Because Someone Asked About Jung--Part Uno

A friend has asked for a rundown on Jung. Now that is an invitation I cannot pass up. I hope some other friends will take a moment to add their two cents worth to this first attempt to put into writing the sum total of my knowledge of Jung. Well, maybe not all of it...I don't even know what I know. I have an inkling of how much I don't know, so I hope that will keep me humble and honest here. 

As I only recently learned, during a lecture by Rick Tarnas, you really have to start with Nietzsche. It was he who coined the phrase, "What does not kill me makes me stronger." As I understand it, he was the first to really GET this idea that suffering actually has meaning and purpose...which is to make us stronger, wiser, deeper, etc. Now poor Friedrich was a very very very intelligent and thoughtful man, and very very very very lonely. He apparently never knew the love of a woman. He knew prostitutes, but was never LOVED by a woman. (Probably because of that 'stache...I mean LOOK at it!) Now this could not have been good for his psyche. In fact, Tarnas makes the case that his lack of intimate relationship did indeed hinder his psychological development in that his ego remained quite inflated. Anyone who has ever been married can attest to the marvelous, deflating effect a spouse can have on one's ego, yes?  However, maybe it was because he held himself in such high regard that he was able to see the enormous ego humans had maanaged to develop. So huge, that we had effectively ditched God.

This is where we get to his most famous, and mostly misunderstood statement, that "God is Dead" which points to our increasing desire to trust in Science and what could be observed and measured, thus turning our backs on what can't be observed, measured, and proved--the existence of the Soul, of God, of a Cosmic Order that infuses everything around us.  He saw that we were taking on so much importance in the universe (this was the post Rennaisance, Enlightentment era, when we were extremely impressed with ourselves) that we were about to supplant the deity. Mind you, we are only talking about the Western Psyche here, in all its glory and all its shame.

For most of our history, people generally thought of the world at large as having some sense of sentience, and that we belonged IN and TO the world and cosmos, were a natural part of it. The numinous deities lived in everything, and anything could be a means by which to connect to and understand them: tea leaves, entrails, serpents, planets, etc.  However, the Rennasiance changed all this. In a positive way, we woke up and grew up, individuated if you will, from this enmeshed relationship with the parental Gods and Goddesses. Science determined that the Gods did not live in the earth, the trees, the oceans, the mountains, etc. They no longer inhabited the sun, moon, and planets. No longer spoke to us through oracles and signs. Tarnas calls this the 'disenchantment of the universe', when the cosmos no longer had a consciousness, and became a lifeless lump of matter. The Western Mind set it up so that a disembodied God was up there in 'heaven' somewhere,  and only maintained a direct line to humans. Especially those living in Europe at the time.

That scene from Angels in America comes to mind...my version of the Angels talking to one another in the voice of Eddie Izzard: "Have you seen God lately?"... "No, I haven't seen him, I thought you had.".... "Well the last I saw Him was EONS ago."... "Holy crap, do you think he's GONE?"..."He can't be GONE...can He?"..."SHIT! What do we tell the humans?"..."Um...tell them he went out for sushi, and He will be RIGHT BACK."

This position, being the special beings on the planet with a direct line to Our One God made it possible for us to rape, pillage, colonize, and destroy the earth and other peoples up until...well...right now.

You know that game telephone, where you whisper a message in someone's ear and send it around the circle? Imagine getting a whispered message from God...how hard is is to ACCURATELY communicate the answer to your prayers. "What God? You say it's ok for us to go to the New World and grab all the gold from the Godless Heathens? Cool! Hey fellas , we're good to go! I got it straight from the Big Guy."  Or what if you DON'T get an answer to your prayers..."Hey fellas, we're good to go..."

We were no longer part of the world, we were the owners of the world. And the world did not have a soul, it was a lifeless lump of Unobtainium waiting for us to mine and use. It was our Manifest Desitny to do so. Poor, sensitive, insightful Nietzsche saw this coming, and proclaimed it loudly. He also got that we were ignoring a vast reservoir of interiority where God still lived quite apart from our contolling egos...deep within the human Psyche and in Nature.  People listened, but did not really really get it in a big way. However, Freud and Jung got it...and ran with it.

More to come.

