured out. The idea that a living thing might actually be more than the sum of its parts—that it might have “emergent properties” —is never considered in the reductionist’s mind-set.
Randomness is the belief that “… natural processes follow the laws of chance.” The Universe and everything in it (including you and me!) are here because of random happenstance. There is no meaning, no purpose and no destiny in life. There is also no free will, since we all are mere creatures of chance. From this it logically follows that there is no god, no Divine intention or higher power working in the world. Materialism as our culture’s current paradigm is atheistic.
It is also committed to rationalism, putting a premium on logic, the use of reason, the dismissal of superstition, and the denigration of what cannot be proven through the use of left-brain, linear mental processes (e.g. religion). This vaunting of reason leads to concoctions that warm the hearts of economists, like Rational Economic Man. Rational Economic Man (this means you and me, in the materialists’ theory) lives by utilitarian values. That is, when you and I go to the store to buy something, or when we invest our money or decide how to spend our time, we do what works for us, we determine right from wrong based on whether the action will get us what we want. We do what is in our best self-interest. The result? An ethics of expediency (if something gets us what we want, or makes piles of money, it’s right) and the greed of consumerism.
These are some of the implications of materialism. Others include the repression of meaning and true satisfaction in life (because “He who dies with the most toys, wins!” is a spiritually deadening philosophy). By killing the spiritual side of our humanity materialism fosters a sense of meaninglessness, ...]]> Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:55:14 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=50 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=49 C.G. Jung, 1938
“For a long time I have advocated schools for the adult…”
C.G. Jung, 1960

A series of dreams in July 2005 led to the creation of the Jungian Center for the Spiritual Sciences. Dozens of dreams since then have supported it, added to its curriculum and widened its scope. I have always intuitively felt that Jung would approve of this endeavor but it is only recently, in reading Jung’s works to prepare a course on Jungian parenting that I came across his explicit statements—like those quoted above—in support of the Center’s type of educational organization.
In this essay we will consider Jung’s thoughts and preferences about how education should be conducted, and the distinction between “instruction” and “education.” Then we will examine what Jung regarded as the two halves of life and their different concerns, followed by discussions of the tasks, components and goals of adult education in a Jungian framework, and what the consequences or results of such an education might be. Lastly, we’ll discuss some of the ways the Jungian Center serves the adult learner and his/her needs.

“Instruction,” “Education” and Jung’s Thoughts on the Proper Form of Education

It is common in American society to use “instruction” and “education” interchangeably to refer to what goes on in those buildings we identify as “schools.” But in etymology, practice and their image of the learner, the two terms could not be more different. “Instruction” comes from the Latin verb instruere, meaning “to pile on.” When we “instruct” students we “pile on” them the facts, figures, techniques, and information that we feel they need to have to cope with the demands of modern life. This is essentially a one-way, teacher- or subject-centered process. It is, to some degree at least, unavoidable, since no one is born able to do sums, parse sentences, read, write, or find France on a map.
Jung recognized the necessity of instruction when he wrote that “youth… must find outside” those things it needs to acquire in order to function and flourish in contemporary society. While he admitted that modern life demanded some technical training (a trend that has intensified in a major way in the 50 years since his death), he preferred a school system oriented more to the historical and humanistic subjects, rather than the “scientific worldview, with its statistical truths….” In general, he was quite critical of most forms of education, because teachers lacked self-knowledge, the children sensed this and the result was that they came away from their studies lacking “a sense of authority, robbed of their individual nature and halted in the development of their personality.” So, while Jung knew instruction had its place, he also knew it must not be the sole form of learning, and this is especially true for the adult learner. For adults—persons at or after mid-life—a much more suitable form of learning is education.
Our English word “education” derives from the Latin exducere, meaning “to draw forth.” When we “educate” we draw out of the student what is within. This is a student-centered, dialectical process, requiring one-on-one dialog and interaction between student and teacher. It is student motivated and self-directed and reflects the shift in focus that Jung felt was a key feature of mid-life—a shift away from a preoccupation with outer reality toward a focus on one’s inner life. Jung described it in these words: “What youth found and must find outside, the man of life’s afternoon must find within himself.” As a process of recognizing and then drawing forth that which is within, education can do this; instruction cannot. So when we speak of “adult education” we are speaking about education, rather than instruction.

The Two Halves of Life and Their Different Concerns

As we noted above, Jung felt that people in the first half of life were concerned with externals: training for work and parenthood, making a living, raising a family, acquiring the material wherewithal that would support a decent life. Jung termed all these things of the “biological sphere.”
By contrast, Jung felt people in mid-life (c. age 40, usually timed when transiting Uranus comes to oppose one’s natal Uranus) and beyond were to shift their focus away from the biological to the “cultural sphere.” This shift came with a host of different concerns from earlier life: the biological instincts were subordinated to cultural goals; mental and emotional energies had to be expended to making a successful mid-life transition (a transition that is not always an easy passage); and the adult had to navigate a reorientation from regarding life as a series of ascents to recognizing the reality of descending and diminishing energies and capacities.
Jung recognized that a variety of questions commonly characterized the mid-life passage. These include such queries as:
“Where am I standing today?”
“Have my dreams come true?”
“Have I fulfilled my expectations of a happy and successful life as I imagined them 20 years ago?”
“Have I been … intelligent, reliable and enduring enough to seize my opportunities or to make the right choice at the crossroads and produce the proper answer to the problems which fate or fortune put before me?”
“What is the chance that I shall fail again in fulfilling that which I obviously have been unable to accomplish in the first 40 years?”
Some people who spend their first 4 decades striving for material success find mid-life full of confusion, disillusionment or loss of meaning. They wonder “Is this all there is?” “With all that I’ve got, why don’t ...]]> Sun, 01 Aug 2010 10:06:38 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=49 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=48
Earlier essays on this blog site described some of the components of individuation and defined it as
… a developmental process which begins in the adult individual, usually after the age of thirty-five, and if successful leads to the discovery of the Self and its replacing of the ego as the personality center. Individuation is the discovery of and the extended dialogue with the objective psyche of which the Self is the comprehensive expression.
Perhaps because it seems similar to “individualism,” or perhaps because American society is so biased toward that philosophy of “each for himself,” many people assume that individuation implies a preoccupation with oneself, selfishness and social isolation. But this is not true at all. Far from fostering selfishness and self-absorption, individuation promotes a greater sense of social concern and responsibility in the person who has taken the spiritual journey. This essay seeks to clarify Jung’s attitudes in this regard, beginning with his warnings about the dangers of immersion in the “mass psychology” of groups.

Jung on the Dangers of Groups

In the essay “Jung’s Timeliness and Thoughts on Our Current Reality,” we noted Jung’s concern about how easily individuals could become identified with groups and thus loose their individuality, as well as their personal moral stance. Over and over Jung decried the tendency for the psyche of the group—the collective psyche—to overwhelm or submerge the individual’s psyche, especially if the group is large. Jung felt that the larger the group, the more readily the individual would get lost in it, and the lower the level of morality that would manifest. So Jung concluded that
…every man is, in a certain sense, unconsciously a worse man when he is in society than when acting alone; for he is carried by society and to that extent relieved of his individual responsibility.
Jung felt that, even when a large group was composed of “wholly admirable persons,” it would still have the “morality and intelligence of an unwieldy, stupid, and violent animal.” Clearly, Jung had little use for large groups!
Not just large groups were at issue: Jung also recognized that the person undertaking the path of individuation would have to “differentiate” him/herself from smaller groups—the family, circles of friends, ethnic and other collectives. This is because individuation requires giving up persona stuff—the host of social expectations and inauthentic roles that the individual has acquired unconsciously over time.
Does this mean that Jung expected individuated people to live in some sort of social isolation? Not at all.

Jung on the Consequences of Individuation

Jung recognized that human beings are social creatures and society is a “necessary condition” for us. Each of us is part of the whole web of life and the process of individuating makes one aware of this wholeness and the unity of all. The process also makes us aware of the unconscious, which—in Jung’s concept of the “collective unconscious”—is common to all humankind. The individuated person is “at-one-ment” with him/herself and also with humanity. Working toward individuation leads us to a deeper sense of connection with others and fosters a desire to serve others.
But because the process of individuating entails being “born out” of identity with family, tribe, ethnic group etc., the individuated person does not fall back into his or her original social network. Time and again as I work with students at the Jungian Center I hear them note how they have found themselves creating new friendships and new social networks. Their old friends seem not to have similar interests or outlook. “As within, so without:” having changed inwardly, individuating people discover that outer life also changes, including their social contacts and friendships.

The “Leading Minority” and the Need for Community

“Leading minority” was Jung’s term for those awake, those persons who had undertaken to look within and become conscious of the unconscious. Both then and now, there aren’t a lot of people who have done this. Western society, and especially American society with its strong ESTJ bias, is not inclined toward introspection or introversion. People stepping out of the mainstream to discover the unconscious and develop their individual uniqueness are few and far between, and they often wind up feeling “different” or isolated, until they link up with like-minded individuals.
Toni Wolff, Jung’s “friend and collaborator” saw this need to link up with other individuating people and got Jung to agree to the formation of the Psychology Club of Zurich. Funded with a gift of 360,000 Swiss francs from Edith Rockefeller McCormack in 1916, the Club provided Jung with the opportunity to do a “silent experiment” in group psychology. Jung also saw it as the antidote to the “onesidedness” of the analytic process.
Jung noted that “Human personality is certainly not individual only, it is also collective,…” and we need contact with others. Years later, as Jung Institutes were created in various cities around the world, there has been the “spontaneous phenomenon” of similar clubs being formed by analysands and others interested in Jung and his ideas.
One such club recently formed at The Jungian Center for the Spiritual Sciences. The shared experience of Jung and his deep effect on individuals committed to their growth has brought people together to share fun, fellowship (and food!), as well as stimulating intellectual exchange of Jung-related ideas. Such clubs become for their members what Edward Edinger called an ecclesia spiritualis, a spiritual gathering of those “called out” from the crowd.
If you are reading this essay in some place far from Vermont, and you need the fellowship of others on the path of individuation, here are some ways you might go about finding others who share your interests:
1. Google “Jung Institutes” and you will bring up over 1 million ...]]> Sat, 03 Jul 2010 09:20:39 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=48 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=47 A Jungian Approach to Choosing

Those readers of this blog who are on the mailing list of The Jungian Center were informed of the voiceover dream I had on September 22, 2009. The voice said:
October 2010 will be an especially important month, when key choices are made that lay down energy patterns the consequences of which we will reap in the next 2 years.
Given my 26+ year track record with such dreams, I always take them seriously. So very shortly I found myself researching what Jung might have said about choice and choosing. Did he leave us any advice about how to make good choices? And what might constitute a “good” choice, to Jung?
My research revealed that Jung never wrote an essay directly on this topic. There are only references scattered throughout his voluminous writing on the subject. But these references allow us to answer the questions above. Before doing so, let’s address the title: What was “Buridan’s ass” and how does it relate to choosing?

Buridan’s Ass

Jung was very learned and well-read and, as such, was familiar with the paradox in philosophy that goes back well into antiquity, to the time of Aristotle, which was discussed centuries later by the 14th century French philosopher, Jean Buridan. Buridan satirized this paradox, in which a man (in Aristotle) or an ass (in later versions) is positioned exactly between two necessities, food and drink (in Aristotle), two bales of hay (in later versions). Buridan felt that if one got stuck pondering the possible outcomes, one could starve. That is, one’s will could so delay making a choice that, in the extreme, one could die before the choice was made. Jung mentions Buridan’s ass three times in his writings, in contexts that give us insights into his views on choosing.

Jung on Choosing

As Jung saw the paradox of Buridan’s ass, the problem was due either to the ass not being hungry so he didn’t take the problem seriously, or to the creature’s externalizing the task. When we externalize a decision we look to the object to make the choice. Jung recognized that good choices—choices that are aligned with our true being—require us to look within, to the depths of our nature and then, to ask ourselves what we feel drawn toward. We must ask ourselves “What is the natural urge of life, at this moment, for me?”
While for most of us the situation of Buridan’s ass may seem extreme, Jung’s identification of the core issue is right on the mark: When people (especially those who are strong Perceivers) have trouble coming to closure, they do just what Jung described. They look to others or turn over the decision-making to others. Or they leave the decision up to life, Fate, Destiny. Jung regarded this tactic as abdicating responsibility for one’s own life and forfeit the opportunity to learn, grow and live more authentically. So one key component of good choices, for Jung, is looking within and being aware of what we are naturally drawn toward.
Jung also recognized that our sense of “free will”—being able to choose freely—is, to a degree, an illusion. The possible range of choices we face when making a decision is dependent upon (and limited by) the amount of libido (psychic energy) disposable by the ego. The Self is really in charge of our lives, a fact most of us usually forget or prefer to ignore. The ego does not like to face its inferiority. It wants to think it is running the show.
The reality of the ego’s dependence on the Self is usually brought home to us only after years of inner work in which the ego experiences the “defeat” that comes with its experience of the Self. This repeated fixatio experience is never pleasant, but eventually it fosters the ego relinquishing its desire for control.
Free choice Jung defined as a “subjective feeling of freedom,” which is not totally free. Our will comes up constantly against the limits of the outside world and also comes into “conflict with the facts of the self.” As the Self acts on the ego it circumscribes our will.
Then there are the inevitable times in life when we experience what Jung calls “conflicts of duty.” These are those situations where we face a choice between two evils or two unpalatable options. In such times Jung saw 3 possible courses of action:
We might look to some outside authority, thus externalizing our locus of authority, something Jung never encouraged.
We might look to an “act of God,” in the form of a fait accompli, which Jung felt most people regard as the will of God. An example here is that of a woman unable to decide whether to have a child, so she stops using birth control, thinking that if she gets pregnant it will be the will of God.
Neither of these did Jung see as desirable. Rather he suggested that we view such situations as opportunities to discover the power inherent in “holding the tension of opposites” and wait for the resolution of the conflict in the form of the emergence of the “transcendent function.” This is not something the ego figures out; it is done by the Self. So this waiting and holding at various (difficult) times of life provide us with opportunities to experience the Self.
Such times also provide the opportunity for us to recognize our “two-ness,” i.e. how we contain both good and evil, different, often opposite impulses or inclinations, as Saint Paul lamented in his letter to the church in Rome. If we can hold the tension of the “two-ness” Jung felt we would achieve a new attitude.
Jung reminds us that the major problems in life—those times when we face major decisions—are never things ...]]> Fri, 28 May 2010 09:47:10 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=47 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=46 An Examination of America’s Potential Future in Light of Its Astrological Chart



In previous essays I have made references to possible forms of the future for America and American society. Those essays make it clear that I am not a fan of our current culture, government or society, nor am I very optimistic about the future. In part, this stems from a series of dreams I had back in 2007 and 2008 which suggest some of the challenges we are likely to face in the coming years. In part, my attitude stems from my reading of Native American sources about the actions of the United States government over the last 400 years, and Native predictions about the karmic consequences of those actions. And in part, my attitude stems from my reading of Jung, and his conviction that our collective future will see some sort of “impending world catastrophe.” As people have read the previous essays posted to The Jungian Center’s blog, they have asked me for specifics: what’s coming down? What are we, as a society, looking at in the next few years? And when might we expect the challenging times to arrive?
There are several ways one might address these questions: One way is with the use of Intuitive Imagery, which I have used with several friends who are adept in it. Another way is by consulting the variety of mantic arts, the results of which, on the collective level, often are hard to decipher or interpret. A third way is by watching one’s dream guidance, and beyond just watching, actively seeking the guidance of the psyche through an interactive dream practice. I have done all of these. There is also another source of information, which Jung used on occasion to better understand his patients, and also to study the relationship of married couples. This source is astrology.
Many Americans, nearly all academics, and some of you readers of this blog might at this point start rolling your eyes. Astrology? Astrology!***??? Yes, I know. Years ago I too had a very low opinion of this ancient branch of knowledge—until I was forcibly, shockingly disabused of my prejudice in this regard. It happened like this:
I was a very logical, rational Cartesian college professor, locked into the world of theory and abstraction like only an Eastern Ivy League intellectual can be, when, in November 1983, my world began to come unraveled. It began with the first of what I have come to call my “voice-over dreams.” No action, no figures, just a voice that said: “Friends will die. Relatives will die. You will give up everything and your life will be transformed.” I was married at the time and I woke up and told my husband, thinking that he must have heard this loud voice. But no, he had heard nothing. I then dismissed the whole experience, given my academic prejudices, but my husband remembered what I had told him. Five days later I learned that my friend Hazel Crafts had dropped dead. When I told Ed, he reminded me of the words I had heard. But I dismissed it as “just a coincidence.” Over the next six months, however, I lost another friend, two aunts and an uncle and everything in my life began to fall away. I came to feel like I was losing my toehold on reality and various friends tried to help, some sending me to ministers, others to counselors, others to psychiatrists and psychologists. So it was, in the Spring of 1984, that I thought my student Miranda was taking me to another therapist of some kind when I went with her to a home in downtown Bar Harbor. It was only on the sidewalk going into the house, just minutes before my appointment, that she told me the person I was about to meet was not a therapist but an astrologer. I recall freezing on the spot, turning to Miranda in shocked disbelief, and yelling at her that that sort of stuff was bunk, nonsense, that she should know better, that astrologers were full of—Well, you get the idea: I was not open to astrology at all! Miranda then said that if I didn’t go in she was still going to have to pay for the session and all the work the astrologer had done to prepare for it. That made me feel guilty: here was one of my students being willing to ante up her own limited funds to help me out. So I hung my head and went into the house. The session lasted the better part of 5 hours—5 hours during which I was transformed. First I sat there, arms folded across my chest in stern disbelief and disdain. Then I began to hear things that rang true—about my nature, my personality, and, even more intriguing, about what I was experiencing at the time. But it was when the astrologer began to tell me when all of it would be over, when life would get better, that I really sat up, took notice and then, lacking any other inner resources with which to explain what I had just experienced, I accused the woman of being a psychic. “No,” she replied, “anyone could do this, if he or she were prepared to study and learn how to interpret the symbols.” Astrology was just a powerful symbol system, open to anyone willing to invest the time and energy to learn. I could do just what she did. Presented with such an intellectual challenge, some part of me took the bait, and I became a student of Frances Sakoian on the spot. Over time, as I faced similar experiences, I came to realize that the Universe was taking each of my prejudices, each of my paradigms about how reality is, and “popping” ...]]> Sat, 01 May 2010 01:32:45 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=46 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=45
In the previous essay I noted how Jung anticipated a new development in the evolution of religion. Some of his followers call this the “new dispensation.” Just what this means, and the role the individual will play in it, is the subject of this essay.
We must begin with some definitions, since “dispensation” is not a household word for most readers of this blog. Nor would Jung’s definitions of “God” be familiar to most readers. After defining terms, we will consider the role of the individual in the emerging spiritual landscape, and we’ll conclude by setting the subject in the broader context of the evolution of Western civilization.

Some Definitions
Dispensation
“Dispensation” comes from the Latin verb dispensare, “to manage, distribute, allot, arrange, dispense.” Given our materialistic ethos most Americans would immediately think of the dispensing of resources, stuff, food or money. But our focus here is more on intangibles. What intangible is being dispensed? Jungians would say the stuff of the psyche. “Dispensation” defined in psychic terms is “the specific arrangement or system by which our perception of the world is ordered.”
This system is not something a group of people decide to create: It is the work of the objective psyche or Collective Unconscious, and it evolves over time. Thousands of years ago the psyches of the ancestors of Western people operated within a participation mystique with Nature. In time, this changed, as the ancient Hebrews took up monotheism, and their perception became ordered around the worship of Jahweh, the God of the Torah. The fact that we now speak of an “Old Testament” and a New bespeaks the later evolution of another form of ordering, what Jung’s followers call the “Christian dispensation,” centered around the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
Jung felt that the key difference between the Judaic and Christian religions was the “transformation of the God-image” that occurred over hundreds of years from the time of Job (c. 600-400 B.C.) to the time of Christ. As he anticipated the shift from the Age of the Fishes (Pisces) to the Age of the Water-Bearer (Aquarius), Jung recognized the outlines of a new form of religious expression.
Jung’s follower, analyst Lawrence Jaffe, coined a term for this new form: the “psychological dispensation.” The first dispensation was the Judaic, the second, the Christian. What Jaffe and other Jungians now see is the emergence of a new religion of consciousness, a “religion of experience” that will reconcile the first and second dispensations.
This “psychological dispensation” is a form of religious expression in which
experience supplants faith: Jung articulated this key feature of the new dispensation in the interview he had with John Freeman of the BBC late in his life. Freeman asked Jung if he believed in God. Jung paused and then said, “… I know. I don’t need to believe, I know.” This was not the only time Jung spoke about his knowing the Divine. In an earlier interview Jung said “I only believe in what I know. And that eliminates believing. Therefore I do not take his existence on belief—I know that he exists.”
In the psychological dispensation, the role of the individual becomes central, as Jungian analyst Edward Edinger noted, when he said that by becoming “…aware of the transpersonal center of the psyche, the Self,” and by living “… out of that awareness, [the individual] can be said to be the incarnation of the God-image.” This quote begs further definition. What is meant by “God”? by “God-image”? by “Self”?
Jung’s Definitions of God
Since “God” is a word most Western people have heard often, the reader of this blog essay is likely to assume he/she knows what Jung meant. Not so! First, note the plural in the sub-heading: Jung used many terms to define the Divine in his voluminous writings.
Second, ever the empiricist, Jung was not about to indulge in vagueness with his terms. He recognized that “god,” as a concept, is unknowable, “because no one can get outside his/her own psyche.” Jung reminds us that “… everything men assert about God is twaddle, for no man can know God.” Jung makes a distinction, therefore, between “God,” the unknowable, and the “God-image,” that sense or image we have in our minds. Jung said: “… I speak of the God-image and not of God because it is quite beyond me to say anything about God at all.” And Jung was quite critical of theologians who did claim to speak of God and describe God, without making any distinction between the unknowable and the mental image.
Third, Jung’s “God” was not absolute, but “relative to man.” Regarding the Divine as absolute would place God “outside all connection to mankind.” Jung recognized that “Such a God would be of no consequence at all.” And God was of great consequence in Jung’s psychology, as seen in the 498+ citations listed in the Index to his Collected Works alone (not considering his Letters, or the other books, essays and articles he wrote).
Jung spoke much of God, but his uses of the term vary greatly. Here are some statements likely to resonate:
“God is Reality itself.”
God is “… a factor unknown in itself.”
God is “… an inner experience, not discussable as such but impressive.”
“God is a universal experience which is obfuscated only by silly rationalism and an equally silly theology.”
“… God is ev to pan.” (in all things)
“God is an immediate experience of a very primordial nature, one of the most natural products of our mental life,…”
“… I do know of a power of a very personal nature and an irresistible influence. I call it ‘God’.”
“I only know Him as a personal, ...]]> Thu, 01 Apr 2010 08:36:06 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=45 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=44
“Phoberon to empesein eis cheiras theou zontos.”
“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
Hebrews 10:31
“… the experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego.”
[italics in the original] Jung, Collected Works, 14, ¶778


The first of the above quotes was cited in the previous blog essay and in a note in that essay I indicated that the following essay would provide further discussion of the “Hebrews” quote. In that essay I noted how fear can be used to keep people under control and how those in power would have us believe that internalizing a locus of security through personal experience of the Divine is something to be feared.
Jung had much to say on this point. Most explicitly he made it clear in his statement quoted above that confronting the Divine is never a pleasant experience for the ego. This is because of pride: the ego “does not like to think consciousness might lose its ascendancy.” The ego fancies it is in control and is forced to face its smallness and limitations when the Self appears.
More broadly, Jung addressed this issue in his discussions of the numen, the numinous, the numinosum and numinosity. In this essay we will define these terms, provide some features and qualities of the numinous, then consider the experience of the numinous and how it has been experienced by some noteworthy historical figures. We will then examine Jung’s experience of it, and Jung’s assessment of our current predicament, now that Western civilization has lost many of its numinosities.

