Carl Jung – Intelligent Christian Spirituality

Deepening Spirituality: Wisdom from Modern Sages

The ideas below come from my ongoing reflections on the works of some of the greatest sages of the 20^th and 21^stcenturies, people like Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Thomas Merton, Ken Wilber, Karen Armstrong, and Richard Rohr. I think about their ideas until I make them my own, then rewrite them in my own words. Here are some of my favourites:

A proof of God everyone can experience: we long for truth, freedom, goodness, and happiness and we long to have all these supreme goods to the max, which is what God is, so what we all long for is God.

The loyalty of Jesus is not to Catholics or Protestants, Muslims or Buddhists, but to anyone who is suffering, whether believers or non-believers. Jesus is always on the side of the crucified.

Religion gives wider meaning to our lives. It makes us realize we are children of God, not just producers and consumers.

It is important to plumb the depths of at least one religious tradition. If you chase ten rabbits you catch none. If you dig ten shallow wells you never reach water.

Full conversion is intellectual (wisdom), emotional (compassion), and moral (individual and social responsibility). Conversion is many-sided.

Meaning is the bottom line in life, not money. Money is important, but life without meaning is not worth living.

The truly religious do not take themselves too seriously. The ability to laugh at yourself is similar to humility. A sense of humour is a sign of spiritual health and holiness. It is the joy of the gospel.

God does not want suffering. The only cause of suffering, beside human folly, is natural processes which are necessary in an evolving universe. Human folly is inevitable but unnecessary.

Religion and spirituality are far more about intuition than reason. Theology is very rational, but reason is very limited. It does not understand the ways and reasons of the heart.

Your relationship with others, particularly your partner, can be part of your spiritual practice.

Your true self is love, peace, and joy, and so the only real sin is to act contrary to your true nature, to violate who you really are, to not let your own God-given holiness shine forth.

Wisdom permeates everything, enters into our souls, and urges us to be friends of God.

God must be very familiar with letting go, because humans insist on being in control. God very seldom gets what God wants. This explains most of the problems of the world.

The purpose of evolution is to bring everything to the point where compassion and wisdom can be born through humans, so that the survival of only the fittest no longer applies.

Humans only live fully if freely joined to God. Therefore, God works by invitation not force.

Jesus chose a child as the model of discipleship. If we lose the qualities of our inner child: humility, innocence, playfulness, creativity, and genuineness, we have essentially lost our soul.

Mysticism, the profound experience of God, gives us the courage and energy to do justice.

Our desires are God-given gifts meant for living life to the full. Contrary to Buddhist teaching, desire is not evil. It is good to desire good things. This is the Holy Spirit working in us.

Most atheists think religious people are out of touch with reality. Most religious people think God is Reality, and therefore, atheists are out of touch with reality.

What matters is not so much doctrine as internal transformation. Kindness and goodness are praised by all religions, humanists, and atheists. These virtues are what unite all people.

Let no one delude themselves that knowledge of the path is an adequate substitute for walking in it. To know spiritual truth is one thing, to live it is quite another.

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and an educator of adults in religion. http://www.brucetallman.com

Unity Consciousness in Spiritual Experience

If you are spiritual you cannot ignore the flesh

you cannot pretend we don’t need the body

to live/breathe/move/see/hear/think/contemplate God

without the body and its senses there would be no spirituality

contemplation allows us to connect scriptures to life

to see how the God who liberated the Israelites

from slavery

wants to liberate us

from slavery

to addictions/codependency/consumerism/victimhood

however, “Shame and aggression are central

in the human psyche, particularly men –

and these are the universal ‘original wounds’

not ‘original sins’ – and they are hard to shake”

– Otto Rank

but prayer heals

and translates religion/doctrines/dogma

into vital spirituality

and we pray in the first person

subject-to-subject

our soul to God’s soul

we say, “Lord, I am sad/joyful”

not “Lord, he/she/it is sad/joyful”

Carl Jung’s personal myth of meaning

which he also found expressed in the Western Mystics

was the myth that God needs us

to become more and more conscious

so that God can become conscious of the whole

which is what the Spirit is leading us to

the core of spiritual experience

is the same in all religions:

unity consciousness

which is not a phantasmagoric mystical experience

but rather a life-changing sense

of the unity of all things –

no more separation

we are all one

with God/others/ourselves

the whole Creation.

