Spirits Calling

"My soul glowed from the fire of your fire. Your world was a whispering water At the river of my heart." --by the poet Rumi

While in love we often fear, often unconsciously fear, that another will subsume us, that we will drown in relationship, and to some extent this is true. The ego must move aside for the opening to the path to love. Love and the soul however will not be lost or drown in another. Rather these are our immutable essences; they cannot be lost or drowned, and yet ego strongly fears this fate. Our sense of self-protection that is ego rapidly assesses any situation in which we must potentially yield to be a threat.

There is a fundamental mystery to the soul, however, writes Deepak Chopra in his book, The Path to Love. He writes further, "its integrity is not violated by merging with another person. The blending of two spirits brings more to the union than each partner started with. The process of soul-making that used to be [for me alone] "me" is now for "us." The poet Rumi expressed this thought with these words:

My soul glowed from the fire of your fire.

Your world was a whispering water.

At the river of my heart.

With the growth of spiritual realization is the awareness that two can be as one; that the multiple aspects of the Dharmakaya are are work; that the Christian idea of a triune relationship within the soul of a great spirit, communing with God are all infinite and possible. While in the state of ego, on the other hand, persons remain isolated and self-protected as if in a siege mentality. There then is no room for the other; often a feeling of isolation and a vague, undefined loneliness results. Yet spirit calls to us powerfully, first, in romantic love. 

We fall in love and for the first time as Rumi passionately writes, we have the opportunity to engage our self into self as an expansion of identity. The Spirit uses relationship as its vehicle. No man is an island; spirit calls to us to overcome our fears such that love may be its replacement.

Once in relationship, however we gain a foothold over ourselves despite the passion, despite the growing self awareness, and ego often returns to us with a vengeance. Falling in love is delightful; it is passion, and a glimpse of the spirit itself. Being in love, love itself entails commitment, and a certain struggle. Many who come to this place in their spiritual journeys feel a sense of loss, and fear what is to come next. 

Relationships have consequences. While they give to each person a sense of belonging, friendship, security and compassion, love also demands something from each partner. Things like patience, devotion, persistence are part of the work and struggle to be realized along the path. Sometimes relationship is hard and painful. Resolution brings joy, and it brings disappointment. "The only real difference between romance and relationship, spiritually speaking, has to do with surrender. Surrender comes naturally to two people when they first fall in love." Love's first flush gives us the courage to do that, to be fearless and act under its protective power. Spiritually, surrender is a solution to the paradox existing between ego and spirit. 

Yet persons who love, who are intimates, over time often find that the ego, now returned carries them on its own agenda. Lovers play games to test one another, they withhold themselves; they are unwilling to give to spirit, and they are unwilling to give to and serve one another. Surrender now must be conscious. It must be an act of free will, of choosing this as your path. Chopra writes, "this isn't to say that surrender isn't hard work; it is conscious work. As such it can bring the same joy and delights as falling in love, the same sense of play which relieves lovers of the ego burdens." 

The British writer and poet, D. H. Lawrence wrote, "That is the crystal of peace, the slow hard jewel of trust, the sapphire of fidelity. The gem of mutual peace emerging from the wild chaos of love."

A free loving commitment of the will made to another is the realization over time of: peacefulness, a companionship and a trust made by the Spirit to another which is, and is not self. "When they are fully committed... they see God in each other." On that basis, they are able to surrender, not to one another so much, as to surrender themselves to the God in each other, and to the God, the Dharmakaya in all things. Dharma is an ancient idea. It means perhaps most fully, sacredness. In its Sanskrit origin, dharma means to sustain or uphold. 

Thus what upholds, honors, or respects another's life is in keeping with dharma. It is, for example in dharma not to tell lies, to deceive oneself or others. Dharma looks to the sacred, it is tied to and intimately guided by spirit. Dharmakaya, likewise, is Karuna, love; love then is a guiding force emanating from the great being, the Dharmakaya. Thus surrender in relationship is surrender to spirit, to dharma. In the Way of the Beloved, the dharma is "a vision of spiritual equality; when you perceive life through this vision, separation ends."

The Legend of the Holy Grail

"It is one of those fairy tales... in which the search for a 'treasure hard to attain." The Grail Legend by Emma Jung and M-L von Franz


Despite the popularity of comedies and parodies about the Holy Grail, Monty Python most famously, there is in European folklore and myth, the tale of the Holy Grail. The Grail Legend as written by Emma Jung and completed after her death by Marie-Louise von Franz is a compelling examination into the origins and compilation of what today we know as the Grail myth. The story is thought to have originated in parts of Europe, especially in the Northern regions, and in geographic France. Its more recent form is often accredited to 12th century by the Middle Age writer, Chretien de Troyes, an early French speaker. It also may be traced to the Anglo and Germanic regions of Europe. Truly it is of European descent.