Some Definitions

Numen is a Latin word, deriving from the verb nuere, meaning “to nod.” Its original meaning was “a nod.” You might well wonder how it comes to have anything to do with the Divine, the Self and Jung’s concerns. It came to mean “divine will or divine power of the gods” from the Greek and Roman practice of going to a temple to consult the will of the gods, at times when a person confronted a serious decision. In the temple the supplicant would stand before a statue of the god, state his problem, ask the god for guidance and then watch the statue. If it seemed to nod, the person knew the god approved the tack he planned to take. Over time numen came to be synonymous with “deity,” “Godhead,” divinity or “divine majesty.”
The other 3 words mentioned above—numinous, numinosum and numinosity—Jung used frequently and all of them derive from numen. “Numinous” was an invented word, coined in 1917 by a German professor of theology, Rudolf Otto, in his book Das Heilige (translated in 1923 as The Idea of the Holy). Why the invention? Otto felt the need for a specialized word to describe the concept of “holy” without the “moral factor” or rationality that we usually attach to “holy.” He sought to describe “… this ‘extra’ in the meaning of ‘holy’ above and beyond the meaning of goodness.” To create his neologism Otto started with numen and then looked for analogies. He found one in “omen,” the adjectival form of which is “ominous.” The adjective form of numen thus would be “numinous.” Otto used “numinous” to describe categories of value within the sense of “holy,” and also to refer to a state of mind.
Modern English dictionaries define “numinous” several ways. It can mean “spiritual, holy, divine” and also “ethereal, nebulous, intangible.” In Otto’s and Jung’s usage, “spiritual,” “holy,” “divine” and “intangible” capture most accurately the qualities they mean.
Numinosum is a word Jung used repeatedly. He may have borrowed it from Otto; perhaps the original German text had this Latinized version of “numinous.” I have not found it in the English translation. In his essay “Psychology and Religion” Jung provides a definition of numinosum:
“… a dynamic agency or effect not caused by an arbitrary act of will…. The numinosum—whatever its cause may be—is an experience of the subject independent of his will…. The numinosum is either a quality belonging to a visible object or the influence of an invisible presence that causes a peculiar alteration of consciousness….”
In Jung’s thinking the numinosum is both a quality inherent to an object or an experience that comes over a person, often inadvertently.

Qualities and Features of the Numinous

Otto and Jung provide a wealth of explicit qualities people are likely to feel when in the presence of the holy. First, it must be noted that the numinosum is a paradox, containing both positive and negative, both of which we may experience simultaneously in any encounter with the Divine.
Some of the positive qualities of the numinosum include: sublimity, awe, excitement, bliss, rapture, exaltation, entrancement, fascination, attraction, allure and what Otto called an “impelling motive power.” Not so pleasant are other qualities like: overwhelment, fear, trembling, weirdness, eeriness, humility (an acute sense of unworthiness), urgency, stupor (blank wonder), bewilderment, horror, mental agitation, repulsion, and haunting, daunting, monstrous feelings that “overbrim the heart.” Otto speaks at length of the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the fascinating mystery that makes us tremble (in awe). Because it “grips or stirs the mind,” such an experience is not one we forget.
But, while it is memorable, the numinous is not easily put into words. “Ineffable” is another of its features. The numinous “eludes apprehension in terms of concepts.” Being bigger and beyond oneself, it induces speechlessness. Being a mystery, it bewilders the rational mind. Being divine, it links us to the “ground of the soul.” Being “unevolvable,” it is not to be derived from any other feeling.
More frequently found in Jung’s works is “numinosity.” He used this term to refer to a ...]]> Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:26:41 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=44 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=43
A one-day experiential workshop that helps students identify those items, ideas and pieces of information that can support them in times of emotional and spiritual crisis. An invaluable adjunct to the spiritual journey and helpful for anyone who works with the unconscious or is in analysis. Led by Sue Mehrtens

The New Dispensation. March 25,April 1, 8 and 15, 2-4PM; $60; 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury.

Carl Jung recognized that a new form of spiritual expression was arising in anticipation of the Age of Aquarius—a form rooted in the psychologically conscious individual. Jung felt that such new spiritual developments grew out of older religions (the old “dispensations”), and this course draws on the wisdom contained in the New Testament and the life of Jesus to describe the form of this “new dispensation.” Led by Sue Mehrtens

Visioneering. March 21, April 11, May 2 and 23; 2-5PM; $75; 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury.

This workshop applies Bernoulli’s principle (the basis for all forms of aerodynamics) to the realm of personal life, to jump-start dreams and hopes we have for the future. Participants learn what vision is, the power it has, and how to use it in very practical, grounded ways, to bring about changes in their own lives. With over 30 exercises, and a modicum of readings, this 12-hour workshop runs over 3 months, to allow members the time to develop a vision, apply the principles and use the exercises to realize a dream. Led by Sue Mehrtens

Making Good Choices Workshop. April 7,14,21,28; 7-9PM; $60; 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury.

We are living in a time when the choices we make will have far more crucial and long-term consequences than at any time in the past. This course explores a variety of questions related to making good choices, e.g. “What does it mean to “choose”?” “What goes into making good choices?” “What assumptions underlie the choices we make?” and “What is going on now, in the larger context of our lives, that might impact our choosing?” Led by Sue Mehrtens

Creation of Consciousness. April 22, 29, May 6 and 13; 7-9PM; $60; 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury.

This advanced course offers an in-depth examination of 4 key documents that explore the basis of what Jung called the “new dispensation”--the Biblical book of Job, Jung’s “Answer to Job,” William Blake’s illustrations of the book of Job, and Edward Edinger’s The Creation of Consciousness—toward explicating Jung’s image of God and fostering an understanding of how we, as individuals, are meant to be carriers of the numinosum and co-creators with the Divine. Ideally students will have taken the Introduction to Jung and Esoteric Christianity courses prior to taking this course, but this is not required. Led by Sue Mehrtens.

The Divine Feminine. April 24; 12-5PM; $30; Best Western Motel, Waterbury.

How can we imagine Wisdom? Learn how to embody in the manifest world the inspirations that come from this exciting experiential workshop that opens your spiritual senses . Led by Kathy Warner, teacher and author; for further information, call Kathy at (802) 426-3987.


Micheline Bogey, a California-based Qigong teacher and Shamanic healer, will be visiting Vermont in May and will offer a two-day weekend workshop called MEDICAL QIGONG, May 1-2, 9AM-5PM, at 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $75/day; $140, 2 days. Info, call Margery (802) 633-4368.

Learn how to deal mindfully with stress, keep the body relaxed and the internal energy strong with the practice of ³Five Elements Medical Qigong.² Medical Qigong is a holistic system of self-healing exercises and meditation that includes meditation, breathing techniques, self-massage and gentle movements. In this workshop we will learn breathing techniques to stimulate the Qi in different parts of the body. We will practice the Inner Nourishing Qigong, Brain Cleansing Qigong and the 6 healing sounds to strengthen our body and mind. We will circulate the microcosmic orbit and its flow in the Qi channels. We will then learn and practice the ³Five Elements Qigong form,² which is a specific form working with the acupuncture meridians and the 5 elements in Traditional Chinese Medicine. We will also attend to specific healing needs of the students. At the end of each day the students will participate in a group healing.

Micheline has over 25 years of experience in teaching Qigong and healing arts. This is a workshop you won¹t want to miss!


Art & Soul Workshop. Saturday, May 1; 9:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. $55 includes lunch; Morrisville Studio.

Inside the psyche of each and every person is an ember of creativity. Using movement and various creative techniques, we will help you to fan that ember into a flame of creative expression. Learn to nurture your soul through the expression of joy, creativity, self-love and acceptance. Facilitated by Lisa Buell, business/life coach and JourneyDance ™ Facilitator, and Sara Waskuch, teacher, writer and creative coach. Call Sara 888-3802 to register and for directions.
The Life Mission Institute Open House. April 25th; 1-5PM; free; Best Western Motel, Waterbury. We’ll be introducing the work of the Life Mission Institute and the LMI team in this afternoon opportunity where you can meet exciting people, enjoy refreshments and have a chance to socialize with like-minded people.

Finding Your Mission in Life. May 5,12,19,26; 7-9PM; $120; 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury.

Every person alive has a unique soul mission, a special way he or she is meant to make a difference in the world. When we discover our purpose we open our lives to greater joy, meaning and wonder. Melding the work of Carl Jung and Edgar Cayce, students participant in a variety of exercises and processes to help them identify their purposes for living. They also meet the Life Mission Institute team and choose one member of the team from ...]]> Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:14:09 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=43 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=42 Part IV—Internalizing a Locus of Security

In the previous parts of this four-part essay we noted how we hold others responsible when we externalize a locus of control and how we expect others to take over responsibility for decision-making when we externalize a locus of authority. How might we expect reality to appear when we externalize a locus of security? We seek outside ourselves for sources of safety—parents, spouses, roles, jobs, savings, pensions, titles, ranks, a guru, being famous etc. Jesus speaks of this when he talks about “laying up treasures on Earth.” Like the other forms of externalization, none of these is reliable.
Why? because anything external is subject to loss. Parents die; spouses can die or serve us with divorce papers. Roles can disappear (just as children have the habit of growing up and moving away). Savings and pensions can be lost or rendered worthless in massive inflationary cycles. Ranks and titles come to mean little if/when the company bellies up. The guru can turn out to have feet of clay. Fame can transform into infamy if the public becomes disenchanted. Moths and rust might consume our stuff, and thieves can break in to steal what we clutch in order to feel safe.
Jung offers one common example of externalization of a locus of security when he describes marriage as a psychological relationship:
At this juncture things are apt to occur that bring the conflict [between a husband and wife] to a head. He becomes conscious of the fact that he is seeking completion, seeking the contentedness and undividedness that have always been lacking. For the contained [i.e. the wife] this is only a confirmation of the insecurity she has always felt so painfully; ... The hope of security vanishes, and this disappointment drives her in on herself, unless by desperate and violent efforts she can succeed in forcing her partner to capitulate, and in extorting a confession that his longing for unity was nothing but a childish or morbid fantasy. If these tactics do not succeed, her acceptance of failure may do her a real good, by forcing her to recognize that the security she was so desperately seeking in the other is to be found in herself....
Many, many marriages are built on the unconscious assumption that the partner will provide security—financial or emotional. A precarious situation, to be sure, in this time of rampant divorce.
So if true security cannot be found in having lots of money, owning one’s own home, acquiring a huge 401(k), being married to a rich spouse, or being a famous celebrity, where does it lie? Jesus tells us that true security lies in “laying up treasures in Heaven.” Jung agrees, but few people in the modern world understand what is meant by “treasures in Heaven.” Jung knew (from personal experience) that true security lies within us, closely related to the inner guru mentioned in Part III of this essay.
In fact, if we have developed a strong awareness of and connection to our inner guru, we are well on the way to creating for ourselves an inner locus of security. This is because, when we give up looking outside to authority figures, we are led
... by a natural route, back to ourselves as an actual, living something poised between two world-pictures and their darkly discerned potencies. This “something” is strange to us and yet so near, wholly ourselves and yet unknowable, a virtual center of so mysterious a constitution that it can claim anything... without moving us to wonder...
Jung then goes on in the next paragraph to name this center:
I have called this center the self... by definition it transcends our powers of comprehension. It might equally well be called the “God within us.” The beginnings of our whole psychic life seem to be inextricably rooted in this point, and all our highest and ultimate purposes seem to be striving towards it.
So the Self is both a goal of the individuation process and the source of inalienable security.
Sounds great! Let’s go for it! We’ll just find that Self within and we’ll be sitting pretty, right? Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Go back to the quote from Jesus: we are told to “lay up treasures in Heaven.” While our materialistic mindset focuses on the “treasures,” both Jesus and Jung would have us focus on the verb, “lay up.” That is, the key to inner security is the years-long process of building a track record of trust in one’s inner guidance and contact with the Self.
Jung minces no words with regard to the long-term effort required to become aware of the Self and then to relinquish control of one’s life to it:
... the self has somewhat the character of a result, of a goal attained, something that has come to pass very gradually and is experienced with much travail. ...
The existence of a sense of inner security by no means proves that the product will be stable enough to withstand the disturbing or hostile influences of the environment. The adept had to experience again and again how unfavorable circumstances or a technical blunder or—as it seemed to him—some devilish accident hindered the completion of his work, so that he was forced to start all over again from the very beginning. Anyone who submits his sense of inner security to analogous psychic tests will have similar experiences. More than once everything he has built will fall to pieces under the impact of reality, and he must not let this discourage him from examining, again and again, where it is that his attitude is still defective, and what are the blind spots in his psychic field of vision.... Always we shall have to begin again from the beginning. From ancient times the adept knew that he was concerned with the “res simplex,” and the modern man ...]]> Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:42:09 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=42 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=41 Part III—Internalizing a Locus of Authority

A few years ago my sister took to wearing a button on her shirt as she went through her days on the University of Vermont campus. The button said “Question Authority.” She didn’t wear the button for long, because she found people’s reaction to the button so dispiriting: Most people would see it, read it and then say, “What should I ask you?”
This sad story illustrates a fact about our culture: We are not encouraged to internalize a locus of authority. We grow up looking to our parents, our teachers, the clergy, the police, political leaders, doctors, lawyers, judges and others as authority figures, and we are taught to honor these authorities. Jung would not be pleased. While he was no revolutionary, he never encouraged people to give over ultimate authority for their lives to any external figure. He felt that doing so was essentially an alienation of the self, a sign of spiritual immaturity and an abdication of the personal task to search for the truth.
Not even analysts did Jung exempt on this point. Early in his essay “Principles of Practical Psychotherapy,” Jung admonished analysts:
When, as a psychotherapist, I set myself up as a medical authority over my patient and on that account claim to know something about his individuality, or to be able to make valid statements about it, I am only demonstrating my lack of criticism, for I am in no position to judge the whole of the personality before me.... If I wish to treat another individual psychologically at all, I must for better or worse give up all pretensions to superior knowledge, all authority and desire to influence.
My analyst describes the relationship of Jungian analyst to client as one where both parties are “in the soup together.” That is, both analyst and analysand are affected by the process and both must defer to the wisdom of the psyche.
Jung reserves some of his most sarcastic comments for those who externalize their locus of authority by becoming disciples of a guru. When discussing negative attempts to free the individuality in “The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious,” Jung wrote:
... the joy of becoming a prophet’s disciple... for the vast majority of people, is an altogether ideal technique. Its advantages are: the odium dignitatis, the superhuman responsibility of the prophet, turns into the so much sweeter otium indignitatis. The disciple is unworthy; modestly he sits at the Master’s feet and guards against having ideas of his own. Mental laziness becomes a virtue; one can at least bask in the sun of a semidivine being. He can enjoy the archaism and infantilism of his unconscious fantasies without loss to himself, for all responsibility is laid at the Master’s door. Through his deification of the Master, the disciple, apparently without noticing it, waxes in stature; moreover, does he not possess the great truth—not his own discovery, of course, but received straight from the Master’s hands? Naturally the disciples always stick together, not out of love, but for the very understandable purpose of effortlessly confirming their own convictions by engendering an air of collective agreement.
The result? Both master and disciples get inflated (since both are identifying with an archetype). The disciple looses his/her spiritual freedom. His individuality is injured. Life for both prophet and disciple is “full of sorrows, disappointments and privations,...” Put on a pedestal by his followers, the master/prophet teeters precariously and almost inevitably eventually succumbs to the moral evils of power, lust and/or greed. The disciple is infantilized and sorely disillusioned when his guru turns out to have feet of clay.
At the Jungian Center for the Spiritual Sciences, we got a first-hand look at this whole process this past Spring and Summer 2009, when one of our students got involved with the work of Dr. Zhi Gang Sha. Interested in his system of soul healing, she went to several of his workshops, came back and urged us to look into Sha’s work, because Sha is quite explicit in his belief that the soul is real, powerful and should be the “boss” of one’s life.
Aware of Jung’s conviction that the psyche (soul) is real, we jumped at the chance to investigate the work of someone else (from a very different, Oriental, not Western background) who recognizes the reality of the soul. So we offered to the public two workshops led by two students of Master Sha. In these workshops it was clear that they had tremendous respect for their master, even to the point of venerating his books (which were not to be put on the floor). Some of us began to be skeptical—what one student called “spotting a red flag.”
Then we were told that the Master could remove karma from past lives, as long as you bought $1,000 worth of his books. Another red flag.
Then came the pitch to attend the Master’s enlightenment retreat, at which one’s level of “soul standing” would be raised—for the cost of attendance, of course. Another red flag.
Finally, a group of us went to a workshop led by the Master himself. We saw people seeking to kiss his feet, to kiss the ground he walked on, to prostrate themselves, to wait on him hand and foot. More red flags.
But it was when Master Sha announced to the group that he had elevated Jesus, Mary and Buddha to a higher level of Heaven that we had incontrovertible proof of the inflation that Jung describes as one of the features of the guru syndrome. Jung would have none of this. We left the workshop on the spot.

The Positive Authority Figure

Jung had no good words for those who set themselves up as authority figures and then take their followers’ authority from them. But he was not completely opposed to ...]]> Sat, 02 Jan 2010 10:00:23 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=41 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=27
Course Offerings for Winter 2010

SHADOW WORK, Jan 9,16,23,30; 2-4PM; 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury; $60. Info, call Sue (802) 244-7909. Jung defined the shadow as “a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality,” a problem that can trip us up or cause all sorts of self-sabotage if we remain unaware of its activity within us. This workshop presents students with a variety of exercises that help to uncover the shadow, in both its good and bad guises, with the goal of expanding consciousness, and helping students to live more compassionately. In the final assignment of the workshop participants will create a Shadow mask which they will wear to the Shadow party (our February Psychology Club event). Led by Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

INTRODUCTION TO WORKING WITH SYMBOLS, Jan 10,17,24,31; 2-4PM; 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury; $60. Info, call Sue (802) 244-7909. Learn how to recognize, interpret and work with the images that form the basis of art, creativity and your dream life in this workshop created by students’ requests. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.
A basic course designed particularly for the student of dreams, focusing on the features, functions, history and sources of symbols, types of symbols (e.g. the mandala), symbols in alchemy and methods of working with symbols that are used particularly in Jungian psychology. An excellent course for students preparing for advanced work in hermeneutics, psychology, art and art therapy and counseling.

INTRODUCTION TO ASTROLOGY, Jan 16,23,30; 9AM to Noon; 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury; $60. Info, call Patrick (802) 479-5017 or Sue (802) 244-7909. A basic course for the novice. Study the ancient symbol system of the stars and learn how it relates to your inner and outer life. Led by Patrick Ross.
A basic course for the novice with no prior training in astrology. The major components of the natal chart—the zodiac, planets, signs, houses and aspects—are identified and interpreted in depth. In addition, students will be introduced to computer programs that construct individual charts.

INTRODUCTION TO DOWSING AND METAPHYSICS, Jan 16 & 30th; 10AM to Noon; $55 (includes set of dowsing rods), $45 if you bring your own dowsing rods; Emerging, 49 Depot St, Stowe. Do you feel tired even after a full night's sleep? Or is there a room in your house or office that you avoid because it makes you feel uncomfortable? The cause could be geopathic stress. Geopathic stress is a natural phenomenon which affects certain places and can be damaging to our health. Dowsing is also a great tool for getting in touch with your intuition. Learn the basics in this experiential workshop.. Led by Rachel Chevalier, dowser and energy healer.

AWARENESS THROUGH CHAKRAS AND YOGA, Jan 30, 10AM-2PM; Geezum Crow Yoga Studio, Montpelier; $30. Info and directions, call Linda (229-9922) or Reenie (244-5250). Learn about and experience Awareness through the body’s chakras using tools and techniques and then apply these in basic yoga postures specifically designed for this class. Fun and interactive for all levels. Led by Linda Buckley, certified yoga instructor, and Reenie Sargent, Reiki master.

WORKING WITH THE I CHING, Feb. 13,20,27, Mar 6; 2 to 4PM; 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury; $60. Info, call Sue (802) 244-7909. One of Jung’s favorite mantic arts was the Chinese “Book of Changes,” or I Ching. In this hands-on workshop we will explore the worldview and principles underlying this ancient art, how best to use it and the role the oracle played in Jung’s own life and work. To get maximum benefit from this course, students should come with questions or concerns about which they want guidance. Led by Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

INTRODUCTION TO MEDITATION, Feb 14,21,28,Mar 7; 2 to 4PM; $60; 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury. Info, call Sue (802) 244-7909. This course provides a basic orientation to one of the most essential practices of the spiritual journey. Called “receptive prayer,” “contemplation,” “sitting,” zazen, and “the art of inner listening,” meditation offers manifold benefits to the spiritual seeker. We consider some of the schools of meditation as we work with over a dozen techniques drawn from Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Tibetan and Zen traditions. Because the purpose of the course is to equip students with this most valuable tool, the format is much more experiential than intellectual, although some readings are discussed and a lengthy bibliography is provided. The goal is both to inform and to immerse participants in meditation, to encourage the development of a regular, daily practice. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

MAKING YOUR KITBAG WORKSHOP, March 13; 10AM-1PM; 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury; $15. Info, call Sue (802) 244-7909. A one-day experiential workshop (with a personal chart reading afterwards) that helps students identify those items, ideas and pieces of information that can support them in times of spiritual crisis. An invaluable adjunct to the spiritual journey and helpful for anyone who works with his or her dreams. Led by Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

Psychology Club activities:
January 16: “A Matter of Heart” (movie about Jung)
Feb 6: Shadow party (led by Shadow workshop participants who will have just finished the workshop the week before)
March 27: Beth Rice will give a presentation on crop circles
April 24: Lynn McBrien will give a presentation on Celtic sacred sites
May 8: Michael Atkinson will speak on fairy tales
June 12: picnic and labyrinth party (details to follow in future newsletters)

Preview of Spring term courses:
Developing Your Intuition: Mar 20,27,Apr 3,10; 2 to 4PM
Visioneering: Mar 21, Apr 11, May 2, May 23; 2 to 4PM
Choosing Workshop: Apr 7,14,21,28; 7 to 9PM
Creation of Consciousness: Apr 22,29,May 6,13,20,27; 7 to 9PM
Finding Your Mission in Life: May 5,12,19,26; 7 to 9PM (led by a team of instructors


The Jungian Center is a tax-exempt 501c3 non-profit educational organi-
zation; for information about the full range ...]]> Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:06:39 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=27 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=40 Part II—Internalizing a Locus of Control

In Part I of this four-part essay we noted that a pre-requisite for achieving individuation was internalizing a locus of control. What does this mean?

Defining “Locus of Control”

I encountered the term “locus on control” in the works of Jungian analyst and astrologer Liz Greene. It refers to the placement (locus) of one’s sense of responsibility or power. In the normal course of child development, the locus of control gradually shifts over time from the parents to the adolescent until the mature adult recognizes and takes up his/her responsibility for living as a well-functioning adult in society.
Jung’s consulting room was full of people whose personal development from child to adult was not normal. Jung’s clients had parents who were negligent, slothful, neurotically anxious or soullessly conventional. Or their parents were clingy, and, as a result “... exercise an extremely bad influence over their children, since they deprive them of every opportunity for individual responsibility.” Others of Jung’s clients were scarred from years of carrying their parents’ unconscious complexes, and, lacking the wherewithal to assimilate that complex, they remained stuck in “infantilism.” Other clients had lived unconscious lives, “carried by society and to that extent [were] relieved of [their] responsibility.” Whatever the personal history, the core situation was the same: externalization of a locus of control, an abdication of personal responsibility.

