Showing posts with label jung. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jung. Show all posts

Thursday, October 16, 2014

You Can't Go Home Again

"Simple persons live within the happiness of their inner world."--   Transformation  by R. Johnson

In most every spiritual tradition there is a sense
of growing maturity, a ripening of the self into what some call satori, enlightenment or salvation, among other descriptions of this experience. Author and Jungian psychologist Robert Johnson discusses this in his book, Transformation.

He writes there are three levels
of consciousness. They are universal the world over, yet in industrialized societies the progression of these experiences is made all the more difficult by our very advances in book learning and complex societies. The level of all mankind, endowed to each of us by nature is what he describes as 'simple consciousness,' followed by 'complex consciousness,' the "usual state of educated Western man, and an 'enlightened' state of consciousness, known only to a very few individuals."

Enlightenment, Johnson reckons,
comes to very few men only after much work and training by highly motivated individuals. He recounts a simple story to illustrate these notions: 'the simple man comes home in the evening wondering what's for dinner; the complex man comes home pondering the imponderables of fate, and the enlightened man comes home wondering what's for dinner.
"Simple man and enlightened man have much in common, including a direct, uncomplicated view of life, and so they react in similar ways."

The difference between them is that the enlightened are conscious of their condition in ways that simple persons are not. Complex persons, however, are often engaged with worry and often live lives marked by anxiety.
Writing Walden Pond, 19th century author Henry David Thoreau writes about his experiences and those of others he knows. He chronicles the complex, Western man's attempt to regain a sense of simplicity in their life.
Gandhi urged India in an earlier era to retain its domestic simplicity; his urgings were largely ignored. Today when one travels to India we are often aware of the tremendous poverty, illness and wants of her citizens. All true. However alongside of these ills is a clear and abundant sense of joyfulness. There is a happiness among large numbers of Indians in their daily lives. Johnson writes of his experiences there, "I was witnessing the miracle of simple man finding happiness in a rich, inner world, not in the pursuit of some desired goal.

Simple persons live within this happiness of their inner world, no matter what the exterior circumstance may be. Those of enlightened conscious also know this and live with an attitude of happiness which bridges their inner world with objective facts, a connection the Simple person does not or is unable to make.
Many a Hindu learns that the highest worship is to simply be happy. On the other hand, complex persons often live in their sense of anxiety and dread, trapped between nostalgia and anticipation of what may come, a fate that mostly eludes ones' grasp.
Despite this, complex consciousness is so highly valued by Westerners that nothing is thought to be too great or expensive in a bid "to gain freedom, self-determination and choices," wrought by his expanded perception writes Johnson.

Traditional Indian society, he observes, is based "on a caste system that allows only a few superior individuals," Brahmins, the chief caste to gain consciousness. The lower castes are less concerned with enlightened minds or methods. This keeps the vast majority of Indians in a state of their natural given, simple consciousness.
For once on the path to enlightenment, many will make significant gains before meeting frustration warned Carl Jung, Johnson's mentor.

Jung noted that once one has left the innate state of simple consciousness for more complex states, one can no longer turn around to retrace the steps of the path from where one has come. Quite simply, he believed that on the path to consciousness, Complex persons may meet with stresses and frustration from which they cannot retire. In other words, Jung believed, one can't just go home again to an earlier simplicity and peace you once knew, in recognition of a certain loss of innocence.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Tales of the Hasidim and Emotional Ties

"Awe is what moves us forward."  --Joseph Campbell

The soul,
wrote Martin Buber in Tales of the Hasidim, is like the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, where in the Temple, the High Priest recites the Avodah, עבודה‎, the prayer of remembrance, "and thus he spoke." For he had not forgotten the time his soul was in the body of a High Priest of Jerusalem, and he had no need to learn from the outside how they had served in the temple.
Once he himself related, " I have been ten times in this world: I was a priest, a prince, a king, an exilarch, rosh galut ראש גלות. I was ten different kinds of dignitary. But I never learned to love mankind perfectly. And so I was sent forth again and again in order to perfect my love. If I succeed this time, I shall never return again."
Tales of the Hasidim, by Martin Buber

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are, but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for the transcendence, for the reference everywhere to the mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine... to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing, the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.

Who Is Man? by Abraham Joshua Heschel

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


 In Visions: Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung writes, "When face to face with such wholeness, a moment of near eternity, one is speechless, for it scarcely can be comprehended. The objectivity that I experienced in the dream, the bliss, and the visions form part of a completed individuation. It signifies detachment from valuations and what we call emotional ties".
"In general emotional ties are very important to human beings... Emotional relationships are relationships of desire... something is wanted, expected of the other person and this binds us... Something else came about as a result of my long illness: an affirmation of things as they are, an unconditional 'yes,' an acceptance of the conditions of existence as I see them and understand them, an acceptance of my own nature..."

'When one lives ones own life, one must take mistakes into the bargain. Life would not be complete without them. There is no guarantee, not for a single moment, that we will not fall into error or stumble into mortal peril. We may think there is a sure road, but that would be the road of death. Then nothing happens anymore--at any rate, not the right things. Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead...'

'I understand how important it is to affirm one's own destiny. We must forge a self which can withstand the trials of the world, a self that withstands the winds and seasons of the world, one that endures the truth, that does not break down; a self that is capable of coping with fate. Then, to experience defeat is also to experience victory...'

'I realize that one must also accept the thoughts that go on within oneself of their own accord as part of ones reality. The categories of true and false are, of course, always present... the thoughts are more important than our subjective judgements of them, for they exist as part of our wholeness."

-- Visions: Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung