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Inner Work Blog

http://innerworkjohnson.blogspot.com/2007/10/cg-jung-on-symbolic-life.html

C.G. Jung on Symbolic Life

“Health calls for the all-embracing vision of myth, as expressed in

symbols. If the symbol is lacking, man’s wholeness is not represented

in consciousness. A symbol cannot be made to order, as the rationalist

would like to believe. It is a legitimate symbol only if it gives

expression to the immutable structure of the unconscious and can

therefore command general acceptance. So long as it evokes belief

spontaneously, it does not require to be understood in any other way."

“A symbol is the best possible representation of something that can

never be completely known.”

“A word or an image is symbolic when it implies something more than

its obvious and immediate meaning. It has a wider unconscious aspect

that is never precisely defined or fully explained … As the mind

explores the symbol, it is led to ideas that lied beyond the grasp of

reason.”

“Since we are dealing with invisible and unknowable things (for God is

beyond human understanding, and there is no means of proving

immortality), why should we bother about evidence? Even if we did

not know by reason our need for salt in our food, we should

nonetheless profit from its use. There is, however a strong empirical

reason why we should cultivate thoughts that can never be proved. It

is that they are known to be useful.”

“Man positively needs general ideas and convictions that will give a

meaning to his life and enable him to find a place for himself in the

universe. He can stand the most incredible hardships when he is

convinced that they make sense … A sense of a wider meaning to

one’s existence is what raises a man bond mere getting and spending.

If he lacks this sense, he is lost and miserable."

“Man is in need of a symbolic life — badly in need. We only live banal,

ordinary, rational, or irrational things…where do we live symbolically?

Nowhere, except where we participate in the ritual of life … Have you

got a corner somewhere in your house where you perform the rites, as

you can see in India? We have art galleries, yes — where we kill the

gods by thousands. We have robbed the churches of their mysterious

images, of their magical images, and we put them into art galleries.

That is worse than the killing of the three hundred children in

Bethlehem; it is a blasphemy …”

“Only the symbolic life can express the need of the soul—the daily

need of the soul, mind you! Everything is banal, everything is “nothing

but”; and that is the reason why people are neurotic…They are all glad

when there is a war: they say, “Thank heaven, now something is going

to happen—something bigger than ourselves! You can see them, these

travelling tourists, always looking for something, always in the vain

hope of finding something. On my many travels I have found people

who were on their third trip round the world. Just travelling,

travelling, seeking, seeking … the eyes of a hunted, a cornered animal

—seeking, seeking, always in the hope of something…A career,

producing of children, are all Maya compared with that one thing, that

your life is meaningful.”

“We cannot turn the wheel backwards; we cannot go back to the

symbolism that is gone. No sooner do you know that this thing is

symbolic than you say, “Oh, well, it presumably means something

else.” Doubt has killed it. My psychological condition wants

something; I must have a situation in which that thing becomes true

once more. I need a new form…I am not going to found a religion, and

I know nothing about a future religion I only know that in certain

cases such things develop…You have to guide people quite slowly and

wait for a long time until the unconscious produces the symbols that

bring them back into the original symbolic life. Then you have to know

a great deal about the language of the unconscious, the language of

dreams. That is modern psychology, and that is the future."

Paradox and Wholeness

"'Take some more tea,' the March hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

'I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, 'so I can't take

more.' 'You mean you can't take less,' said the Hatter. 'It's very easy to

take more than nothing.'" (Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in

Wonderland)

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that

concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and

immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and

could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he

would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr

would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was

sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have

to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to." (Joseph Heller,

Catch-22)

These are examples of paradox. Our daily lives are filled with apparent

contradiction which, viewed from a different perspective are

paradoxical. You can never resolve paradox, but you can dissolve it if

you will sit with the contradictions until a synthesis occurs.

There are two kinds of suffering: unconscious suffering, which we

experience as neurosis, and conscious suffering, which provides the

keys to the kingdom.

“The way to the goal seems chaotic and interminable at first and only

gradually do the signs increase that it is leading anywhere. The way is

not straight but appears to go round in circles. More accurate

knowledge has proved it to go in spirals…”

--C.G. Jung, CW12, Psychology and Alchemy, para 36.

“ … the individual may strive after perfection but must suffer from the

opposite of his intentions for the sake of his completeness…under

certain conditions the unconscious spontaneously brings forth an

archetypal symbol of wholeness. …it is given central and supreme

importance precisely because it stands for the conjunctions of

opposites. Naturally the conjunction can only be understood as a

paradox, since a union of opposites can be thought of only as their

annihilation. Paradox is a characteristic of all transcendental

situations because it alone gives adequate expression to their

indescribable nature.”

--C.G. Jung, CW9ii Aion, para 123,124

Words often destroy what is true. How ironic that I make my living

with words.

As Lao-Tsu informed us, "If it is true it cannot be said and if it can be

said it is not true." St. Paul suggested, "The word killeth." Language is

a cultural trap that we often become entangled in. The trickery of

words is a masculine problem that also shows up in the animus of a

woman. Two proverbs resonate deeply: In the Christian tradition God

says, "If you had not already found me you would not search for me,"

and in the second instance, "to search for God is to insult God."

Posted by ruhljohnson at 1:09 PM 2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Speaking literally destroys truth. Speaking metaphorically

conveys it. The province of truth is poetry. Who hath ears

to hear, let him hear.

February 12, 2008 12:54 AM

bb said...

This is a beautiful and bitter truth. And, sadly, for me, it is

why, after thirty years of writing, I still struggle with

revealing words. I want them to set me free, to have a

transformative quality, the same as any art, but, with

words, an especially dangerous form, another might

choose to nail me to the wall with them. I wrestle between

my own truth and that of those who would define me with

them, and rigidly so, if I gave them a chance.

Words are impossibly risky...

February 19, 2008 8:25 PM

Three Kinds of Loneliness

There are three kinds of loneliness: loneliness for the past, loneliness

for what has not yet been realized, and the profound loneliness of

being close to God. The third kind of loneliness is actually the solution.

The first kind of loneliness is regressive. It attacks early in life, during

adolescence or early adulthood. We want to return to where we came

from. We want the comfort and security of the good old days, the way

things used to be. How many times do your dreams take you back to

early times—the playground, the backyard, the tree you used to climb,

your grade-school friends? This is the backward-turning loneliness, a

hunger for the Garden of Eden.

There isn’t much we can do about it. We can’t go back. The Bible

describes an angel with a flaming sword at the gate of Eden,

forbidding re-entry. Backward-turning loneliness is the mother

complex, the wish to return to our mother’s womb. This becomes the

will to fail, the propensity to relinquish power and regress. It’s the

spoiler in a person, stronger than most of us are able to admit. When

you have an exam at school or an interview for a job and you feel

terrified, this is probably the fear of success. The enemy is inside. The

first step toward curing any psychological problem is to acknowledge

it. When you can put name and form to it, when you can say what you

are lonely for, you’re halfway free. Being conscious is your greatest

ally. If you are able to admit to yourself how much you wish to fail,

this is the beginning of a cure.

Loneliness for the way things used to be can spoil a marriage, wreck a

job, and leave you inert in almost every aspect of life. None of us is

free of it. It is the wish to return to primal innocence. Grieving is

another manifestation of harkening back to what was. We’ve lost

something. Sadness and loneliness are understandable, but they’re

backward-looking. It’s not just the loss of the other; it’s also the loss of

an arrangement – a place to invest our highest potentials. We may not

feel ready to take it back, to bear its weight, but all backward-looking

qualities are doomed. We can’t go backwards.

The second kind of loneliness is the longing for what is possible but

has not yet been realized. An alive, vigorous, functioning human being

has a vivid intuition of what he is capable of. His intuition leaps

forward, and he knows what is possible. This comes up in fantasies.

He knows there is a perfect woman out there somewhere; a love affair

that will touch him to the core of his being. He’s lonely for what he

does not have. He sees “out there” what really belongs “in here.”

Being stuck this way is a problem, because our value and sense of

meaning are always outside of ourselves. There’s someone or

something or someplace or some condition that, “Just as soon as…”

The first loneliness drives one backward and downward. The second

loneliness drives us forward and upward. It is, at least, a progressive

loneliness. It drives us to accomplishments. But both drive us.

The third kind of loneliness is the most subtle and difficult. It is the

loneliness of being dangerously close to God. It is more than most

people can stand. To be near but unable to touch something that you

want more than anything is unendurable. A medieval proverb says:

“The only cure for loneliness is aloneness.”

We go from loneliness to aloneness, from solitude to vision, and a kind

of redemption takes place. The loneliness vanishes, not because it gets

filled, because it was illusory in the first place. It doesn’t have to be

filled; it can never be filled. A new kind of consciousness comes that

does not find the immanence of God unendurable. The proximity of

God is always registered first as extreme pain.

There never was anywhere to go outwardly. But there was a lot to do

inwardly. This change of consciousness that turns loneliness into

solitude is genius. Each time the handless maiden comes to a crisis,

she goes to the forest in solitude. This is especially powerful in a

woman’s way. It is the feminine spirit.

In the western world, loneliness has reached its peak, or its nadir. It’s

everywhere. The old ways of protecting us from loneliness — extended

families, community, marriage, church — have worn thin. We no

longer invest in them. We’re at the point where the King has killed the

frog, and we feel perpetual, incurable loneliness.

When we’re in this kind of pain, we cry, “Please free me from my

suffering.” But if our understanding is deeper, we’ll go off somewhere,

sit still or lie face down, and determine not to move until the issue is

resolved. For some time, it isn’t possible to do this, and the journey is

hellish, culminating in the world of ice. I don’t know if it’s possible to

get through this stage more quickly or whether it’s a set path that we

have to go through at its own pace, not ours.

If you’re honest, you can tell the difference between regressive

loneliness, the first kind, and the ineffable third type of loneliness,

when you have seen what you can’t have. If you can say exactly what

you are lonely for, it will reveal a lot. But doing so takes courage. Do

you want to go back where you came from, to the good old days? Or

have you seen a vision you can’t live without? They’re as different as

backward and forward.

Dr. Jung, with pithy oversimplification, once said that every person

who came into his consulting room was either twenty-one or forty-five,

no matter their chronological age. The twenty-one year old is looking

backward and must conquer it. The forty-five year old is being touched

by something he cannot yet endure.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 3:05 PM

1 comments:

Shawn said...

Terrific post. I have struggled and felt loneliness a lot in

my life, and strongly relate to these three types you

describe. I must touch on the third nowadays, because it

seemed like when I started spending more time alone my

loneliness become something very different than pain. It

didn't feel bad. I haven't been as literally connected to

people as I once was, but I feel more connected to the

'whole' than ever.

A song I appreciate called "Loneliness" has an amazing

line: "Loneliness itself is full of life waiting to be

discovered, and waiting is never wasted time." It somehow

wraps up all three stages for me.

Thanks for such a great post.

February 27, 2008 4:36 PM

Listening to Your Interior Intelligence

Robert, on his first meeting with Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung in 1948,

as discussed in our book, Balancing Heaven and Earth:

Dr. Jung saw the potential in me as well as the dangers ahead. I

remember sitting there thinking, “This man is just like me, except

infinitely wiser. He understands me completely. He understands.”

But I can see now that was part of his genius. He was not like me at

all, but he was capable of making me feel as if we were of one mind.

Later, when I saw him in other circumstances I realized that our

personalities were quite different, then I thought, “This man has

deceived me. He tricked and manipulated me.” But as I reflected on

that day in Kusnacht, I realized that he had given me a very special

gift. Not only did he know how to speak English to me, he knew how

to speak in the typology I could best relate to. He chose examples and

even figures of speech that were consistent with my introverted

feeling type of personality.

This, it seems to me, is pure genius. Many brilliant people display

their knowledge by talking in big words and mighty concepts that

serve the dual purpose of inflating the speaker and confusing the

listener. They sit like Olympian Gods and expect other people to learn

their language. But Jung could adjust his discourse in a way that

would best serve the needs of the other person. He was a great

intuitive thinker, but he did not speak to me in abstract intellectual

language; he addressed me in the feeling language that I could relate

to.

This is the essence of what I learned from Dr. Jung: Listen to your

interior intelligence, take it seriously, stay true to it, and -- most

importantly -- approach it with a religious attitude. His psychological

term for this is individuation -- the discovery of the uniqueness of

yourself, finding out what you are not and finding out what you are.

Individuation relates to wholeness, but it is not some indiscriminate

wholeness, but rather your particular relationship to everything else.

You get to the whole only by working with the particularity of your

life, not by trying to evade or rise above the specificity of your life.

This is the blending of the golden world and the earthly world. This

can provide a truly religious life in modern times.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 11:45 AM

http://innerworkjohnson.blogspot.com/2007/10/cg-jung-on-symbolic-life.html

2009:M O N D A Y , A U G U S T 1 0 , 2 0 0 9

Inner Collective Weather

I have been reflecting on the concept of PSYCHIC WEATHER which I

once heard someone speak of in Zurich. I need much more training in

this subject, but I cannot find another teacher. It makes such a good

analogy to look at some recent events of our modern world as if they

were a kind of INNER WEATHER in the PSYCHIC world. Everyone is

capable of viewing the OUTER WEATHER (THE RAINDROP KIND) as

a non personal happening, but if there is such a thing as COLLECTIVE

INNER WEATHER that we all share in common, few people are

capable of viewing it as equally impersonal as OUTER WEATHER.

The thought comes to mind that INNER COLLECTIVE WEATHER

should be taken as impersonally as the OUTER WEATHER. One could

be free of a great deal of guilt which most people carry about with

them. If they could differentiate the two kinds of WEATHER. Such a

division would allow one to take appropriate measures for each kind of

WEATHER.

INNER COLLECTIVE WEATHER would be the kind of suffering which

is raging through our culture during the last few months and is so

often viewed as a personal experience. Both WEATHERS get one

"wet", so to speak, but the two are best treated by very different

attitudes. INNER COLLECTIVE WEATHER is the accumulated

mistakes of our whole historical experience but is not a personal

matter. Ordinary OUTER WEATHER is an immediate highly personal

experience. To assign guilt to the wrong level is useless suffering. To

confuse these two attitudes is to leave one in a helpless confusion of

cures that has no conclusion.

What can we say about INNER COLLECTIVE WEATHER? From the

above manner of thinking, it is a profoundly deep attitude which is

proving to be incorrect. History gives us some terminology that is

useful for this inquiry: before the age of Copernicus COLLECTIVE

THOUGHT was that the earth was the center of the universe and

everything else was to be judged as peripheral to the earth.

Copernicus upset this attitude by teaching that the sun was the center

of our universe and our earth dependent on the sun as the center of

our known world. Outer thinking slowly changed to the Copernican

model but failed to make use of the model as an inner fact. It is high

time we think of the Copernican model in an inner sense; if we could

go through a Copernican revolution in an inner sense by seeing the

center of our personal universe as not the ego, but as the SELF (as

Jung defined it) we would have a far more accurate model of our

human experience. To make this transition would be extremely

difficult for modern man - who is used to thinking of his ego as the

center of his universe - but it would be far closer to reality than our

present ego-centric attitudes.

To put this in the simplest manner: It is time we made the Copernican

revolution true inwardly as well as outwardly.

I am uncomfortable when I hear people saying that we will pull out of

the present depression in six months or so and be back to normal

again. If the Copernican revolution in its inner sense is required, no

slight alteration of our "normality" will help. We had a chance at such

a revolution several times in recent history but did not recognize it.

Intelligence would urge us not to fail this chance.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 7:17 PM 6 comments

F R I D A Y , J U L Y 3 1 , 2 0 0 9

Placebo or Symbolic Effect?

In a recent study imaging the brains of patients with major

depression, some of the patients had positive therapeutic responses

but did not receive the anti-depressant. “We were just looking at the

placebo group as a control group,” noted Dr. Leuchther, author of the

study. “It was really quite a surprise to us to see significant changes in

brain function in those who received placebo, activity comparable to

those patients who had received antidepressants for several weeks.”

Although sham surgery is rarely used, in a trial of arhroscopic surgery

for osteoarthritis of the knees, there was no difference in pain

improvement between those getting actual procedures and those

simply receiving incisions and sutures (Moseley et al, 2002)

Arthroscopy allows inspection of a joint cavity via an illuminated

fiberoptic scope. Fragments of degenerated cartilage thought to be

causing inflamation and pain are removed. Prior to this study,

arthroscopic knee surgery was considered standard practice and

nearly three-quarters of a million such surgeries were performed

annually in the U.S. In the trial one group of patients had the surgery

while another group was anesthetized and given three stab wounds to

the skin with a scalpel. Both groups showed comparable levels of

improvement with respect to knee pain. The researchers concluded

that the billions of dollars spent on such procedures might be put to

better use.

The placebo effect has been characterized as something to control and

minimize in clinical research because it confounds studies, something

to cultivate in clinical practice, and something present in all healing

encounters. These distinctions are too often collapsed into a black box

containing those healing elements that are not well understood. One

person’s placebo may be another’s active treatment.

The word placebo is Latin for “I shall please.” In Chaucer’s

Canterbury Tales written in the fourteenth century there is the story

of an old two-faced lecher named January who wants to marry a young

girl; he discusses this plan with a man named Placebo, who advises

that whatever he wants to do is fine and wise. In the 19th century this

sense of the word had been adopted by physicians for any medicine

adapted more to please than to benefit the patient.

The actual intervention that elicits the placebo effect may be words,

gestures, pills, devices and, as in the case of arthroscopy, even

surgery.

Assuming that the placebo response is highly polymorphic in human

populations it is reasonable to expect that pluralistic healing

modalities trigger a placebo response. What has been disparagingly

called the placebo effect and relegated to the category of a nuisance

in research studies, is in fact an evolutionarily adaptive trait, for the

individual and the social group. Opportunities for catalyzing a placebo

response by triggers to the mind, body and senses and diverse, which

explains why patients are choosing to use multiple healthcare systems

interactively.

The old language of placebo restricts our ability to think about

complex healing, and I would propose that we rename it the symbolic

effect. Researchers increasingly require more subtle ways to examine

and describe the variety of catalysts involved in self-healing. The full

range of human experience may catalyze a placebo response, and it

does this through the power of symbolization and meaning to the

patient. Rehearsing or visualizing is a mode of directly producing an

outcome. A symbol has both conscious and unconscious dimensions,

many of which can never be known. A symbol is open-ended,

polyvalent, and has an inherent capacity to bring together that which

has been torn asunder. Symbols are powerful agents of

"wholemaking."

Posted by ruhljohnson at 1:12 PM 0 comments

The Individuation Process

Individuation is a term that Carl Jung invented. It lacks poetry, but if

you are searching for meaning in your life you are individuating. It is

the process of you becoming yourself – that which you were put on the

face of the earth to achieve. It was Jung’s genius to realize that every

person is born as unique in his or her personality as in a physical

structure. The shape of your ears, the color of your eyes and your hair,

the contours of your body, your thumb print -- these are unique to you.

It should not be a big surprise to find out that your psychology, your

personality, are equally unique. To discover your uniqueness, this is

the individuation process.

Søren Kierkegaard, a 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian

wrote about faith in God, the institution of the Christian Church,

Christian ethics and theology, and the emotions and feelings of

individuals when faced with life choices. He summed up the

individuation process (though he never used that term), when he

wrote that there are three kinds of men in the world. Simple man

comes home after work and thinks about what is for dinner. Complex

man comes home after work and ponders the imponderables of the

world. Enlightened man comes home after work and thinks: What is

for dinner? It looks like a round trip.

Similarly, a Zen proverb says: The simple man sees the mountains as

mountains, the rivers as rivers and sky as sky. Then one loses one’s

way and the mountains are no longer mountains, the river is no longer

just a river, and the sky is no longer sky. This is that awful, in-between

stage in which we worry everything to death and read into all about

us. Then, for the man who has had satori, the mountains are again

mountains, the river is a river, and sky is sky. This is other language

for the individuation process.

My first analyst in Los Angeles, Fritz Kunkel, used to say there are

three kinds of people in the world: red blooded people, pale blooded

people, and gold blooded people. These are all ways of talking about

individuation.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 1:04 PM 1 comments

What is Progress?

Lewis Mumford wrote a wonderful book on modern civilization and

the growth of our cities. He did not believe that we were making much

progress in a true sense. There has been enormous change in the past

100 years, but has our consciousness progressed? Mumford noted that

the 12th century gave us cloisters and Thomas Acquinas. The 18th

century gave us no cloisters, but indoor plumbing, and Voltaire. The

20th century gave us no cloisters, plumbing, and Norman Vincent

Peale. Perhaps today we would substitute mega-churches. I believe

this was said tongue-in-cheek, but it speaks in an interesting way to

the illusion of progress. How do we measure progress, as individuals

and as a culture?

Posted by ruhljohnson at 12:58 PM 2 comments

M O N D A Y , J U N E 2 9 , 2 0 0 9

The Gift of Stopping

In our busy lives today, we all need reminders that stopping is

possible. Stopping is going nowhere happily, turning away from the

hurry that fills so much of modern life.

Each day you can give yourself a mini-vacation, simply by stopping

what you are doing so that you can reside in being for a few moments.

Let go of paying bills, returning phone calls, crossing things off your

to do list, and take some time to just be.

I recently had a patient whose life was in a shambles, but still she

could not seem to adjust the pace. She brought her cell phone to our

sessions and interrupted our conversations to take calls. One day,

exasperated, I asked how much she made per hour.

“I bill my service out at $120 per hour,” she said proudly.

I inquired, “Can I hire you for an hour.”

She agreed to this. I hired her for one hour and told her I wanted her

to sit in a chair and not go anywhere or do anything. She did it. She

wouldn’t do it because she needed it, but she would do it for $120.

That was the only way I could get her to stop doing and contemplate

being.

Although it is hard for us to slow down, the synthesis of life’s tensions

and contradictions requires a quiet place. Continuous doing generally

flips more energy into the complications that already exist in our lives.

For example, when couples are having trouble with their marriage,

often the first solution is, “Let’s go on a holiday. We will take a

vacation, and then we will feel better.” Well, a modern vacation

generally involves expending more energy, traveling long distances,

doing things from morning to night and spending money. That doesn’t

help. It most likely will send the oppositions that trouble you farther

apart. How often do trips like this result in conflict?

Anyone in the second half of life must find ways to, in the felicitous

phrase of the Swiss psychiatrist, C.G. Jung, “decently go unconscious.”

We all require relief from the tension and burdens of ordinary

consciousness, and it is natural to seek altered states. (Watch children

spin in circles until they become so dizzy that they fall down. They will

laugh themselves silly, get up and do it again). To decently go

unconscious means purposefully stopping the constant, droning buzz

of information that floods the mind – but not by blotting out

consciousness through excessive and soulless work, eating, drugs,

shopping, sex, television, or other compulsive and repetitious

behaviors.

Through the quality of our attention we can step outside – transcend –

our habitual patterns and gain harmony with something greater and

more complete. There is a long and rich spiritual tradition by which

people achieve transcendent states using prayer and meditation. Life

begins to flow again. One is open to the vast potentials and

possibilities of the universe.

We are so busy living that much of the time we don’t question how we

experience, and as a result we neglect most of what is possible for us

to sense, feel, or think at any moment. But it all still exists. Paying

attention is essential for expanding one’s consciousness.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:28 AM 3 comments

Complexes

Each day we have choices to reclaim stuck and outmoded aspects of

our being.

The poet, Rumi, urges us heed the call:

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep!

You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep!

People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two

worlds touch.

The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep!

So-called imaginary pains hurt just as much as legitimate ones, and a

phobia of illness has not the slightest inclination to disappear even if

the patient himself, his doctor, and common speech usage all unite in

asserting that it is nothing but “imagination.”

In dialoguing with dream figures we are trying to alter our

relationship to the complexes. The universal belief in spirits is a direct

expression of the complex structure. The royal road to the gold in the

unconscious goes through the complexes, which are the architects of

our dreams and our symptoms. As Jung noted, this road is not so very

“royal,” however, since the way is more like a rough and uncommonly

devious footpath that often loses itself in the undergrowth. Whereas

the ancients euphemistically referred to the Furies, which had to be

propitiated cautiously, the modern mind conceives all inner activity as

its own and simply tries to assimilate these energies.

For so-called primitives the world of the spirits has a real existence.

Where this “naive” perspective is lost through civilization, we speak of

dreams or fantasies or neurotic symptoms rather than spirits or

ghosts, and thereby attribute less importance to them.

Primitive pathology recognizes two causes of illness: loss of soul

(those complexes which naturally belong) and possession by a spirit

(patterns not naturally belonging to the self. Similarly, for modern

people we can imagine two classes of complexes, 1) all those

potentials that could just as well be part of our conscious repertoire

were they not rejected or repressed for some reason and deemed

incompatible with out conscious personality; and, 2) those potentials

which may exist in the collective but don’t rightfully belong as part of

the conscious personality.

These “spirits” appear when the individual loses his adaptation to

reality or seeks to replace an inadequate attitude with a new one. The

primitive knows how to converse with his soul, whereas we are unable

to suppress many of our emotions; we cannot change a bad mood into

a good one, and we cannot command our dreams to come or go. As

Jung pointed out, we believe we are masters in our own house only

because we like to flatter ourselves. Semi-autonomous patterns take

over our thinking feeling, and actions.

Recognizing how relative and even arbitrary many of our patterns of

thought and behavior are can help us to let go of them and open to the

exhilarating notion that there are other ways of being. We all rely on

yesterday’s patterns of response—that is how all life learns, adapts,

grows and copes with the demands of life. The problem is clinging to

the fixed and the known even when it is clear that these are no longer

serving us. By midlife the accumulated life becomes a crustaceous

shell. Our solutions are often actually the problem. Why should we

imagine that the attitudes of one stage of life and development of the

personality would be adequate for another stage?

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:25 AM 1 comments

Rice and Vitamins

In 1905 there was an enterprising young British physician living in the

East Indies. This man of science observed something quite

unexpected; he grew curious and went to work to understand this

phenomenon. It was the custom in Malaysia at this time to feed

prisoners brown rice and water and nothing else. It wasn't an ideal

diet, but the prisoners lived on it. Then the missionaries came and

declared, “You really must do better by your prisoners than this; you

must feed these people properly.” In response, the prison officials

began doling white rice out to their captives. When they did this,

many of the prisoners responded by dying. Observing this cultural

clash and looking into the cause of the deaths, the British physician

discovered that the polishings of the brown rice contained an essential

element for the human diet—he had discovered vitamins, and it was

he who named then; vita (life) min (source).

In the interim period of a hundred years we are now doing much

better in understanding basic human needs on the physical level. But

on the symbolic level, we have become poverty stricken. As soon as

something is missing in the human diet, be it physical or

psychological, symptoms appear. Something essential is missing from

our psychological diet today, and that something is as important to life

as any vitamin—it is connection with feeling.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:14 AM 1 comments

S U N D A Y , A P R I L 2 6 , 2 0 0 9

'What is'

“To this day, ‘God’ is the name by which I designate all things which

cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset

my subjective views, plans and intentions, and change the course of

my life for better or for worse.”

-- C. G. Jung

Posted by ruhljohnson at 9:09 AM 0 comments

“The great problem of our time is that we don’t understand what is

happening to the world … Our values are shifting, everything loses its

certainty … Who is the awe-inspiring guest who knocks at our door

portentously?”

--C.G. Jung, Letters, II, p. 590

Posted by ruhljohnson at 9:08 AM 0 comments

Confusion

Confusion is seen as a mistake, even a madness. In truth, our potential

for psychological growth reveals itself in moments of disruption. The

gift of confusion must be honored to clear a space in your life for

something new to claim you.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 9:07 AM 0 comments

Repetition

“Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular and by nature it is

interminable, repetitive and very nearly unbearable.”

– Flann O’Brien

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:59 AM 2 comments

Understanding Levels of Truth

Years ago I began looking into the bewildering plethora of TRUTHS

that the modern world lays out for a guileless youth. I grew up an

unquestioning Baptist youth taking everything that my wonderful

Grandmother poured out to me in her story telling love. How could

one question such an outpouring of love and devotion? But

predictably, I came to the age when I did question and I began a

search through every religion I could lay my hungry hands on for

something to BELIEVE. My youthful organ of BELIEF was very raw

and gullible, but it did have its natural faculty of discernment.

I was dazzled by the Catholic Mass, awed by a Jewish Synagogue,

puzzled by a Christian Science temple, startled by a Yoga teacher,

impressed by a somber Presbyterian church, swept off my feet by the

glittering promises of a Parmahansa Yogananda temple, hopeful at the

Christian Science view, respectful at a Unitarian Church, even

touched by a Swedenborgian Church* - and finally settled down to the

good sense middle way of the Episcopal Church. Even here I was not

quite sure between Low Church and High Church, but settled on a

Low Church congregation. Settled, yes, but I often went to the big

Catholic Church near by just to soak in the delicious pageantry of the

Mass. I was ensconced in the Episcopal church and remain in its fold

to this day.

As if all this was not bewildering enough for a youth, I had taken my

first job as organist and choirmaster of a large Protestant church

called the First Christian Church of Portland Oregon.