Jung on Responsibility, the “Blame Game” and the “Search for the Magical Other”

Jung’s writings are replete with calls for individuals to recognize and take up personal responsibility:
... the maturing personality must assimilate the parental complex and achieve authority, responsibility, and independence.
… you could treat yourself if you don’t succumb to the prejudice that you receive healing through others. In the last resort every individual alone has to win his battle, nobody else can do it for him.
... every man is, in a certain sense, unconsciously a worse man when he is in society than when acting alone; for he is carried by society and to that extent relieved of his individual responsibility.
The bettering of a general ill begins with the individual, and then only when he makes himself and not others responsible.
Making others responsible is what some call playing the “blame game.” When we play the “blame game,” we blame others for our current situation, and these “others” are most often our parents or other adults who played a prominent role in our upbringing. Jung provides an example of the blame game in “Symbols of Transformation:”
Faced by the vast uncertainty of the future, the adolescent puts the blame for it on the past, saying to himself: “If only I were not the child of my very ordinary parents, but the child of a rich and elegant count... then one day a golden coach would come and... take... his long-lost child back with him to his wonderful castle,...
Clearly, Jung was familiar with this fruitless fantasy. He probably had many patients who were into playing the blame game. He recognized it as a morally lazy and ultimately frustrating endeavor, as he explained to a Swiss Fräulein in a letter of 23 January 1941:
There are a whole lot of facts in your letter which you’ll just have to face up to instead of tracing them back to the faulty behavior of other people…. There are countless people with an inferior extraversion or with too much introversion or with too little money who in God’s name must plod along through life under such conditions. These conditions are not diseases but normal difficulties of life. If you blame me for your psychological difficulties it won’t help you at all, for it is not my fault you have them. It’s nobody’s fault. I can’t take these difficulties away from you, but have merely tried to make you aware of what you need in order to cope with them. If you could stop blaming other people and external circumstances for your own inner difficulties you would have gained an infinite amount. But if you go on making others responsible, no one will have any desire to stand by you with advice.
As long as we see our problems as “out there,” caused by others, as long as we focus on assigning blame, we are refusing to face our own responsibility for dealing with the hand that Fate has dealt us.
This is not to say that Jung absolved parents of blame. He was quite blunt that most children who were brought to him with psychological problems were not the people he really needed to treat. Most of the time “problem children” were carrying their parents’ complexes and
In a case like this what would be the sense of talking to the child?... Such a procedure would ... burden her with a responsibility which is not hers at all, but really belongs to her parents....
Jung would then try to treat the parent or parents, but sometimes the parents didn’t want to hear that their unconsciousness was the real cause of their child’s problem. Rather than take up analysis with Jung themselves, they would leave.
It is not uncommon for people to have experienced poor parenting. Lots of us have come away from our youth scarred, warped or injured from all sorts of tragic events. Jung was explicit that, whatever our personal histories, the key to successful living is accepting that, as adults, we are responsible for the rest of our lives. If in some way or ways our life is not working, blaming others will only keep us stuck in our “stuff.”
Likewise, searching for the “magical other” who will transform our reality and bring us happiness is another trap that will keep us stuck. James Hollis, Jungian analyst and prolific author, wrote on this “search for the magical other” in his book ...]]> Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:35:24 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=40 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=39 Part I—What is Individuation?

“Individuation” is a term often associated with Jung and his psychology. In this four-part essay we are going to define “individuation” and discuss some of the benefits, elements and requirements for achieving individuation (Part I). Then we’ll examine several components of it, specifically the locus of control (Part II), the locus of authority (Part III) and the locus of security (Part IV).

What is “Individuation”?

Our English word comes from the Latin individuus, meaning “undivided” or “individual.” The dictionary defines “individuation” as “the process leading to individual existence, as distinct from that of the species.” This definition applies the term to both animals and humans. Jung’s usage focused on humans and the concept became central to his approach to psychology.
Jung recognized the importance he placed on individuation in his 1921 definition of the term:
The concept of individuation plays a large role in our psychology. In general, it is the process by which individual beings are formed and differentiated; in particular, it is the development of the psychological individual... as a being distinct from the general, collective psychology. Individuation, therefore, is a process of differentiation... having for its goal the development of the individual personality.
In later years, Jung amplified his definition in a series of essays, describing “individuation” as
... the process by which a person becomes a psychological “in-dividual,” that is a separate, indivisible unity or “whole.”
...the better and more complete fulfillment of the collective qualities of the human being,...
... practically the same as the development of consciousness out of the original state of identity.... It is thus an extension of the sphere of consciousness, an enriching of conscious psychological life.
... becoming an “in-dividual,” and, in so far as “individuality” embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s own self. We could therefore translate individuation as “coming to selfhood,” or “self-realization.”
Jung felt this process of “self-realization” was a “natural transformation,” something that “the unconscious had in mind,” something meant to develop our individual personality.
Jung also regarded “individuation” as a solution to what he considered one of the major problems facing modern people: How to link up consciousness to the unconscious; how to bring our ego mind (consciousness) into a working relationship with our inner terra incognita, our unknown inner terrain. Concern about this problem was not unique to Jung: thousands of years ago Taoist and Buddhist practitioners had also seen its significance. Jung recognized this when he noted that “... the individuation process ... forms one of the main interests of Taoism and of Zen Buddhism.” Coming from a Christian background, as the son of a Protestant minister, Jung also recognized a Christian relevance to the concept, when he described individuation as “... the primitive Christian idea of the Kingdom of Heaven which ‘is within you’.”
Aware of Western culture’s vaunting of individualism, Jung took pains to stress the difference between “individualism” and “individuation.” The former concept is ego-driven and fosters selfishness and lack of concern for others. (Think of the bumper sticker that celebrates “Looking out for #1!”). Individuation is very much the opposite: Over the years of inner work the process requires, the person experiences repeated crucifixions of the ego as the ego confronts and assimilates contents of the unconscious. This long-term process
... brings to birth a consciousness of human community precisely because it makes us aware of the unconscious, which unites and is common to all mankind. Individuation is an at-one-ment with oneself and at the same time with humanity, since oneself is a part of humanity.
So, far from being selfish, an individuated person feels deeper responsibility to support and serve others and to foster peace, wholeness and integrity in the world.

Some Requirements of the Process of Individuation

Mention of crucifying the ego brings up the subject of what individuation entails. It’s challenging, a task for heroes, not for the faint of heart or for those who can’t stand against the crowd and be different. Divisio (being divided not only from others but also within oneself), separatio (being separated not only from family, friends and collective society, but also from the person you used to be), solutio (watching the structures of your life dissolve), discrimination, self-knowledge, “a positive torture” —these are just a few of the hardships likely to be faced in this work. Jung was being honest about the task when he warned “...as always every step forward along the path of individuation is achieved only at the cost of suffering.”
Why such difficulty? Jung gives several reasons. First, we grow up under parents and society, striving to become what is expected of us and the result is what Jung called the development of the “persona,” or mask. In many cases, the persona is not our true self. We have had to compromise, adapt, even, in extreme cases, betray our authentic nature. The process of individuation requires getting wise to this mask, that is, we have to face the fact that for years (if not decades) we have been living a lie. And then we have to give up this lie, put down the mask and begin to change our life so as to live more aligned with our authentic being. Such change almost inevitably elicits remarks (maybe even protests) from those who know us best, those most deeply invested in how we used to be, those likely to be most affected by our shifting the parameters of daily life, i.e. our family and closest friends.
Second, individuation requires heroism because it is hard to be different, to step out of the mainstream conventional reality and march to one’s own drummer. The work is not a herd phenomenon. You aren’t going to find many people doing it. For this reason Extraverts, who tend to ...]]> Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:28:32 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=39 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=38 Seizing the Opportunity in the Archetype of the Apocalypse

“Apocatastasis.” It’s a five-dollar Greek word that Jung used repeatedly in his writings, drawing on earlier usage in the New Testament and the Gnostic gospels. It means a “re-establishment,” “restoration” or “reconstitution,” and, as we noted in the previous essay, it is part of the intentionality of the archetype of the apocalypse. No person goes through the apocalyptic process simply to experience the destruction of what he or she holds dear: the whole point is to clear away the detritus of a life that he or she has outgrown. In a similar way our collective global society is now being challenged to open up to radically new ways of thinking, so as to replace a civilization that has grown stale and inappropriate with a world that works for everyone.
The initial reaction of most people to this challenge is “Duh? Radically new ways of thinking? Replacing a civilization? A stale civilization? A Rip Van Winkle act sounds appealing right about now; let’s go to sleep for the next 40 years and wake up when all this is over!” Jung would not be amused; he would also not be surprised.
Jung recognized that most people will take the Rip Van Winkle approach, only they won’t need to go to sleep: they already are asleep, and they won’t want to hear any of the following. Jung was a realist: only a “leading minority” will have the maturity, the consciousness and the courage to transform the world. Fortunately, since Jung’s time, as the world has gotten more and more “stale,” more and more people have been taking up his challenge and have responded to the apocalypse archetype to restore and revitalize their own lives. As they have done so they have also taken up the task of envisioning a similar restoration for the collective. They have shared their insights and suggestions in a wealth of books and articles that inform the portrait of a civilization more supportive of the fullness of our human potential.
In this essay we consider what such a civilization would look like, its features, activities and paradigms (basic patterns that structure underlying beliefs and assumptions). Because this new “restored” civilization is growing out of the old, we must begin with a review of the basic features of the world we know. Then we can examine how that world is no longer appropriate, what might replace it and the form a global restoration might take.

Some Basic Features of Western Civilization

When we speak of “civilization” these days invariably we mean the life ways of the peoples of Europe, America and other “progressive” countries. Superficially this “Western” civilization means “high technologies” like television, cell phones and computers, and cultural artifacts like movies, pop stars, video games and the Internet. This civilization offers to the people of the world sophisticated forms of medical care—hospitals with their CAT scans and MRIs; germ theory, vaccines and the promise of the eradication of disease; “spare-parts” medicine, the evolution of super-bugs, and the prospect of global pandemics--pandemics made more likely because of growing urbanization, as more and more people flock to cities, turning them into megalopolises. It also has enmeshed the entire planet in corporate capitalism, with its credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations and other types of derivatives, etherealized money and massive economic inequality. Some other features of our current civilization include literacy, numeracy, digeracy, indoor plumbing, electricity, cars, trains, planes and supertankers.
All these are “superficial” because they are consequences of much deeper aspects of our Western civilization. These deeper aspects are so deep as to touch into what German-speaking societies mean when they speak of “culture” as distinct from “civilization.” The German tradition recognizes a difference between the artificial constructs of city living (“civilization” deriving from the Latin civitas, “city”) and the more organic growth of collective ways of living. The archetype of the apocalypse is asking us to address themes that have evolved organically over millennia—paradigms that are much deeper than our technological gadgets and ways of running our economic and political systems. To deal with such deep themes we must get to unconscious levels, to address and change things so basic that they seem “normal” or inevitable.
What are some of these deep themes that have grown organically over the last 6,000 years in the development of Western civilization? We will consider 6 of them, all closely interrelated, and we will do so by drawing on the insights of contemporary authors but also on the ideas of an enlightened human being who was 2,000 years ahead of his time.

How Our Current World is No Longer Appropriate

The six themes we will examine are: power relations, social relations, gender relations, racial and ethnic prejudice, economic injustice and our beliefs and attitudes around violence.
Power Relations. For many millennia the world has operated with a flawed notion of power. We think of power as “domination,” the ability to control, to force other people to do our will. The lust for control is very strong in our Western mindset, leading us to develop our left brain’s logic, reasoning ability and objectivity. Over many centuries this has grown into what we now term “science.” Francis Bacon (one of the fathers of modern science) was explicit about the desirability of gaining control over Nature, so we can bend her to our will.
Another feature of this power-driven mindset is dualistic thinking, which perceives reality in “either/or” terms. In this system power is a “zero-sum game:” If I have power then you don’t. This then creates competition and fear. Politically this evolved over many thousands of years into monarchies and tyrannies and, in our own day, into totalitarian regimes and “imperial Presidencies.” Power-as-domination also gave rise to colonialism and ...]]> Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:58:36 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=38 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=37
As we have noted in earlier essays, Jung was very intuitive. Thanks to his keen intuition he was able to sense shifts in the collective consciousness long before outer changes made these shifts obvious to others. One of the shifts he noted was the approach of the end time and the activation of what he called the archetype of the apocalypse. As early as the 1950’s Jung foresaw the approach of the “end time.”
Jung felt it was important for people to know about this archetype because he recognized the power each individual has to change the future. He knew that if enough people become aware of the apocalypse, as an archetype, understand its intentions and internalize its meaning in their own lives, the fate of the world might be more positive. In this essay we are going to discuss briefly the meaning and features of archetypes, with particular attention to the archetype of the apocalypse, and then consider how it relates to the individual and to the collective. We conclude with identifying some of the signs of the approach of the archetype in our world at the moment and Jung’s attitude toward apocalypticists.

The Meaning of “Archetype”

In a paper presented at a London symposium in 1919 Jung used the term “archetype” for the first time, to refer to the
a priori, inborn forms of “intuition,”... which are the necessary a priori determinants of all psychic processes. Just as his instincts compel man to a specifically human mode of existence, so the archetypes force his ways of perception and apprehension into specifically human patterns. The instincts and the archetypes together form the “collective unconscious.”
Earlier in his publications Jung had used the terms “primordial image,” and “the inborn mode of psychic apprehension...”. None of these definitions is likely to illuminate the meaning and value of the notion for the contemporary layperson devoted to Jungiana. So, eager to convey the utility of the concept to their students, later Jungian analysts have elaborated Jung’s definition.
One of the most thorough explications of the concept is found in Anthony Stevens’ Archetype Revisited: An Updated Natural History of the Self. In this revision of his earlier study of the concept, Stevens defines archetypes as
“innate neuropsychic centers possessing the capacity to initiate, control and mediate the common behavioral characteristics and typical experiences of all human beings, irrespective of race, culture or creed.”
What’s this mean? Let’s examine each of the components of this definition.
First of all, archetypes are “innate,” that is, they are part of our psychic makeup, much as our instincts are. We don’t have to learn them or do any sort of conscious work to make them part of our array of human traits: they already are within us, as a form of natural self-organization.
Next, Stevens describes archetypes as “neuropsychic centers.” They are part of our psyche and our nervous system. And they hold potential, i.e. they give rise to patterns of behavior. Archetypes help us to respond in the moment to experiences that arise in life.
One example that I use in my classes which helps students grasp the idea here is the situation where a person is walking along a sidewalk and comes upon a tiny infant all alone and crying. Virtually no one in such a situation would walk on by: It is part of our innate psychic makeup to stop, look around for the parents or caregivers and, if none seem to be present, to try to tend to the infant in some way. Such solicitude reflects the activation of our inner “mother” archetype, which predisposes all human beings to give nurturance, protection and comfort to infants in distress. The caregiving impulse is one pattern of behavior. As Stevens notes in his definition, the archetype “initiates” the behavior. In this case, it is the behavior associated with “mothering.”
A final feature of archetypes is their universal quality. As part of the “collective unconscious” they are common to all persons “regardless of race, culture or creed.” Every human collective has “mother,” “father,” “birth,” “death” etc. in its culture—these are universal features of human existence.
As “active living dispositions... that perform and continually influence our thoughts, feelings and actions,” archetypes are very significant in our lives. But they are not tangible: you cannot see the archetype itself but only the behaviors or patterns of feeling that the archetype gives rise to. Ultimately, Jung realized, archetypes cannot be defined (just as we cannot wrap our minds around the collective unconscious). We can best understand archetypes through our experiences as humans. We can grasp the archetype of “mother” from situations like the above example with the infant on the sidewalk.

Some Features of Archetypes

Several features we have mentioned above: Archetypes are universal and impersonal, as part of the collective unconscious which links us to all of humanity. They are also intangible--non-material--being part of our psychic makeup. We cannot see archetypes with our physical senses unless or until they spark some outer behavior or feeling. And this is another feature: Archetypes are generative, i.e. they spark actions on our part, as we noted in the example above of the “mothering” behavior that arises when we see a vulnerable infant exposed to danger. We don’t have to learn this behavior: It is innately part of our being human.
Archetypes get actualized through our personal experiences in life. In our example, the “mother” archetype gets actualized when we stop and seek help for the infant. The puer archetype is actualized when we spend time at play. The senex archetype shows up when we balance our checkbook and plan our budget for the months ahead. We will discuss how the archetype of the apocalypse shows up later in this essay.
Other features of archetypes are more ...]]> Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:08:30 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=37 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=36 “Holding the Tension of the Opposites”

The last fifteen years of Carl Jung’s life were lived against the backdrop of the Cold War—that time in our global history when most of the nations of the world were aligned either with the “West” or with the “Communist bloc.” Intermittently throughout this time the people of the world held their breath as they watched confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union heat up. During one such tense time members of the Psychological Club in Zurich asked Jung if he thought there would be an atomic war. Barbara Hannah recalled his reply:
“I think it depends on how many people can stand the tension of the opposites in themselves. If enough can do so, I think the situation will just hold, and we shall be able to creep around innumerable threats and thus avoid the worst catastrophe of all: the final clash of opposites in an atomic war. But if there are not enough and such a war should break out, I am afraid it would inevitably mean the end of our civilization as so many civilizations have ended in the past but on a smaller scale.”
In the 1950’s the “opposites” globally were the capitalist West and the communist East, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. The latter collapsed in 1989, seemingly leaving the United States as the undisputed leader of the world. But a nation as unconscious as the U.S. cannot exist for long without some external threat carrying its shadow, and it didn’t take more than a few years before another “opposite” emerged. What replaced Communism as our “opposite”?
Consider the major features of American society: We are a liberal, secular, ethnically diverse and pluralistic culture. We espouse democratic ideals and are progressive in the sense that we expect the future to be better than the past. We cherish free-market capitalism, an economic orientation well-suited to our materialistic bent. Many of our citizens enjoy high-tech forms of entertainment and urbane activities in a cultural milieu of moral debauchery.
The opposite of our society would be a culture that is illiberal, intolerant of diversity, theocratic and tribal. It would reject democracy and be oriented to the past, to traditions and history, rather than to the future. Such a culture would regard “progress” as a threat to its heritage, and would reject both capitalism and the materialism on which capitalism is built. It would be regressive, fanatically religious, dogmatic in its beliefs and rural in its orientation. Its citizens would live under a moral code that seems (to the “modern” West) almost medieval.
Do we see such an opposite in our world today? Clearly, the Islamic jihadists and, in particular, the Taliban, are just such a society. And, given their commitment to a bogus interpretation of jihad, they are eager to confront the United States. Since 1993 the world has witnessed increasingly destructive examples of the “clash of opposites” that Jung feared: the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center; the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa; the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon; the 2002 bombing of the nightclub in Bali; the 2004 railroad bombing in Madrid; and the 2005 bombing of the tube and buses in London.
In multiple messages the late Ayatollah Khomeini made it clear that he viewed the United States as the “Great Satan” and Osama bin Laden has demanded that we convert to Islam, give up our military bases in the Middle East, and change our way of life to conform to Islamic values. In this he is reflecting a deeper “opposite,” that is, a more fundamental clash of opposites, in what has been called the “clash of fundamentalisms.” Both Christianity and Islam lay claim to having the Truth. Each insists only its way is the right way. In an earlier essay I defined “cosmic vanity.” This idea that one religion is the sole proponent of truth is cosmic vanity. This way of thinking was the ideological basis for the crusades back in the Middle Ages. It comes as a shock to most Western people to learn that Osama and the jihadists are still operating with this medieval mindset and in their minds they have taken up the efforts to conquer the “infidel” that went on for over a thousand years.
In the essay on America’s shadow I noted how the United States is so strongly an ESTJ culture, Extraverted (oriented to the outer world), Sensate (focused on tangible, material things), Thinking (preferring rational argument and objective facts to feelings and subjective values), and Judging (liking closure, decisive leadership and rapid decision-making). Such a strong bias does not conduce toward introspection and reflection, so it is not surprising that we have to see our inner opposite “out there,” in outer reality, rather than recognizing it within ourselves. We are now facing our unconscious in our current confrontation with the Islamic jihadists, who are carrying the projection of our societal shadow. Failing to hold Jung’s “tension of opposites” within ourselves, we are forced to experience it in outer reality.
Given the fanaticism of the jihadists and the profundity of our Western unconsciousness, this projection presents us with the gravest of problems. Jung offers us some advice in this impasse:
“...I had learned that all the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble.... They can never be solved, but only outgrown.”
Our current situation globally is not a problem to be “solved” with logic, reason, computer programs and other forms of left-brained processing. We are here dealing with a situation we must outgrow. The ego mind does not have the answers here. We can’t use our conscious mind to figure out what to do. Neither the predominance of our Thinking function, nor our Extraverted bias will be useful in dealing with our current challenges. “Outgrowing” ...]]> Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:43:57 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=36 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=35
Sometimes, in reading Jung, I encounter a passage that makes me think Jung wrote it just yesterday. Recently, while preparing a presentation for the Jung Society for Scholarly Studies symposium at Cornell University, I came across the following quote from “Civilization in Transition:”
Thanks to industrialization, large portions of the population were uprooted and were herded together in large centers. This new form of existence—with its mass psychology and social dependence on the fluctuation of markets and wages—produced an individual who was unstable, insecure, and suggestible. He was aware that his life depended on boards of directors and captains of industry, and he supposed, rightly or wrongly, that they were chiefly motivated by financial interests. He knew that, no matter how conscientiously he worked, he could still fall a victim at any moment to economic changes which were utterly beyond his control. And there was nothing else for him to rely on....
Jung wrote these words for a BBC broadcast he gave in 1946, but, given our recent history, they seem as relevant in 2009 as they were 63 years ago. How prescient Jung was! He could see the fragility of the industrial system and how vulnerable it has left the vast majority of people in the modern world.
Ever the clinician concerned to relieve suffering in the world, Jung was not content simply to diagnose problems; he offered suggestions as to what we might do to improve our situation. Some of these suggestions include wising up to the dangerous features of our current reality, addressing the problem of “mass-mindedness,” and achieving a metanoia, or fundamental mind change.

