Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Relation Between Man and Vegetable

"More servants wait on man than he'll take notice of." Ralph Waldo Emerson


Many over the eons have conceived of, and written of a conception of nature, herself. However in 1848 the American thinker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, engaged himself in the "Free Soilers" movement with other contemporaries such as the future president, Abraham Lincoln and emerged with an expanded notion of Nature. He wrote about the subject of nature and the soul in his book, Nature, in 1836 to form the early ideas of Transcendenalism. Nature expressed Emerson's theories that the imagination of man is shaped by nature herself, most plainly and most cleanly.

Quickly he emerged as a central figure in the nascent American Transcendentalist movement. Now, before you laugh too hard over the title of this post, read a bit further into the mind of one of our Nation's great thinkers. Emerson wrote of Nature that:

"To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches... The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection.

Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood... The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right."

Dreams, Living Your "Unlived" Life

In the culturing process, the many decisions of our parents and childhood caretakers become habits, and they become our own when adults. The mind has a terrific repertoire of past behavior accrued over time and stored until the precise moment when needed. These actions, memories or past, form a bulk of our coping skills in adult life.
For many they are trusty and reliable responses to ordinary life events, things like dealing with annoying people, completing tasks, organizing our schedules and taking advantage of "down time." We often think of them as "manners."

All these activities give the adult satisfaction and a sense of mastery over everyday events. one often gains a sense of security from these interactions; as a person matures, more experiences accrue and more strategies are learned, stored and used as needed.
For many if not most, there comes a point in time when we are no longer marking time as "from when I was born until the present," but rather time is more as "from the present moment to my death." This shift in perception is gradual, usually occurring in the 40's and becoming louder as the 50th decade and beyond approaches.

Those trusty old solutions, those experiences of the past may no longer suit. What once was a brilliant maneuver at age 25 is not so now. Life is more lived, and the past while possibly remembered fondly now is more nuanced, more characterized. Something new is often in order.
The goal is not the elimination of patterned views and responses; growing maturity may call for a re-examination of previously disregarded choices or pathways.

Yet this can lead to major disruption or even financial ruin of a lifetime of gain. So many busy themselves with other things, staving off the gnawing thought in the back of the mind, that a path once contemplated, such as travel, further study or a career move might, still, make sense.
Writing partly from personal experience and partly from a professional perspective authors R. Johnson and J. Ruhl write in their book, Living Your Unlived Life that loosening up on the reins of life, "give us more freedom of choice, to regain access to lost resources that are essential to a fulfilling life."
The paradox of identity is that identity is fluid over a lifetime, more than something rigid or habitual. Even so, we rely on the patterns of the previous to make our current experiences coherent.

And while these patterns and structures are necessary and in a large degree helpful, they are also, "over time becoming boundaries, restricting our freedom and narrowing our experience." Relying then on the familiar, we do feel often worn out, tired or stressed. As the saying, 'same old thing' kicks in, "by mid-life your identity is the institutionalization of your past," writes Johnson.
The antidote Johnson says may lie in several places, but one thing he assures the reader is that by this time in life whatever the solution, it indeed lies within.
Carl Jung, Johnson's mentor, wrote that it is "a mistake to fear that the truths and values of earlier adulthood are no longer relevant; they have just become relative-- they aren't universally true."

Becoming re-acquainted with your inner life, the who, how and whys of your existence may make you feel a bit of a teen again, but it will also give you new awareness and updated solutions to events in your life. The authors give much, much more detail and introduce the concept of "active imagination" as a real and effective tool for growth.
Johnson insists that it may effectively quell moods, mental stresses and other psychic disorders if practiced effectively and consistently. This technique as explained incorporates ones' dreams, imaginings and conscious thoughts as part of its method.

Your Neurosis, a Low-Intensity Religious Experience*

“Jung’s studies and work led him to conclude that the unconscious is the real source…" Robert Johnson

Jungian psychologist and author, Robert Johnson writes about many things in his book, Inner Work. Most importantly he details the value of the ‘inner world’ of individuals. The inner world as he describes it follows along the ideas of his mentor psychologist Carl Jung who defined the term: the ‘secret inner life we all lead, by day and by night, in constant companionship with our unseen, unconscious self." Johnson, like Jung, makes considered value of these associations, the conscious, the unconscious, dreams, rituals and something he calls active imagination.

“Jung’s studies and work led him to conclude that the unconscious is the real source of all our human conscious… reasoning, awareness, and feeling. The unconscious is the Original Mind, the primal matrix... Every feature of our functioning consciousness was first contained in the unconscious and then found its way from there… The conscious mind reflects the wholeness of the total self… this [is] a storehouse of raw energy assimilates into the personality… the true depth and grandeur of an individual human being is never totally manifested until the main elements of the personality are moved from the level of potential (meaning more at ‘possibility’) in the unconscious… [to] the level of conscious functioning.”

Jung observes about the inner life: the unconscious, when in balance with the conscious mind lives in relationship to one another. However the disaster in this view is that the modern world has completed “the splitting off of the conscious mind from its roots in the unconscious.” Thus all the forms that nourished earlier generations such as dreams, vision, ritual, imagination and religious experience are lost, dismissed by the modern mind as base or superstitious. What’s left? Many seek to fill the void with a ‘conscious consumerism,’ fed by big business, they fixate on the physical, the external, material world.

Still the inner world strives to make itself known. Many have contact with this form of knowledge through the recollection of dreams. While dreams are not taken literally in Jung’s view, they are, however, powerful imaginings and symbols pointing the way; thus the dream is a portrait of the dreamer. They are influential reporters of our behaviors, whose origins are from within. And “curiously people resist their good qualities even more emphatically than they resist facing their negative qualities,” writes Johnson. Dreams “constantly speak to us about our beliefs, and attitudes.”

Moving from dream work to the place of ritual is part of the process Jung describes as a function of making the unconscious individual. Ritual is a most important tool with great energy to bridge the difference between the paradox of opposites. It ties our divided selves together. In the West, Johnson says, there is a great urge to make everything abstract, to use intellectual discussion alone in substitution for concrete, direct, feeling experiences. When emotions are registered physically and concretely, they register at the deepest places of the psyche.
Another important point Johnson brings up is that of common sense. While imagination is a useful and valid part of conscious reckoning;its content and origin are produced uniquely within the self. Many conduct themselves without common sense. Not everything one imagines is to be acted upon. Some things are just for contemplation. Through thoughtful consideration, the distinction between the active and contemplative becomes apparent.
The Hindu master Sri Aurobindo once said, “Why is it that when people first relinquish the world (worldliness), the first thing they relinquish is common sense?” Courtesy and respect of others remain important community values.

* As for Neurosis, Jungian analysis sees this as a situation where unconscious motives are expressed in ways that do not directly serve the person; they may actually be detrimental imbalances to the self. How? For more information: This is a long discussion contained within the book, Inner Work by Robert Johnson, and also many prior references by Carl Jung in his writings.