LOVE KNOWS NO HIERARCHY

In Japan, the traditional sects:

Pure Land/Nichiren/Zen Buddhism dwindle

and new ones faithful to Buddhist teachings

try to humanize Japanese culture

alienated by technology and debilitating wealth

in Japan, like many countries and religions

hierarchy dominates and is a dirty word for many

but both oppressive/dominator/political

and growth/actualization/psychological hierarchies

exist – and the latter serve us

by showing us the road to human development

in ancient Greece, even love had (age-related) hierarchies:

philia – the bond of family and friends when you are young

eros – the bond of lovers when you are adult

storge – the bond of empathy when you are broken by life

agape – the bond of God-love when you finally surrender

the supreme love – the love of God

was preceded for Augustine by the “love of wisdom” –

“philo-sophia” or “philosophy” which he discovered

thru the Roman philosopher Cicero’s book Hortentius –

love of wisdom turned Augustine away from his sinful life

and toward God

philia is love expressed in family and community –

brotherly/sisterly/communal love –

eros is love longing to be one with the other

storge is love feeling what the other feels

agape is love repaying evil with good

agape loves those broken/rejected/marginalized

but according to Carl Jung agape begins with self-knowledge –

a religious undertaking because it involves

getting to know your shadow – all the rejected/lost parts of your soul –

embracing your shadow is the main path to healing

and to the unconditional love of God – how can you believe

God unconditionally loves you

if you don’t unconditionally love yourself?

Spinoza, a philosopher, agrees with Erich Fromm, a psychologist:

proper love of the soul/self-love/self-affirmation/courage

and proper love of others and God are all interdependent

and so all loves are part of each other – all loves are one.

STORIES R US

Hildegard of Bingen’s famous visions

made her sick until she wrote them down

and communicated them to others.

God will not let us bury our talents/visions/stories

– they are given to us for the common good.

Carl Jung’s story about humans is that

we are all interdependent and interrelated

not just interpersonally but cosmically –

from this came his idea of the Collective Unconscious –

whereas Sigmund Freud atomized humans

seeing each one as an independent individual

Jung fits much better than Freud

in the quantum interconnected story of the universe.

A basic quantum theology principle:

ultimate meaning is embedded in stories not facts –

ideologies/mythologies/worldviews/religions

create our world more than facts.

The main components of the new story

of the emerging Interspiritual Age:

the evolutionary consciousness movement

the developmentalist movement

Spiral Dynamics/Integral Theory/Einsteinian physics

all these together create a new metaphysical story.

In the other major story –

the materialistic/scientific/rationalistic one –

Meister Eckhart’s spiritual concepts are hard to grasp –

the “God-beyond-God” and “praying to God

to rid him of the concept of ‘God’” –

since all our concepts of God are false idols.

Even simple Bible stories written for the common good

need interpretation: the meaning of John 3:16

changes radically depending on how you interpret

“everyone who believes in Jesus will not perish” –

does “believes” mean “intellectual assent

that Jesus is the Third person of the Trinity”

or “everyone who trusts in Jesus” will be saved?”

Biblical interpretation is the story about the stories

that created western civilization.

HOW TO HARNESS YOUR MIDLIFE CRISIS

In early childhood we are who we are in a straightforward, direct way. We love and trust life and other people spontaneously. We are uninhibited, so nothing is held back or hidden.

However, usually due to conditional love from our parents, we learn quickly that certain things we say or do will be rewarded, and other things will be ignored or punished. We learn to hide certain parts of ourselves in order to be loved by others.

As we move through adolescence toward adulthood, we learn even more that we must repress parts of ourselves in order to be tough and competitive and stand on our own two feet in the world. Our ego must become strong so we can survive.

In childhood and adolescence, the repressed parts of ourselves get buried in our subconscious mind. However, in mid-life, which can extend anywhere from thirty-five to sixty-five years of age, we have less energy to hold all this subconscious material down.