Wising Up to the Dangerous Features of Our Current Reality

Jung summarized many of what he felt were dangerous features of Western civilization in the above passage. In the manner of the French explication de texte, let’s draw out Jung’s wisdom phrase by phrase.
“Large portions of the population were uprooted...”: Jung regarded the rootlessness of modern people as “one of the greatest psychic dangers... a disaster not only for primitive tribes but for civilized man as well.” Why a disaster? Jung felt rootlessness would lead to “... a hybris of the conscious mind which manifests itself in the form of exaggerated self-esteem or an inferiority complex. At all events a loss of balance ensues, and this is the most fruitful soil for psychic injury.”
“herded together in large centers.”: Jung refers here to big cities, the megalopolises of the modern world, and he felt such “herding” of people caused all sorts of social and mental pathologies, a tendency to “thinking in large numbers” and the rise of “mass psychology” —all regrettable and dangerous features of modern life.
“...dependence on the fluctuation of markets and wages”: Jung recognized that we have become so dependent because of the “externalization of culture” —the result of the Extraverted bias of Western culture (most especially in America). Our “materialistic technology and commercial acquisitiveness” has led to “a loss of spiritual culture.” Jung was quite explicit about the dangers in such dependence on externals:
The man whose interests are all outside is never satisfied with what is necessary, but is perpetually hankering after something more and better which, true to his bias, he always seeks outside himself. He forgets completely that, for all his outward successes, he himself remains the same inwardly, and he therefore laments his poverty if he possesses only one automobile when the majority have two. Obviously the outward lives of men could do with a lot more bettering and beautifying, but these things lose their meaning when the inner man does not keep pace with them. To be satisfied with “necessities” is no doubt an inestimable source of happiness, yet the inner man continues to raise his claim, and this can be satisfied by no outward possession. And the less this voice is heard in the chase after the brilliant things of this world, the more the inner man becomes the source of inexplicable misfortune and uncomprehended unhappiness in the midst of living conditions whose outcome was expected to be entirely different. The externalization of life turns to incurable suffering, because no one can understand why he should suffer from himself. No one wonders at his insatiability, but regards it as his lawful right, never thinking that the one-sidedness of this psychic diet leads in the end to the gravest disturbances of equilibrium. That is the sickness of Western man, and he will not rest until he has infected the whole world with his own greedy restlessness.
The economic meltdown of 2008 brought home the truth of Jung’s insight: the “captains of industry” (most of them in the United States), “chiefly motivated by financial interests” did indeed “infect” the entire planet with their greedy materialism.
One concomitant of such materialism is “... the spiritual confusion of our modern world.” Another has been “the hollowing out of money, which in the near future will make all savings illusory...” . A third is the emptiness of Western materialistic values, which has led to the degeneration of the individual personality. Jung speaks to this in his reference to
“... an individual who was unstable, insecure and suggestible.”: Our Western over-valuation of logic, reason and science is both a result of and a further cause for our lack of self-knowledge and valuation of the inner man. We put great store on being “with it,” following fads and fashions with increasing susceptibility to the omnipresent influence of the media. Lacking inner anchors, we become more and more suggestible, especially as our cities get larger and larger: “The majority of normal people (quite apart from the 10 per cent or so who are inferior) are ridiculously unconscious and naive and are open to any passing suggestion.... The more people live together in heaps, the stupider and more suggestible the individual becomes.”
Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:50:00 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=35 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=34
This is the final of three essays that focus on America and its current situation from a Jungian perspective. In this last in the series the subject is, as noted in the final sentence of the previous essay, “the size, cause, nature and deep background of the coming American catastrophe.” Since the “deep background” requires more explanation and elaboration we’ll consider that first.

The Law of Cause and Effect: The Deep Background to America’s Current Situation

If we want to understand the deep background of what is going on now in America, we have to consider several key concepts. The first of these is the principle of karma. Theosophy and Eastern religions like Buddhism consider karma to be part of the Law of Cause and Effect. The Dalai Lama has provided a good definition of this Law and the principle of karma:
The fundamental precept of Buddhism is Interdependence or the Law of Cause and Effect. This simply states that... cause gives rise to effect which in turn becomes the cause of further effect,... consciousness... flows on and on, gathering experiences and impressions from one moment to the next... a being’s consciousness contains an imprint of all these past experiences and impressions, and the actions which precede them. This is known as karma, which means ‘action.’
Karma comes from all of one’s acts, words and thoughts, which “determine a person’s fate in his next stage of existence;...” The dictionary offers “fate,” “destiny” and “kismet” as synonyms for karma, and relates the term to Buddhism and Theosophy.
But the concept of karma and the Law of Cause and Effect is not unique to Buddhism. The Bible is full of references to this law and the concept of karma:
Job noted that “... those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it.”
Many years later the prophet Hosea expressed the same idea: “But you have planted wickedness, you have reaped evil,...”
Jesus advised his followers: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”
And the apostle Paul reminded the church in Galatia that “A man reaps what he sows.”
Jung wrote about karma in several places. In “Aion” he defined karma as “the fate earned through works in previous existences,” and he associated the term with Theosophy. He also recognized the importance of the concept in understanding the nature of archetypes:
When... psychic energy regresses, going beyond even the period of early infancy, and breaks into the legacy of ancestral life, the mythological images are awakened: these are the archetypes. [Here he appends an informative footnote:] This... is... a deliberate extension of the archetype by means of the karmic factor, which is so very important in Indian philosophy. The karma aspect is essential to a deeper understanding of the nature of an archetype...
Ever the man of science, Jung was quick to admit that concepts like karma cannot be proven:
...karmic illusion—that is to say, illusions which result from the psychic residue of previous existences...karma implies a sort of psychic theory of heredity...we cannot even conceive how anyone could prove anything at all in this respect... Hence we may cautiously accept the idea of karma only if we understand it as psychic heredity in the very widest sense of the word. Psychic heredity does exist--...
Jung offered a “Western version of a prenatal karma” in the “very ancient idea of what we might call an inborn bill of debt to fate...” . Our contemporary American culture has this idea, but we put it in a modern vernacular: “What goes around, comes around.” What you put out eventually comes back to you.
All the above remarks relate karma to the individual, but it has collective application as well. The Dalai Lama noted this in his autobiography, when he discussed the Tibetan invasion of China in the 8th century. Back then Tibet was a war-like place and the aggressive Tibetans actually seized the Chinese capital in 763 A.D. The killing, looting and destruction created a karmic debt, even though Tibet soon fell under the influence of Buddhism and became a very pacific and non-aggressive society. No matter. The karmic debt still had to be paid, and the process of doing so began in 1950, when China invaded Tibet. In 1951, just as the Tibetans did 1,188 years earlier to China, the Chinese took over the capital of Lhasa.
At this point you might be wondering what all this has to do with America, its current situation and the “catastrophe” mentioned above. We’ll get to that shortly. First, we must define another key concept: “cosmic vanity” or “ontological arrogance.”

The Concept of Cosmic Vanity

The terms “cosmic vanity” and “ontological arrogance” are not mine. I got the first from theologian Charles Davis, the second from business consultant Fred Kofman. They mean essentially the same thing: “... the claim to a privileged knowledge of the origin, structure and workings of the cosmos... a temptation that dogs all religion ... [is] cosmic vanity.” “Ontological arrogance is the belief that your perspective is privileged, that yours is the only true way to interpret a situation....” “Ontological arrogance [is] when I assume that my truth is the truth.”
We can define cosmic vanity situationally:
The vain man assumes that the world is as he sees it and also takes for granted that others should see things the way he does... Cosmic vanity occurs when men impose their social structure upon the cosmos as a whole, falling into the conceit of interpreting the entire cosmos in terms of the limited preoccupations and organization of a particular society and culture.
and we are reminded, by Kofman, that cosmic vanity has consequences:
Our history informs our understanding of the present and the decisions and actions through which we shape ...]]> Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:01:53 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=34 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=32 As I have done with other essays I will begin by defining the “shadow,” in Jungians terms; then I will consider the link between the shadow and the typological functions. After that I will consider the specific elements of America’s shadow and how our collective shadow manifests pathologically. Finally I will examine how it relates to American exceptionalism.

What does “shadow” mean?

As used in Jungian thought, the term “shadow” refers to the “hidden or unconscious aspects of oneself,” which the ego has either repressed or simply not recognized. It is “shadow” because we are “in the dark” about these parts of ourselves.
While we will focus primarily in this essay on the negative aspects of the shadow (which are more problematic than the positive) we should note that the shadow contains all the parts of ourselves that we don’t recognize as “us.” That is, there can be positive or good qualities, like creative impulses, realistic insights, and qualities that are not developed in our consciousness: things or activities we are not good at, or aspects of living where we are awkward or unadapted. So, for example, gross motor coordination (fine athleticism) is part of my shadow (I can’t walk and chew gum at the same time!). Athleticism is a good thing, to be sure, but it is not something I do well and it would be very difficult for me to develop my gross motor skills to a high degree. So we might say that athleticism is part of my shadow.
More difficult—what Jung called “a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality” —is to work with the negative forms of the shadow. We will focus on this form in the rest of this essay.
In its dark guise, the negative guise, the shadow includes all the things we are not proud of or would not want to see as part of us: repressed desires, uncivilized impulses, resentments, childish fantasies, morally inferior motives, behaviors that are anti-social or illegal. Because we don’t want to think poorly of ourselves, we very rarely actively seek to discover our shadow. Jung felt the shadow showed up, or confronted a person, at the outbreak of a neurosis. At such a time, we are confronted with both embarrassing insights into ourselves and also new possibilities (because the shadow offers the opportunity to enlarge our sense of self).
At this point we face a choice: We can take up the task of working with the shadow material OR we can willfully repress the shadow. But note this: repression does not make the shadow go away. It continues to exist in the unconscious and begins to express itself indirectly (e.g. in outer life) in situations that are not pleasant. Often in these situations we “project” the shadow out (unconsciously, of course) and then find ourselves having to deal with people who carry the projection. Life gets more difficult. Jung even uses the word “dangerous” at this point. The shadow wants to be reckoned with. Doing so produces change.
If we take the more prudent (but less palatable) course and confront the shadow, what happens next? Jung describes the process: We come to feel stuck. Many of the certainties in life come to seem doubtful. We find it hard to make moral decisions. We may feel ineffective or begin to question our convictions. In short, life does not get better immediately because the process of assimilating the shadow takes time.
Much as we might wish for a guaranteed “cookbook” approach to resolving the shadow problem, there isn’t any. Each person grapples with it in his/her unique way. It is always an individual process. But certain steps have been identified by Jungian analysts.
First, we must accept the shadow as part of us and take it seriously. Second, we must become aware of the shadow’s qualities and intentions. How to do this? By paying conscious attention to our moods, fantasies, impulses and dreams. Dreamwork is one of the most effective ways to get to know and monitor the shadow. Third, we hunker down for a long “process of negotiation,” what Jungians call (using the technical term in the German original) “Auseinandersetzung,” or “having it out with oneself.” In this process we metaphorically “wrestle” with ourselves inwardly, engaging the shadow material, then backing off, coming in again, withdrawing again and again. This phase of inner work can take months, but there is no set timetable and, as I remind my dream students, this is not a race: the work will take as long as it takes.
In discussing the shadow, we must mention a key point which relates to the quality of the shadow. By “quality” I refer to how dark or light the shadow is. This degree of darkness “depends on how much we consciously identify with a bright persona.” By this Jungians mean how highly we think of ourselves. If we think we are wonderful, superior to others, special, or gifted, our shadow is likely to be very dark and full of all sorts of stuff we are not likely to want to see or face. Why is this? Because the shadow stands in a compensatory relationship to our conscious sense of ourselves. This is important to remember when we examine America’s shadow in a later section of this essay. ...]]> Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:56:34 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=32 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=31
“America is an exceptional country.”
Sarah Palin
“I do believe in American exceptionalism”
John McCain

The topic of this essay—American exceptionalism—may not be familiar to many readers of this blog as it is not something taught in schools, but in the last Presidential election both Sarah Palin and John McCain mentioned it. As we look ahead to the future, and particularly the future of the United States, the concept of American exceptionalism is important to understand, and we will mention it in the two essays that follow this one. In this essay we will define “American exceptionalism,” then examine how it has shown up in American history, consider some of its implications and then offer a Jungian “take” on it.

What does “American exceptionalism” mean?

A concise, as well as easily accessible definition is provided by Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
American exceptionalism ... refers to the belief that the United States differs qualitatively from other developed nations, because of its national credo, historical evolution, distinctive political and religious institutions, ethnic origins and composition, or national ideals.
To understand what “differs qualitatively” means, we’ll consider each part of the definition:
“historical evolution” refers to the founding myth of the Puritan colonists, who felt they were charged with a special spiritual and political destiny to create in the New World a church and society that would be a model for the rest of the world. John Winthrop expressed this in his statement that he and his fellow colonists were creating a “city on a hill” that others in the future would be able to look to for inspiration on how to live an exemplary life. Believing they were chosen by God to be moral exemplars, the Puritans felt they were “blessed by Providence.” Later generations developed and extended this idea, as we shall see later, when we consider how American exceptionalism has manifested in our history.
“national credo” has been embodied or expressed in several ways: It appears in documents, particularly the Declaration of Independence (“...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...”), the Constitution (“We, the people of the United States... do ordain and establish this Constitution...”) and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (“... this nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal....”). It frequently shows up in Presidential speeches (The United States is “mankind’s last, best hope,” a “beacon on a hill,” “God’s own country,” “the indispensable nation” and a “shining city on a hill.”). Finally, American exceptionalism as a national credo got carved in stone—on the Statue of Liberty, in a stirring poem by Emma Lazarus: “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore/Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:/I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” Written, spoken or carved, words like these reflect the United States’ unique nature.
“ethnic origin and composition:” Mention of the Statue of Liberty and the message carved on its base reflects another component of the definition of American exceptionalism. More perhaps than any other country in the world, the United States draws its population from everywhere. There is no single predominant cultural origin here, and America for centuries has provided “upward mobility” without rigid castes or an official noble class. Its open social structure makes it unique.
“distinctive political and religious institutions and practices:” The official documents that established the United States separated church and state. There is no state religion in this country and such secularism is not the norm elsewhere. The absence of socialism and the failure of labor unions to organize into labor parties are also unusual. The most remarkable form of American exceptionalism is found in our diplomatic and foreign policies, in our isolationism, with our mistrust of entangling foreign commitments and the refusal of our federal judges to submit to the rulings of other jurisdictions; in our tradition of deprecating power politics and old-fashioned diplomacy; in the assumption we make that American values and practices are universally valid and appropriate for the rest of the world; and in our “exemptionalism,” in which U.S. courts exempt America from adherence to international treaties.
“national ideals:” We express our ideals in such statements as “America, land of liberty,” “The United States is the land of opportunity,” and “America, beacon of freedom.”
Clearly, American exceptionalism is a complex concept, including many aspects of our history and culture, with many facets and components. Some of these facets are positive, others negative. On the positive side, scholars of American history point to the following statements or claims:
The United States has a special role in the world.
The U.S. has a special destiny and mission.
The U.S. is the only nation founded on an ideal.
The U.S. is different from other nations in its underlying values.
The U.S. sees diversity as a strength.
The United States is distinctive.
The U.S. stands outside of history.
The U.S. is more patriotic than other lands.
American conservatives go farther in their claims, to offer a form of American exceptionalism that exalts the United States as superior to other nations, being richer, more democratic, more religious, and with the best values and institutions yet devised.
In reaction to this “triumphalism” other scholars remind us of the negative face, in such statements as:
The United States believes the rest of the world should adapt to American ways.
The U.S. thinks it can, and should, force its version of democracy on to others (e.g. Iraq).
The United States is ethnocentric.
The U.S. is hyper-nationalistic.
The U.S. is an arrogant bully.
The U.S. fails to listen to other countries.
The U.S. falls into a “double standard:” criticizing others while ignoring its critics.
The United States suffers from a “disease of conceit.”
The U.S. is blind to the misery its ...]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:53:01 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=31 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=30
Part III: Our Current Situation in an Alchemical Context

In this part we will examine the 4 alchemical phases with reference to specific events in the daily newspapers that provide us with insights into the phases underway in this transitional time. Then we will consider what the next few years might hold for us, using alchemy as a guide to the future.

Pick up the daily newspaper and what do we read about? Major forest fires burning thousands of acres and leaving hundreds of people homeless. Massive hurricanes dissolving beaches, breaking down structures, flooding whole cities. Tens of thousands dying in large earthquakes and terrorist attacks. Currencies losing their value. The revelations of corruption at all levels of business and government, as Governors and Senators are forced from office for malfeasance, bribery, or other “high crimes and misdemeanors;” heads of state castigating other heads of state as “the axis of evil” and refusing to engage them on the world stage; Wall Street tycoons getting huge paychecks, CEOs claiming big bonuses, “golden parachutes” and salaries hundreds of times larger than those of ordinary workers; hot shot “dealmakers” fancying themselves “Masters of the Universe;” confusion, bewilderment, disorientation and melancholy as tens of thousands of people lose their homes in the mortgage crisis; hundreds of young people becoming addicted to drugs or alcohol each year; major banks collapsing, ratcheting up the anxiety level throughout our society.

Do we need to wonder what is going on? Clearly we are now in the nigredo stage as a society, experiencing the calcinatio (fires), solutio (floods), mortificatio (dying), inflation (both economic and personal), the putrefactio (corruption), confrontation with the shadow (which George Bush projected out in seeing others as “evil”), greed, confusion, sickness of spirit, and anxiety. This is not a good time in our collective reality! Some elements of our society would have us believe it is the beginning of the end, that we will soon witness Armageddon or the Apocalypse.

But Jung reminds us that the nigredo is not meant to be the end. It is only a phase, the hardest phase, admittedly, but one that we are meant to grow through. Using alchemy as our road map, we can also see signs of the albedo, the phase after the nigredo.

We see the strong passions and bitter hostilities that are characteristic of the albedo phase in the Obama-Clinton exchanges during the Presidential primaries. Other examples of this are: the hostilities between Sunnis and Shi’ites in Iraq, between Tibetans and Chinese in Tibet, and between the Islamic jihadists and the U.S. military in Afghanistan. There is growing awareness of the need to balance opposites like home and work, work and play, in, for example, the studies of Anne Wilson Schaef and others on the dangers of addictions (e.g. workaholism). In the rise of feminism, gender studies on college campuses, and the women’s rights movement internationally we see growing attempts, on the collective level, to integrate animus and anima. In the rising awareness of holistic health, eating disorders and the value of diet in health maintenance we see the redemption of body and matter. The popularity of the books by Marion Woodman speaks to the growing concern with the body and its connection to soul. Finally, the environmental movement is the modern form of Hildegard’s benedicta viriditas, the blessedness of “greenness” and life on this planet.

Signs of the rubedo phase are just emerging in our collective experience. Renewal seems to be showing up in the growing number of people who are now working on healing themselves, including becoming conscious of the unconscious. New attitudes are appearing: there is more respect now being given to indigenous peoples and what they can offer us; more people are waking up to how global capitalism is destroying the planet; reverence is being given to Mother Earth in more places and more ways; the push for peace is growing as more people wake up to the reality that violence never solves anything; we are seeing a more conscious holding of the tension of opposites, as more people recognize the “clash of universalisms” and realize that gravity—and the Source of gravity—truly does work for everyone (even those who profess a different religious belief). As more people “authorize their own lives” they look within for direction and recognize the wisdom that their inner Divinity offers. Finally, we are hearing messages (even in media like television that usually pander to the lowest common denominator) reminding us “we’re all in this together,” and in such venues we are seeing nascent visions of unity. “Nascent” because this phase is just beginning to emerge on the collective level.

The nigredo, by contrast, is well underway. What does it suggest the next few years are likely to hold for us?

Our Possible Future in an Alchemical Context

The years ahead are likely to see widespread confusion—times when people really aren’t clear as to what’s happening. Disintegration—where things fall apart—is also likely, in what George Land called the “breakdown” time (which makes possible the “breakthrough” later on). Another likely part of our future is aggression: anger against oneself, as well as with other people. All sorts of base passions are likely to rise up: rage and jealousy, resentment and frustration.

There is likely to be lots of death. In the mortificatio people experience the death of various aspects of themselves or the death of some important people in their lives, or the death of a phase of life, or the death of a job. Given the current round of layoffs reported daily in the news, we are witnessing lots of mortificatio now. Deaths from fires, ...]]> Mon, 23 Feb 2009 12:45:04 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=30 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=29
Part II: Alchemy and Its Phases—A Road Map for Individuals and Cultures

“Alchemy.” The word conjures up medieval men hunched over flasks and fires trying to turn lead into gold. Historians of science regard alchemy as the precursor of modern chemistry. The dictionary defines it as “a combination of chemistry and magic studied in the Middle Ages, especially the search for a process by which cheaper metals could be turned into gold and silver...” It was part of Jung’s genius, born out of his respect for ancient ways and wisdom traditions, to recognize that the medieval alchemists were about something much more profound than making gold out of lead.

Rather than metallurgical transformation, alchemy is about the process of personal transformation. Lead is symbolic of the basic unconscious state that we’re in when we come into the world, and the gold is the achievement we reach when we have developed in ourselves what Jung called “individuation,” that is, when we have become fully and truly who we are meant to be. This process of change takes many forms, involves many processes and takes us through many phases as we work to individuate.

Jung and his followers (especially Marie-Louise von Franz) describe the phases of alchemical change using the terms developed by the early alchemists. These medieval researchers were fluent in the scholarly language of the day, Latin, hence the terms show up in forms that are foreign to the ears of most contemporary Americans.

The alchemical change process occurs in four major phases: the nigredo, the albedo, the rubedo and the citrinitas. In this Part II we will define and describe each phase in terms of an individual’s experiences. Then we will apply the phase on the collective level, in a general way. In Part III we will relate the phases to our current reality, with reference to specific events and phenomena we are witnessing now, and then look into the future.

The Nigredo

The first of the phases is dark, dismal, a very black time, well-labeled the nigredo, which comes from a Latin word (niger) meaning “black” or “dark.” For the person in this phase, life is not pleasant, as it is full of confusion and bewilderment, disorientation, sickness of spirit and confrontations with the shadow. Jealousy, envy, irritability, anxiety, self-righteousness, greed, melancholy and inflation are just some of the panoply of feelings that show up during this most difficult of the phases.

A variety of alchemical processes are part of this time, including:

the putrefactio, when we come to recognize some component of our existence is putrid, or rotten, with little or no energy left to feed our life.

the mortificatio, “death”—of people, things, parts of ourselves, in a metaphorical or (more rarely) literal sense—which leaves us with a sense of loss and grieving.
the calcinatio, “burning” or the “refiner’s fire” spoken of in the Old Testament, the process in which we experience the frustration of our desire nature, with the purpose of purifying or “refining” our will.

the solutio, or dissolution of one or more of the elements of our existence that give our life structure, a process during which we are flooded with affect.

These are just a few of the more than dozen processes that alchemists recognized and described. Since each alchemist wrote from his/her own experience, each alchemical text describes the order, sequence and processes differently, making close comparison difficult. But Jung saw the close correlation between their varied descriptions and what he himself experienced in his own development and in that of his patients.

The nigredo is the phase when we are still operating mostly unconsciously. Our complexes are mostly autonomous in this beginning phase. As a result, we suffer more acutely than in the later phases.

The Albedo

The term albedo comes from the Latin albus, meaning “white” or “bright.” Things begin to feel lighter, “brighter” in this phase, compared to the previous misery of the nigredo. The work of this phase is to become aware of our “contrasexual side” and make the acquaintance of our “inner partner.”

As we wrestle with our complexes and strive to domesticate them, we experience strong passions and bitter hostilities, within and without, in dealings with others (often those closest to us). The challenge is to balance the opposites and achieve an integration of the animus/anima. In the process of the sublimatio, we become more objective, able to rise above situations to see them from a transcendent perspective. In developing a conscious relation to the inner man (for a woman) or woman (for a man), we redeem the body and matter, and come to experience what the great 13th century abbess, Hildegard of Bingen, called benedicta viriditas, the blessedness of being alive.

In the albedo phase we work to bring up from the unconscious (that is, we “redeem”) attitudes and feelings about ourselves, our bodies, our sexuality, the opposite sex and the host of feelings we have around embodiment itself. The purpose here? To come ultimately to a deeper level of wholeness and a greater appreciation of life on the physical plane.

The Rubedo

The third phase means “reddening” in Latin and just as our face reddens in the process of blushing, so we experience a surge of renewal in the rubedo phase. After confronting the shadow in the nigredo and wrestling with our inner opposite sex in the albedo, we come to the third phase more able to hold the tension of opposites (good and bad, male and female). The process of the sublimatio has led to the development ...]]> Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:43:33 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=29 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=28 A Three-Part Essay

Carl Jung, the inspiration behind the Jungian Center, was a highly intuitive person. Over the course of his long life he had many flashes of insight, premonitions and instant knowings that related to both his personal life and his professional work. One of the most intriguing of Jung’s vision was his last, occurring just eight days before he died, when (in the words of his close friend and student, Barbara Hannah) he was “largely concerned with the future of the world after his death.” This vision, Jung felt, was of the time 50 years hence, i.e. in 2011, and it is intriguing for what it foretells, and what inducement it can offer us to work on ourselves and create more consciousness in the
world. In this three-part essay (Part I posted in January ’09, Part II in February and Part III in March) we will examine Jung’s visions (Part I), his insights about the value and applicability of alchemy in understanding personal and collective change (Part II), and how these two—Jung’s visions and his use of alchemy—can help us re-perceive where we are now collectively and what the future might hold for us (Part III).