All of these came down in a clattering crash within a year as my job

disillusioned me of church organizations and my approaching

adulthood brought a sharp faculty of discrimination to bear on the

whole subject.

There followed the most painful and dangerous period of my life, a

time so torn with conflicts that I still marvel that I survived it. A

Jungian therapist taught me some truths I could believe, salvaged me

from that painful time bordering on disaster - and gave me the

beginning of a profession.

Out of all that mess I remember one issue that still claims me; that is

the teachings of Parmahansa Yogananda. Those teachings were far

past the possible limits of belief, but they were so delicious that I

refused to relinquish them into the fairy tale realm which they

resembled. Life is too somber and dry if I have to give up

Grandmother and her fairy tales along with Parmahansa Yogananda,

but my discriminating faculty would not allow either one.

Page by thirty years of reasonably workable life that have little to do

with the present subject - my year in Zurich under the watchful eye of

Carl Jung, later study with Toni Sussman in London, England, years of

experience as a Jungian Analyst, settled roots in Southern California.

These were good and stable things in my life, but two profoundly deep

roots unfulfilled, followed me. Carl Jung settled one of them; he taught

me the art of discrimination of levels and how to hear Fairy Tales on a

LEVEL appropriate to them. Fairy tales ( and Grandmothers also) are

powerful TRUTHS if one obeys the art of LEVELS to understand them.

No one can negociate a modern life and avoid schizophrenia without

the art of LEVELS firmly in place.

The remaining unlived stream of life, unexplainable but indelible, was

India and its yoga and reincarnation and promises of realms far

beyond present possibilities. Parmahansa Yogananda had left me with

a hunger for something that was totally impossible, a complete

collision of realities. Unfathomable but indelible. Later I read a quote

from Dr. Jung who was asked to read THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A

YOGI by Parmahansa and he labeled it "Pure Coconut Oil". Well, yes it

is; but I refuse to let loose of it's genius even so.

Time came for me to bring these two opposites into collision to see

what I can do with these two manifestations of TRUTH. I went to

India, not just once, but twenty times, a three month trip every winter

for twenty years, to search out this collision in me! I have a workable

solution now, but the paradox is still in me. How does one survive a

collision of a direct crash between outer non-truth and inner longing

that is so strong as to be vital? The answer, so far as I have

accomplished it, lies again in the art of LEVELS.

I can best explain this by an event in my own life: A teacher asked

twelve-year-old Peter Nelson in his class, "Is there anyone here who

still believes in Santa Claus?""Yes", replied Peter; Teacher "You really

believe in Santa Claus?" Peter, "Yes, --- inside." So Peter articulated

the answer to an unanswerable dilemma: Yes, Santa exists, if you are

sure of your levels.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:45 AM 1 comments

T H U R S D A Y , F E B R U A R Y 2 6 , 2 0 0 9

Individuation

This is the essence of what I learned from Dr. Carl Jung: Listen to your

interior intelligence, take it seriously, stay true to it, and -- most

importantly -- approach it with a religious attitude. The psychological

term for this is individuation, discovering the uniqueness of yourself,

finding out what are and are not. It is your particular relationship to

everything else. You get to the whole only by working through the

particularity of your life, not by trying to evade or rise above it. This is

a truly religious life.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 4:10 PM 1 comments

Intimations of Immortality

A friend recently reported a dream:

I am in a house, perhaps a house of worship. Some nice people are

somewhere in this house. Jordis Ruhl (recently deceased) and "her

mother" enter the house. It is now my house. Jordis says she wants

some clothes to wear. She looks good, though shorter now. A good

figure, I think. I tell her that I am surprised that she wants clothes,

and I apologize that there is not much of her stuff left, just spring

clothes. She chooses some accessories such as belts, scarves and

jewelry. I again express surprise that she would want these things,

since I thought she was in a spiritual form now. She says, "Oh, no. I

have a real body, and I still want pretty clothes." I wonder why I was

not told about this new type of body that exists after death. We would

most certainly want to know about this. End of dream.

Death is such a mystery. We are not designed to fully comprehend it,

perhaps. As another friend advises, "Our minds slip over it, as if the

idea were Teflon coated."

Death brings up profound questions. Where does the profound

richness of life go when someone dies? Does it dissipate into

darkness? Our dreams suggest otherwise. The deep psyche shows no

signs of ending with physical death. We die, and we do not die. When

the dew drop falls into the ocean, it is no longer a dew drop, but is it

gone?

Posted by ruhljohnson at 3:55 PM 0 comments

Lent and Sacrifice

Sacrifice is an important concept for anyone interested in leading a

religious life, but most people today seem to think that sacrifice means

giving something up, such as candy at Lent. This is how shallow our

religious sense has become. Sacrifice really involves the art of

drawing energy from one level and reinvesting it at another level to

produce a higher form of consciousness.

Learning the value of meaningful sacrifice is not the same as denying

pleasure or practicing asceticism. There is a wonderful saying from

the Judaic tradition suggesting that every legitimate joy you deny

yourself on earth will be denied you in heaven. This speaks to the false

spirituality of asceticism. Trading in one thing to get something better

is not a spiritual act at all; in fact, it is highly egocentric. You shouldn't

make a sacrifice in hopes of getting something back from God. I see

many people who pray so that God will make things to the way they

would like, or go to church to achieve some social standing or some

other worldly goal. This is not sacrifice. A sacrifice should be suffered

simply because it is necessary for the transformation of consciousness

-- to get beyond the wishes of your ego, not to satisfy those wishes in

some backhanded way.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 3:45 PM 4 comments

Death and the Infinite

What is the greatest wonder? That death comes yet man lives each

day as if he were immortal. Death does not exist. The wind of life flows

from the infinite. The infinite drinks death. When death itself is

destroyed, one contemplates infinity. Krishna's advice to Arjuna in The

Mahabharata

Posted by ruhljohnson at 3:40 PM 0 comments

2008:M O N D A Y , D E C E M B E R 2 9 , 2 0 0 8

An Incarnation of God

Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet and storyteller, wrote

beautifully that he was walking down the road one day when a woman,

unknown to him, came up and knelt before him, asking simply and

directly and with no further introduction if he would be the

incarnation of God for her. There are strict laws over this in

traditional Indian customs, and if one appoints another for this role,

he or she must have no other relationship but that of worshipper to

God. One must not become a pest, nor mix up other desires. With this

safeguarding and understanding the two may undertake such a

relationship in old India. Tagore thought quickly and decided that it

was his duty to carry this role for the woman -- so he agreed. For the

rest of the lives of these two people that was their agreement.

I have watched people in their interactions in our society and have

longed silently for the language and the understanding and the

collective backing in which one might give true proportion, depth, and

dignity to a relationship in this manner. People here, no less than in

traditional India, are capable of worship and worthy of relationship of

that kind, though we don't understand it, we have no form for it, and,

more often than not, we are seared by the intensity of it or invest it in

other forms which are not suitable containers. Then we have the

inevitable tangles so characteristic of our age.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:42 PM 1 comments

Only One Endures

Only love heals love. That which breaks us and poisons our happiness

is the only recompense, the only antidote. It is not a cure because

there is no cure for death. Is there a healing? Love and the end of love

are inextricably linked, which is why we fear them so. We know deep

down that love will irreparably wound us, but there is nothing else to

replace it. Love and death are bedfellows, like you and I once were,

yet only one endures.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:30 PM 0 comments

S A T U R D A Y , D E C E M B E R 1 3 , 2 0 0 8

Robert Memories of Europe in 1947

I had left the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich after Christmas of l947

simply because I had run out of funds and had to return to the U. S.

That was very sad for me but unavoidable. One does not argue with

money, especially when it makes it's presence known negatively. I

surveyed the time and place and wondered if I could see something of

Italy before I returned to America. It was a lonely trip to Paris for

Christmas holiday with friends, then even more solitary to go by train

to Rome and then stretch out my funds still farther to Florence. I

remember what a lonely time it was to be exploring such grandeur all

by myself, the days being richer in magnificence than I could bear all

by myself, the nights being even more solitary. I felt I was

accumulating more impressions than I could safely bear alone.

Then Florence on a very cold snowy day with everything at low ebb on

that early January day. The city was only beginning to recover from

the great War and such things as fuel or heat mostly unknown. I found

the Ponte Vecchio and was warmed by the still resonating story of the

bridge being spared because neither the German Army or the U.S.

forces could bear to destroy the bridge where Dante had first seen his

beloved Beatricce. It thrilled me to my heart that stone could be saved

from bombardment by the power of a story of Love. So I stood on the

bridge and defied the snowy cold with the warmth of a mere

story.

But another story defied the cold and taught me yet another proof of

miracle.

With no other human in sight on the bridge I heard a thin voice ask

me - in near perfect English - "Mister will you hire me as your guide?"

It was a little, thin teenage Jewish boy shivering silently beside me,

and of course I could not refuse him.

His story came pouring out of him: in the terrible night two years

before, word circulated the Jewish community that the German

soldiers were gathering up every Jewish person of any age to be killed

in the half day remaining before the Allies broke into the southern

edge of the city. Thin rumor had it that any child small enough to be

wedged through the iron rods of the ornate gate before the Vatican

might survive. My thin companion was the youngest of his family and

barely -BARELY- fitted between the medieval bars of that ancient gate.

He fell to the ground on the other side of those few inches of safety

and lived by the mercy of PiusXII for the next two years. He never saw

or heard of his family again.

By the time he was finishing his story we were eating a thin meal of

spaghetti (I, with tomato sauce to help), he refusing my demand that

he also was to have more than bare spaghetti. He argued only that he

was not used to such things.

I had almost no money at that point in my trip but the boy took

matters in his hands and led me down the row of jeweler's shops that

jut out precariously from the two sides of the famous bridge. He

announced in his imperial voice that "His American master wished to

see the gems - but only the best!" I was turning a couple of coins in my

pocket trying to convince myself that I had at least had two coins to

rub together as I looked over tray after tray of cut diamonds, rubies,

star gems, etc. The boy knew exactly the right moment to announce -

with disdain- "None of these are worthy of my American master" and

lead us off to the next shop.

If the fantasy of the cash that the gem merchants lost to the rich

American still reverberates around the stalls of that famous bridge,

their counterpart still ring in my head of the fact that I have so much

as looked at such priceless gems.

I did go music shopping and still treasure some of the Italian Baroque

music I took away.

The boy left, (though I will never forget him), I searched out Western

Union to get my accumulated mail, staggered away reading the

telegram that my Father had suddenly died. Enough is too much and I

could not manage anything more than the train ride through the

Gothard tunnel back to Zurich to find some friends I could talk with.

But the story is not yet finished: in Zurich I found a letter waiting for

me from "Benny" another of the fateful carriers who guides me into

the next step of my life, with some fistfulls of American money and a

note telling me to return to school and finish the year. It was in the

time following this that I had my private time with Dr, Jung and also

met my English friend - and her two adopted sons - both profound

events of my life.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 4:08 PM 7 comments

S U N D A Y , N O V E M B E R 1 6 , 2 0 0 8

Heavenly Must Be Enlarged to Include Earth

We are the product of centuries of Christian training that teaches us

to abandon our earthy nature in order to accomplish our heavenly

goal. I think the original teaching of Christianity was that Christ, the

prototype of true man, is equally god and man. I was thrilled to learn

that the word HERESY is not the dictates of some old men in the curia

in Rome, but precisely the error of believing that Christ was more man

than god or more god than man. This, the basic tenant of Christianity,

somehow got misplaced into the belief that the more spiritual

(heavenly, god-like) we could become the more nearly we had come to

true Christianity.

For many people today the task is to divinize their earthy nature. How

does one make one's earthy nature heavenly?

I was stuck at this point for many years and unable to get past the

impasse of spiritualizing my earthy side. If viewed in this context it

meant 'de-earthing' my instincts, especially sexuality, and disdaining

everything earthy about my nature. My fundamentalist Christian

upbringing taught me that everything of the body was sinful and to be

at least kept to a minimum. Even fun and joy were suspect. I

remember my Grandmother's stern forefinger admonishing me, "Now

cool that happiness or you will offend our beloved Jesus'.

This might be excused as stern measures needed to compensate for

the excesses preceding the Victorian age, but it is exactly the wrong

medicine for our overly abstracted thought-dominated present age.

From this I learned who the THEY are who look over one's shoulder

and disapprove of some Dionysian revelry one is engaging: THEY are

the militiamen/women who are devoted to keeping the old rules intact

when a new era is needing a new set of standards. THEY carry an

illegitimate but terrible power over one. What will THEY think if they

knew what one is doing - or even thinking?

This leaves us at the very cutting edge of evolution and requires some

new terminology. New wine cannot endure in old wineskins - as

scripture tells us.

I found a new area to explore when I could replace the word

CONSCIOUSNESS for DIVINIZING. To make something conscious

which had been unconscious is to prepare it to stand in the skies along

with its heavenly twin. Then both can take on godly beauty and

divinity.

Another word must be updated if we are to avoid a stalemate;

HEAVENLY must be enlarged to include EARTH. Heaven in not some

other time some other place, but is here and now; and it is here and

now that the process of the divinization of our earthy side must be

accomplished.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 5:34 PM 3 comments

M O N D A Y , O C T O B E R 2 7 , 2 0 0 8

60-second Creativity Workout

The Fountain of Youth is a legendary spring that reputedly restores

the youth of anyone who drinks of its waters. Florida is said to be its

location, and stories of the fountain are some of the most persistent

legends associated with that state. No wonder so many retirement

communities exist there. A long standing belief is that Spanish

explorer Juan Ponce de León was searching for the Fountain of Youth

when he traveled to present-day Florida in 1513, but this concept did

not start with him, nor was it unique to the New World. Tales of

healing waters date back to the ancients. Immortality is a gift

frequently sought in mythic stories of treasures such as the

philosopher's stone, universal panaceas, and the elixir of life.

While our modern economy profits from the cult of youth, what is

really needed as we age to remain energized and vital is to tap our

inner fountain of creativity. This energy is free, refreshing and always

available. To access it only requires an attitude of tinkering, discovery,

and play.

In our outer-oriented, materially focused society, imaginative play is

too often put aside, confined to the weekend, or left to “creative

types.” But when we become too serious and overly dutiful, our work

and life become dry, boring, and unspired. Under the weight of duties

and responsibilities, our inner creative energies can be gradually

squeezed out of us. Yet this irrepressible youthful quality lives within

each of us, at least as a potential.

In the spirit of play we may toss together elements that were formerly

separate. To play is to foster richness of response, to reinterpret

reality, to experience life in unforeseen ways. Imaginative play is

different from an organized game, such as football or a symphony,

which has rules and a definite goal. When we watch professional

sports on television, we see a highly constricted form of play; even

amateur sports increasingly seem to be motivated less by “love of the

game” than by a display of pride or greed.

Imaginative play is a divine quality that you can bring to anything, an

attitude and a presence rather than a defined activity. When play is

free, and not choreographed by some existing rules or regulations, it

is ambiguous, exciting, risky, and open to new possibilities.

We all know people and institutions that do not age gracefully. Some

trade youthful enthusiasm for what society calls ‘responsibility’ and

become reactionary, defensive, and stiff – cut off from the creative

spirit of creation. Far too many old people become hypochondriacs,

pedants, or applauders of the past as substitutes for the broadening of

the self that is called for as we age. The instinctive youthful creative

energy must be cultivated in the second half of life, or we can easily

become morally rigid, dogmatic, judgmental, and authoritarian.

Interestingly, our religious traditions inform us that this playful access

to creativity is essential throughout life: We are told only those who

“become as little children” can enter the kingdom of heaven. In

psychological terms this means that we will not experience the divine

aspects of life without a childlike, lighthearted quality in our efforts.

Any human ability atrophies when it is not used. Your imaginative

capacities, like your physical muscles, require exercise to get back or

stay in into optimal shape. Here is a 60-second exercise. It can be

practiced at any time during your day, to help get your imaginative

power back into shape. By practicing it you will bring more creativity,

flexibility and fun to your work and your life.

Close your eyes and visualize a pen slowly writing your name on a

blackboard. Now try visualizing some different shapes: a triangle, then

a square, and then a circle. Now visualize the face of a loved one. Next

hold in your mind’s eye the image of a favorite place you have visited

in nature.

Next, imagine touching one at a time: the rough surface of concrete, a

feather, the cool water of a mountain stream, a silk scarf. In your

imagination, experience the taste, temperature and texture of: ice

cream, one raisin, a peanut, a ripe peach, and a chili pepper.

Now imagine that you smell: a rose, fresh cookies, an ocean breeze,

popcorn. Then, with your eyes closed, imagine you can hear: someone

calling your name, rain on the roof, an ambulance siren, people

talking in a restaurant, a tiny bell.

Don’t worry that entertaining “irrational” or downright silly energies

will unseat your personality. When you allow these unlived potentials

to become conscious it actually increases your integration, your

creativity, and your vibrant feelings of being alive.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 9:05 AM 1 comments

T U E S D A Y , O C T O B E R 1 4 , 2 0 0 8

Dr. Ruhl Named Executive Director of Houston Jung Center

The Jung Center of Houston recently announced the appointment of

Dr. Jerry M. Ruhl as its new executive director, effective January 1,

2009, following an extensive international search. Founded in 1958,

The Jung Center is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting

the development of greater self-awareness, creative expression, and

psychological insight individually, in relationship, and within

community. Dr. Ruhl succeeds Dr. James Hollis, who has served as

The Jung Center’s executive director since 1997.

As a vibrant non-profit serving the psychological needs of the Houston

community and beyond, the Houston Jung Center requires a unique

combination of therapeutic expertise, management experience, and

teaching excellence in its next director, said James Reeder, president

of the board of the center. "Jerry has all of these qualities, and his

leadership will be a great asset to the center as we continue our vital

work of promoting psychological wholeness among all Houstonians,

regardless of background or resources."

Dr. Ruhl's background reflects a lifelong commitment to education,

communication, and the promotion of psychological well-being. With

Robert A. Johnson, he is the author of three best- selling books on

psychology and spirituality: Living Your Unlived Life (2007,

Tarcher/Penguin), Contentment (1999, HarperSF), and Balancing

Heaven and Earth (1998, HarperSF). A Jungian-oriented psychologist

most recently in private practice in Dayton, Ohio, Dr. Ruhl brings to

Houston a wealth of clinical and teaching experience. Prior to his

training as a psychologist, Dr. Ruhl was a journalist and managed

corporate and marketing communications for two major corporations.

"I feel honored, energized, and confident in the certainty that there is

no better place for me to be of service than the Houston Jung Center,"

said Dr. Ruhl. "While I leave Ohio with a sense of both loss and

appreciation for my clients and the C.G. Jung Association of the Miami

Valley, to work beside such leaders in the field of depth psychology,

religion, and the humanities as James Hollis and J. Pittman McGehee,

as well as the talented and dedicated board, staff, and faculty in

Houston, is a privilege that I could not pass up.

“This Center is not only a valuable resource for the greater Houston

area, it is in a unique position to be a world-class institution reaching

beyond walls to inspire and challenge,” adds Ruhl. “In troubled times,

we need more than ever a caring and vital community to support our

development of intellect and soul. The Houston Jung Center must and

will continue the tradition of helping people find meaning, purpose,

and connection with what truly matters in life."

Outgoing director and highly popular instructor Dr. James Hollis will

continue to be meaningfully involved in the life of Houston Jung

Center. In addition to his regular Tuesday evening classes, Dr. Hollis

will maintain his role as the director of the Jungian Studies graduate

program offered through Saybrook Graduate School and hosted by the

center. “As Houston will soon learn, Jerry Ruhl is a warm, personable

man, an author with excellent teaching skills, extensive administrative

experience, and is most attuned to the mission and constituency of the

Jung Center,” Dr. Hollis said.

The Houston Jung Center is a nonprofit educational institution where

those who treasure the world of ideas and learning gain fresh

perspectives and deeper insights into the human condition. Through

classes, programs, and grant-funded outreach collaborations, the

center provides a forum for psychological, artistic, and spiritual

discourse and advancement.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 11:39 AM 2 comments

W E D N E S D A Y , S E P T E M B E R 2 4 , 2 0 0 8

A Trust to God

Abdu'l-Bahá, who was the son of Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í

Faith, once interpreted a dream that was brought to him by a very

troubled woman. She told the dream: “A young girl became evident to

me as belonging with the family, but I could not make out who she

was. She spoke of a horse that my son had once had long ago, but I

did not understand what she meant. After a time it became known that

she was my daughter and I felt grieved to think that I had not been

conscious of her presence in all the past years. She seemed not hurt,

but surprised that we did not understand her. Just as I was waking, I

realized that she was our little baby who had passed away over 21

years ago, when only nine months old.” At this, the dream ended. The

troubled woman added, “She was my idol, and because I loved her so

much, I tried hard to put her out of my thoughts, and the dream made

me feel that we should not do this.”

Abdul Baha responded: “That child is your trust within the charge of

God. She was a child when she went, but you shall find her full grown

in the Kingdom of God. You shall find her mature. You shall not find

here there as a child. You shall find her perfect and mature. As to the

horse once belonging to your son of which she spoke in the dream,

this means a wish. It shows that your daughter has fulfilled her wish

and her desire, and that shows the loftiness of her station. The wish is

one in which your son shared, you’re your daughter has attained to it.

It is my hope, God willing, that he too will attain to it.”

The aggrieved woman was still crying and Abdul-Baha continued: “Do

not cry. Be happy because you saw her, and you saw her perfected.

You must be happy. She is your trust with God. You have not lost her

out of your hands. The only difference is this; that you gave her as a

trust to God as a child, but you will take her back as a fully mature

person. I had a son who was four years old, and when he died I did not

at all change my attitude. I gave my son to God as a trust, and so at

his death I did not grieve.”

The woman said: “But there is a difference, you gave your son to God,

but God takes ours.”

Abdul-Baha replied: “It is the same thing. In both cases it is a trust of

God. The cause of her surprise in the dream is this – that you are

crying. Your departed daughter would say: “I have a good mother. She

must be happy. Why does she cry?” Your daughter now belongs to a

realm in which everything becomes mature, and she expected you to

see her in the state of perfection in which she manifested herself to

you. It is not good for one to try to forget (those who have departed).

One must always remember them. But you must be happy. You gave

her as a trust to God.”

Posted by ruhljohnson at 2:30 PM 0 comments

Remembrance and Celebration: Jordis Ruhl

Jordis Elaine Langness Ruhl

12/7/56-9/22/08

Jordis Ruhl, wife of Dr. Jerry M. Ruhl, died this week after two-and-a-

half years of living with a brain tumor. Jordis' life was characterized

by love for and service to others, in the tradition of the Bahai

teachings that were instrumental in guiding her adult life.

A friend once asked Abdu'l-Bahá, the Bahai prophet and leader, “How

should one look forward to death?”

Abdu'l-Bahá replied: “How does one look forward to the goal of any

journey? With hope, and with expectation. It is even so with the end of

this earthly journey. In the next world, man will find himself freed

from many of the disabilities under which he now suffers. Those who

have passed on through death have a sphere of their own. It is not

removed from ours; their work, the work of the Kingdom, is ours; but

it is sanctified from what we call ‘time and place.’…Those who have

ascended have different attributes from those who are still on earth,

yet there is no real separation. In prayer there is a mingling of station,

a mingling of condition. Pray for them as they pray for you. When you

do not know it, and are in a receptive attitude, they are able to make

suggestions to you; if you are in difficulty, this sometimes happens in

sleep. It is not possible to put these great matters into human words;

the language of man is the language of children, and man’s

explanation often leads astray.”

Posted by ruhljohnson at 2:23 PM 3 comments

S U N D A Y , S E P T E M B E R 1 4 , 2 0 0 8

Musings on Hell

A perinatal (the period around the time of birth) interpretation of Hell

tells us that if there is an astral hell like the one some people report in

near-death experiences, hell's function is not damnation, but spiritual

transformation (as one may read in Christopher Bache's thought-

provoking work, Dark Night, Early Dawn).

The metaphysical vision that emerges is one that balances

accountability with compassion. It integrates the necessity that we

learn from our mistakes with the realization that our ability to make

mistakes is one of the things that makes us precious to the Creative

Intelligence. Instead of being the final resting place of those who have

rejected God, hell may be part of a developmental sequence of

imperfect persons who are drawing closer to their inherent perfection.

For spiritual practitioners, it is their passionate impatience to awaken

to the transcendent dimension of being, and to awaken others, that

causes them to plunge deeper and deeper into this purifying ordeal.

As we draw near to the source of our existence, to that from which we

originally came and in essence always are, we approach as a small

flame drawing close to a large fire, Bache notes. Fire merges with fire

effortlessly, but due to our history, our fire nature has partially

crystalized into the constricted patterns of fragmented consciousness.

As we approach this larger fire, our inner flame flares as if in response

to its presence. The closer we come, the more brightly it glows until it

begins to burn away and set free everything in our history that

constricts it. Because our history is a record of our life in space-time,

as it is burned away we suffer the excruciating "loss" of that life. The

more brightly the flame burns, the more we suffer until we think that

surely there is no surviving this, and there IS no surviving it. That is

the point.

Only when the work is finally done can we possibly begin to

understand hell's mercy. Only when it has freed us from that which we

mistakenly cherished most can we comprehend its love.

IS IT POSSIBLE THAT HELL IS NOT HEAVEN'S OPPOSITE BUT THE

GUARDIAN AT THE DOOR WHICH HEALS EVERYTHING? HELL MAY

BE GOD'S CLOSEST COMPANION, FOR IN TRUTH IT MAY BE

SIMPLY THE TRANSIENT FLASH OF PAIN EXPERIENCED BY OUR

URGENT RETURN TO OUR SOURCE. THERE IS NO PUNISHMENT

HERE AND CERTAINLY NO BANISHMENT.

Rather, there is simply the brief if terrible combustion that results

when we feel we must shed our history as fast as possible, and "safely"

staying apart from the Divine Presence is a far worse fate than

suffering in it. Hell may indeed be heaven's purifying fire.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 11:12 AM 1 comments

T U E S D A Y , A U G U S T 2 6 , 2 0 0 8

Our Conflicting Job Description

We humans are given a conflicting job description. We must be

civilized human beings and that requires a whole list of dos and

don’ts, culturally determined values such as courtesy, politeness,

fairness, efficiency – all the virtues. This is our duty to society.

Simultaneously, we are called to live everything we truly are, to be

whole. This our duty to our higher self or to God – to be whole, and

authentic. To be all that we were put on earth to become. This creates

a collision of values. We avoid waking up to the conflict because it is

too frightening.

While you can’t reel in the years past, you can go to your unlived life

and discover what it would be like to follow different routes than the

ones you chose. There are ways to do this without causing damage to

you or others or undermining the life you have worked so hard to

build. This is the real meaning of growing up. Growing up to your full

potentials. In some instances you will find places to express unlived

potentials externally, rearranging priorities and outer life. You may

discover your true vocation or new directions in work or relationships.

You may discover you have outgrown old patterns and transcended

the need for things that once seemed important. Then you can quiet

the noise inside you and gain more contentment. You can let go of

nagging and negative thoughts and habitual patterns that hold you

back.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 12:29 PM 0 comments

The Notes Unchosen

Beethoven was asked how he composed music, and he said he

unchose certain notes. What are the unchosen notes in the

composition of your life?

Posted by ruhljohnson at 12:24 PM 1 comments

The Second Half of Life

Never before in history have people lived so long. Average life

expectancy in the United States is now 78, up from only 47 in 1900,

thanks to clean water, improved nutrition, better sanitation and

medical breakthroughs such as antibiotics and vaccines. Two

generations ago a typical forty-year-old was frequently ill and nearing

the end. For us today, this is only the mid-point, a time for taking

stock, setting new goals, renewing our life purpose. Today there are

an estimated 77 million baby boomers (ages 39 to 57). What are we to

do with these "extra" decades? Repeat the same activities and

patterns that carried us through the first half of life? Or utilize what is

unlived in us to create greater wholeness, fulfillment and satisfaction?

You have an ego and the spark of something godlike or divine within

you. The I, or ego, that subjective sense of self, is our name for the

center of consciousness. We work hard to get ego awareness going in

the first half of life – the whole educational system and socialization

process in invested in this. Most psychotherapies are designed to

patch people up, make them more productive, better adapted socially,

and then throw them back into the rat race of life. Even when such

treatment is successful, over time you can watch them wither under

the weight of it all.

To be complete must recognize that we have an ego, which directs

earthly responsibilities, but also within us is the spark of something

godlike. It pushes us to become more integrated, more creative , more

whole. Dr. Jung called this the Self, with a capital S, to designate a

centering force for the entire personality – conscious and unconscious.

Aligning our lives with the callings of this Self is a worthy goal for the

second half of life.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 12:15 PM 0 comments

The Two Thors

This story all began when I was seventeen years old and fell heir to

the task of driving my grandmother to Spokane for the funeral of her

daughter-in-law. We left Portland, Oregon, and arrived safely in

Spokane to be guest of Thor and his wife (she was a cousin whom I

had known during our childhood years).

I was just then needing a hero in my life (no brothers or sisters, mostly

absent father, non functioning stepfather); Thor observed this and

took on that role for me. The afternoon of the funeral Thor took me in

tow, and we went hunting, rifles in hand, in a pine forest outside of

Spokane. I was full of admiration for this big strong Danish man and

was pouring out all my nacent masculinity to him. He played the role

perfectly and began teaching me the high art of hunting! Carry the

uncocked gun just like this, aim it down at the ground when walking,

search for an animal within shooting range. Never in my life had I felt

so big or IN before! We spied a squirrel on a branch a hundred feet

away and I was soaking up the lore of cocking my rifle, getting the two

sights on top of each other, then pulling the trigger slowly so as not to

move the gun's sights out of line ---------- then FIRE. I knew nothing

about backlash and nearly fell over backward from the blast and a

sound I had never experienced before.

I recovered my senses, looked for the squirrel - now vanished of

course - and was prepared to be chastised by my mentor with some

such phrase as "Missed, but a close shot." Thor and I walked over to

see the scene of my failure only to find the bloody mangled corpse of

the squirrel on the ground under the limb. Congratulations from Thor

and I suddenly felt the most impossible mix of horror at what I had

done and pride in the presence of my hero.

This, and skinning the body of the bloody squirrel back at home at the

end of our hunting expedition, was some sort of masculine rite that set

off a delayed adolescence that in hindsight was a major event of my

early life. I never saw Thor again but learned from my cousin that he

had turned into a drunkard bum who eventually left his family.

Skip three generations for the next part of my story.

The concept of generations has always puzzled me, especially when

they consist of people I have never met. The whole motion of the

passage of time and the miracle of human personalities still remains a

mystery to me. Our story now goes to a second Thor, whom I never

met, and the passage of more than 45 years when this god-like Nordic

name appeared in my life again.

It seems that my cousin married again, I did not see her for many

years since she was in Montana and I was in San Diego. One day she

called me and asked if I would participate in a birthday party for her

and husband a few weeks hence in San Diego, I would be pleased to

see her and the new husband (impossible that he would be a

replacement of my hero Thor). I had no idea how to throw a party, but

I would try. I asked my San Diego friend Michael to help this clumsy

introvert with the difficult assignment of hosting a party.

Even with help, I was afraid of being host for a party for someone I

had not seen for so many years since the funeral in Spokane -

especialy when I discovered there would be nine people crowded into

my tiny apartment. One of the

additional guests would be Thor, whom I had never heard about --

grandson of my heroic Thor, the man who so many years ago was

enshrined in my memory as a hero of youth.

The party went well, though I had been unable to find a story I could

tell as host. When I was introduced to the young Thor, I was startled

to find a thin, blond, shy replica of his grandfather, and I knew I had

the proper story for the birthday party. I would recount the shooting

of the squirrel with Thor (I) and discharge a huge debt. This thought

cheered me on immensely and I recounted in minute detail the saga

(still huge in my memory) of hero and gun and squirrel and the high

art of firing one of man's favorite inventions and the double feeling of

being master of the power of the high art of both destruction and

creation. Both these arts swam equally potent in my breast and still

stand high as one of the imponderables facing any conscious human

being.

The Birthday party went well - with the extroverted dimension of

Michael's help. I was racing along in my fantasy underneath it all on

the subject of godfathers and the very large place this had held in my

own development.

Godparenting is still known in modern custom but it generally takes a

place much lower than its original meaning. In modern times the term

indicates that someone agrees to care for a child if he or she should be

orphaned before adulthood. But its original meaning was much more

profound. Old wisdom knew that the relationship between parent and

child has worn a bit thin by the time the growing adult reaches his or

her teens, and the custom of godparenting was devised to give a

second chance at the powerful bond between child and adult which is

such an important transition. A friend of mine with a wonderful sense

of wit once commented that there are no handholds for one to hang

onto between getting a driver's license and qualifying for social

security. Godparents, in the original sense, are needed to traverse the

early part of this wasteland. My own passage of this early time was a

nightmarish chaos made possible only by godparents -- both men and

women-- who filled in that vacancy for me.

My Birthday party fantasy was: Here would be a skinny, shy youth

desperately in need of a handhold to help with the swirling rapids of

adolescence; it was also a chance for me to repay a karmic debt to his

grandfather who had saved me from a tortured loneliness of the same

period. I said nothing of my thoughts but began a correspondence

with the younger Thor, occasionally sending him some money, hearing

of his triumphs and failures, generally cheering him on. He courted a

girl, married her, and had a towhead son with her.

Thor the younger loved art, sculpturing especially, and began the

unheard of work of gathering bits of junk from car-wrecking dumps

and making imaginative sculptures of these worthless bits of castoff

trash.

My favorite piece of rejuvenated waste sculpted by Thor is a life sized

statue of Buddha, head made of a reincarnated carburetor, shoulder

pads of long useless brake linings, etc. No single piece does anything

but scream of its junk origin, but, miraculously, the whole structure

has a most powerfull sense of dignity. Another piece , all of derelict

auto parts, more than 15 feet tall, was bought by a wealthy donor and

ensconsed in a park of modern sculptures somewhere on the East

Coast of the United States.

I have only seen my two Thors, once each in my life, but both hold

high places in the pantheon of my lifetime.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 11:39 AM 0 comments

T H U R S D A Y , A U G U S T 1 4 , 2 0 0 8

Literalism is Idolatry

The British philosopher Owen Barfield said something that still

reverberates in my mind every day. He commented, “Literalism is

idolatry.” If you take the inner world literally into our time-space

world, you lose it.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I was in love with the

church and devoted to it. But as I grew older, I became critical and

left the church. I wouldn’t have anything to do with it. Later, I read a

medieval text that made Christianity real for me again. It said that

Christ is constantly being conceived, constantly being born in his

stable, constantly confounding the elders, constantly being betrayed

by Judas, constantly being crucified, constantly resurrecting, and,

most wonderful of all, constant in his second coming.

The doctrine of the Second Coming of Christ is, for Christians, the

greatest telling of the once and future king story. Early Christians said

that on the eighth day after his Resurrection, Christ will come and

usher the world into the new millennium, when time will end, strife

and suffering will stop, and the Kingdom of Heaven will be at hand.

Taken literally, this story doesn’t touch me very much. It’s too

abstract, too far out of reach. If we wait for this literally, we’ll wait till

doomsday.

But when we take this story out of literalism and into the interior

world, which has no time and no space, we have an immediate, living

fact. If we take the full story of Christianity inwardly, as a timeless

fact, these possibilities are available for us to touch when we’re ready,

or perhaps even when we choose. The Second Coming of Christ is not

just available to us; it is beating at our doors.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 1:56 PM 0 comments

Feeling, the Orphan in American Life

Feeling is the orphan or unlived faculty in our society.

Ours is a thinking-oriented culture that grades and tests and honors

and rewards people on the basis of their thinking capacities. Every

culture has its hierarchy of values, Thinking is our primary one, with

sensation coming in a close second.

Whenever you specialize you do it by robbing energy from its

opposite. We have robbed from our feeling function to achieve this

thinking dominance.

In considering feeling, I would prefer to abandon the term feeling and

substitute the word meaning or value. We don’t regard this faculty

highly enough of it to even give it a name of its own, so we use feeling,

which also determines if something is hard or soft, rought or smooth.

In general, feeling is more important to women, and so the

degradation of feeling in Western culture is even more painful for

them. We must define some terms: Feeling is not emotion. Emotion

simply means movement of energy. There is no proper or adequate

word in the English language for feeling in the sense of valuing.

Nobody knows what a feeling is. If someone has hurt my feelings they

have challenged or damaged my valuing system, the meaning of

myself.

Every faculty has its language. A thinker will tell you reasonably why

something is important but generally is not capable of bestowing

value. Sensation types will say that a new job pays $20,000 more per

year than the old job. There is no adequate language to talk about the

meaning of the job. Feeling is closer to saying, "It will serve my

relationships better, or I will be much happier there." If you get a man

talking about his profession you will get meaningful things in his

language.

It’s often the woman who carries feeling in a marriage and who will

talk about meaningful aspects of the relationship. In this culture men

so often depend upon a woman for the meaning of their lives. Many

men at the age of 60 are about 15 years old psychologically when it

comes to their feeling function. Conversely, the wife may be a 15 year

old in her reasoning facuty (but of course this is not always the case --

either partner may carry the feeling side). So the two trade insults

back and forth and both feel terribly misunderstood by their partner.

What can you do with a faculty that doesn’t even have a proper name?

We could start by trying to develop some language. To make a list of

what you value in your life is already in the thinking manner. Thinking

dominates our very language. The man in couples therapy so often

says, "The only feeling she brings is to burst into tears.” Quite

justifiably. People with opposite typology are often attracted to one

another in an unconscious attempt to balance out the faculties.

Sensation has a vocabulary: She can be an artist and work with things,

or he can begin a woodworking shop.

Articulation is the desire of thinking. Feeling transmits through subtle

things, such as tone of voice, the direction of the eyebrows, and other

body language. I had an Italian woman in analysis who had married a

proper English gentleman when they were both in their 20s. She was

presently despairing of his ever understanding her volatile feeling

nature. One day in the consulting room I announced: "The hit play of

the season in London ends with the man standing on one side of the

stage and the woman on the other side 20 feet away. There is a long

and tense interval, finally she says, 'John I love you,' and after a pause

the man responds, 'Mary I love you.' Now that is what you married.

That is the English version of feeling!" This helped them to reflect on

their inherent differrences of typology.

The noted author C.S. Lewis married into just such a situation. He was

a proper Oxford don who fell in love with a fiery American.

Therapy, unfortunately, is confined mostly to talk-- a very serious

shortcoming. Getting a person to paint or sculpt or draw or write

music is the best hope for addressing feeling issues. The impersonal

structure is like working with one arm tied behind your back.

Just being fully present can sometimes pull someone out of a dark

mood, not by theory but by feeling. You must become related to

something if your feeling side is in trouble.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 1:33 PM 1 comments

W E D N E S D A Y , J U L Y 2 3 , 2 0 0 8

More on Active Imagination

As I have said before, in active imagination you must first define the

elements that are in trouble with each other. Then you must set up a

dialogue of equals. One can then sometimes do something in the

physical world that demonstrates this exchange. In a therapy session I

will sometimes take someone out in the yard, draw a circle, and ask

them to randomly pick up objects: a stone, a gum wrapper, a stick.

Then they proceed with a dialogue. For example, the gum wrapper

says, "I am jealous of you," and stone replies, "Oh yeah, why you are a

slut and everyone just walks all over you!" And then the dialogue is off

to the races.

People can’t stop laughing when the opposites start insulting each

other like this. I tell them to keep it going. "I'm just making the whole

thing up," they say. "Good. Make up some more."

There are as many ways to do active imagination as there are arts in

the human repertoire. If someone is depressed I might say choose a

color to represent that depression and do something with your paint

brush. Someone else might compose a theme in music and a counter

theme and then let them dialogue.

A neurosis consists of holding two opposing views in warfare. Active

imagination is a way of assessing the split, or the contradiction.

People resist this with a fierceness. Some personalities cannot stand

imaginal work, and it's true that this is not a medicine for everyone. If

a person is near a psychotic break or suffers from dissociation caused

by trauma of some sort, then this may not be helpful. But most people

resist the celestial dialogue of opposites for some other reason. It's

true that you will encounter the difficult sides of you nature, and you

won’t always get your way. It can seem humiliating to have a true

exchange of equals. It requires humility (earthiness as in humus) for

the ego to let go of its imperialistic attitude and admit there are other

energy systems in the psyche that want to have their say.

For example, I have a nasty streak in me. So does everyone, but that

fact doesn't help with mine. To do real active imagination, I have to

give my nasty side equal value and worth as my idealistic side. Why is

this worth doing? I can use my nasty side to defend myself and my

friends. It has a high energy charge, and I keep wanting more energy.

It is better to be related to my nasty streak than to be acting it out

unconsciously whenever something in me gets triggered or I get worn

down by life.

The symbolic way is the only one I know for coping with things of this

nature. The shadow by definition is that portion of yourself that you

don’t want to acknowledge or have even hidden from yourself. It is

part of the painful aspect of being a conscious human being that

everything arrives as a pair of opposites, and for every conscious

quality there exists the opposite in your shadow. Every virtue has a

vice. We are happily aware of our virtues. I am kind, generous, and on

time. Society likes these, but each one has a parallel vice in back of it

and in my psychic structure. It doesn’t mean you must totally live your

shadow, but you must become aware of it.

Opposites are the generating factor of energy in the universe. The

outlet plug in the wall has a positive and negative charge. We are not

exempt from this in our psychological structure. So much of

civilization consists of dividing the pairs of opposites and deciding to

live one aspect and keep its opposite out of the picture. We call that

civilization. The word civil derives from the word meaning straight

lines. As soon as civilization comes straight lines are imposed. So-

called "primitive" people don’t like straight lines. Paths wander. When

the missionaries go in they try to straighten things up. One is taught

what the culture prefers and affixes this to the ego and identifies with

that.

It’s good to own things, to be kind, to be solvent. What happens to the

other side? Everything comes in pairs, like electricity in the wall plug:

a positive pole and a negative pole. If one is courageous enough to

think psychologically, what is one to do with the unlived or refused

aspect of one’s character? I count myself a courteous person. I took

that on as a persona, a mask. I’m courteous, but also its opposite.

What to do with this dark side? That is why active imagination and

symbolic life are so important. There are ways of living characteristics

without ignoring them or acting them out. Thank God there are ways

of living the shadow without strewing it all over the family or the

neighborhood. It takes a big police force and a big army to protect us

from the shadow of the other. Maybe we could reduce the cost by

exploring the shadow in ourselves.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 4:24 PM 1 comments

Turning Contradictions into Paradox

Active imagination is a powerful tool that you can use for many of the

hundreds of impossible situations that turn up in life. One is always in

a dilemma of some kind: you are not young enough, or not old enough,

or you need more money, or you want to change partners, or improve

your work, or fix something at home.

Active imagination begins with defining two opposing facts that are in

contradiction. What to do?

First, you must be as aware as possible. Turn suffering into

awareness. Then you must set these two things into dialogue with

each other. The art consists of quietly and privately engaging in a

dialogue (perhaps in a notebook or while sitting at your computer,

though you can also dance it, draw it, paint it). In doing active

imagination work there are specific laws that must be obeyed. One

must never engage in the error of thinking one side is correct and the

other incorrect. When you make one right and the other wrong you

destroy the paradoxical nature of reality.

This is what was originally implied in the word prayer: what man

thinks of the situation and what fate is bringing to one -- these are the

two arms of the paradox. But most prayer for a modern person is an

effort to make the “right” one win out. We need rain, please God make

it rain. Please clean up the suffering that I don't like. That is what I

sarcastically call "bell-hoppping" God, telling him/her what to do. In

true prayer, you lay out the two sides of whatever "is" and leave it to

work itself out.

In active imagination we are seeking dialogue between two equals, not

a dialogue in which one wins. This realization has altered my religious

life profoundly. I can’t go to church and hear people beseeching God

to do this or that. This does not lie within the experience of two

opposites engaging each other. It is said that someone once asked St.

Teresa how she could change a situation by her prayers. People would

ask her to pray for them, because she was such a deeply spiritual

person. She replied, "You don’t understand, I’m not telling god what

to do. I’m just pointing out what the situation is, "clarifying what is."

Generally speaking, the art of active imagination consist of I, the ego,

discussing with the other side what is going on and each making it as

clear and conscious as possible -- this helps to set up the possibility for

the near mystical situation wherein a pair of opposites can temper and

even cure each other.

Symbol is the essence of religious life. Dr. Jung taught us a new form

of prayer in active imagination.

Reality always comes in pairs. If I get to heaven some day I will

challenge this, but in the meantime this is our reality: It comes in

pairs. This is the nature of most arguments between man and woman.

He wants his reality and she wants to impose her reality. And so they

argue on. They must instead define the situation, not on a quarreling

basis, but in an honest attempt to make the contradictory opposites

more conscious. Then you allow each side to express itself in the best

manner possible.

All paradoxes have a synthesis point, which is the only possible

solution.

You get two humans going at each other like cat and dog and if they

will only stop the bickering and discipline themselves, they often will

find they are arguing the same thing with different languages or from

different perspectives. In active imagination two people, or two energy

systems within you, can present their points of view, not as a quarrel

but as an act of awareness. The two antagonistic points of view must

be held with discipline and integrity and this is the job of the ego. The

ego is inclined to rush in and overwhelm the other point of view. That

destroys the miracle of the paradox and you are back stuck in

contradiction.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 3:59 PM 0 comments

Power as Love's Opposite

"Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power

predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other."

--Carl Jung, On the Psychology of the Unconciousness, 1917

Posted by ruhljohnson at 3:55 PM 0 comments

T H U R S D A Y , J U L Y 1 0 , 2 0 0 8

A Maori prayer

The Lord’s Prayer: (Translation from the New Zealand Book of

Common

Prayer, The Maori version)

Eternal Spirit, earth-maker, pain-bearer, life giver,

source of all that is and that shall be,

father and mother of us all,

loving holy one in whom is heaven:

may it happen in the way it is good to you;

may it happen on earth in the same way

as it happens in spirit world.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.

In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.

In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.

From trials too great to endure, spare us.

From the grip of all that is evil free us.

For you live in the glory of power that is love, now and forever,

now and forever.

Amen

Posted by ruhljohnson at 3:52 PM 0 comments

Projection: The Relationship Time Bomb

Projection is a metaphorical way of talking about an interior process

by which we all grow. This term refers to the process of attaching an

aspect of your inner life onto someone or something on the outside. In

projecting an underdeveloped or disowned part of yourself, you first

see it in another person. Just like a film projector in a movie theater,

your small interior image is projected onto an outer screen where you

can see it larger than life. It appears to be an objective fact, and, just

as in the movies it may involve strong emotions, dramatic scenes, and

twisting plots.

New potentials in us don’t go in a straight line from the unconscious

to consciousness. We see them first on the outside, and then reclaim

them as our own.

When I was about 10 years old a distant relative of my father

graduated from West Point and came to visit. I had lost a leg in a car

accident at the age of 8 and was very vulnerable and sensitive, and

along comes this impressive young man in his uniform who is going off

to war in the military. I saw this man only once in my life. He was kind

and saw that I was tagging along and attaching to him like a dog

looking for a new master. He was a hero to me for many months. One

has many heroes in life, hooks to hang our projections upon. A year

later this man was killed at the World War Two fighting in Bataan, and

he took a part of me with him.

It is important to understand hero worship as the precursor for

another universal experience by which we all can grow or falter:

romantic love. By the teen and early adult years we begin a search for

our missing pieces by worshipping a soul mate. It is a painful fact that

a good deal of what passes for romance is actually our own unlived life

reflected back to us from the projections we place on others.

Hollywood is skilled at producing celluloid heroes according to this

formula. We project ideal qualities, both good and bad, on celebrities

and enjoy hearing about their exploits. If you want some excellent

examples of projection watch the "unreality" show The Bachelor (or

the Bachelorette in the most recent season). It is highly instructive on

how not to create a viable relationship.

I recently watched with pained amusement a woman project her

romantic image on a succession of eternal boys (puers). The puer type

is endlessly fascinating to some women; when dating he seems

uplifting, inspired, experimental, optimistic, idealistic, fun loving and

endlessly creative. He also is irresponsible, mercurial and hard-to-pin-

down. Puer dominated people (whatever their chronological age) often

seem possessed by an almost sublime if somewhat dreamy spiritual

quality. Jung called this pattern the Puer (Latin for boy) and the Puella

(maiden). This energy is often the delight of the opposite sex,

particularly during courting. Such a man or woman appears fresh,

new, filled with fun, unpredictable. Life is never dull in the presence of

the puer/puella in a man or woman. Once such a person commits to a

relationship, however, then too much of this powerful energy can

seem unruly and dangerous. They can never commit, fearing that

choices may limit their options. They are filled with ideas that are

never brought to fruition. Under stress they often become childish,

wanting to be babied.

With some psychological maturity we begin to realize that the

qualities that we most admire in a prospective partner are those

unlived potentials that are ripe for development within ourselves.

When we awaken to a new possibility in our lives, we see it first in

another person. A part of us that has been hidden is about to emerge,

but it travels by way of an intermediary. We often project our

developing potentials onto someone, and suddenly we’re consumed

with him or her. The first inkling that something in us is attempting to

change is when we see another person sparkle for us.

Again, this is how we grow, but if we do not become conscious of

unlived life our projections will undermine intimate relationships. As a

relationship progresses, so often we demand that others fill in our

missing pieces rather than utilizing the relationship for mutual growth

in consciousness. No one notices at the time, but in-loveness

obliterates the humanity of the beloved, for we are really looking at

our own incipient potentials. And precisely because we have not

reclaimed these as our own, we act out unfinished business and relive

old wounds with the very people we profess to love. So often we

unfairly require our partners to carry what is unlived in us. By

observing what we attribute to the other person, we can see our own

depth and meaning.

Love, as practiced from the egocentric perspective, is finding someone

to use. “I love you because you are good for me, you complete me.” In

our culture, mutual projection is regarded as the prerequisite for

marriage.

True marriage can only be based on human love, which is different

from romantic love, being in love, or “in-loveness.”

Romanticism is unique to the West, and only since the twelfth century.

And romantic love is not in and of itself a basis for marriage. Our

human life, our marriage, is fed by the capacity to love human to

human. When we’re in love, we put our unlived life – our expectations

– on the other person, and it obliterates him or her. There is no true

relatedness.

Loving is a human faculty. We truly love someone for who that person

is. We appreciate and feel a kinship and closeness. Romantic affection,

on the other hand, is a kind of divine intoxication. We deify the other

person. We ask that person, without knowing it, to be the incarnation

of God for us. Our religious life can be fed by in-loveness. It is a deep

spiritual experience, for many people the only religious experience

they’ll have in life, the last recourse God has to catch them.

When you ask someone in a relationship to incubate your unlived life

for you, try to be conscious of what you’re doing. If you ask someone

to carry that numinous, glow-in-the-dark quality, understand that

doing so will obscure him or her from you as a person. Naming the

process helps. That’s the beginning. Why do I have this feeling when I

look at such-and-such a person? Do I really see him or her? Do I truly

love this person, or am I putting a bell jar over my beloved, which will

obliterate the real person from my sight?

Most of the time, we are not conscious of this; our unlived life is

bouncing around out of sight and out of control. It’s a serious problem,

how much we project in our relationships. We see our own unlived

potentials reflected as in a mirror, not the true reality of other people

or the outside world. The exchange of projections takes place much

more frequently than you might realize, and so you must try to be

conscious of it and do what you can to reclaim it as your own.

The first half of life feeds on projections – this is how the unconscious

becomes conscious. If we did not project idealism and love, we might

never leave home. However, in the second half of the journey our

projected values, hopes, and dreams lose some of their magical power.

Our illusions are disillusioned. It must be so if we are to collect our

own missing pieces and become more whole.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 11:46 AM 0 comments

M O N D A Y , J U N E 2 3 , 2 0 0 8

Thoughts on Levels of Awareness

A start in moving to more advanced consciousness in our society

would be to stop scapegoating (the old custom of putting your sins on

a goat and casting it out into the desert). Today, the terrorist is the

scapegoat coming back home. It could be called a communist, a

Russian, etc., but now it is a terrorist. There is a growing chance that

terror will destroy our civilization, but not necessarily on the premises

that have been presented by our politicians.

Current plans call for the construction of an even taller building on

the site of the former World Trade Center in New York. We’ll show

them. What does this say about our consciousness (and our memorial

to those who lost their lives on 9/11). This is what most people do in

analysis. Assisting them in building a still bigger ego structure goes

down as a dramatic cure and both analyst and patient feel better for a

time — the patient is, after all, functioning again as head of the

corporation, or a cog in the industrial machinery, or whatever. Too

bad his wife left him and he also lost his soul along the way.

A misconception of levels is the biggest problem facing us, both

individually and collectively. Jesus referenced this when he was

accused of transgression for taking grain from the field on the

Sabbath. He was told, "You have defiled the sabath and stolen!" Jesus

responded, “If thou knowest what thou doest thou art blest; if thou not

knowest what thou doest, thou art cursed and a transgressor of the

law." It’s the level of consciousness that defines the rightness or

wrongness of an action or a policy. Are we building monuments to

ourselves, or are we assisting in the advance of humanity and the

evolution of consciousness?

Posted by ruhljohnson at 1:43 PM 0 comments

S U N D A Y , J U N E 2 2 , 2 0 0 8

Our Task in These Times: Turning Three-dimensional Consciousness into Four

Dr. Edward Edinger, a Jungian analyst who died recently, once

examined five historical people who had been hit by what he termed

"the Greater Self," and Edinger then contemplated what these people

did in the face of the divine personality. He looked at: Job, Jesus,

Buddha, Blake, and Nietzsche.

Dr. Carl Jung once said that William Blake went farther into the

collective unconscious than anyone and yet lived to tell the tale

because he hung onto his ordinariness. Blake painted, wrote, and

engraved, without being incinerated by his brush with God. Nietzsche

expressed the agonized cry of a man who had seen something but

didn’t have one person who could understand. If he had possessed

only a companion, he might have been able to carry his enlightenment

through, but he didn’t, so ultimately it destroyed him.

In my own life I do not want to be an enlightened one or a self-styled

saviour. More and more I enjoy the most ordinary things, they take on

a divine beauty. Occasionally just a colour or taste, or slant of

sunshine is just breathtaking. It is on the level of attitude -- nothing

has to change but the attitude we hold for it. It’s not the things, it is

our attitude toward the things.

Please understand I don’t live this way each day, and this is not my

personal experience at all times, but it is an attitude that is filtering

up and getting close to my reality.

People come to me lamenting the obvious breakdowns in our cultural

and economic system. I don’t know how to talk about this without

getting into the flypaper of contradiction. I think I finally understand

what my old teacher Krishnamurti was trying to say to me 50 years

ago, that all physical materialism and objective knowledge is

inappropriate. I feel foolish because there is nowhere to go, that is the

summation of what I have learned.

We live in such a difficult time. How are we to be when everything is

falling down and breaking apart all around us? For our daily lives we

still have to balance the checkbook, make choices and take action. We

must do our best to lean toward "the good."

All one can do is carry it through to its conclusion, which is absolute

exhaustion or paralysis. Christianity was at least potentially a system

for waking one up to four-dimensional consciousness, but it has been

translated by the church into three- dimensional terms.

How do we realize this new consciousness collectively?

No three-dimensional action or language has the slightest effect

transforming things except perhaps bringing it to a ripeness for

transformation. All language is inherently three-dimensional because

it is based on the principle of cause and effect. In every sentence there

is an equal sign, similar to a math formula. In the first half of

sentence, the subject, says "this is something," and the second half,

which is about the object, says “that is something” and, if we had the

ears to hear it we would realize that it says this is that. But we hear it

as cause and effect.

Jung did say, quoting alchemy, which was engrossed in this problem,

that one begat two. In other words, consciousness splits and is aware

of the other. Two begets three, consciousness turns back on itself --

for humans, this creates self awareness. This is the consciousness we

have inherited now. We are three-dimensional people, for the most

part, living in a time of inadequate three-dimensional consciousness.

A two-dimensional person sits in a dual world, and is played upon by

that world. He or she watches the gods fight; evil comes, good comes;

he/she is sublimely childlike in watching it. That’s the unburdened

simple man we are so envious of and try to go back to emulate, hippie-

style. I have seen this consciousness first hand in the rural villages of

India. For a time I thought of moving there, where life is filled with

meaning and people, despite material hardship, are actually more at

peace. There is no chance of succeeding at this regression to an

earlier form of consciousness, however. Two-dimensional man is

helpless -- at times delighted and at other time terrified -- by watching

the gods direct his fate.

To satisfy this passion to get out of the contradictions of three-

dimensional consciousness, we seek after money, or we try to get the

right love partner, or we seek relief on Saturday night at a movie, and

the "10,000 things of the world" (as Buddhists describe it) quickly

follow. The passion is right, the level is wrong -- the true problem is

three-dimensional consciousness itself.

Dr. Jung, one of my heroes, could’t explain it well, but the trinitarian

symbols he wrote about in his later works refers to this level of

awareness. Dreams that come out of everyone badger people half

insane trying to solve in the unconscious the problem of the three. All

the dreams where there are three things waiting for the fourth,

something is incomplete. In a key dream from my own life, one that I

took to Dr. Jung, three Buddhas are born and I am waiting for the

fourth Buddha to arrive (This dream and the encounter with Dr. Jung

is described in the book Balancing Heaven and Earth). Then, in my

dream, a big snake scares the devil out of me. This is code language

for the steps of consciousness. In three-dimensional consciousness,

something is always thrown out.

All taboos are so holy that they are forbidden.

It is inevitable that the fourth thing will show up, the solution is not to

go on a witch hunt trying to stamp it out. I’m amazed speechless that

so many otherwise enlightened people don’t get this. Jung made a few

opaque statements on this topic. He wrote that your neurosis is your

salvation. Another time he wrote that "your inferior function is your

entry to heaven." At Jungian workshops people nod their heads in

affirmation, but clearly they don’t get it. People challenged the

contradictions in his writings and Dr. Jung replied that he was trying

to make it as paradoxical as he could because this is the nature of

Reality. His famed book, Answer to Job, is almost universally

misunderstood. A sentence at the end, which should have been the

opening line, states, "I am not talking about the God in heaven that

Christianity keeps making pronouncements about. I’m talking about

the god complex in man!"

Theologians and other scoffers never get that far or are too

mesmerized to hear it when they get there.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 11:50 AM 2 comments

Waking Up to What Has Always Been

A few years back I had a most interesting dream. I had read J.R.R.

Tolkein’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as a boy, and was

fascinated by these stories. As dreams often do, this one picked up

imagery from outer experience and applied it to the inner situation of

the psyche.

“I dreamt of a power that controls the world, and whoever has the

ring has absolute power. He (or she) can teleport, become invisible,

and is essentially invulnerable; no one can contest him. This condition

lasts for 20 years, but over time the power of this ring kept

diminishing for the person who possessed it, until there was almost no

power left. Then, just at that point of realizing the power is gone, a

young man comes running; he is exhausted and panting, and the

police are after him trying to get the ring!

The boy in the dream alters his path slightly and chucks the ring into

my hand as he runs by. I knew instantly that I had about five seconds

to decide whether or not to accept the ring. It was very tempting, the

power of the ring, but I intuitively knew somehow it would fade in

twenty years; so, in that five seconds while I still had the power of

decision and before the ring could overpower me, I threw it into the

ground with all my might. I did this just as the police converged on

me. We all got down on our hands and knees to see that the ring had

completely disintegrated. The ground around the ring was golden, but

there was not a piece of it anywhere. All power had been grounded by

my action.

And then, in one of those strange shifts that occur in dreams, the

police and I went together a distance away to look in a pool. We were

admiring the golden fish. With that the dream ended.

Like all dreams, this one provides a brief history of what was going on

inside me at the time. I believe this was a dream of discovering that

my thoughts create what is “out there,” and this dream heralded a

change of consciousness. During my nineteen years of wintering in

India, that traditional culture helped distill a wisdom represented in

this dream of the ring: the objective reality that we think is “out

there” is actually only of our own inner construction.

This has been going on all the time: but in my 80s I began waking up

to this reality of the psyche. When you wake up to it, nothing has

changed in the outer reality -- yet everything in your experience

changes. I suspect that is true for everyone on the journey into

wholeness. No change, yet at critical points of transition there is a

180-degree shift of perspective. My attitude changed dramatically

after having this small dream. The feeling for days and weeks was

pure joy and revelation. Also a huge sense of relief. I believe it was the

dream of a new level of awareness, a state that my ego had been

preparing for (yet also fighting at every turn) for many years.

We all fight until there is no fight left in us before we find out the goal

of heaven for us.

Please note there is very little drama in this dream. It states in simple,

symbolic form a transformation that theology fills volumes speculating

about: a shift from ego-centered to a different sort of consciousness.

There isn’t any movement required at all to get to this consciousness,

just waking up to what has always been. It’s no big news, and yet it’s

the biggest news in the history of the world. There is substantiation

for this from Zen Buddhism, before enlightenment you chop wood,

draw water, after enlightenment, chop wood, draw water. Nothing

needs to happen, because it is already so.

Another dream two years ago was much the same: I suddenly had the

power to heal physical illness in people. By a nod of my head anyone I

passed on the street was healed. Word got around very quickly. Soon

a mob of people with their various maladies was rushing to me. I woke

up on my naivite and realized I would be trampled to death by this

mob of people. If this got around it would be super destructive…I

thought, “what do I do now that I have been naïve? I couldn’t go home

because people would be there, so I got a hotel room under an

assumed name. I thought who is the best person who would

understand and not lock me up? I have a friend, Dr. Dolph Arnicar,

who shares an office with my friend David, so I went to talk to him for

objective help. He saw what it was. First we must get you protected to

cope with the mob, when that is accomplished…and there the dream

ended.

Getting enlightenment isn’t difficult, or so I’ve read, surviving it is

what’s difficult.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 11:44 AM 1 comments

Our Place in the Great Dance

I recently had a dream in which I was nearly asleep in my tiny

bedroom, a single room (amazingly small dimensions) in a hotel or

apartment house. I became aware of superb music coming from

somewhere outside my room. The music was classical, finely crafted, a

male voice singing with large orchestra as accompaniment. I was

amazed at the beauty of it and wondered where such sublime music

could be coming from. Then a door from the next room, which I did

not know existed, opened a crack and the music was louder indicating

the music was coming from that room, Also a ray of light came into my

dark room. The door opened very slowly wider and wider, people

began to come into my room and soon were very near me and some

sitting on my bed beside me. I was greatly surprised, pleased and very

puzzled. More and more people came, more light came into the room,

the room very slowly expanded in all dimensions and finally became a

great hall as if in a castle or Medieval building. It was lighted with

golden light, perhaps from cut glass chandeliers, many candelabra,

elaborate furniture, much gold, rich sculptures, tapestries, inlaid

marble floor, everything one could imagine to portray a royal place of

immense beauty. The music grew in volume and reverberated in the

great room. The many people who had accumulated by this time were

royally dressed and were dancing with great dignity on the great floor.

Somewhere along the way (though I was not aware of it), I had gotten

up from my tiny bed and taken my place in the great dance which was

going on. A profound happiness filled me and the atmosphere of the

dream.

From my teaching in Zurich, this sounds like a death dream - being

ushered into the next world in all its glory. Aging or ill people

approaching death often have such dreams of the Golden World. If we

can accept them rather than running away from their majesty, they

can provide deep meaning and inform us of the glory of our lives.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 11:40 AM 1 comments

Man the Complainer

It is doubtful that human beings can live outside the yoke of necessity

for long. Much of one’s life is set; most people have to get up in the

morning and go to work. We complain and have daydreams, “If only I

could win a million dollars things would be great,” but in fact they

grow worse. The meaning of life often falls apart for those individuals

who actually win the lottery or unexpectedly come into a great sum of

money. Recall this recent news item:

CHARLESTON, West Virginia (AP) -- The wife of the lottery winner

who took home the richest undivided jackpot in U.S. history says she

regrets his purchase of the $314.9 million ticket that has thrust her

family into the public spotlight.

"I wish all of this never would have happened," Jewel Whittaker told

The Charleston Gazette for Tuesday's editions. "I wish I would have

torn the ticket up."

Since winning the lottery two years ago, her husband, Jack Whittaker,

has been arrested twice for drunken driving and has been ordered

into rehab. He pleaded no contest Monday to a misdemeanor assault

charge for attacking a bar manager, and is accused in two lawsuits of

making trouble at a nightclub and a racetrack.

There have been several thefts involving Whittaker's vehicle, his office

and his house. One of the thefts occurred at his home in September on

the same day an eighteen-year-old friend of Whittaker's

granddaughter was found dead there. The death remains under

investigation.

Last week Whittaker, 57, reported his granddaughter missing. Putnam

County sheriff's Sgt. Lisa Arthur said the granddaughter is not

considered a kidnapping victim.

***

It is true that too much grinding necessity dulls a person and reduces

him or her to the lowest common denominator. But not enough

necessity is a guaranteed ticket to neurosis for most people. So we

complain – about our family, about our job, about where we live, about

the weather. Instead of homo erectus, the human species should have

been called homo complingere, which means man the complainer.

It is difficult for us to accept that contentment grows out of a

willingness to surrender preconceived ideas and affirm reality as it is.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 11:36 AM 0 comments

Sacred and Profane

I was surprised to learn recently that PROFANE means The Porch of

the Church. In medieval times the sacred myths of the church were

carried out in private at the altar for an elect few; the same myths

were played out on the "porch" of the church as morality plays for the

illiterate populous of the town.

This puts "profane" in an entirely different meaning for me.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 11:33 AM 0 comments

Fountain of Youth

The Fountain of Youth is a legendary spring that reputedly restores

the youth of anyone who drinks of its waters. Florida is said to be its

location, and stories of the fountain are some of the most persistent

legends associated with that American state. No wonder so many

retirement communities exist there.

While our modern economy profits from the cult of youth, selling us a

plethora of material goods and services with promises of youthfulness,

what is really needed as we age is the inner resource of the Eternal

Youth. This energy is free, refreshing and always available. To access

it only requires an attitude of tinkering, discovery, and play.

In the spirit of play we may toss together elements that were formerly

separate, and in this sense symbols are a highly sophisticated form of

play.

To keep the spirit of Eternal Youth active in us during the second half

of life we must learn again to play with our experience. Recall the joy

of discovery before it bowed to work, obligation, and duty. Movement

is alive; inertia is dead. We become more “unalive” as we cling to that

which is predictable and unchanging.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 11:24 AM 0 comments

Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances

Of the terrible doubt of appearances,

Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded,

That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,

That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only,

May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills,

shining and flowing waters,

The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, may-be these

are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real

something has yet to be known,

(How often they dart out of themselves as if to confound me and mock

me!

How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them,)

May-be seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they indeed but

seem)

as from my present point of view, and might prove (as of course they

would) nought of what they appear, or nought anyhow, from entirely

changed points of view;

To me these and the like of these are curiously answer'd by my

lovers, my dear friends,

When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding me

by the hand,

When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason

hold not, surround us and pervade us,

Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am silent, I

require nothing further,

I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity

beyond the grave,

But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied,

He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.

-- Walt Whitman, from the collection Leaves of Grass (1867)

(With appreciation to Ulrike)

Posted by ruhljohnson at 11:20 AM 0 comments

T H U R S D A Y , J U N E 5 , 2 0 0 8

Cultivating Our Talents

talent [ˈtӕlənt] noun

a special ability or cleverness; a skill

Example: a talent for drawing

According to the dictionary talent may refer to:

A personal gift/skill

A show-business personality or group of them

Tarento, the Japanese pronunciation of the word; a variety

entertainment personality in Japan

Talent agent, a person who finds jobs for actors, musicians, models,

and other people in various entertainment businesses

Talent manager (or personal manager), one who guides the career of

artists in the entertainment business

Talent scout, responsible for finding and developing talent

Talent show, a live performance spectacle (sometimes on TV) where

contestants perform acting, singing, dancing, acrobatics and other art

forms

Talent (unit), an ancient unit of weight and currency

Everyone has God-given talents. Other qualities can and should be

developed with work and dedication, but when we are in the realm of

a talent then we are truly co-creating with the divine rather than

willing our way through the world. A talent is like the higher Self

whispering in your ear or directing your hand. Sometimes it is all we

can do to keep up with this inspiration. As with all relationships, we

cannot legitimately will or overpower a muse without damaging the

relationship. Neither can we ignore it without making our lives

miserable. We can, however, stop drugging ourselves with things of

the world or activity so that inspiration allows our talent to flow.

Practice is an organized allotment of time and energy to converse with

the divine through our talent. It is, at best, a conversation. When we

don’t practice we don’t create anything and fail to participate in the

celestial dialogue. When we try to muscle our way through practice

the small “I” (ego) has taken possession of the work and it soon

becomes dry, boring, empty and frustrating. We are likely to quit

when this method of practice is pursued for long. Practice, or having a

practice, is best when we can take delight in the conversation, relief in

letting go the burden of consciousness.

Consciousness is a burden. To be forced to make decisions, to feel

torn between “this versus that” takes a lot of energy and wears us

down. Eventually we can’t stand it anymore and find some way to blot

out consciousness through food or drink, drugs, pornography, or

diverting attention by purchasing some new bauble. Such distractions

are not inherently good or bad, it’s just that they are empty and

ultimately unsatisfying when used in this manner. We need to learn to

go “decently unconscious,” that is, to deliberately let go of the burden

by participating in creation or celestial dialogue.

Life becomes a dutiful drag when our activities are one dutiful

practice session after another, preparing or ploughing through,

waiting for something to happen that feels vital and alive.

A practice, is deliberate stopping of the hum and buzz of the mind

“stuff”, quieting the mind so that one might participate in the celestial

dialogue.

We are co-creators with the divine force, which needs us to manifest

in time. Our talent is the arena in which we have the highest capacity

for conversation. When we are culturally rewarded for this talent it is

natural that should begin to exploit it for all the wrong reasons. When

this happens we often “kill the goose that lays the golden egg.” When

our talent is exploited – for money, for fame, for power – then it loss

the divine connection and dries up.

Perceived from a more penetrating perspective, the oppositions which

present themselves each day are the play of energy. They are not

really opposed, but rather two sides of poles of an essential unity. To

move from contradiction to paradox is to recognize the underlying

unity. From a less penetrating perspective it seems that the

oppositions victimize us, tearing apart our feeble and temporary

attempts to get things under control, lined up, and settled. But the

universe doesn’t seem to want to be settled. It is continually sifting,

shifting, changing, and reinventing itself. Though cycle after cycle of

birth and death, creation and dissolution. Forms take shape and then

recede again into undifferentiated flux and flow. But along the way

there is an accumulation and an accretion of awareness that builds

upon itself into increasingly integrated.

Unity and diversity are two interesting aspects of celestial

conversation or dialogue.

Practice should be a time for communing with the divine, allowing it

regular space in our lives to inform and inspire us. Like the basic

rhythm of breathing in (inspire) to take in the “other” and let it

commingle with us, and then giving it back again, the conversation is

allowing ourselves to be played.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 6:57 AM 0 comments

W E D N E S D A Y , J U N E 4 , 2 0 0 8

To "Fall" in Love

To fall in love is an abyss of ecstasy and bewilderment that is far

beyond our western understanding. It is nothing less than seeing the

image of God in the form of another person and being transfixed by a

splendor beyond our comprehension. The art of falling in love is

recent in human experience, probably not much known before the

advent of our own modern age. It is still not known, or honored, in the

eastern world except as they drink up our customs and ideals by the

sudden deluge of the information age. It is astonishing to see how

quickly an easterner takes on western characteristics - both good and

bad - as he or she adopts the English language and western customs.

Only one generation is required to turn a traditional easterner into a

jeans-clad ambitious youth clambering to get to America where the

streets are paved with gold.

So, what is the strange love required on the spiritual path? It is very

much akin to our romantic love, or falling in love. I am inclined to

think that our capacity to fall in love is a new faculty of religious

comprehension for which we have so little insight as to be

catastrophic. We naively presume that falling in love is the ideal

preparation for marriage, when the facts are that virtually no ordinary

human arrangement can hold the immense power of the Divine Love

which has fallen upon us.