The legend in general is told as a story about the search for a mysterious, life sustaining object or vessel guarded by a King in a castle which is remote and difficult to find. The King is lame or sickly; thus the surrounding countryside is suffering, many parts in devastation. The health of the King is paramount to the restoration of the fertility and health of the land. If a knight sufficiently noble and quite excellent can find the castle, and at first sight asks a question there in that place, all will be well. Should he neglect to ask, all remains as before. The castle then is to vanish, the knight to set out once more to search for the vessel. After wandering, should the knight succeed, find the Grail Castle again, ask the question, the King will then be restored to health; the lands will prosper. And that knight, now the hero will become guardian of the Grail from that time onward.


What remains of special interest in this story, even today, has been the focus of study by various individuals, including Emma Jung, wife of the famed psycho-analyst, Carl Jung. Believing in the power of myth and the importance of them in the modern age, Jung set out to examine their components and what they had to teach us about the world we live in and the spiritual world we sense to be. In this story, a unique blend of  "eternal fairy tale enters," writes Jung. She says it reflects the 'Christian eon' as well as fundamental human concerns and spirituality.

Jung and the Monotheisms: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

"All that is above is like all that is below; all that is below is like all that is above, in order that the miracle of Unity be accomplished." --The Tabula Smaragdina, attributed to 12th century writer, Hermes

Jung and the Monotheisms: Judiasm, Christianity and Islam is a book in five parts written by Joel Ryce-Menuhin. Ryce-Menihin explores a number of historical and current ideas within philosophy and religion, including Hermeticism, which includes alchemy, astrology and theurgy. Many if not most of the teachings of Hermetics can be traced back to the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. Today it is in these forms which it survives. Hermetics is often described in terms of neo-platonism of the 200 C.E. period. Hermetics teaches that God, the creator, created man androgynous, in his own image. Many of its teachings were suppressed by early European monarchies, however Hermeticism resurged during the Renaissance period and carries forward in a number of traditions today, including Free Masonry, an outgrowth of Enlightened thinking of the same period.

One of psychologist Carl Jung's "most original contributions was his analogical [analogy, use of metaphor] work on development as psychological development in the same sense as the alchemists who were searching for ultimate self hood through the language of refining metals into gold," writes Ryce-Menihin. Of great interest to Jung was also the ancient notion of the Elixir of Life and the Philosopher's Stone, all deriving from ancient Arabic roots and resurrected in the Renaissance period. In these, Jung saw an alchemy, if you will, that occurred as patients came to him for analysis. Working through their interior thoughts, many he saw were attempting to realize spiritual development within these deep, subterranean elements of Christianized, Western culture.

The English nobleman and scientist of the Enlightenment, Sir Isaac Newton, eagerly sought in scientific experimentation the structure of a "micro" universe. Not merely satisfied with his discovery of gravity, Newton intuited and sought what some today might describe as Quantum Physics. He posited that there was yet another sphere, in which on the tiniest basis there existed elements of a secretive, mysterious world. In his day, the Renaissance of the 1600's, European thought was literally overrun with interest in mechanistic science, leaving alchemy and its proponents behind. Jung however has resuscitated interest; in the 20th century and now in the 21st century, we find Alchemy alive and well, often living under a label of "New Age." It is not new, nor unique to the age; its origins stretching far back into history of Kings, Queens and the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt.

To Jung, whose outspoken interest and allegiance to Orthodox Christianity is well documented, there was indeed an intersection between religion, psychology and western culture stretching back into the origins of human civilization. Jung believed that neither culture nor religion could be ignored in favor of psychology. Intuitively Jung recognized that dreams and other extra-normal experiences had roots in a deeply ingrained culture, and that most often religion was its vessel. It could not be ignored. For Jung, the Spiritual was the Religious; he did not dramatically differentiate them.

Famously when patients sought out Professor Jung for analysis, he inquired about their religion and their family religious traditions. He then advised his patients to continue in the tradition of their childhood, or to return to the tradition of their forebears. This, he believed,was a critical point for self understanding, a vessel in which a person's hopes, dreams, fears and wishes were most clearly contained. Today it remains a foundation of Jungian analysis. Indeed, as a child, Jung saw all things in the cosmos as circling around God! To resist this force, he believed, was a grave sin. His belief was strong, instinctive and intuitive.

As a young psychologist, Carl Jung fell in with the famed psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud. Charged with the Socialist and Communist politics of the day, Freud was embraced; his conception of man was decidedly not religious, not Christian; he believed that man could be reduced [reductionism] to the motive and drives of the animal. This suited the policy makers of the day, who sought an "opiate for the masses," so as to quell and subvert their longings for personal and political freedom in the waning days of European Feudalism. However after a time, the two men fell out with one another.

Jung remained staunch in his views of religion, rejecting man as an animal, a mechanism of labor for use, believing God had a higher call than Freud allowed. The two men parted, effecting what would become one of the most remarkable thinkers of the 20th century, Carl Jung, who established what is today known as Jungian analysis. And Jung remained a member of the Protestant Christian denomination, the Swiss Reformed Church throughout his life time.