Part I: Jung’s Prophetic Visions

Carl Jung was known for many things: his work with dreams; his early work as a psychiatrist with association experiments leading to the concept of the “complex,” work that brought him to the attention of Sigmund Freud; his interest in archetypes, which became such a feature of his brand of psychology that it often is labeled “archetypal psychology.” What is not so well known is Jung’s very keen intuitive nature, which manifested in his quick assessment of his patients’ conditions and, outside the clinical arena, in both his personal life and his role as a public figure.

Intuition is that function that allows us to see around the corner of the future. Jung experienced this repeatedly in his personal life. In 1896, when he was 21 years old and living in Basel as a medical student, Jung was asked by his mother to pay a social call on an old family friend, Frau Rauschenbach. During this visit Jung had a fleeting glimpse of a young girl and he knew intuitively that he had seen his future wife. This was highly improbable, given that Emma Rauschenbach was then only 14, the daughter of a rich industrial family, and he was an impoverished medical student with many years of education ahead of him. But Jung never wavered and, once he achieved financial independence, he courted her persistently and married her in 1903.

Nineteen years later, in November of 1922, Jung had a dream in which his father (who had died in 1896) came to him with questions about marital psychology. At the time Jung found the dream obscure. But two months later, he had a disturbing dream, which he recounted in his autobiography, Memories, Dream, Reflections:
I was in a dense, gloomy forest; fantastic, gigantic boulders lay about among huge jungle-like trees. It was a heroic, primeval landscape. Suddenly I heard a piercing whistle that seemed to resound through the whole universe. My knees shook. Then there were crashings in the underbrush, and a gigantic wolfhound with a fearful, gaping maw burst forth. At the sight of it, the blood froze in my veins. It tore past me, and I suddenly knew: the Wild Huntsman had commanded it to carry away a human soul. I awoke in deadly terror,...
The following morning Jung got news that his mother had suddenly died, and he then remembered the dream of two months earlier and understood that in that dream his father had sent him a warning.

Another example of Jung’s intuition arose from his habit of painting mandalas. When he did so, Jung operated in what I have referred to as “allow mode.” In this mode, one’s intuition emerges out of the end of the pen or brush, without intermediation by the conscious mind. One mandala Jung painted in 1928 developed a Chinese character and Jung was puzzled at this. Within a few weeks he was approached by a Sinologist, Richard Wilhelm, who asked Jung to write a psychological commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower, a Taoist-alchemical treatise.

A final example of Jung’s intuition operating in his personal life was his initial meeting in 1933 with Marie-Louise von Franz, who was to become one of his most diligent students, analysands and co-workers. The meeting came about through Jung’s interest in getting to know more about the young people of the day. Von Franz was the only girl in a party of 8 that Jung hosted with lunch and supper and, as he spoke to them of his psychology, he felt certain that von Franz had something to do with alchemy. His intuition prefigured reality a year in the future: In 1934 von Franz became Jung’s analysand and translator for him of Greek and Latin alchemical texts. Many years later, she wrote Alchemy, one of the definitive texts on alchemy and Jungian psychology.

Jung’s intuition was no less impressive about collective situations. In 1913, Jung sensed the “atmosphere” of Europe was “darkening,” and there was “something in the air,” something that felt oppressive in concrete reality, not just in his unconscious. In October of that year, Jung had a prophetic vision which he described in his memoir:
... I was suddenly seized by an overpowering vision: I saw a monstrous flood covering all the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps. When it came up to Switzerland I saw that the mountains grew higher and higher to protect our country. I realized that a frightful catastrophe was in progress. I saw the mighty yellow waves, the floating rubble ...]]> Fri, 09 Jan 2009 12:39:59 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=28 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=26

Pitfalls of the Path

The previous essays in this collection have described waking up and leap-frogging as positive, desirable activities or states of being, and they are. But it would be disingenuous of me to suggest they are without pitfalls. This final essay considers some of the disadvantages, drawbacks or dangers associated with waking up and leap-frogging.

Our examination will take as a model of awakeness and leap-frogging the figure of Jesus. His life illustrates some of the hazards the path can present. We will consider these under six rubrics: general problems; frustrations; temptations; problems associated with lifestyle; problems related to relationships with other people; and the pitfalls linked to public activities (i.e. leap frog actions).
Some General Problems

Under this heading, I consider the inevitable consequences of either waking up or leap-frogging. Problems of this type are inescapable.

“Waking up” is a process of coming to realize that the psyche is real and that Spirit is primary. Therefore Spirit has purchase on one’s soul. Our spiritual commitment comes before all else. This is what is meant by the Biblical injunction against “having any other gods” but The Force. Nothing else can we worship. How is this a problem? Because the Second Wave world lives in the materialistic confusion that ignores Spirit and denigrates the soul. We are “odd man out” when we put Spirit first in our lives.

Doing so—living with Spirit primary--implies living on faith and trust. In practice, this means holding or containing the left brain’s lust to know, to plan, while we hold or contain the ego’s fears and anxieties in the face of unknowing. This is painful, and hence, another peril.

Pain and suffering are unavoidable on this path. Jesus and the Buddha recognized this. But, as was noted in an earlier essay, suffering can be reperceived when we consciously recognize its meaning and purpose. But sometimes, especially when we are struggling alone, feeling isolated, without guidance or support, it can be very difficult indeed to know the point or purpose. And even when we do see the meaning, the ego is not likely to be happy. It does not like being crucified. This is what Jesus referred to when he spoke of “taking up one’s own cross” and following him. We face crucifixion whenever we must hold the “tension of opposites” in the struggle toward integrating them, as part of the individuation process.

The ego also hates self-denial. It does not appreciate having its desires thwarted. This is part of the task of “losing one’s life” that Jesus mentioned as being a part of his followers’ task. Relinquishing the things we want, so as to have higher, spiritual blessings, is never easy, for the whole Second Wave world pressures us to buy, consume, compare, compete, and “keep up with the Joneses.” It requires a strong inner locus of determination and independence of thought, as well as repeated contacts with The Force, to come to the point of knowing the truth that we do find life only when we consciously give it up.
Pitfalls of Frustration

Then there are the pitfalls associated with frustration. Frustration is an omnipresent feature of waking up and leap-frogging. Again, Jesus’ life can provide multiple examples. Frustrations come from many sources, e.g.
from being misunderstood. This is likely, perhaps inevitable, from those who are very asleep, because of the wide difference in level of consciousness between those awake and those very asleep. But even our closest contacts and aspirants—people who work with us and spend lots of time with us—may not be able to get on the wavelength at times.

from literalism and fundamentalism. Those stuck in the old way, following the letter of the law, will always misintepret what is said by those awake. Jesus experienced this with Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a well-known, recognized teacher and leader. Jesus knew this. Yet, for all his training and knowledge, Nicodemus was not able to rise above literalism in thinking that “rebirth” meant some literal process of being reborn. People who are not into spiritual things will not “get it,” and this will cause frustration in the face of the seemingly unbridgeable gulf.

from the refusal of some people to wake up, or even to recognize that their lives are not working. This is likely to be the most common frustration. Lots of people in the Second Wave world are in denial, thinking that “denial” is that river in Egypt. When we encounter these folks, what is patently obvious to us won’t even be “up” on their radar screens. This will provoke intense frustration unless we take Jesus’ advice: leave; move on. We don’t subject ourselves to lower levels of consciousness. There will be other, more challenging tasks to address, including another pitfall. This is the pitfall of temptation.

The Pitfall of Temptation

There are many types of temptation, but three are particularly common in the lives of people who are waking up. Again, we can look to the life of Jesus to illustrate these types. Perhaps the most omnipresent, given the consumerist cultures of the West, is the temptation of materialism. Where “getting and spending” are seen as virtues, and keeping alive the “throwaway” economy is a civic duty, it is hard to resist falling into this temptation. Even if we do manage to escape “consumeritis” by consciously choosing lives of “voluntary simplicity,” we can still fall into this temptation in its more subtle form: regarding “security” in monetary terms. This form of materialism would have us feel “safe” by having a regular paycheck, or savings in the bank, or health insurance, or other ...]]> Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:27:53 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=26 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=25

Allow Mode

There’s an old saw that goes, “Don’t just stand there! Do something!” The subject of this essay is almost the reverse of this: “Don’t just do something (mindless action)! Stand there (mindfully)!” Note the parenthetical additions. Most Second Wave activity, especially in response to crises or pressing circumstances, is mindless: not reflective, not well thought out, not based on sound principles. There is a marked denigration of inaction/non-action in the Second Wave world, as if not doing is to be equated with passivity or an inability to take action. “Allow mode” is part of Third Wave reality in its assumptions, goals and effects. We will examine what I mean by this, but first I need to define the concept, and within this, examine the connotations of “allow.”
Definitions of “Allow”

Dictionaries define “allow” in terms of letting, giving, admitting, acknowledging, and “permitting to happen, especially through carelessness or neglect.” Note the negative implication. We are not using “allow” in this negative sense in this essay. Rather, we are drawing more on the classical Greek senses of “allow.”

The ancient Greeks thought of “allow” in terms of giving, granting or offering something to the gods, or devoting oneself to something (worthy of such devotion). They put stress on a yielding or subordination of ego to something higher, a higher force, power or principle. This inclusion of a higher power is central to the concept of “allow mode.”
Definitions of “Allow Mode”

“Mode” is a way of being or responding. I am thinking now of the current computer techno-jargon, “sleep mode,” when a computer is not fully functional, but is “resting” in an energy-conserving state. Similarly, “allow mode” is a way of being or responding to life.

The term is not my creation. I was introduced to it when I studied energy healing at the Barbara Brennan School. It was used there to refer to one of several possible ways of working with energy. “Push,” “pull,” “stop” and “allow” are four ways energy healers can handle energy. “Allow mode” is the mode in which the healer simply holds the energy field with the conscious intention not to “do” anything. That is, the ego mind is not in control. The logical left brain is not trying to diagnose, prescribe or “make” a cure happen. Rather, the healer, by holding the field, creates a “space” for The Force to work, to bring the patient whatever he or she needs. By non-doing, the healer gets his/her ego out of the way and serves as a conduit for a higher wisdom to work. In my experience, allow mode is the most powerful of all the modes of energy work.

Note that allow mode is not pure passivity, because it requires a certain type of action. This action takes the form of mentally setting an intention. It focuses the will to be fully present, attentive, responsive and responsible (i.e. able to respond to the patient). The healer consciously puts his/her skills, talents, time and energies at the disposal of The Force, and deliberately resists the desire to intervene. A further form of action is the courage required to move into that psychic “space” where we (ego mind) don’t know when, where or how we will be put to use.

Allow mode also requires trust, because we don’t know. We operate, when in allow mode, relying that we will be guided, at the right time, to the right place, to connect with the right people. We trust that we will be given all that we need to do the task we are given.

The opposite of allow mode is “making it happen.” The Second Wave world is addicted to “making it happen.” The Second Wave world insists on control, being in control, staying in control, because of its illusion that we are in control and can control the world. The Second Wave world believes not only that it can “make it happen,” but that it can know what it should do or make happen. This is the cause of many, if not all, of the problems in contemporary life.
How Allow Mode Relates to Waking Up and Leap Frogging

A key facet of waking up is subordinating the ego to the Self (our Divine core). This is difficult because the ego doesn’t like to relinquish control. Every such experience feels, to the ego, like a defeat. To become conscious of the Self, to become aware of how our ego operates, and to place the ego under the Self takes effort.

Jesus spoke of this effort when he talked of those worthy of him taking up their cross and following him, and “losing their lives for his sake.” The consequence of such loss is finding one’s life. This paradox bears a bit of examination.

Spiritual reality is paradoxical. Jesus knew this. He often confounded the priests, scribes and teachers of the law with his habit of talking in paradoxes. The one in Matthew 10:38-39 is classic:

“…anyone who does not take his cross and follow after me [i.e. use my life as a model] is not worthy of me. Whoever invents/creates his life [on the material plane], will ruin/destroy it [on the spiritual plane] and whoever gives up his life [on the material plane] for my sake [i.e. to follow Divine guidance] will gain it [on the spiritual plane].
Allow mode is closely connected to crucifying the ego and making the conscious choice to use Jesus as a model. Doing so involves giving up or “losing” one’s (ego-driven) life. When we make this sacrifice, we “find” life on the spiritual ...]]> Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:16:44 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=25 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=24

The Forms and Value of Death

The Second Wave mind-set would regard the title of this essay as bizarre because, to the Second Wave world, death is an obscenity, something to be feared, denied, and postponed with all the herculean measures allopathic medicine can muster. In this, as in so much else, the conventional view is very confused and mistaken, as well as impoverished in its understanding.

By “impoverished,” I refer to the one-dimensional sense given to “death” in Western society, with its materialistic bias. Death, from this perspective, is extinction. It blots out life, ending all personal existence. “Life,” in this view, is tied to having a physical body.

A Third Wave view is much richer, in part because “death” is recognized as having many forms and meanings. There is Death, the archetypal experience found in all cultures and experienced by all life forms. Imagistically, this form is often depicted as a skeleton in black, with a scythe: the “Grim Reaper.” Then there is death as transition, the form recognized in the ancient wisdom of many cultures (Egyptian, Tibetan, the kabbalah of Jewish mysticism, etc.). This is the form of death that the dictionary defines as “any ending that is like dying.” And there is the death that is part of the process of living. This death, with its multiple stages, has been well described and delineated by medieval alchemists.

In the Third Wave mind-set, death is not an unmitigated disaster to be denied, avoided or resisted. It is recognized as natural, inevitable and frequent. That is, everyone dies multiple times (and I don’t imply here a belief in reincarnation). I’m talking about this life you have now. Each of us dies many times, and part of waking up is getting wise to when we are going through another death, what it is about and how we can realize the potential in the process.

In this essay I am going to examine the archetypal and alchemical stages of death, and then consider the transitional meanings of death. The goal is to demystify the concept, and to illustrate how death is central to living and growing.
Death as Archetype

Archetypes are timeless, universal symbols that “live” in human beings. Jung believed that there are as many archetypes as there are experiences we can have. “Father,” “Mother,” “child,” “sun,” “birth,” “suffering”—all are examples of archetypes. Since the experience of death is common to all cultures, death is also an archetype.

Halloween has made most of us familiar with the images, colors and accessories associated with the archetype of Death: the skeleton (loss of embodiment depicted as lack of flesh); the color black; a tool of harvest (e.g. scythe) representing the sense of Death collecting the energy of the no-longer-living; cemeteries; and midnight (the cusp time, when one day’s allotment of time has run out, parallel to the depletion of the time given to one life). Feeling associations run all to the negative: fear, grief, terror, anxiety, powerlessness.

But archetypes are purposive. That is, they arose for some purpose or serve some universal need. What could be the purpose of death?

To the Second Wave thinker, this is an idiotic or obscene question. Death being the enemy, it has no good or purpose about it. But Second Wave thinking is wrong, as we can see from the ancient wisdom of other cultures.
Death as Seen through the Lens of History and Eastern Cultures

Western people have not been as confused and mistaken about death as we are these days. The ancient Egyptians, for example recognized death as part of life. From their “Book of the Dead” to their elaborate funerary arrangements brought to light by archeology, we can see just how much thought, time and energy the ancient Egyptians gave to the process of dying and the care of the physical remains. To them, death was no obscenity, but the gateway to another life.

Ancient Greeks had no qualms about facing death. They thought of death as the twin brother of sleep. Just as we experience sleep on a regular basis, so we experience death. The mystery religions of the Greco-Roman world also addressed the forms and processes of death, and understood it as one of the great “mysteries” of reality.

After the fall of Rome, the subject of death was taken up in Western Europe by two groups. One, the medieval alchemists, we will consider later. The other, the Roman Catholic Church, developed elaborate rituals and teachings, in part because of the prevalence of death in this time when good hygiene was generally lacking and no one knew about germs as the cause of disease. In certain periods, like the time of the Black Death of the 14th century, pandemics led to death being uppermost in the minds of most people, as up to half of the population succumbed in some regions of Europe.

With such death rates, the experience of death was unavoidable, so the medieval church developed a set of spiritual exercises and rituals known as the ars boni moriendi, “the art of dying well.” Using the “memento mori,” e.g. a human skull, and other visual aids, the church encouraged people to contemplate death, and in particular, their own coming death. People kept watch over corpses (a residual legacy of which lingers now in the phenomenon of the “wake”) and watched dead bodies decay. Through such exercises (which strike most modern Western people as ghoulish), medieval men and women became acquainted with the process of dying and deadness in vivid ways—ways that helped them to dis-identify with their bodies. ...]]> Sat, 25 Oct 2008 08:28:37 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=24 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=23

The Gift of Suffering

The title of this essay likely induces one of two responses. The charitable response assumes there’s been some sort of typo of rather large proportion, like a whole word switched for another, i.e. “gift” got put in place of another word like “tragedy” or “misfortune.” Less charitably, one might respond that the author has clearly lost her mind, if she think suffering can be regarded as a gift!
The first response, while kind, is erroneous: there’s no typo. “Gift” is what I meant. As for the second, I can only ask that you bear with me, read on, and pass judgment on my mental state at the end of the essay. Perhaps it won’t seem as crazy then as it might at first glance.

I shall begin as I do in many of these essays, with an examination of the meaning and etymology of the key words. Then I’ll consider how the title might make sense, and finish up by relating the theme of suffering to the wake up/leap frog process.

The Meaning of “Suffering”

Our English word “suffer” comes from two Latin words, sub and ferre, meaning literally “to carry under.” When we “suffer,” we carry our pain under. Under where? Under our heart, because pain is a feeling and the heart is the area that processes feelings.

Because I know that etymologies carry a deep wisdom, I mulled over this sense of “carrying under the heart” for some time. What did the ancient Romans know that we have forgotten? After thinking about this for some time with the back burner of my mind, I had an intuition that led me to check my old physiology textbook. The organ that is under the human heart is the spleen, whose task it is to purify the body of toxins (especially bacteria and worn out blood cells). It also stores and releases blood as the body needs it. The spleen, in other words, helps us stay healthy by processing and removing the old or what would endanger our health, while it provides us with energy and resources (blood).

Since there are no coincidences, it is not by chance that the psychological equivalent of the spleen is the act of carrying pain under the heart, or what Jung calls “conscious suffering.” “Whoa!,” you say. Bear with me. I’ll make the connection clear.

Another Latin meaning for sub + ferre conveys the psychological sense. These two words joined as a compound can mean “to take upon oneself.” When we “take upon ourselves” the pain that human embodiment is heir to—that is, when we refuse to repress, deny or avoid facing reality as it is, we do psychologically what the spleen does for us physically: We help ourselves to stay healthy by avoiding the development of mental illness or neurosis. We also free up or release energy that otherwise would go into repression.

Types of Suffering

Carl Jung identified two forms of suffering: meaningless and meaningful. Meaningless suffering is everywhere, being part of the human condition, as the Buddha recognized. This existential suffering is the result of our trying to avoid pain, by denial and repression. None of us wants pain. We naturally shun it. But doing so is like the spleen refusing to do its job. It leads to big trouble, dis-ease, and real problems. In the realm of the psyche, these are called “neuroses.” Jung identified the long-term habit of repression (our “stuffing” unpleasant feelings, facts, etc. within) as the cause of neuroses.

Because we all do this, we are all “neurotic” to one degree or another. This is “meaningless” suffering because it makes no sense, has no significance, and gives us no benefit. This form of suffering, in other words, is not a gift.

The form of suffering that is meaningful comes when we stop repressing and take up our moral task as humans to deal consciously with our pain. In this process, we take up the pain that is endemic to living and work with it, in the knowledge that pain has a purpose. It is a warning, with an intrinsic message. We need to listen to our inner voices to learn this message.

To do this, we allow the full range of emotions to flow through us, without putting up resistance to the process. We set the intention to experience the full range of feelings—be they good or bad. This requires moral courage, but, while it is uncomfortable (especially in the early stages), it affords the same benefits as a well-working spleen: We are more resilient. We have more energy. Our spirit is purified. And, most of all, we begin to be aware of the meaning behind the pain we experience. As the Buddha said, the more conscious we become, the less we suffer. The development of consciousness serves to deliver us from meaningless suffering.

Suffering as a Gift

Ernesto Cardenal said succinctly what I mean here: “…even my pain is God’s loving gift.” Now you might well wonder not only at my sanity, but at Cardenal’s! The word “gift” has positive connotations. When we receive a “gift” it is a good thing. How can suffering be seen as something good?

Surely meaningless suffering (as defined above) is no gift. But suffering consciously undertaken, worked with, processed and explored to the point that we recognize its meaning—this suffering is a gift, with a wonderful host of associated benefits. Let’s consider some of the ways suffering gifts us.

 Meaningful suffering makes true happiness possible. Jung recognized this when he noted that “… happiness is itself poisoned if the measure of suffering ...]]> Thu, 04 Sep 2008 08:13:55 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=23 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=15
At our Waterbury location:
SUFI CHI GONG, Sept 3,10,17,24, Oct 1; 7-9PM; 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury; $75 (includes written materials). Info, call Radha, (802) 658-2447. Heart with Wings Qigong is a unique Chinese exercise system. Through individual effort, practitioners build up their health by combining discipline of mind, body and the body’s “Qi” (vital force). This specific form is Sufi inspired and focuses on ten planetary energies which, when mastered, provides a balanced and integrated body-mind connection. Once learned this 20-minute daily practice is an excellent beginning for the serious student of meditation in motion. Led by Radha Buko, Sufi teacher and meditator.

MAPPING YOUR INTERIOR LANDSCAPE, Sept 4 and 11, 6-8PM; Sept 6, 10 to Noon ; $45. Info, call Kathy (802) 879-3379, or Sue (802) 244-7909. Safari through your inner islands, mountains, bogs and deserts. Images, metaphors, myths and symbols will be used to illuminate your journey through life. Led by Kathy Rude, teacher and writer.

MYTHOLOGY, Sept 4,11,18,25, Oct 2,9,16,23; 7-9PM; 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury; $100. Info, call Sue (802) 244-7909. In an 8-week format, this workshop offers an exploration of the meaning of mythology and the evolution of mythical thought from an interdisciplinary standpoint. The course will examine the relevance of myths in our daily lives, and the archetypal underpinnings of myth, with a focus on Jungian interpretations of some of the major myths in the classical Western tradition. Led by Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

INTRODUCTION TO ASTROLOGY, Sept 13,20,27,Oct 4; 10AM to Noon; 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $60. Info, call Patrick (802) 479-5017 or Sue (802) 244-7909. A basic course for the novice studying the ancient symbol system of the stars and how it relates to your inner and outer life.A pre-requisite for more advanced courses in Astrology. Led by Patrick Ross, P.E.

INTRODUCTION TO JUNG, Oct 7,14,21,28; 7-9PM; 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury; $60. Info, call Sue (802) 244-7909. A basic overview of Jung, the man, his thought, and his legacy to psychology and our world, providing a primer of key Jungian concepts. Highly recommended for all who plan to take more advanced courses in the Center’s Via Investigativa, e.g. alchemy, archetypal psychology, archetypal astrology, and the Mysterium Coninunctionis. Led by Sue Mehrtens.

