Imagining and the Soul

"What converts this "it" into me"?  --The Force of Character by James Hillman*

Writing about character isn't so fashionable these days; in our psychologically steeped society, we are conditioned to think more about personality, ego, identity, integrative structures, and other such rational terminology for what has been thought of in previous generations simply as "character". And despite the apparent Oneness which most religions teach, you each have your style, your set of traits both physical and emotional, and a destiny. "You are essentially different from me,' says Hillman, 'by virtue of the lasting sameness of each of our individualized characters." Hillman argues that despite all the changes in a single lifetime, all the progressions made into the future, you are the unique sum of character; character provides 'a lasting core.'

"It's refreshing to discover that some of the oldest and most basic ideas of philosophy-- Same and Different, Form and Matter-- are actually at work in our daily lives... [What] keeps us who we are and holds our body to its form? Imagine the body as an ancient philosopher, the body as a place of wisdom... character, this governing wisdom... an active force...  the hustlers of materialism [form counters materialism, advances function] who ask us to buy the idea that we are complex pieces of biotechnology, compared to computer chips... results from underlying bio-genetic impulses.'
'Form can be reduced to matter." Equally fashionable and in doubt, in Hillman's eyes, is the discipline of Cognitive Sciences. Here the temptation is overwhelming to reduce a human being to an "organ of computation," a reptilian brain and so forth. Equally fantastic is the absence of myth or reductionism in its presentation. Rather there is an air of statement or axiom, self-evident 'truth.'

In contrast Hillman, the philosopher, the scholar, turns to thinkers such as Aristotle, especially Aristotle whose idea of Form in relation to the body and soul has guided much Western thought for more than two millenia. Aristotle believed that the soul is the form of the body, the original of its movement... the interests of body and soul are the same. The soul forms the body, in this view; while without a body, a soul cannot be located. Because of this Aristotle believed that the soul's beauty was harder to detect than beauty of a bodily form. The soul is, in tradition, the element concerned with goodness and beauty, justice and courage, friendship and loyalty. The soul is also variously described by its actions, such as courageous, timid, vacillating, or kindly, loving. "Through these characteristics we come to know the nature of our soul and to assess the souls of others."

Insisting that the soul has a definite, intentional, intelligent idea, Hillman strikes against the cliche idea of soul today that concludes it "all gossamer, no fiber; a refuge, a fairytale land, a mood, a symbol... He counters these cliches, insisting "the idea of  Form gives shape and character to soul, and demands more rigor in thinking about it. Further the character in this reckoning fulfills itself "by doing what it is naturally suited to do, which is also its pleasure. Aristotle called this natural activity, energy." Thus, the character imagined is as much a product of our imagination as our experiences; this "does not mean that our images are purely personal fantasies and that imagination is a function inside each privately enclosed skull."

Imagination is more than a mental function. The creative forces in the world, as the world soul, produce the images that we perceive; some come to us in idleness, in daydreams, in sleep, in sudden, clear insights, or after long struggles in meditation. The philosopher Emmanuel Kant remarked that without imagination, we should have no knowledge whatsoever.  We do not have to visually perceive these imaginings to feel feelings, think thoughts; we do not have to optically view poems, or characters in stories or movies to 'see' them or their character in our imagination. More than anything, imagination is one of the great "archetypal principles like love, order, beauty, justice, time. We sense these principles coursing through us." Beauty and order, for example, are not placed in the world; we find them there. Thus if  "character is a complex of images, then to know you, I must imagine you."

* author James Hillman is a well known thinker, Jungian psychologist and scholar.

Mandala or Mandorla?

"Happily...we have a solution. This is the mandorla... It is far too valuable a concept to have lost." Owning Your Own Shadow -- by R. Johnson

"Everyone knows what a mandala is, even though mandala is a Sanskrit idea borrowed from India and Tibet. A mandala is a holy circle or bounded place that is a representation of wholeness..... the Tibetan tanka [for example], a picture generally of the Buddha in his many attributes... Mandalas are devices that remind us of our unity with god and all living things."
Mandalas are found in places as diverse as a Tibetan monastery, an Indian ashram or a Christian cathedral. In the christian version, the mandala is most often represented as a rose flowering. It appears in Gothic architecture as a rose window,  frequently representing a healing symbol in christian mythology.