Weighed down with mortgages, jobs, parenting, and other responsibilities, and aware that we may not live a lot longer, often in mid-life we suddenly feel an urge to rediscover the freedom and spontaneity of our inner child or inner adolescent. Our subconscious, repressed parts start to emerge in our dreams, daydreams, fantasies, or in a general sense of restlessness or meaninglessness. We might have a powerful urge to write poetry, start a rock band, buy a hot car or motorcycle, party all night, have an affair, quit our job, or leave our marriage.

At this point, according to the great twentieth century psychologist Carl Jung, we have three basic options. The first one is to keep soldiering on, keep repressing all these seemingly irrational urges that are coming up, keep cutting off essential parts of ourselves. We may end up with an ulcer, stroke, or heart attack, or become cynical, bitter, and slowly die spiritually.

Or, at the other extreme, we can let the subconscious urges flood us all at once, so we are overwhelmed and become a mid-life crazy person who throws out all we have worked so hard to build, irresponsibly destroying our marriage, family, and career in the process.

The third option is to allow the subconscious, repressed parts to have a voice, listen to them, and let them into the conscious mind a little at a time so that we are in control of the urges rather than the urges controlling us. We can look at our urges and decide rationally which would be wise and which would be foolish to act on. This is the healthiest option, to slowly integrate the repressed parts of ourself back into our life without destroying what we have built so far.

Jung called this third option “individuation.” It is our true self calling us to let go of our ego, to integrate our conscious and subconscious minds, so that we become a whole person again.

In this third option, we reach “second naivete,” that is, we let our inner child play through us in a mature way. Letting our inner child out may seem foolish to the person who has become cynical and bitter, just as continuing to be responsible may seem foolish to the person who has chosen irresponsibility.

We are not called to become immature, that is, childish, but rather to become directly loving and trusting once again, that is, childlike, but in an adult way. Life has taught us some hard lessons, but we make love and trust our greatest priority again, without letting our guard down absolutely, as a child does. According to Jung, this is the essential work that needs to be done in mid-life.

THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL

For Carl Jung, consciousness and archetypes

underlie all religion –

religious symbols are a response

to power centers in the collective unconscious.

Jesus deserves the claim

of universal salvific significance

because he is the archetype

the paradigm, the living parable

of humanity, of God’s love for us

the human face of God’s mysterious care.

And for Jesus, no amount of

learning, authority, tradition, or sacredness

was immune to his challenges.

Even fundamental assumptions and values

like obedience to the Law

could be questioned and changed.

Catholic and Orthodox priests

made the Great Indwelling of the Holy Spirit

depend on membership and sacraments

and Protestant clergy made Spirit

depend on personal decisions.

Both tried to control

the Uncontrollable.

Transformation happens in ‘liminal space’

when we are in-between stages of

life, relationships, faith

when we are not in control –

transformation does not happen in our comfort zone.

William Blake, Chuang Tzu, and Zen

knew that vision and imagination

are necessary to counter

a world of rationality –

both reason and imagination are needed

for the marriage of heaven and hell.

According to Michel Foucault

the 18^th to 20^th century scientific Enlightenment

resulted in people becoming

“objects of information”

rather than “subjects of communication”

that is, persons became “its” with no

depth, intentionality, or personhood.

The spiritual void

in a culture of “its”

intensifies anxiety over

death, guilt, and meaninglessness –

all “existential threats of non-being.”

Pleasure and pain are inevitable

components of bodily existence.

Happiness is not all pleasure and no pain

but the ability to handle pain

and, when necessary, delay pleasure

preventing denial, blame, scapegoating and addiction.

All major religions

transform suffering into

deep connection to salvation.

Many great religious figures suffered

for others

or ascetical purification.

But religion was never just

how to handle suffering –

along with lists of sins

there were lists of virtues.

Christians added three theological virtues:

faith, hope, and love

to Aristotle’s list

of four cardinal virtues

justice, temperance, fortitude, and prudence.

Seven cardinal virtues

counterbalanced seven cardinal sins.

And beyond positively practicing virtues

there is non-elitist “street spirituality:”

seeking out the stranger

the broken, the prisoner

were part and parcel of the biblical prophets

wisdom literature, and saints

down through the ages.

All this is the opposite

of treating persons as

“its.”

SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Life’s central task

is consciously knowing

what we already unconsciously know

who we already are:

our True Self.

We already have

everything we need

our only need

is self-discovery

not self-improvement.

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