FINDING YOUR MISSION IN LIFE, Oct 1,8,15,22; 7-9PM, plus an individual session; 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury; $75. Info, call Sue (802) 244-7909. Every person alive has a unique soul mission, a special way he or she is meant to make a difference in the world. When we discover our purpose we open our lives to greater joy, meaning and wonder. Using techniques suggested by the holistic healer Edgar Cayce, students handle a variety of tools and instruments to determine their purpose for living. Besides learning ways to get intuitive guidance about personal mission, participants in this workshop also discover their personality type and assess their range of talents. Led by Sue Mehrtens

CREATIVE WRITING, Oct 11; 11AM-4PM, plus 6 weeks of personal work (submissions due on Oct 15,22,29, Nov 5,12 and 19); 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury; $200. Info, call Sue (802) 244-7909. This six-week course begins with a full-day writing workshop and continues as a distance-learning class, with students submitting writing and receiving feedback on a weekly basis. Emphasis is on locating the authentic voice, overthrowing the inner critic who restricts free expression and developing discipline as a writer. All genres. Led by Stacey Engels, NYC-based writer, teacher and creativity coach.

INTRODUCTION TO WORKING WITH SYMBOLS, Oct 29, Nov 5,12,19; 7-9PM; 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury; $60. Info, call Sue (802) 244-7909. A basic course designed particularly for the student of dreams, focusing on the features, functions, history and sources of symbols, types of symbols (e.g. the mandala), symbols in alchemy and methods of working with symbols that are used particularly in Jungian psychology. An excellent course for students preparing for advanced work in hermeneutics, psychology, art and art therapy and counseling. Led by Sue Mehrtens

CREATIVE PROCESS, Nov 15-16; 11AM-3:30PM; 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury; $100 (includes lunch and snacks). Info, call Sue (802) 244-7909. A weekend workshop combining seminar, meditation, creative exercises and outdoor exploration to reveal the processes of scientists, artists, political thinkers and others who approach “reality” as a creative medium. By expanding out definition of creativity and enhancing our receptivity and perception, we improve problem-solving skills, identify our unique gifts and begin to see the connections between personal and social transformation. Led by Stacey Engels, NYC-based writer, teacher and creativity coach.

at our South Burlington location:
HIGH SENSE PERCEPTION WORKSHOP, Sept 9,16,23; 7-9PM; $45. Info, call Sue (802) 244-7909. It has been said that we draw on a small fraction of our true brain power. Equally, we go through daily life using a narrow range of our senses. This workshop introduces participants to their real perceptual ability, what some call our “high sense perception.” Via a series of assessment instruments and dozens of exercises, students discover their strongest perceptual mode, their psychological type and its effect on their sensory engagement with the world, and how to access and use the full range of psychic abilities: clairvoyance, clairaudience (knowing beyond the normal range of hearing), and clairsentience (kinesthetic knowing). Key techniques required for further work with energy fields and energy healing are also presented, along with guidelines in psychic etiquette and safety tips. An essential course for all further energy work. Led by Sue Mehrtens.

DEVELOPING YOUR INTUITION, Oct 7,14,21,28; 6:30-8:30PM; $60. Info, call Kathryn (802) 999-8081. During this experiential workshop, you will identify your intuitive style and learn six proven ways to access your intuition. Bring to the workshop several questions about which you would like greater clarity or insight. Led by Kathryn Webb, teacher and trainer.

at our Morrisville location:
THE ART OF COOKERY, Sept 29; time, place and cost TBA. Info, call Sara (802) 888-3802. Don’t just cook, prepare ...]]> Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:54:07 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=15 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=22

Redefining Success

How do you define “success”? What does it mean to you to be “successful”? For most people, at least in the Second Wave (Western) world, success means “the gaining of wealth, position, or other advantage.” This is the standard dictionary definition, implying things like advancement, “upward mobility” (e.g. rising from a mid-level management position to the top of the corporate hierarchy), getting or being rich, having power or status, achieving a prominent social position, or gaining acclaim or a respected reputation in one’s career (e.g. recognition as an “expert”).

In Second Wave reality, the opposite of “success” is failure, something to be avoided. From earliest childhood we are taught to seek success and try to avoid failure. This is particularly true in those families where children are extensions of the parental ego: the child must succeed so that the parent looks good in the eyes of family and friends. So there is an ego investment involved in the whole notion of “success.”

Comparison with others is also involved in our conventional attitudes about success. The “successful” person advances beyond other people, or gains advantage, compared to some others. There’s an element of “one-upmanship” that figures in this concept.

Some definitions of success are situational. A whimsical piece that went around the U.S. in April and May 2001 illustrates this:
“Life’s a test and you’re graded on a curve. At age 4, success is not peeing in your pants. At age 12, success is having friends. At age 16, success is having a driver’s license. At age 20, success is having sex. At age 35, success is having money. At age 50, success is having money. At age 60, success is having sex. At age 70, success is having a driver’s license. At age 75, success is having friends. At age 90, success is not peeing in your pants.”

Common to all these definitions of Second Wave “success” is something rarely recognized but at the core of Second Wave thinking: the whole orientation is external, i.e. focused on the physical, tangible reality “out there.” Wealth, power, position, rank, class, status, behavior—all are part of life “out there.”

By this point, if you have assimilated the Second Wave worldview, you are probably feeling a bit confused, wondering what I mean by “external.” Perhaps you are asking yourself what other reality there is. Of course “success” is defined in terms of tangible reality!

The Second Wave world does not readily admit the existence of the “inner city” and the internal world each of us inhabits. Every bit as much as we live in the outer world of matter, we also live enmeshed in an inner world—what Jungians call the “inner city.” In its materialism and positivism, the Second Wave world dismisses this inner reality as “subjective,” non-quantifiable, immaterial, and therefore bogus. But “waking up” and leap-frogging are centrally related to the inner world, with its very different notion of success.

Third Wave Definitions of Success

The emerging Third Wave world has very different approaches to many aspects of life, and success is one of them. As I point out in many essays in this collection, Third Wave thinking returns often to the wisdom of the ancients that are embodied in the etymologies or root meanings of words. So let’s examine the linguistic roots of “success.”

Our English word comes from two Latin roots: sub and cedere. The compound literally means “to go up, ascend, advance” (i.e. the Second Wave meanings), but also “to come under, submit to, follow, or enter into a relationship with.” “Huh?,” says the Second Wave thinker. “Success has nothing to do with following or submission!” Certainly not in the Second Wave world. But it has everything to do with it in the emerging Third Wave reality.

This is because the Third Wave appreciates the inner life and the host of internal energies each of us can turn to for guidance and direction, and these are what we are meant to submit to and follow. As for entering into a relationship, what the ancient Vedic tradition (and later Carl Jung, who borrowed from the Vedas) call “the Self” (our Divine core) is the inner figure we relate to when we succeed. The voice of The Force (heard via dreams, intuitions etc.) is what we are to follow.

What does this Third Wave definition of “success” look like? It is not about externalities. It is not projected out, as Second Wave success is. By “projected out,” I mean that success is not defined in terms of tangible things, or other people’s opinions or evaluations. Therefore, it is not as vulnerable to being lost as Second Wave success is. When success depends on what other people think, or on what one has, it can be very easily lost. Third Wave success is different: It arises from inner clarity, self-awareness, and a sense of personal identity. It has no need to compare self to others, but focuses on integrity and authenticity, i.e. being truly who we are and true to our own values and identity.

Rather than striving for external forms of power (Second Wave forms that try to control others and get them to do one’s will) Third Wave success focuses on moving into one’s own inner power as an agent of The Force. Then it seeks to empower others by sharing this inner power in personal relationships (familial, workplace etc.).

Rather than trying to get ...]]> Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:52:50 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=22 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=33

Spiritual Literacy

One of the most important abilities for leap-froggers, and a major characteristic of people waking up, is spiritual literacy. “Say what?” is a common response from Western people hearing the phrase for the first time. We tend to think of “literacy” as having to do with words and the verbal skills of reading and writing. To understand the subject of this essay, we need to consider the deeper meanings of “literacy,” before tackling the meaning of spiritual literacy.
Definitions of Literacy
Dictionaries define “literacy” as “the ability to read and write.” The conventional meaning is strictly verbal. A better, more inclusive definition would be “the ability to recognize the meaning in certain shapes, signs or marks.” The intellectual/verbal bias of the Western tradition ignores many valuable forms of literacy, e.g.
the literacy of the native tracker/hunter, whose “letters” are the animal foot prints, spores, bent grass, wind direction etc. All these the skilled hunter can “read” to get the information he needs to find prey. The San people of the Kalahari are supremely “literate” in this sense, while urbane Westerners plunked down in the middle of the wilderness are in peril of their lives due to their illiteracy.
the literacy of the animal and infant human being, who are able to pick up the meaning and intentions of adults by tone of voice, facial expression and body language. Pet owners who observe their pets know that domesticated animals like cats and dogs are keenly able to “read” signs that we often are quite unconscious of.
the literacy of the seer or enlightened master. Tibetan physicians refer intractable cases of illness to such masters, who are able to read deep into the soul of the patient to perceive the spiritual problem at the root of the disease. Likewise, masters who supervise meditators in Buddhist vipassana meditation practice can “read” the psychological state of their pupils.
the literacy of the mystic or “awake” person. This is the type of literacy we will be focusing on in this essay. What those who are asleep fail to recognize as signs (and then, of course, fail to see as meaningful) the awake can recognize as significant, and can then “read” on many different levels.
Definitions of Spiritual Literacy
Reflecting the limitations of its materialistic orientation, the Second Wave world has no definition for spiritual literacy. In the last few years, as part of the “melding” of Eastern thought with Western culture, the term “spiritual literacy” has begun to surface in the West. It is not a new concept. As noted above, ancient people and Eastern cultures have been aware of it for millennia. Native American Indians call it “reading sign.” Medieval Catholic monks described it as “reading the book of the world.” Quakers refer to it in their practice of “praying the Ordinary.” And Buddhists speak of it as the 84,000 “dharma doors” that exist all around us for our benefit and learning.
The root meaning of some of our English words conveys the centrality of spiritual literacy to a life rightly lived. Consider, for example, the word “disaster.” It comes from Latin dis and aster, meaning “to be cut off from the stars.” When we are spiritually illiterate, we are estranged from our cosmic roots or connections. Being able to “read the book of the world” means that we are aware of our connectedness to the rest of life, and can see reality “with the eyes of the Earth.” Being spiritually illiterate is literally a “disaster.”
Spiritual literacy allows us to recognize “that the whole world is charged with sacred meaning.” There is nothing in our reality that is not meaningful; nothing that cannot offer us something by way of incitement for growth, learning, or expression of gratitude and awe. No matter how mundane, everyday objects can serve as our spiritual facilitators, if we are able to read the signs they present to us. Our bodies speak to us constantly, sometimes loudly (in various forms of illness or discomfort), sometimes in ways so subtle that we can barely perceive the message. Shakespeare spoke of the “sermons in stone” that are available to us, if we can discern them. Morris Berman speaks of our contemporary need to “reenchant the world,” if we are to address successfully the global environmental crisis. As ancient as it is, spiritual literacy is very much a skill for which the modern world has a pressing need.
Elements of Spiritual Literacy
Verbal literacy requires several things: training, teachers, books, a certain level of intellectual capacity, and usually some form of technique (like phonics). Spiritual literacy is different. We already have what is needed: the webs of life; the physical world; fears, wounds and the host of other human emotions; a body with its range of senses, responses and instinctual rhythms. We don’t have to go buy books, find a teacher, take training or worry that we’re not smart enough (some of the most spiritually literate individuals are the “mentally challenged”). Spiritual literacy is not a “head trip,” in the sense of something requiring cognitive development. It requires other things, like attention, being present, compassion, devotion, enthusiasm, faith, forgiveness, grace, gratitude, hope, hospitality, imagination, kindness, listening, love, nurturing, openness, playfulness, a questing attitude, reverence, silence, vision, wonder, yearning and zeal.
By saying that we have all we need, I don’t mean to imply that teachers aren’t helpful. They are. But we don’t have to search for one, because they are all around us. But not usually in the form we think of as verbal literacy teachers (i.e. humans). Teachers of spiritual literacy are just as likely to be animals, plants, ...]]> Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:57:46 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=33 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=21

“Resist Not Evil”

The title of this essay is a quote from Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” Mahatma Gandhi meant the same thing when he said, “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good.” Both Jesus and Gandhi were drawing upon a very important principle of which leap froggers, and any people interested in working for change, should be aware. The purpose of this essay is to examine this principle and relate it to the leap frog option. But before doing so, we must be clear about what is meant by “evil.”
Definitions of “Evil”

Readers who have been through college courses in Western civ or humanities might be bracing themselves for a long philosophical disquisition, since the question of evil has occupied many philosophers over the ages. But have no fear! This will not be philosophical, although I will give a passing nod to Plato, whose definition of evil (as the absence of good) is one of the most succinct. Rather than getting into philosophy, I want to review some of the practical (hands-on, useful, applicable) definitions.

Standard dictionaries tell us that “evil” is that which is “morally bad, wrong, sinful or wicked,” that which “causes harm or injury,” that which is unfortunate. This is OK, as far as it goes, but it misses the richer meanings offered by comparative linguistics and etymology.

The ancients understood that “evil” has three aspects: mental (what we think of as “wrong” or “bad”), physical (what we experience in our bodies as causing pain, harm or suffering), and affective or emotional (what causes negative feelings or responses, in us or in others). In this multi-level definition, “evil” is not only wickedness but also ugliness: that which is disordered or chaotic. To the ancient Greek mind there was a close link between the beautiful and the good. The Greek term for “universe” was kosmos, i.e. “that which is ordered.” The heavens and earth were orderly, and this order was regarded as beautiful and good. The Greeks regarded anything that destroyed this orderliness and beauty as “evil.”

A few centuries after Plato and the heyday of classical Greece, when the authors of the New Testament were creating their Gospel accounts and epistles, they used three terms for “evil” that illustrate the richness of the Greeks’ thinking. The first, kakos, carries the meaning noted above: that which is bad is also that which is evil or wicked. The second, poneros, carries the affective meaning of “evil” as that which causes pain or suffering. The third word, used especially in the gospel of John and the epistles of John, James and Titus, is phaulos. This Greek word carries the mental connotation: “evil” as that which is stupid, foolish, unwise, or thoughtless. To the Greeks, always mindful of the intellect, the fool was more likely to commit evil than the wise man.

This is close to the modern psychological definition of evil, as developed by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. Jung felt the most intractable root of evil was unconsciousness, being unaware of one’s lack of self-awareness. Jung was familiar with St. Paul’s dictum that the root of all evil was the love of money, but Jung realized that loving money was itself more a symptom of a psychological disorder (lack of self-esteem or a basic lack of a sense of security or trust) than an originating cause. The lack of consciousness or insight into one’s personal “stuff” and how it affected daily living was what the Greek meant by phaulos. Ignorance, indifference, unconsciousness will cause suffering, harm, disorder—all forms of evil.

Beyond classical and New Testament sources, we can consider our own English language roots for further insights. What is the opposite of “evil?” Holy. The etymological root of “holy” is the Old English hal. This is also the root of our words “hale,” “health,” and “whole.” Speakers of Anglo-Saxon (the language that became the basis for modern English) felt that if you are whole (undivided, possessed of integrity) you are holy. Conversely, what is not whole, or not well is “dis-eased,” or evil. As causes of suffering, sickness could be regarded as a form of evil.

So, let’s recap. Evil is:
• what is morally bad or wrong (the refusal to be responsible for one’s shadow side)
• what causes harm, injury or suffering, that “which ought not to be,” the evil which is inflicted
• what is disordered, or destructive of natural orderliness
• what is foolish, ignorant or unknowing
• what is unconscious or perpetuates unconsciousness (e.g. insensitivity or lack of awareness)
• what destroys integrity, ruptures wholeness, or causes disease or pain, the evil which is undergone
These definitions give us a set of useful criteria for evaluating what is evil and what is good, without resorting to philosophical hair-splitting. We can now consider Jesus’ and Gandhi’s statements. We will do so on two levels.

Level I: The Level of Universal Law

The Greek writer who translated Jesus’ Aramaic into the phrase “resist not evil” used a Greek verb (antistanai) that means “to set oneself against.” Jesus urged his listeners not to set themselves against what causes suffering. In other words, what we find distressful we should not resist or oppose. Gandhi similarly spoke of our duty not to cooperate with evil. What were these two wisdom figures trying to tell us? Surely not to cave in to evil, or let it run over us.

Not at all. Both Jesus and Gandhi understood the wisdom in the universal law that says “what you resist, persists.” Another wording for this law is “Reality grows where attention goes.” That is, what ...]]> Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:33:02 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=21 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=20

Relinquishing the “Addiction to Perfection”

Western civilization is “addicted to perfection.” We are taught from childhood to drive ourselves, to “make our best better,” to compete in ever-more-competitive arenas, never to be satisfied, but to keep raising the bar or level of standard that we set for ourselves. We operate in the belief that perfection is desirable, if not actually possible.

Question this belief in the value of perfection as an ideal, and many Western (or Westernized) people will defend it as part of orthodox Christian dogma, citing the more than two dozen references to perfection in the New Testament. But what most people don’t realize is that Christian orthodoxy, and all the subsequent cultural developments related to it, are built on a fundamental mistranslation of the five Greek words used in the New Testament for “perfection.”

The Roots of Our Addiction to Perfection

The five Greek words are teleio, holokleros, katartizo, epiteleo, and pleroo. Teleio means “to complete, fulfill, finish, or bring an end to.” Holokleros is an adjective meaning “entire, complete, in all its parts,” compounded of two words meaning “whole” (holos) and “allotment” (kleris). Katartizo means “to furnish completely, to readjust, or put in order again.” Epiteleo is a compound verb based on teleo, meaning “to complete, finish or accomplish.” And pleroo means “to make complete or full; to fulfill.” These words occur repeatedly in statements made by Jesus, Paul, John, James, and Peter that urge us (in the orthodox version) to “be perfect,” “be made perfect,” “aim for perfection,” “attain perfection,” “present everyone perfect,” “make perfect those who draw near to worship,” “be righteous men made perfect,” and “be a perfect man.” The original Greek, however, had something quite different in mind.

The authors of the New Testament drew upon sources that were written by men thoroughly steeped in the Hebraic concepts of ancient Judaism. Jesus was familiar with these concepts, including that of shalom. Shalom is rich in meanings and impossible to render in a single English word. It is usually translated as “peace,” but “peace” in the sense of the peace of mind and spirit that comes from being in harmony with Creation, being in a state of wholeness or fulfillment. When Jesus urged people to be “perfect” (Greek teleioi), very likely he had the concept of shalom in mind. That is, he was really urging them to live, work and strive toward the peace that comes from completeness or wholeness—not a private or shallow wholeness, but a wholeness that “ensouls the world.” Jesus was calling people to fulfillment in the fullness of their humanity, to focus on achieving the glorious end appointed to all persons by virtue of their humanity. Jesus recognized what a wonderful blessing it is to be incarnated in a human body, to enjoy life in materiality, to absorb the lessons that are possible for a soul to learn only while on the physical plane. He also knew each of us has a unique set of talents and a particular destiny—that special purpose, work or service that we are meant to fulfill.

This is the true meaning of teleios. If we want to reach our goal, to complete our life’s mission, to know the peace of shalom, the satisfaction of fulfillment, we must give up money-grubbing, let go of grasping and selfishness, and follow Jesus’s example. This has nothing to do with perfection, and everything to do with realizing our divinely-appointed destiny.

When Paul urged the people of Corinth to “aim for perfection,” the verb he used (katartizo) meant “to work to become complete, healed, mended or restored.” Likewise, with James, John and the author of Hebrews. They exhort us to become whole, integrated, healed, fully accomplished in the development of our divine gifts. The goal of life, in other words, is to reach our appointed end, much as an acorn realizes its destiny in growing into a glorious oak tree.

So what happened? How did the original meaning get lost? Students of this issue target the patriarchal bias of “spirit-based” religion, which focuses on the disembodied spirit, and plays down the soul and the physical plane. The spirit world is ungrounded, out of touch with physical life. As the product of mentation, the spirit lives in abstractions, focused on ideals. In the rarefied world of spirit, perfection is one attribute of the Divine, one of the Platonic ideals.

In the several centuries after Jesus’s death, as the New Testament canon was developed, neo-Platonic influences crept into Christianity, showing up most clearly in the interpretation of the five terms noted above. Rather than the original focus on shalom, wholeness or completion, realizing one’s innate human powers, the focus shifted to the unrealizable ideal of perfectability.

By this point, you might find yourself saying, “OK. That’s all very interesting, but why does it matter to me? What does it have to do with waking up and the leap frog option?” Here’s the connection.