While mandalas are perhaps more familiar to many persons, the mandorla is an important symbol as well; during the Medieval age it was prevalent in many places. It has a healing effect, "but, as Johnson writes in his book, Owning Your Own Shadow,' it's somewhat different.
A mandorla is an almond shaped segment formed when two circles partly overlap."  This symbol is "nothing less than the overlap of opposites." It is often seen in spiritual terms as the overlap between heaven and earth, dark and light.
Each of us, at different moments in our every day existence, have the experience of the worldly demands which collide or conflict with our spiritual longings and desires.

It is within the ancient symbol of mandorla that we may be instructed so as to reconcile these demands and needs. In our lives, mandorla may act to remind us of our life as both earthly and heavenly.
The Christ depicted with his mother, Mary at his side, clearly makes the point (mandorla) how wonderfully true the affirmation of the feminine energy is in life, by assigning her in a place next to the majesty (masculine) which is the Christ.
Some of the most beautiful mandorlas in European monuments feature this particular subject. "The mandorla is so important in our torn world" that re-examining it is of great significance.
There is a tendency to divide the self, to banish elements of self and let them live unobserved alongside the "known" self.
However in doing so, considerable energy is sidelined into what is sometimes called the "shadow." But they will not stay hidden forever and have the habit of returning; asserting their energy, like it or not.

When that day of reckoning comes, and there may be many over a period of time, the mandorla is a wonderfully healing help. It begins to focus one upon the self and the re-emerging split. Mandorla starts first as something very tiny, a sliver really, and as it grows, greater overlap occurs; the self is re-made more whole, stronger and more complete.
Binding together, making holy the unholy; mandorla is a profound religious and spiritual experience. It is the place of poetry, where the fire becomes the rose, where this is that, where transformation is great synthesis.
The biblical story of the bush which burns, yet is not consumed is poetry leading to a new sense of wholeness, unity completed. The bush and its burning overlap. Healing begins in the space between. And mandorla is peacemaking.

"If your eye be seen, your whole body will be filled with light." Matthew 6:22

Blinded by Sympathy

"What makes sympathy so weak is its lack of objectivity."  Love and Responsibility by Karol Wotyla

Writing about the path from sympathy to friendship, Wotyla in his book, Love and Responsibility, writes that "one in sympathy" may be thought of as one who experiences with;  it means above all else, that what results in the way of emotional energy, is energy which strongly tends to unite persons. In the event of sympathy, the uniting of persons arises as a direct response to their feelings and emotional response to external events.
"This is something which happens to them, and is not the direct result of an act of  [free] will. Sympathy is a manifestation of experiences rather than activities... the will is captured by the force of those emotions and pulled along." Sympathy is love at a purely emotional stage without any act of choosing. "At most the will consents to its existence and to the direction it takes."

When we find ourselves sympathetic to another, we find that the other is in our 'emotional energy range,' and that an emotional response is awakened by their presence. "This response is awakened with my sympathy, and may also die with it, since it depends upon my emotional attitude to the person who is the object of my sympathy."
There then is a weakness present in sympathy such that without the action of the will, sympathy persists; it tends to blind and obscure the innate value of the person. Sympathy in itself is not friendship and cannot constitute a love for others, despite the reality that at least initially, it pulls one another into a single orbit and makes the persons feel emotionally close.
It may and does creates some of the conditions for true friendship and love to arise, but without a conscious desire of goodwill and benevolence, 'I want what is good for you,' a simple, sympathetic relationship falters.

While sympathy may at times pass for goodwill, its effect is not long lasting. It is illusion. For what is real, remains. It is here that sympathy may be blinding. Often persons, acting under the sphere of pure emotion, mistake it for friendship.
As a result, for example, marriages may be based not on friendship, a direct act of will, but on sympathy; if one does not engage the will, at some point the marital relationship dissolves. In  friendship, the act of choosing, the desire of what is 'for the goodwill for another' is actively and necessarily engaged. Both friendship and goodwill are absent in relationships founded in mere sympathy.