First Blog....First Post

I'm making my way through David Whyte's audiobook The Three Marriages, so this is where I will enter the conversation, mid-stream, navigating the currents of relationships to another person, a work, and this precarious and unsettling connection to something within which I refer to as the Self, Psyche, or Soul...depending on my mood and which teacher-in-absentia I am learning from on any given day.

THE UNIVERSAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL:

Regarding the nature of passionate love (whether it be for a person, an inner calling, or an outer vocation), Whyte says that it is characterized by an "unconscious drive toward vulnerability", that despite all rational thought, common sense, or sound advice, one is compelled to follow the "hidden, non-negotiable conversation that will reorder and reimagine us, preparing us for the marriage to which our falling in love leads." To follow that longing despite the odds, despite the probability of rejection and humiliation, takes us toward an encounter with something that will utterly change us. 

In the following poem, he shows us that this encounter is not necessarily what we are dreaming it to be--happily ever after with our true love, fame and fortune in the perfect job--but something far more significant and perhaps terrifying to the small ego trying to control and manage our lives:

Self-Portrait by David Whyte

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

from Fire in the Earth
©1992 Many Rivers Press

In his recently published private journal, The Red Book, Carl Jung says, "He could find his soul in desire itself, but not in the objects of desire. If he possessed his desire, and his desire did not posses him, he would lay a hand on his soul, since his desire is the image and expression of his soul." I believe this is related to Rumi's statement (translation by Coleman Barks), "Lovers don't finally meet somewhere/They are in each other all along." Whenever we are feeling that deep, undeniable longing for someone or something, the desire that does not fade and that will not let us sleep, we are hearing the call of the Soul. This also reminds me of Joseph Campbell's exhortation to "Follow your bliss."

What happens when we refuse to follow that call? When we turn away from our desire, our longing, our love, out of fear that we will never have it , or having had it, lose it, we turn away from our own Soul, away from the Self.  What does this look like? In Swamplands of the Soul, Jungian analyst and author James Hollis describes "desuetude", a kind of depression and loss of vitality, as the emotional state that occurs when we are headed in the wrong direction. When we are driving ourselves away from what the Soul wants, she withdraws the life force, cuts the fuel line, kills the engine so that you come to a complete stop until you figure it out. Maybe she is hoping you will ask for directions!

THE PERSONAL and PARTICULAR:

 In college, I studied English poetry and Shakespeare, Theatre, and the sublime but completely impractical art of Oral Interpretation. Can you imagine a Masters' degree in anything more self-indulgent than reading poetry out loud?? Can you imagine my father's anxiety, wondering how in the world I would live on that? He tried so hard to get me to study teaching, so that I would always have a job. Well, I did what I had to do...studied what I loved. And I got a job teaching the art of reading poetry--and other things--out loud as soon as I graduated. I taught that for a decade, and loved every minute of it. Then I got a degree in Jungian psychology. There is nothing less practical than Jungian psychology when you work in a government funded agency. But those loves changed me...brought me closer to my Self than I could ever have imagined as a young woman entering college.  

I have also had experiences loving a person that made me a compulsive neurotic wreck. It was so much easier to follow the career desires! I have been absolutely obliterated by this: the mythology of who I thought I was, left shredded on the floor every time.  Luckily, when I picked up the pieces, I was somehow better. And bigger on the inside. A part of me would like to give up all this suffering for love, but another part of me just takes over and all I can do is fall into the center of my longing again and again, and see where it leads.

My Wild Heart

I have a wild passionate heart.
Restrained by rules and roles
Dutifully acknowledged for years,
She pulses secretly,
and tentatively
reaches out whenever she can.
Soon, in stillness and in play
She will break free
To love what she chooses.

You cannot control or capture
My Wild Heart.
You may only accept what she offers
(or doesn't offer, on her whim)
And tend to your own heart,
Beating wildly within.


BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME...

Have you ever given in to a passionate longing for someone, despite your better judgment? Have you followed a dream, with trepidation and uncertainty, that you were told was impossible? Do you find yourself turning within, in solitude and silence, when you really 'out to get out more'? Marion Woodman would ask, do you go by choice or by compulsion? The answer is always "yes", but even when one is abducted, like Persephone taken down into Hades, there is also a certain amount of courage in the surrender. Where have you been courageous? Where have you refused the call and suffered the consequences? Tell us! Inquiring minds want to know!