Why This Matters to Those Waking Up and Leap Frogging

The whole issue of perfectionism is crucial to the leap frog and wake up processes for many reasons. First is the fact that the quest for perfection is a hopeless endeavor, which is why it becomes an addiction. Trying to be perfect is a foolproof strategy to foster guilt, shame, self-hatred and a sense of personal inadequacy. In our patriarchal culture, the notion of perfection as the goal or standard served church leaders well, in terms of keeping control over people, because it encourages feelings ...]]> Mon, 05 May 2008 07:17:32 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=20 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=19

“In the Grip of the Daimon”

The title of this essay is a direct quote from Carl Jung, as he described his own life in Memories, Dreams and Reflections. He used the phrase as partial explanation of his life’s work: He lived, wrote and developed analytical psychology as a consequence of being “in the grip of the daimon” that lived within him. What did he mean? To understand this, we need to define the term “daimon.” Then I will relate the concept to the themes of waking up and leap frogging.
Definitions of “Daimon”
The word “daimon” is Greek, deriving from , “to divide or distribute destinies.” The “daimon” is the energy or being in the Universe that gives us our fate or allots human destiny, i.e. a god/goddess. The Romans took up the term, which became the source of our English derivative, “demon.” But note that, in the original meaning, and the sense in which Jung used it, “daimon” is not the negative thing we associate with “demons.”
Being well versed in the classics, Jung brought many ancient concepts into modern usage in psychology, to foster our understanding of the workings of the unconscious. The “daimon” became a central part of his thinking about vocation, motivation, creativity and the individual’s potential for achieving fulfillment in life.
As Jung used the term, “daimon” referred to something alien from the unconscious, an “archetype” or “numinous imperative which from ancient times has been accorded a far higher authority than the human intellect.” As an archetype, the “daimon” is universal, something experienced in all peoples and cultures. Among indigenous tribes, it shows up as a “primitive power concept.” As “an autonomous psychic content,” the daimon is a “force as real as hunger and the fear of death.” Because it is autonomous, it behaves within us like a god, making demands of us and acting with authority. The poet and potter M.C. Richards describes the experience of the daimon well when she says, “There lives a creative being inside all of us and we must get out of its way for it will give us no peace unless we do." Beside Jung, multiple figures in history have acknowledged being in the grip of a daimon, e.g. the Greek philosopher Socrates, the German poet Goethe, and the French ruler Napoleon.
When we say the daimon is “autonomous,” we mean that it is not under the control of the ego consciousness. It is superior to our ordinary consciousness, and can possess us without our conscious awareness. Its expression cannot be consciously willed, and the more our unconscious is split off from consciousness, the larger and more powerful the daimon is.
The daimon shows up in life as certain feeling states, with a “release of affect.” That is, we feel something, usually something powerful, something with numinosity—an energy that cannot be gainsaid. It can seem like we are being taken over, because the level of intensity and energy exceeds normal human limits. When we are in its “grip,” the daimon will make us feel like we are caught up in a force or process that is carrying us along. And so, it requires courage to deal with, because we don’t fully understand this force, or know where we are being carried, or what we are being led to undertake. Nor do we often recognize this force as something that is our own.
In its workings, the daimon tends to be compensatory, i.e. it functions as a countervailing force relative to our conscious mood of the moment. If we are “up,” the daimon will be “down.” If we are in the doldrums, the daimon will be energetic and upbeat. The daimon, in other words, holds the “tension of opposites,” with its good and bad aspects.
Let’s consider the bad aspects first. The negative side of the daimon explains the English derivation “demon:” that within us that forces us to impose suffering on ourselves. “The Devil made me do it!,” we say. “Devil,” “seducer,” “tempter,” “evil spirit”—all are terms for the negative side of the daimon, which will drive us into untrodden regions and create conflicts between our outer life and inner demands. When the daimon shows up, it often seems unwelcome and intrusive, a source of discomfort, something to be endured. If we could, we would ignore it, but it is ineluctable, i.e., it is that which must be obeyed.
In its benign aspect, the daimon is our “guardian angel” or “genius,” our better self or inner voice, our heart or “higher man”—the part of us that helps build our strength by leading us into challenging situations and giving us the guidance to get through them. The daimon fosters a dialogue between ego and unconsciousness which can heal us and make us whole. By challenging the whole of our being, the daimon forces us to enter the fray of life with every function or ability we have, and this fosters our wholeness. It is the contact with our daimon that gives us a clear sense of our vocation. Jung also noted the close connection between the daimon and creativity: “The fight against the paralyzing grip of the unconscious calls forth man’s creative powers.” Finally, and most relevant to the leap frog option, the daimon pulls us out of conventions and social norms, because it operates in the archetypal (universal, timeless) realm. Which brings us to the question: how does all this relate to the themes of waking up and leap frogging?
The Daimon and Waking Up
One of the activities that is central to “waking up” is the process of ...]]> Mon, 31 Mar 2008 09:52:47 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=19 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=18

Time, Space and Patience

The process of waking up involves many things, but none so centrally as the three essentials of time, space and patience. The great American prophet and healer, Edgar Cayce, regarded these three as “fundamental measurements of a soul’s experience in the physical world,” absolutely central in the life of any person who is in the process of waking up. Why is this so? To understand the emphasis Cayce put on these three features of life, we need to clarify the meaning of each, and then examine their role in the process of waking up.
Time
The English language is very rich in its meanings for the word “time:” There are at least 20 different dictionary definitions or usages for this simple word, from “a defined interval” to “a unit of meter in prosody.” This suggests just how much English is focused on temporal concerns, unlike, say, the Hopi, who have no tenses in their languages, and little concern for measuring, dividing, allotting, buying, or killing time.
How very different the Second Wave world is from that of the Hopi! Not only do we reify time, i.e. turn it into something quantifiable, dividable, and concrete, we equate it with money, and set it as the gold standard for business performance in the new idiom “24/7 365,” meaning operations that never close or take holidays. To the Western mind, and especially the New York mind, time is life’s tyrant, forcing us to go faster, faster in the mindless rush born of “hurry sickness,” in pursuit of deadlines that get shorter and more and more unrealistic. If we want something, we don’t want it now: We want it yesterday! And whole industries have arisen to satisfy that lust for speed, e.g. FedEx, DHL, the Internet and scanners, e-signatures, etc.. In this mind-set, time is something to be conquered, as the omnipresent enemy.
Ironically, all this is occurring just as modern science--both physics and medical science--is discovering what ancient peoples like the Hopi and the perennial wisdom have always known: Time is a mental construct, a “root assumption” of our Western culture, without a reality outside of our experience. Einstein showed that time is relative, something we experience in contexts that can make it seem longer (sitting on the hot stove) or shorter (relaxing in the easy chair on the beach in summer). Time is a construct of our own making. At the same time, it is something precious, as our word for the immediate moment—“present”—indicates.
The Indo-European languages all share a mental schema that tenses reality into past, present and future. Few speakers of English ever really think about the labels we put on these divisions of time: “past” comes from the Latin word for step or pace, suggesting the duration or interval it has taken to move across some terrain. “Future” also has Roman roots, from a participle meaning that which is about to be. And “present,” in its Latin origins meant that which is beside us.
People who are awake appreciate the dual meaning of “present.” It is not only the NOW moment—our point of power—but also a true “present,” or gift from the Universe. In the Second Wave world, very few people live out the truth of this fact. Rather, we live out in the future, making all sorts of plans for how things should be, or worrying about what might happen. Or we live in the past, with recriminations, guilt, shame, remorse and mental anguish full of “if onlys…”. In neither place, past or future, do we have any of the power that is innately ours as human beings. To claim that power, we need to come back into the body—that is, get out of the mental realm where we go when we flee into the future or past--and be here now.
When we return to embodiment, to experience the flow of life in our physical being through our senses, we are in a inner place where we can appreciate time as the cyclical flow it is. The ancient Chinese appreciated time: The Chinese word for “busy” is composed of two ideograms for “heart” and “killing.” When we rush around in our busy-ness, we are literally killing our hearts!
To wake up we must be in the NOW, consciously cherishing time by slowing down, taking ourselves out of the rat race, and giving ourselves free moments of time. Time to relax, to reflect, to be with ourselves inwardly. Time to be fully present to family and friends. Time to “sit in one another’s stillness” and wait together on each other’s growth. Time to play. Time to live in balance, resisting the pressures toward workaholism that are so pervasive in the Second Wave world. Time to live at the soul’s pace. Time to spot all the moments of grace that fill our lives and to savor the epiphanies that The Force offers daily. Time to “waste” time, since “wasted” time is “usually good soul time”. Time to walk, rather than drive. Walking takes on the motion of the soul, according to Plotinus. By walking, we give ourselves more time to commune with our soul. By slowing down, we allow ourselves to enjoy all the good stuff in life.
We are living through the process of a “timeshift” now, when time as we know it is being bent, folded, spindled, mutilated, compressed, condensed, and subject to all manner of deformation as the mad pressures of Second Wave reality try to obliterate it. The only sane response, in such a situation, is to return to the wisdom of our bodies and souls, by consciously choosing to cherish time as one of the key essentials we have to ...]]> Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:39:55 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=18 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=17

The Faces of Denial

A woman is involved with a man her friends don’t like. When they notice bruises and welts on her arms and face, they ask her what is going on. She replies, “Nothing. Everything’s fine.” Denial.
A child makes it clear she does not want to go away to summer camp. Her mother replies, “It’s for your own good, dear.” Denial.
A teenage boy recounts the circumstances of the motorcycle accident that left him a paraplegic in a monotone voice, as if he were talking about the weather. Denial.
A devout churchgoer speaks up frequently criticizing the immorality and sinfulness of the “heathen” in our society, smugly confident of her moral superiority. Denial.
Five highly educated New Yorkers were riding in a car at night on Long Island in 1998. Four of them saw a huge spaceship or UFO above the car, lingering for 15 to 20 minutes. The fifth man (an M.D.) reported seeing nothing at all. Denial.
The organizer of an international conference worked long and hard to get a famous speaker to give the keynote address. When the celebrity faxed a refusal, the fax somehow mysteriously disappeared, and the conference organizer forgot completely about the disappoint it contained, so all the PR materials later had to be corrected and reprinted. Denial.
The pajamas were blood-stained, and the little girl’s sheets were semen-stained, but she always insisted on holding Daddy’s hand when the family went out for a walk. Denial.
A woman takes up with one man after another, all of whom turn out, over time, to be “losers.” She finally concludes “There are no good men out there.” Denial.
Harriet is a “pillar” of the local church, always active, always to be counted on when anything needs to be done, never idle for a moment, the first to volunteer for any chore or help someone in need. No one can remember a time when Harriet had a need, when someone helped her. When asked about this, Harriet assured her questioner that she was happily self-sufficient. Denial.
A marriage counselor was consulted by a couple having marital difficulties. The counselor interviewed each member of the family individually. He had the 8-year-old daughter draw pictures of her favorite dessert, a scene, things that meant a lot to her. She drew a banana split, a tree trunk being cut in half, and a road coming to a Y-shaped intersection. When he asked the little girl whether her family was happy, she replied, “Oh, yes, very.” Denial.
In the days before chemical anesthesia, the British physician James Esdaile, while stationed in India, discovered that hypnosis could be used to anesthetize patients for surgery. At the time in Europe 95% of surgery patients died from the pain of the operation. Esdaile’s hypnotized patients reported feeling no pain, and 95% of them survived their operations. When Esdaile returned to London, he put on a demonstration of surgery under hypnosis for his colleagues at the British College of Physicians and Surgeons, amputating a gangrenous leg while the patient lay smiling. The doctors watched and then declared that Esdaile was fooling them, having hired a rogue to lie there and pretend to feel no pain. Denial.
Dean Ornish (the developer of a non-fat diet system for reversing heart disease) and Robert Atkins (the developer of a widely-used non-carbohydrate diet) had a discussion recently, sponsored by Natural Health magazine. Atkins said that he has gotten reports from 60,000 patients reporting success with his diet. Ornish replied that these results were merely “anecdotal” and meant nothing, because no controlled studies were done to back them up. Denial.
Denial, thy face is everywhere! The above are just a dozen examples illustrating the truth of the many faces of denial. Denial is much more than a river in Egypt. It is a core element of our lives, but, because it is generally an unconscious process, this may not be obvious. In this essay, I’m going to examine why we use denial, the various forms it takes, the effects it has, and how to get wise to it. Then I will consider the positive version of denial, which is a key component of true happiness and spiritual fulfillment. But first, let’s look at the meaning and derivation of the word.
Meanings and Etymology of “Denial”
Our English word came to us from Latin, through the Old French denier. The Latin root is denegare, “to negate.” The prefix “de-“ intensifies the negation. So denial is “the act of saying something is not true; or declaring that one does not hold or accept something.” It also means a disowning or refusal to acknowledge something, a refusal to accept things as they are. In the form of self-denial, it means a “doing without things that one wants.”
“Denial” also has a technical meaning, used in psychology, and this specialized meaning will be our focus. To therapists, analysts and others in the helping professions, “denial” is used to describe an extreme form of self-protection, or a refusal to acknowledge the existence of an external source of anxiety. Students of learning theory recognize denial as a central element of the “closed belief system,” with serious implications for perception and learning. Denial is also one form of defense mechanism, and a core component of most others, like projection, rationalization, reaction formation, displacement, etc.
Why Denial?
Speaking of “defense mechanisms” provokes the question why use denial? What purpose does it serve? “Defense” suggests its purpose: protection. Defense mechanisms are cognitive devices for tampering with reality to avoid pain. They are “self-deceits” ways we keep secrets from ourselves, part of what Freud called the “ostrich policy” found in all people.
We use ...]]> Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:16:07 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=17 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=16



There’s an old adage that expresses succinctly the content of this essay: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." The first act—giving a fish—is what I mean by “helping.” The second is quite different. It will require more time and effort in the short run, but it will be more beneficial in the long run. Rather than “helping” it might be termed “supporting” or equipping. People who are at the point of choosing the leap-frog option need our support, not our help. To understand this, we need to be quite clear on the difference between “help” and “support.”
The Definition of Help
Helping is an act that does it for the person we are helping. It takes over and fills the need the person has, without thinking of the wider implications. It has been called “playing God,” because it operates from the conviction that we know what the person needs, or ought to do or be. In certain emergency situations—in the aftermath of earthquakes, fires, floods and other natural or personal disasters—this form of aid is necessary, for those needing aid are so traumatized or overwhelmed that they are in no position to do it for themselves. In other, non-emergency situations, helping should be avoided. Why?
Because “helping” operates with a whole set of assumptions (most of which are quite unconscious). These include:
• the belief that the persons we seek to help can’t do it
• the belief that they aren’t qualified
• the belief that they can’t learn or that it would take too long and involve too much trouble to teach them
• the belief that they don’t have what it takes, in terms of resources (like money) or that they can’t afford (in financial or temporal terms) what will be required
• the belief that they don’t understand
• the belief that they aren’t reliable, trustworthy, a good “credit risk” etc.
This list is not exhaustive: there are a lot more such assumptions floating around in the thinking of “helpers,” but this list will give you a feel for the mind-set. This mind-set is closely linked to the historical relationship between the colonial Western powers and non-Western native peoples. In this schema, the “helpers” hold Western values, operate with a Western sense of time, work with Western technologies (many of which are not appropriate to non-Western venues), and lack an appreciation for the essentials of life (like time, space and patience) and for non-Western values.
“Helpers,” in other words, often mean well and are sincere in their desire to improve the lives of those that seem less fortunate, but they intervene with an unconscious sense of superiority, from a viewpoint that is chauvinistic, imperialistic, racist and sexist (i.e. Western). This stance and its beliefs and assumptions are disempowering. The people to be helped are regarded essentially as powerless. This is not an approach, or a set of beliefs, that we want to support.
There is another interpretation that can be made about people who are eager to help others. It is well known among the psychologically savvy that those who are compulsively focused on helping others are most of the time projecting their own “stuff,” and are using their supposed charitable impulses as a clever (and totally unconscious) way to avoid doing their inner work, while getting other people to think well of them (for all their philanthropic gestures). A true story will illustrate this form of “do-good ego trip.” A few years ago, in my practice, a complete stranger called and asked to meet with me to get some advice. Apparently he had heard of me from one of my clients, since I never advertise. A few minutes into our meeting, it was clear that the man was not interested in working with me, but rather wanted a set of rules or guidelines that would make him more effective in his work with other people. I was mystified: It was clear that this fellow fancied himself something of a counselor, but he had no training, no personal experience of analysis, and no history of working with his own dreams. He assured me, in fact, that he never remembered his dreams. But he made it clear that he was very much into helping others (i.e. he had quite a lot of ego investment in his role of “helper”), and he described at length all the people in his circle of contacts that he was helping through their marital problems, illnesses, family troubles, etc. As I listened to all this, I grew more and more aware of acute discomfort in my body—a feeling reaction that I had come to recognize, through years of practice, as a sign of something amiss. It was only in the very last minutes of our meeting that it became clear what was going on. As the man put on his coat, he mentioned in passing, in a very casual way, that his son was in jail for drug use, his wife had left him, and he had a brain tumor. Recognizing that this man would probably never hear the truth from any other source, I asked him if it had occurred to him that, rather than focusing his attention out, to “helping” others, it might be more useful to look within, and get his own house in order before tending to other people. I suggested the possibility that he was using others’ problems as a diversion to keep him from facing his own. That is, I was holding up his projections so he could see them. He assured me that everything was fine in his life (at which point I reminded myself ...]]> Sun, 30 Dec 2007 15:47:52 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=16 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=14
In an earlier book, Wake Up, South Africa!, I defined the “leap-frog option” in relation to South Africa and its future, as a way for it to avoid falling into the “catch-up option” that most people assume must be how South Africa will “succeed.” In choosing to “leap frog,” rather than play “catch up,” South Africa would question the conventional wisdom of the West, rely on its own resources, develop its own solutions, and affirm its confidence in its own abilities. It would refuse to copy the West, or dance to the tune called by Western “experts.” Choosing the “leap-frog option” would result in South Africa reaching a new place by leaping over the West and its ways.
But in focusing on South Africa, I don’t mean to imply that leap-frogging is something appropriate or possible only in South Africa: It is possible anywhere change is needed, anywhere people are behind the eight-ball of Second Wave reality, that is anywhere people are marginalized and suffering.
Features of Leap-Frogging
Leap-frogging is a form of change with key features that distinguish it from reform movements or traditional change processes in Second Wave. Some of these features include:
taking up personal change first. Leap-froggers realize that all lasting, genuine change begins with the individual. If we want to see change “out there,” we can begin only one place: with ourselves. Doing anything else is simply a form of projection (seeing the “speck” in the other guy’s eye, without tending to the “log” in one’s own eye). Leap-froggers refuse to project. They look within first, and change themselves. They also recognize that any “problem” or outer situation is a reflection of an inner state of being, and so they begin with self-analysis, to determine how they are implicated in the problem “out there.” This process leads to another feature of leap-frogging: transformation.
leap-frogging change is transformative change. It works at deep levels, to reclaim both lives and Nature. It supports natural forces and operates consonant with the laws of Nature (including those of ecology, which Second Wave business and economics ignores and denigrates). Transformational change takes 3 forms: in perception (how reality is “seen”); in response (how we react to what we perceive); and in assimilation (how we take in and integrate the new information we see). The result is that both people and their circumstances are irrevocably altered.
leap-frogging turns problems into opportunities. Where Second Wave people see “problems,” leap-froggers see great potential for learning and growth. Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, noted that problems are never solved so much as they are outgrown. Faced with a “problem,” leap-froggers ask themselves, “How is this situation calling on me to grow or change?” And this shift in attitude (from the negative of the Second Wave mind-set to the positive of the Third Wave) calls up creativity and resourcefulness.
leap-frogging starts where people are. It is local, operating at the grass-roots, with actions that are what Glenn and Mildred Leet call “trickle up.” Rather than looking to the government or outside experts or international aid agencies for a pile of money, leap-froggers look around, at the resources that lie at hand. And even when they have little or no capitalization, they find ways to foster change, often with low-tech solutions that are more suited to their circumstances than those that the World Bank or I.M.F. would import. This is by design, thanks to another feature of leap-frogging: building empowerment.
leap-froggers stress people doing for themselves. This is how empowerment happens. Individuals take responsibility for their own lives, with no “bail outs” or interference from Western “experts” full of their own importance. Leap-froggers realize that the goal is the process: We empower others by regarding them as responsible, competent, capable and then standing back, giving them adequate space to rise to high expectations.
leap-frogging challenges convention, tradition and the status quo. Leap-froggers are inner-directed, rather than tradition-directed (looking to the past for guidance about what to do) or other-directed (looking to other people for guidance). Leap-froggers listen to their own inner voice, in dialog with The Force. As a result, they question tribal traditions, unfair laws, economic inequities, the “scientism” of Western culture, and a host of other limited and limiting belief systems. In this way, leap-frogging is culturally subversive. Not content to fight “old” wars, leap-froggers look to radical approaches (i.e. approaches that get at the “roots” [Latin radix]) in their quest to create a world that works for everyone.
leap-frogging is done mostly by the marginalized. This follows from the law of the retarding lead, which suggests that the leaders of any society are “retarded” in their leadership, and so any push for change is more likely to come from those for whom the old system doesn’t work well. As I noted in the essay on “waking up,” there is a close connection between “waking up” and developing social concern and sensitivity about injustice. So people who are awake are likely to join the marginalized in leap-frogging activities.
Leap-frogging may seem like something new. Certainly the term is novel. But the activity itself is archetypal, i.e. people of courage, inspired by The Force, acting as change agents outside the bounds of their culture and place, have been doing it since the beginning of time. To see examples of this, we need only consult the wisdom literature of humanity: the Bible, the Koran, the Pali canon, the Bhagavadgita. The pages of these sources are replete with examples of people taking up their individual responsibility, accepting the challenge of personal change, achieving transformation, turning problems into opportunities, moving into their own power, working with those less fortunate, developing visions to inspire and energize others, and challenging the status quo.
An Example of Leap-Frogging and its Archetypal Features
An example from one of these ancient sources will help describe what leap-frogging looks like “on the ground.” It is from a Western source (since I know the ...]]> Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:08:21 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=14 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=12 Definitions of “Waking Up”
Most people would think a definition of “waking up” superfluous, since obviously it means “not asleep.” And that is, in fact, how dictionaries define “awake.” But my usage is far more subtle, being rooted in the esoteric tradition. When we are “waking up” we are in the process of recognizing how we have been “asleep,” i.e. at a lower level of consciousness like sleepwalking.
Charles Tart, a psychologist and university professor, devoted a lengthy book to the subject of waking up. He describes it as a “state of consciousness” that involves a “major alteration in the way the mind functions.” Continue in the process long enough and you reach “enlightenment,” the highest level of consciousness to which we can aspire. Whether high or low, each level is characterized by “state-specific knowledge.”
By “state-specific knowledge,” Tart and other researchers in the field of consciousness mean the information or perspectives that are available or to be found only in a particular state of consciousness. Experiments have shown, for example, that drunks (inebriated people) can learn things that they will have no recollection of later on, when they have sobered up. Drunkenness is a state of consciousness. Sleep is another. Ordinary waking consciousness is a third. This level of consciousness the Russian mystic G.I. Gurdjieff called the “consensus trance” of our culture. He identified higher levels of consciousness as well: “genuine self-consciousness,” characterized by “self-remembering;” and “objective consciousness,” the level at which we realize our unity with all. This “objective consciousness” we tap into in mystical moments, “peak experiences” and epiphanies. Intuition and flashes of inspiration can bring us to this level too, and provide us with types of knowledge unavailable to us at the ordinary level of consciousness.
There are other definitions of “waking up,” and other ways I use the term in the essays in this collection. It is both a journey and a destination. By “journey” I refer to the extended length of time inherent in the process of “waking up.” Like any kind of trip, it takes time to get to where you want to go. And “waking up” can be thought of as the long-term journey to our ultimate destination, as we develop our human potential to realize Jesus’ words “ye are gods.”
There is also a technical or physiological definition of “waking up.” In this context, the 7 energy centers of the physical body (known as “chakras”) begin to operate more fully and clearly, as the kundalini force begins to ascend from its base at the seat of the spine up to the top of the head. In some people, this “kundalini rising” happens spontaneously, accompanied by experiences of heat, fatigue, discomfort, flashing lights before the eyes and curious sounds in the ears. For most people, this form of “waking up” is the product of years of labor and self-denial in a diligent yoga practice under the direction of an enlightened yogi master. There have been cases where foolish Westerners, not aware of the dangers to the physical system that can befall in unsupervised tinkering with the kundalini, caused themselves great harm, and even death. This type of “waking up” must be done under careful direction by a qualified yogi. The end result is the same as with other methods, i.e. (in the words of Gopi Krishna, an Indian authority on kundalini) “unspeakable glory and bliss, beyond the sphere of opposites, free from the desire for life and fear of death.”
What “Waking Up” is Not
“Waking up” should not be confused (but often is) with awareness. Being aware is not the same as being awake. When I speak of “awareness,” I refer to mental, rational ego-based activity—the sort of thinking done by the left brain. A person who is “aware” is knowledgeable about some condition or situation, e.g. environmental awareness. If internalized, awareness can have an impact on one’s values, lifestyle etc. over time, leading to changes in diet, habits, activities, even friends. But the aware person is still enmeshed in Second Wave reality, with its superficialities and unconsciousness.
People who are “awake” have experienced a very different thing. Non-rational, intuitive, right-brain-based processes mediate waking up. Many of these processes go on in the unconscious, and are largely psychological in nature. “Waking up” works at the deepest level of being. There is nothing superficial about it. While it can begin with an “upending moment,” or an instantaneous flash of insight, it takes years to integrate, and people work at it for lifetimes, literally (e.g. many Buddhist tulkus and master teachers). It usually results in massive life changes on every level, such that the person shifts from Second into Third Wave, in terms of values, perceptions and assumptions about life. It also tends to incorporate awareness, that is, the person who is awake is also more aware or supportive of reform, fundamental changes in the outer system, and in working for a world that works for everyone.
“Waking up” is not some short-term change done through a weekend course. New age groups and gurus would have us believe otherwise—that we can achieve “instant enlightenment.” This is bogus. While “satori,” the moment of insight, is instantaneous, the process of waking up is slow and incremental (a good thing, because of all the deep changes it involves—changes that would wreck our physical and mental systems if they occurred all at once). Once a person starts on the path, “waking up” becomes an on-going mode of living. Temporal duration really doesn’t figure in it: It is ...]]> Mon, 05 Nov 2007 11:46:48 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=12 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=10
by

Susan E. Mehrtens


© 2001 Susan E. Mehrtens

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright holder, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Printed in the United States of America.

