Gravity Always Prevails, Common Sense

"We do not [like to] live according to common sense. We don't like the critical voice; we don't like to come down." --Nothing Special: Living Zen   by Charlotte Joko Beck

We like compliments; we like flattery. They make us 'feel special.' "What 's the difference between the sound of the [cooing] dove and the sound of a critical voice?" asks Joko Beck in her book, Nothing special: Living Zen. It seems many don't like the 'criticism.' We, according to Beck,"don't just hear the voice; we attach an opinion to what we hear." An opinion is not the same as a fact. Facts are easily verifiable. The sun for example, gives light; it rises and sets on a cycle. Our opinions may be formed variously, changed and reformed. They are not facts.

For many 'staying up,' as Beck calls it, is a quest to always float, like a ballet dancer suspended in air. But gravity, the fact of the matter, prevails and we return to the ground. Common sense is not something most of us admittedly indulge in. Our preferences trend more to the fictitious, the imaginary, the wishful. And we all have this same inclination. Some say that hope springs eternal. "
 Yet like it or not, life consists of much unpleasant input. Seldom does life gives us just what we want..."  We spend our time trying, like a juggler, to keep all the balls up in the air, to avoid a crash.

Fact may be that in most, if not all lives, illness and injury are a component of daily living. Injuries may be both mental and physical; we can't avoid disappointment, loss or grief. Seeking to 'take out some insurance' against unpleasant events, we often think the best course is to avoid any 'contact with painful reality.' Our minds spinning, racing busily ahead, we persist in trying to avoid all pain. We plan, strategize, evade, stonewall, avoid, fear, resent; we look for the best way, we think to avoid all pain.
Doing what we can to feel safe and not scary, we just want to be undisturbed. The ultimate action of the mind is to transform facts, what is neutral, and real into another state, so as to think that what disturbs, is unpleasant, challenges us, cannot get near us--not ever.

"We want to stay up in our cloud of thought about our enterprises, our schemes for self-improvement." And while self-improvement such as improving our health, losing weight, learning a new language and the like can be beneficial, the 'wheels go off the wagon,' if you will, when we add on to the improvement effort a notion or desire to protect ourselves from the ups and downs of life. Some, for example, believe that eating certain foods or engaging in rituals or other practices will keep them from diseases such as cancer, or they'll  live longer.
We try to insulate ourselves in these instances from the base unpleasantness of life. It just has to be some body's fault! 

The struggle between the 'sound of the cooing dove' and the rasp of reality continues to cause suffering; for as long as one attempts to avoid or imagine, life is not simply as it is. Our opinions continue to enforce our behaviors, behaviors may become demands. Demands unmet may become painful resentment, rather than sense-perceptions from our faculties. Carefully sitting with them, life as it is, allows us to observe our thoughts, to become aware of our physical senses, to listen to our body.
Gaining honesty about our opinions, our self, those around us brings clarity to the day. When we realize that there is 'nowhere to get to,' that we are already arrived in the right place,  just this moment, our suffering ceases. Acceptance now takes its place.

Jung: The Psyche, an Androgyny

“The most important aspect of the psyche is the “soul-image.”
--Inner Work by Robert A. Johnson

For psychologist Carl Jung, the understanding of dreams and making the unconscious conscious are at the heart of the individual. While there are, in his view, other significant factors influencing one’s behavior and thoughts, for Jung archetypes and dreams are a pathway. The concept of archetype comes up frequently in reference to dreams and what he calls “Active Imagination.”

Archetypes as described by Jung are a most provocative concept. While an ancient idea, Plato also held a like concept he called, “ideal forms,” or forms pre-determined to come into the world as the divine pattern. Jung took the idea and fused it with individuals.
In his view, individuals hold in common primordial symbols which express their deepest motives, the world over. Even if an individual has not personally experienced something, the mind, in a dream state, may still conjure the symbol.
In the dream state then, symbols appear to represent universal human themes and individuals appear to represent “energy forms,” or those distinct, inner personalities, the inner-self.

Dreams often aid in the resolution of conflict through symbolic means by bringing the unconscious and the conscious into harmony.
In his book about the subject, Inner Work, Jungian psychologist, Robert Johnson writes, “Most people can’t face inner conflict at all; they impose a kind of artificial unity on life by clinging to the prejudices of their ego and repressing the voices of the unconscious.
If there are parts of ourselves who have different values, or needs, most of us would rather not hear about it.”

Thus, the categories which we determine to be good or bad are mostly arbitrary and subjective. They are without absolute.
In Jung's view, we are actually all plural beings, possessing any number of conflicting and opposing, distinct personalities co-existing in one body.
This is familiar to most us; we like some things, love others, dislike, or are uncomfortable about still more.
Making the self conscious or transparent is a life long task. It is the move towards wholeness and wellness. The most important aspect of the psyche is the “soul-image.”

As part of the sense of plural being, Jung proposes the theory that the psyche is, as a result, an androgyny. It manifests itself as ‘containing both feminine and masculine energies.' While every man needs “to connect his masculine energy” to his feminine energies, women also need to connect their feminine energy to their “masculine” self.
Doing so creates balance within the individual. The psyche spontaneously divides masculine and feminine, appearing to the conscious mind as complementary opposites like yin and yang, dark and light. “They are destined to make a synthesis, one stream of energy.”