You know
all those affairs you have had, are having, or think about having? It’s your
Soul saying, “How about me, baby?” Or, it’s your Soul seeking comfort and
consolation in the arms of Love. Either way, Soul is at the bottom of it,
behind it, beyond it, wondering when you are going to wake up and understand.
Soul
communes with us, communicates to us, through projections. One way we see Soul is
in the form of actual or imaginary lovers. We have to learn to see Soul in the
person of the other person. What does she/he have that we need beyond the
pleasure of sexual attention? What is the source of our attraction to THIS
person and not the one sitting next to her/him, or standing behind, or in
front, of her, him? What sets THIS person off, makes THIS person “hot”? Why
THIS person and not that one, or that one over there?
We have
to do the work of making the Unconscious Conscious here. What is trying to come
to life in our Unconscious? What is striving to become Conscious in our
Unconscious? What is struggling to be born in us and through us into the world?
When we
make the Unconscious Conscious, we bring forth into our actual, physical, life,
qualities and characteristics that were latent in our Unconscious, waiting to
be born. We make the Unconscious Conscious by becoming Conscious of certain
aspects of the Unconscious and giving them expression in our life. We exhibit
them and make them a part of our way in the world. We integrate them into our
life and they become and aspect of who we are. Of who we now are, which is who
we have always been, and who we will be.
Carl
Jung said, “We are who we always have been and who we will be.” We make this
statement a reality as we make the Unconscious Conscious. This is our work. We
live to make the Unconscious Conscious in the time left for living. This is the
Hero’s Journey, the Spiritual Quest, the Search for the Holy Grail and the Land
of Promise, and the work of Enlightenment—bringing the Unconscious forth into
the light of day, making the Unconscious visible and apparent in the context of
our life. Incarnating God.
The work
of the Incarnation is this very thing: Making the Unconscious Conscious,
bringing God forth into Human life. The equation of God with the Unconscious is
not as blasphemous and heretical as it seems. This is not to reduce God to
human form, but to raise the Unconscious to the level of the Divine.
We all
are both God and human being, the visible form of the Living God (to use
Biblical terms most of us are familiar with). This phraseology is simply an
attempt to say what is at stake in the experience of bringing forth the
Unconscious, of making the Unconscious Conscious and apparent in “the field of
action” (Joseph Campbell), in the world of space and time.
This
requires us to re-think the standard view of God—to move beyond the doctrinal
definitions (“God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable in his [sic]
being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth” – Answer 4,
Westminster Shorter Catechism, 1647) into the realm and work of “the evolution
of the idea of God.” We “grow our understanding of God” by “bringing God forth”
in the field of action, which is our life in the world of space and time as we
make the Unconscious Conscious.
Carl
Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct
your life and you will call it fate,” and,
“What is not brought to consciousness, comes to us as fate.” Or, to get
us back to where we came in, it comes to us as an actual, physical affair with
a hot little honey or a big manly hunk—or as an imaginary, fantasy, affair we
dream of and wish could be real. What needs to be real is not a sexual liaison with the subject of your desire, but the
actual qualities/characteristics/aspects that you find desirable about the
person who is attractive.
After the actual affair plays itself out, you
will still be attracted to people exhibiting the qualities that are stirring
within your own being, trying to come to life in your life—to be expressed and
exhibited in your way with life. You will project onto them the you you are
refusing to become, thinking that if you could only marry them everything would
be wonderful. If you do marry one of them, you will soon enough wake up to all
the things they also are and will wonder what in the world you were thinking
when you married this person—who will likely be wondering the same thing about
you. You both are in the same boat of trying to be completed in the other,
while your individual wholeness depends upon your bringing forth into your individual
lives who you are capable of becoming in the time left for living.
The work of Individuation (Carl Jung’s term) is
the work of coming forth into who we are—into who we always have been and who
we will be. It is the work of making the Unconscious Conscious—the work of
waking up to who we are and who we also are—the work of integrating the
opposites within into a complementary whole—the work of bringing ourselves
forth into the field of action which is our life in the world of space and
time. This is the work this is ours to do in the time left for living.
I’ll post some pointers here from time to time.
Encouragement for the journey, cool water along the way. I hope you find it
helpful.