Order of Posting on Jungian Center Blog

Front Matter and Introduction October 07
Waking Up November 07
Leap-Frogging December 07
Why “Helping” is Not Appropriate January 08
The Faces of Denial February 08
Time, Space and Patience March 08
“In the Grip of the Daimon” April 08
Relinquishing the “Addiction to Perfection” May 08
“Resist Not Evil” June 08
Spiritual Literacy July 08
Redefining Success August 08
The Gift of Suffering September 08
The Forms and Value of Death October 08
Allow Mode November 08
Pitfalls of the Path December 08

Note: Please read the initial essays—Introduction, Waking Up and Leap-Frogging—before reading others of these essays, as these three contain definitions and usages of terms that you will need in order to understand what follows.


Introduction

This section provides some important definitions or explanations of terminology that will appear in the essays that follow—terms like “Second Wave,” “Third Wave,” “The Force” and “The Self.” It also introduces the organizational scheme and presents the philosophy behind the concepts of “waking up” and “leap-frogging” that are at the core of every essay.
Some Key Definitions
The Concept of Growth Curves. We are living in a time of two realities. The old reality we have known is slowly sputtering to an end, full of problems, while a new one is aborning, full of potential. This may be hard for those of us with a Western mind-set to comprehend, because Western thinking tends to be either/or or bi-polar. But this is a both/and time: things are not either good (resilient, likely to go on indefinitely) or bad (short-lived, heading for a fall) but both. How can this be? Because we are living at what George Land and Beth Jarman call a “breakpoint time.”
George Land is a student of living systems. In his book Grow or Die, he described how any living entity comes into being, grows, matures and dies. Plotted graphically, this growth process looks like this:



Land called this pattern of overlapping sinusoid shapes a “growth curve.”
One of the most obvious examples of how these curves show up in reality is in generations: The curve on the left could be the lifetime of a grandparent; the middle curve, the life of a parent; and the curve on the right, the lifeline of the child.
Just as generations overlap in time, so civilizations begin and develop while the older civilization is still in existence. Land drew up a graph of what the civilizations in human history look like:





In this diagram , the growth curve on the left represents human culture in the prehistoric era. The middle growth curve represents Western culture, which began with the rise of cities. It is the old reality human beings have known for many millennia, which is now in the breakdown stage, the reality I mentioned above with all the problems. The growth curve on the right represents the reality of the future, which Land and Jarman feel began in 1776, at the time of the creation of the American Declaration of Independence. This growth curve has many centuries of prosperity ahead of it, and is the second reality I mentioned earlier, the one with potential.
Notice how the curves in the middle and on the right intersect in 2012. George Land and Beth Jarman call this point of intersection the “breakpoint.” A host of ancient sources predicted the date when this will occur: 22 December 2012, just a few years from now.
The Concept of Waves. I developed the habit of speaking of current and future reality as “waves” for two reasons. The first is the obvious way that Land’s diagram looks like waves. The other reason is the inspiration I got from the work of an American social analyst, Alvin Toffler, who wrote The Third Wave in 1980.
In this book Toffler described history as a series of waves, based on the focal point of economic activity. In the First Wave, the focal point was the farm. Agriculture was the dominant mode of production. In the Second Wave, the focus shifted to the factory, as the Industrial era developed. In the last half of the 20th century, Toffler realized, there was another shift underway, as more of the productive labor began to be done in the office. The nexus of economic activity was shifting away from the M-sector (manufacturing) to the S-sector (service industries). Toffer regarded this as a whole new ballgame, which he termed the Third Wave.
In 1990, ten years after Toffler’s Third Wave appeared, Herman Maynard and I wrote a series of essays that later became a book, The Fourth Wave. In it we extended Toffler’s argument to postulate a wave beyond the Third. We also gave Second and Third Waves very different meanings. We used the term “Second Wave” to refer to our current reality, on Land’s old growth curve, which will peter out in the near future. We used “Third Wave” to refer to the new growth curve that has a long-term viable future. This is how I am using “Second Wave” and “Third Wave” in this collection of essays.





It is important to remember that each wave represents an upward shift of consciousness. From the Second Wave mind-set (our current perspective), Third and Fourth Waves seem unrealistic or nonsensical. ...]]> Tue, 09 Oct 2007 16:24:51 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=10 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=8
We also have seen an increase in the number of our tutorial students (i.e. students who work one-on-one with a faculty member to study a course not currently offered, or to pursue a particular individual interest). At the moment we have two students studying astrology in tutorials (one of them from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the other local), and a student taking the “Developing Spiritual Literacy” workshop. We hope anyone reading this blog on our Web site will contact us if they see any courses in our catalog that are of interest.

Speaking of our catalog, the full text of the catalog, with descriptions for all the courses and workshops we currently offer, will soon be posted on this Web site. This will provide more information about the courses that heretofore were only listed on the grid of our curriculum in the 5-path format.

Looking ahead to the Fall, here are some of the workshops that we will be offering in September, October and November. Other offerings will be posted on our blog as the faculty decide what they will be teaching. For further information on the courses listed below, check our catalog (for the full description) or call/email/write to us.

INTRODUCTION TO ASTROLOGY, Sept 18,25, Oct 2 & 9, 7-9 PM at 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $50. Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Get a basic orientation to the study of the stars as you learn about yourself, friends and family. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

INTRODUCTION TO JUNG, Sept 19,26, Oct 3 & 10; 7-9PM, at 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $50. Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Get a basic overview of Jung, his thought & legacy, along with hands-on work; learn your type, your unique set of activated archetypes and more. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

INTERMEDIATE ASTROLOGY, Oct 23, 30, Nov 6 & 13, 7-9PM at 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $50. Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Continue your immersion in the wisdom of the stars; prerequisite: Intro to Astrology, or prior study of astrological basics. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

WOMEN’S SPIRITUALITY, Oct 24, 31, Nov 7 & 14, 7-9PM at 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $50. Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Experience the feminine form of the Divine through this experiential workshop open to both women and men. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

A sample of our Winter and Spring 2008 workshops:

ARCHETYPAL ASTROLOGY, Jan 19,26, Feb 2,9,16,23, Mar 1 & 8, 9AM to Noon.

INTRODUCTION TO DREAMWORK, Jan 20,27, Feb 3 & 10, 2-4PM.

DEVELOPING YOUR INTUITION. Mar 8,15,22,29, 2-4PM.

MEETING YOUR INNER PARTNER, April 5,12,19,26, 2-4PM.

INTRODUCTION TO ESOTERICA, April 23,30, May 7 & 14, 7-9PM.

We will be offering additional courses and workshops. Watch this space for further information, dates, times and locations. ]]> Sat, 04 Aug 2007 15:45:02 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=8 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=7
In March 2007 The Jungian Center achieved a major milestone in being awarded tax-exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service as a “public charity” (501(c)3). This will allow The Center to receive tax-deductible contributions and to work with foundations and other granting agencies. We are very grateful to the many people who worked with us on this lengthy and demanding process.

As we look ahead to the immediate future, we have several exciting courses coming up:

DEVELOPING YOUR HIGH SENSE PERCEPTION, May 5, 12, 2-5 PM at 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $40. Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Learn to use the full range of your psychic abilities, and work with energy fields. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author. Limited to 10 students.

It has been said that we draw on a small fraction of our true brain power. Equally, we go through daily life using a narrow range of our senses. This workshop introduces participants to their real perceptual ability, what some call our “high sense perception.” Via a series of assessment instruments and dozens of exercises, students discover their strongest perceptual mode, their psychological type and its effect on their sensory engagement with the world, and how to access and use the full range of psychic abilities: clairvoyance, clairaudience (knowing beyond the normal range of hearing), and clairsentience (kinesthetic knowing). Key techniques required for further work with energy fields and energy healing are also presented, along with guidelines in psychic etiquette and safety tips. An essential course for all further energy work.

THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL, June 2,9,16; 9AM to 1PM, at the library in Richmond VT; $120. Info, call Chris, 802-434-4830. Step into the shadow aspect of life in this workshop that examines grief, depression and the dark emotions so as to achieve a more highly developed sense of integration and individuation. Led by Chris Sloane, teacher and counselor.

One cause of depression in American society may be our culture’s denial of the shadow side of life. America is afraid of grief, depression and the dark emotions represented by the shadow. We repress, demonize and project these emotions on to other people and other nations. If the shadow aspects of the self are not acknowledged and depression ensues, the return to wholeness may be through the archetype of the dark night of the soul. This archetypal experience can bring the realization of inner peace, a state of grace and a deep knowing that we are always connected to the Cosmos. This course provides space for students to examine the shadow emotions, experiences and body-mind states, in order to achieve a more highly developed sense of integration and individuation. Some of the topics discussed include: depression; the shadow; grief; our parents’ wounds and our children’s wounds; the archetypes of death and rebirth; shamanic initiation and rituals; processing unfinished business; principles for spiritual guidance; day journaling and dream journaling.

INTRODUCTION TO DREAMWORK, July 11,18,25, Aug 1, 7-9 PM at 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $50. Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Get a basic orientation to an essential practice of the spiritual journey; learn over a dozen techniques in this workshop that is more experiential than intellectual. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

This workshop explores the methods, experiences, and applications of dream work, drawing upon our historical and cultural heritage. A wide array of psychological theories underpinning the study of dreams is also included. Students are required to maintain a dream journal, and to attempt analysis of their own dreams and those of their classmates. Hands-on experience in dream interpretation is stressed.

INTERMEDIATE DREAMWORK, Aug 8,15,22,29, 7-9PM at 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury, VT; $50. Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Continue to explore your psychic depths in this follow-up workshop that provides more techniques and exposure to Jungian methods. Pre-requisite: Introduction to Dreamwork, or prior experience working with dreams. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

We have exciting new courses coming in the months ahead, including: Spiritual Dowsing, Men’s Lives in the 21st Century, Women’s Spirituality, Introduction to Astrology, Intermediate Astrology, Introduction to Jung, Developing Your Intuition, Archetypal Astrology, Introduction to Dreamwork, Introduction to Esoterica, and more. Watch this space for further information, dates, times and locations. ]]> Thu, 05 Apr 2007 08:18:59 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=7 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=6 News Update

The Winter offerings at The Jungian Center proved to be very popular. Despite the cold and snow all our workshops—Introduction to Dreamwork, Introduction to Jung, Finding Your Mission in Life, and Visioneering, and Creative Writing—had great attendance. All of these workshops are suited to distance learning, so if you are reading this blog and find any of these interesting, contact us by phone, email or snail mail.

We are in the midst of planning offerings for summer ’07 and the Fall 07-Spring 08 academic year. We may be offering creative writing workshops in June-August. There will be a 3-term sequence in Astrology (Astrology I in Fall, Astrology II in Winter, and Archetypal Astrology in Spring). “Introduction to Dreamwork” and “Women’s Spirituality” will round out the Fall offerings. “Introduction to Jung” and “Intermediate Dreamwork” will run concurrently with Astrology II in Winter ’08, and “Developing Intuition” and “Introduction to Esoterica” will be offered in Spring ’08. We hope to offer other courses as well, which we will advertise in this blog space as faculty indicate their interests.

In the more immediate future, here’s what’s being offered in the next 3 months:

Upcoming Events

INTRODUCTION TO DREAMWORK, Mar 14,21,28, Apr 4, 7-9 PM at 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $50. Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Get a basic orientation to an essential practice of the spiritual journey; learn over a dozen techniques in this workshop that is more experiential than intellectual. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

INTRODUCTION TO MEDITATION, Apr 25, May 2,9,16, 7-9 PM at 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury; $50. Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Get a basic orientation to an essential practice of the spiritual journey; learn over a dozen techniques in this workshop that is more experiential than intellectual. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

DEVELOPING YOUR HIGH SENSE PERCEPTION, May 5, 12, 2-5 PM at 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $40. Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Learn to use the full range of your psychic abilities, and work with energy fields. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author. Limited to 6 students.

We are seeking qualified people with an interest in Jung and application of Jung’s theories to teach in a variety of areas. If you are interested in teaching in our programs, please send us your C.V., with proposed course/workshop(s) and format.

Note: The courses on dreamwork and meditation can be taken via distance learning. Call, email or write us for more information on our distance-learning option. ]]> Thu, 08 Feb 2007 15:48:17 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=6 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=5
The Board of Directors of the Jungian Center held its annual meeting on October 24th, a gathering that celebrated the creation and initial year of operation of the Center. The Board took note of the hard work that went into the creation of the Center’s catalog, student and faculty handbooks, and the policy handbook. If you would like copies of any of these (aside from the catalog, which is available at the Center’s Web site), please contact us with your mailing address and we will be happy to send you these items.

We are now in the midst of planning the courses that will be offered at various locations around northern Vermont in the Winter term (January-April). We will be advertising these in Seven Days, as well as through flyers and posters in the Burlington, Waterbury and Montpelier areas.

If you live outside northern Vermont, please be aware that many of our courses can be taken via distance learning, and you don’t have to wait for us to formally advertise a course offering: If you are interested in any course listed on our Web site, please contact us to see if it is suitable for distance learning, and we will send you the particulars about signing up.

The following are SOME of the courses we will be running in the months ahead. We will update this list as faculty contact us with details of the courses and workshops they are planning to offer.

Happy Thanksgiving!



Winter 2007 Workshop Offerings

Sponsored by the Jungian Center for the Spiritual Sciences


INTRODUCTION TO DREAM WORK, Jan 6,14,20,27, 2-5PM, 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $50; Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Learn how to work with your dreams, connect to your inner life and empower yourself in a safe, supportive setting. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author, with over 30 years of experience in Jungian analysis, dreamwork and leading adult programs.

This four-week workshop explores the methods, experiences, and applications of dream work, drawing upon our historical and cultural heritage. A wide array of psychological theories underpinning the study of dreams is also included. Students are required to maintain a dream journal, and to attempt analysis of their own dreams and those of their classmates. Hands-on experience in dream interpretation is stressed.

INTRODUCTION TO TIBETAN BUDDHIST MEDITATION, Jan 13, 10-5, 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury; suggested contribution, $15; Info. call Sue, 802-244-7909 or Herb 802-223-6822. Learn the basics of this very powerful approach to meditation from an experienced student of Tibetan Buddhism. Led by Dr. Herb Propper, teacher and student of Lama Norlha, Rinpoche.

This one-day workshop provides participants with a variety of experiences drawn from the rich tradition of Tibetan meditation practices. Targeting anyone interested in exploring this form of meditation, it presumes no familiarity with Buddhism or experience with other types of meditation.

FINDING YOUR MISSION IN LIFE, Feb 3 & 17, Mar 10, 2-5PM, plus individual session, 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $75; Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Discover the unique way you are meant to make a difference in the world and open your life to joy, meaning and wonder. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

Every person alive has a unique soul mission, a special way he or she is meant to make a difference in the world. When we discover our purpose we open our lives to greater joy, meaning and wonder. Using techniques suggested by the holistic healer Edgar Cayce, students handle a variety of tools and instruments to determine their purpose for living. Besides learning ways to get intuitive guidance about personal mission, participants in this workshop also discover their personality type and assess their range of talents.

VISIONEERING, Jan 7, Feb 4, Mar 4, Apr 1, 2-5PM, in Burlington or Waterbury; $90. Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Learn a scientifically-based technology to harness the power of vision that allows you to create the future out of the future and move your life ahead. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

This workshop applies Bernoulli’s principle (the basis for all forms of aerodynamics) to the realm of personal life, to jump-start dreams and hopes we have for the future. Participants learn what vision is, the power it has, and how to use it in very practical, grounded ways, to bring about changes in their own lives. With over 30 exercises, and a modicum of readings, this 12-hour workshop runs over 4 months (meeting on one afternoon a month), to allow members the time to develop a vision, apply the principles and use the exercises to realize a dream. Topics include the 4 stages of the visioneering process; the laws and principles behind the process; visioncasting; requirements and implications of visioneering; incubating a vision; your personal situation, timing and potentials; synchronicities and other signs; the ask-seek-knock process and the use of the “positive pause.”

INTRODUCTION TO JUNG, Jan 10,17,24,31, 7-9PM, at 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $50. Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Get a basic overview of Jung, his thought & legacy, along with hands-on work; learn your type, your unique set of activated archetypes and more. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

A basic overview of Jung, the man, his thought, and his legacy to psychology and our world. As a primer on Jungiana, this course introduces key concepts in Jung’s thought, e.g. the shadow, the anima/animus, archetypes, the 4 functions, the 2 orientations, the personality types, the collective unconscious, the complex, compensation, enantiodromia, imagoes, individuation, introjection, libido, the night sea journey, the levels of the unconscious, projection, identification, the psyche, the Self, the self-regulation of the psyche, the meaning and value of symbols, the temenos, synchronicity, and the transcendent function. In addition, the course describes the major stages in the individuation process (like the mortificatio, the transitio, the coniunctio), and offers a portrait of ...]]> Fri, 17 Nov 2006 12:17:23 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=5 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=4
Our faculty is expanding. In September, Christopher Sloane joined us. Chris has his bachelor’s degree in transpersonal psychology from Burlington College and is a mental health counselor as well as a group facilitator for a variety of organizations and groups. He will be offering courses in metaphysics, healing and psychology in the future (times and dates to be worked out). Sabina Evarts joined us in October. She will be teaching mandala drawing and soul work through creativity, as well as additional courses in the Via Physica and Via Practica. Sabina is a great networker and has put us in touch with several other potential faculty members. We welcome Chris and Sabina to our endeavor!

We are now in the process of planning the Winter term program. In the “News Update” for November we will post specifics of what the faculty would like to teach. If there are any courses or workshops that you would like offered, please let us know as soon as possible, and we will try to accommodate your request.]]> Mon, 09 Oct 2006 12:11:20 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=4 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=3
If this is your first visit to our blog, welcome! Please check out our Web site, if you haven¹t done so already. We update our site through this blog every month, and you will find here news of new faculty, upcoming courses and ideas about what the Center might do in the longer-term future.
If you have thoughts, hopes or dreams about how the Center might grow, and the services it might provide to the public (in line with our organizational mission and values), please let us know.

Upcoming Courses and Workshops

Here are some of the courses that are in the works for our Fall term, which begins on September 12th. The courses that can be taken via distance learning are marked with a *. More detailed descriptions of the content of these courses are at the end of this blog.

INTRODUCTION TO MEDITATION, 9/12,19,26, 10/3; 7-9PM at 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $50. Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Get a basic orientation to an essential practice of the spiritual journey; learn over a dozen techniques in this workshop that is more experiential than intellectual. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

*THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAMING, 9/13,20,27,10/4,11,18,25,11/1,8; 7 to 9PM, at
55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $100. Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Learn the historical, cultural and theoretical underpinnings of dreams along with dream interpretation techniques. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

*INTRODUCTION TO JUNG, 9/14,21,28,10/5; 7-9PM, at 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $50. Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Get a basic overview of Jung, his thought & legacy, along with hands-on work; learn your type, your unique set of activated archetypes and more. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

PSYCHODRAMA & THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS, 9/30, 12-4PM, 138 Main St., Montpelier; $50. Info, call Herb, 802-223-6822. Explore your personal connections to archetypes and discover how they can inform and enrich your life. Led by Dr. Herb Propper, certified psychodrama trainer and therapist.

*VISIONEERING, 9/18, 10/16, 11/13, and 1/8/07, 6:30-9PM at 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $90. Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Learn a scientifically-based technology to harness the power of vision that allows you to create the future out of the future and move your life ahead. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.

New Faculty

Over the summer Janet Schneider has joined our faculty as a teacher of Jung-related creative projects. Janet is a poet, published author, student of herbalism and a devotee of Jungiana. She is currently creating a series of creative writing courses that she will be teaching for us in the coming months. We welcome Janet to the Center!
For those of you based in central Vermont who want to develop your creativity in an on-site format (that is, not via distance learning), we have another teacher of creativity based in Randolph, Carmella Cyr. For more information about Carmella¹s courses, you can contact her at (802) 728-4698; or 1781 Tatro Hill Road, Randolph.

Course Content in Detail:
tIntroduction to Jung: A basic overview of Jung, the man, his thought, and his legacy to psychology and our world. As a primer on Jungiana, this course introduces key concepts in Jung¹s thought, e.g. the shadow, the anima/animus, archetypes, the 4 functions, the 2 orientations, the personality types, the collective unconscious, the complex, compensation, enantiodromia, imagoes, individuation, introjection, libido, the night sea journey, the levels of the unconscious, projection, identification, the psyche, the Self, the self-regulation of the psyche, the meaning and value of symbols, the temenos, synchronicity, and the transcendent function. In addition, the course describes the major stages in the individuation process (like the mortificatio, the transitio, the coniunctio), and offers a portrait of the process of Jungian analysis. In the experiential component, participants gain hands-on experience doing dream interpretation, identifying their personality type, and discovering their unique set of activated archetypes. Highly recommended for all who plan to take courses in alchemy, archetypal psychology, field theory, the psychonaut¹s journey, Jungian dream theory and practice, the Mysterium Coniunctionis, and the psychology of dreaming.

tIntroduction to Meditation: This course provides a basic orientation to one of the most essential practices of the spiritual journey. Called ³receptive prayer,² ³contemplation,² ³sitting,² zazen, and ³the art of inner listening,² meditation offers manifold benefits to the spiritual seeker. We consider some of the schools of meditation as we work with over a dozen techniques drawn from Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Tibetan and zen traditions. Because the purpose of the course is to equip students with this most valuable tool, the format is much more experiential than intellectual, although some readings are discussed and a lengthy bibliography is provided. The goal is both to inform and to immerse participants in meditation, to encourage the development of a regular, daily practice.

tThe Psychology of Dreaming: This 9-session workshop explores the methods, experiences and applications of dream work. It covers historical and cultural perspectives along with the psychological theories underpinning the study of dreams and dream work. The format includes a combination of discussion of the readings, dream sharing and dream interpretation. We consider the value of dreams, the history of dreaming, dream theory and the scientific research on dreaming, as well as a variety of techniques for incubating and interpreting dreams. Each session will combine theory with ³hands-on² activities working with the students¹ dreams, so participants gain personal experience working in the unconscious. The goals are: to help participants become aware of the reality of the psyche; to give participants multiple opportunities to get to know their ³Inner Friend,² while they learn a variety of ...]]> Sat, 19 Aug 2006 12:09:27 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=3 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=2 Distance learning opportunities

Many courses offered by the Center are available in multi-media format. All the courses in the Via Investigativa are suitable for distance learning. Some of the courses in the other 4 paths are too; check with us about specific courses.

On-site programs

Courses and workshops in various formats are offered at sites around northern and central Vermont throughout the year. Notices about these offerings appear on the “Upcoming Events page of this site. Advertisements also appear in the local print media: Ever Changing magazine, the “Courses” section of Seven Days, and occasionally, as block ads in the Burlington Free Press and The Times Argus. As some offerings have limits on class size, you should try to register early for our programs.

Many of our workshops use a short-term or week-end format well suited for those who wish to combine a vacation trip to the beautiful Green Mountains of Vermont with a learning experience. Waterbury is the #1 tourist destination in Vermont, thanks to the presence of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Factory. Within a 20-minute drive are 3 major ski centers (Stowe, Mad River Glen & Sugarbush), Vermont’s largest city (Burlington) and a wealth of tourist attractions. Take advantage of our special combination packages:

* a week-end workshop (one-day or two-day)
* special reduced rates at the historic Old Stagecoach Inn (some restrictions apply)]]> Thu, 18 May 2006 12:06:00 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=2 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=1 Tue, 04 Apr 2006 11:59:39 -0500 http://jungiancenter.org/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=1