Perhaps romantic love, falling in love, appeared when our traditional

religious forms began to lose their power to mediate the Splendor of

God for us. To ask another fallible human being to carry this splendor

is to ask the household wiring of our ordinary life to carry the hundred

thousand volt power of the Vision of Heaven.

I once observed traditional Indian youths going to the temples

frequently, sitting in yoga position before an image of God, tremble

with the power of the experience, then go about their daily work and

family without being tempted to ask that vast impersonal experience

of a mortal human.

Probably the most volatile problem our modern world faces is what to

do with the uncontrollable power of the love that is greater than any

individual. Little wonder that romantic love, that lightning bolt that

falls from the heavens, when laid at the feet of a mortal human, fails

both persons involved. The origin of the term Honeymoon implies that

it lasts for a month.

But what about "reality"?

It is possible to invest the great love in a way which can support it and

thus leave our human love to a realm which is appropriate for it. To

mix the two is a sure program for disillusionment and bitter

disappointment.

All models prove inadequate finally, and it must be admitted that all

loves are the same love - of divine origin; but this is a rare experience

to be found only after the most careful differentiation. Freud was

right: everything depends on sex as the origin of its power: however,

he declined ever to define his term, perhaps in humility at the power

of it. He might have been better understood if he had used the term

Love. But it is a rare individual who has earned the right to this

Unitive vision.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 4:40 PM 1 comments

T H U R S D A Y , M A Y 1 5 , 2 0 0 8

Searching for the Will of God

Buddhism states that reality is singular, never dual. Christians attest

to this, sleepily, every Mass, by reciting, "I believe in one God, the

Father almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth -." This implies one God,

not duality.

But the human mind is based irrevocably on duality; it - and our

language that dominates so much of thought - can conceive of nothing

but the play of opposites. At best, this is delight, dance, drama, and

paradox; but at worst it is doubt, anxiety, guilt. Modern man seems to

have drifted more and more into the Hamlet state of suffering over

duality. He hangs so often in the torture and paralysis between two

opposing possibilities.

How to discern the Will of God?

I was exhausted with this split world and decided on a series of

exercises. If reality (God) is singular, how can I restore that unity in

my everyday life?

I settled on the simplest example of my split world and decided to look

at it without making any judgment. Later I could express this simply;

use my ego consciousness as observer but not judge. I watched for as

long as necessary and was delighted to see the split gradually dissolve

and one of the two warring possibilities grow clear while the other lost

energy. This brought a workable solution to my paralysis.

I can’t formulate a description of this process but it seems that 'it'

decided if I looked quietly enough at the split without trying to judge

it.

This worked only on the simplest possible examples; I could not keep

my anxiety, fear, and guilt out of the picture on larger decisions and

had to resort to the usual ego solution of disciplining myself to choose

one possibility against the other. This yielded a decision but left

uncertainty and guilt.

I spent some years at this exercise and found that the 'no decision'

technique began to work on larger issues as well. I still cannot be

quiet enough to bring this exercise to bear on large issues. But I think

I see a principle at work that may be useful.

But wait! I started out by saying/believing that reality is singular and

here I am trying to work out a technique for choosing between two

possibilities! This is an untenable contradiction.

I watched this process more carefully and discovered that there was a

level in back of the split that was of a different character than the

consciousness seeing the split. Was I projecting the appearance of

duality from my own consciousness onto a non-split world? Does this

imply that I can find a non-split consciousness if I will quiet my split

consciousness?

So it seems that my efforts to find the Will of God by searching out the

'right' way is badly based from the beginning. The search is for that

consciousness which is not split in the first place. The solution to the

problem is not to solve it but dissolve it.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 3:59 PM 0 comments

T U E S D A Y , M A Y 1 3 , 2 0 0 8

Rilke: the Terror of the Angel

Who if I cried out, would hear me then, out of the orders

of angels? and even supposing one suddenly took me

close to the heart, I would perish from that

stronger existence. For what strikes us as beauty is nothing

but all we can bear of a terror's beginning,

and we admire it so, because it calmly disdains

to destroy us. Every angel strikes terror.

And thus I restrain myself and swallow the luring call

with dark sobs. Whom then, alas, are we able

to use in our need?

--R. M. Rilke

Posted by ruhljohnson at 7:18 AM 4 comments

The Ubiquity of Unlived Life

Your unlived life, sometimes called your “shadow,” is the repository of

everything that has been split off, everything that is unrealized and

every potential that has never been developed. We all carry with us a

vast inventory of abandoned, unrealized, and underdeveloped talents

and potentials. Even if you have achieved your major goals and

seemingly have few regrets, there are significant life experiences that

have been closed to you. If you are an only child, then you will never

know the experience of having a brother or sister. If you are a woman

then you are not a man, and some of the masculine experience is

foreign to you. If you are married you are not single. If you are a black

man you are not a white man. If you are Christian you are not Muslim.

And so it goes. For every thing you choose (or that has been chosen

for you), something else is “unchosen.”

Consider for a moment something in your life that you cannot do and,

as a result, you feel diminished in some way. What do you resent

about your life? The endless demands of children or your job? The

inattention of your spouse? The limitations of an illness? Whatever

seems to be missing – that is part of your unlived life.

A woman may decide to pursue a career only to wake up one day,

years later, and realize that some part of her always longed to stay

home with the children and be a housewife. Or she may discover an

aspect of herself that would have chosen a religious life, an existence

of reclusive meditation. In the same way a man may feel he has the

makings of a poet, but he also has a talent for business and he finds

himself climbing the corporate ladder, organizing his life around the

business world and supporting a family. Still, the poet in him lives on

as a potentiality that he hasn’t had time to experience externally.

Perhaps you are short and you always wanted to be tall. Perhaps you

wanted to be thin, or to have a different body type, or to explore a

musical talent, or to be more athletic. What is unlived yet still has

some urgency in you? How is it expressed? As discontent, or anger, or

depression?

Reclaiming unlived life is a difficult but noble task that confronts us in

the second half of life.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 7:13 AM 1 comments

How Heavenly Organ Music Is Made

I (Robert) wrote earlier about my love of Bach and the musical

discovery of the pipe organ.

The organ has gone through a very long history of development from

the small cathedral organs of Europe limited in size by the fact that

they required human labour to pump the "wind" required to sound the

pipes. There is a bit of insight into this evolution in the story of the

great organ in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It required nine strong

men to man the pumps for the wind required to operate the several

thousand pipes housed in the west end of the great gothic building. In

1914 World War I demanded all the men available and it required 18

women to "man" the pumps. It was only in 1927 that electricity was

allowed in the Cathedral and electric motors replaced the hand

operated bellows.

Hand blown organs were limited to very low wind pressure (wind

pressure was described by the inches of water the wind pressure

could contain in a U shaped tube of water. The maximum for hand

bellows was about two and a half

inches, (approximately the air pressure of human lungs) thus the limit

of air for a pipe. Voicing on this low pressure produced a very gentle

sound for any sized pipe, from two inches to thirty two feet in length.

There is virtually no limit to the air pressure available by electric

motor. Experiments took air pressure to a hundred inches on the

water gauge, and the roughness of sound increased proportionately.

Dr. Schweitzer made his famous Bach recordings on a small two

keyboard organ in St. Aurelie, Strasbourg, France, built about 1725 by

Bach's organ builder, Jacob Silberman. The wind pressure of this

organ was approximately two and a half inches of wind and produced

the ethereal light sound characteristic of low wind pressure. To make

a comparison, the organ I played as a young man in a Portland church

was voiced on twelve inches of wind and sounded accordingly.

A large adventure of my life took me to Europe in 1948 and my

devotion to fine organ voicing and playing brought me to Strasbourg.

That could mean only one thing by association, the organ playing of

Albert Schweitzer and the organ where he made his famous

recordings of Bach, the Church of St. Aurelie. Those two associations

were so powerful in me that finding a hotel in this badly war damaged

city was secondary to finding the Church of St. Aurelie. I asked about

for the location of the famous church with no success. Finally,

someone took me to an old part of town and pointed out a very small

church which in no way fitted my expectations of the great resonant

building I had expected. Only then did I remember that Dr. Schweitzer

had written that he chose that church - of all the organs of Europe

that would have been offered to him - because of its unrestored

Silberman organ and, second, because of the near perfect resonance

pattern of the building's acoustical structure. That is to say that the

reverberation quality of that building aided the clarity of the sound

more perfectly than any other that Dr. Schweitzer examined.

At various times I have heard the reverberation of different buildings

such as St Paul's Cathedral in London with an eighteen second

reverberation period (it is not difficult to think you have blundered

into Heaven when you hear that sound) to the new Festival Concert

Hall in London built to welcome the newly approaching era of the post

war world, that is so dry and devoid of reverberation that one cannot

escape the feeling of being naked accoustically. No matter how loudly

officials argued at first that this was the ultimate of "clear" sound,

they made alterations in the architecture several years later to warm

the sound and provide some relief from the starkness that affronted

one's ears at the musical inauguration. I have never heard music in

the altered building, but have most vivid memory of its first dry

concerts.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 6:51 AM 0 comments

Finding Our Hidden Gold

Some of our very best characteristics, the gold in one’s personality,

are the most difficult of all for most of us to cope with. It is often our

noblest energies that our hidden most assiduously, such as our

capacity for love, generosity, relatedness – these turn out to be equally

difficult to express in one’s outer life. For example, you simply cannot

go up to someone you see on the street for the first time and say,

“There is something about you that is enchanting, and I love you.” It

doesn’t work. It is frowned upon by our society, and would create

havoc. And yet that capacity for love is one of the finest

characteristics in the potentials of any human being.

Inner work provides a means to live out the gold as well as the dark –

all those unlived potentials that have not found an adequate place in

the practical, every day affairs of one’s life. The aim of such efforts is

to relieve the neurotic pressure of these unlived things and the anxiety

of choice, transferring it to the level it really belongs, the celestial

dialogue of the pairs of opposites, the song of Heaven.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 6:49 AM 0 comments

T U E S D A Y , M A Y 6 , 2 0 0 8

The Opposition of Love and Power

People think that hate is the opposite of love. Actually power is the

opposite of love. Love is identity with the other, while power is the

desire to control the other for our own purposes. Where there is

unconditional love there is no issue of power. From the spiritual point

of view, love is much preferred. “Love knows all things, love conquers

all things, and love endures all things.”

Some of our very best characteristics, the gold in one’s personality,

are the most difficult of all for most of us to cope with. It is often our

noblest energies that our hidden most assiduously, such as our

capacity for love, generosity, relatedness – these turn out to be equally

difficult to express in one’s outer life. For example, you simply cannot

go up to someone you see on the street for the first time and say,

“There is something about you that is enchanting, and I love you.” It

doesn’t work. It is frowned upon by our society, and would create

havoc. And yet that capacity for love is one of the finest

characteristics in the potentials of any human being.

Inner work provides a means to live out the gold as well as the dark –

all those unlived potentials that have not found an adequate place in

the practical, every day affairs of one’s life. The aim of such efforts is

to relieve the neurotic pressure of these unlived things and the anxiety

of choice, transferring it to the level it really belongs, the celestial

dialogue of the pairs of opposites, the song of Heaven.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 9:49 PM 1 comments

The Cost of Ignoring Our Shadow

Despite the moral imperatives that we learn as children, it’s

sometimes not enough to just say, “I won’t do it,” to banish all thought

of a forbidden thing. This creates inner conflict. Who knows how much

physical illness is the battleground of unlived life? You may well get a

nervous stomach, back pain, headaches or some other type of ailment

when you try to practice a moralistic “just say no” policy.

At the collective level, we see every day in the headlines what happens

when the shadow is not recognized. It is projected onto neighbours

who are defined as enemies, carrying “the other” for us. In the socially

driven process of becoming legitimate and gaining credentials for

success in the world, in the experience of wielding power, through our

hunger for certainties in a universe filled with paradox and mystery,

we don’t want to face our shadows and question our assumptions. It is

easier to split off the “bad” onto our neighbours, whether they are

down the street or across the ocean, to fear the “other” rather than

face the “otherness” within.

If you are drawn to a “bad boy,” or a "temptress blue angel," this is

probably a sign that you are too diligent and dutiful in your life.

Perhaps you try so hard to be good that the other side needs to be

heard to balance your life. (This is a frequent problem for pastors,

politicians, families of prominent people, and anyone who feels they

must appear as all “good.” One day their “bad” side is acted out in

some unconscious manner).

In this example, you must ask yourself how you might break the rules

a bit, be more spontaneous, own some of these “bad” qualities in

yourself. How is it you became undernourished in this quality? Are

there core beliefs that keep you from expressing what is unlived?

To individuate in the second half of life you must fill in the missing

pieces of your personality, to become more aware and more whole. It

includes both the gold and the dark side that gets projected, so we see

it on the outside first and we want to reclaim it. A good part of the

first half of life is about that. We probably would never leave home if

we didn’t project. We project heroism and all kinds of idealism onto

the world. We go out and find we really need to reclaim it, but in the

beginning projection is what propels us into the first half of life. Yet, at

some point, at mid-life, we gain enough strength or we get frustrated

enough at the cycles we keep repeating trying to fulfill these unlived

potentials on the outside that we say: “Maybe I need to sit down and

do my own work.” That is reclaiming the projection and seeing that

this is part of my own likeness that I need to take back.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 9:44 PM 1 comments

Memories of Schweitzer

I recently received a set of CDs of Albert Schweitzer playing Bach on

organ in 1935. This touches some of the happiest memories of my life.

Independent of his international renown as a humanitarian,

Schweitzer is well known as a great musicologist; a reputation that

rests largely upon his book, "J. S. Bach." Its influence on the

subsequent performance of Bach's music was enormous, and there is

scarcely a later work on Bach which does not acknowledge a deep

debt to Schweitzer.

My love of Schweitzer and Bach began when I quite suddenly was old

and sensitive enough to hear the grandeur of the organ in my church.

I am unaware why or how these things can happen so suddenly to a

youth, but it was an opening to the heavens for me. Why? How? A total

mystery to me but certainly one of the greatest blossoming of

MEANING that has ever happened to me. It was nothing less than the

sound of heaven opened up to my adolescent ears.

The next Sunday I approached the organist and asked for instruction

to play this great instrument. When he learned that I was missing one

leg from a childhood auto accident he dismissed me with a sentence

and sent me off feeling as if I were disconnected from the greatest

beauty in the world. I sulked for a week not having any idea how to

face this negation, but thought it worth another try when the following

Sunday I saw the assistant organist playing the service. I presented

myself to her after church and got a puzzled reply that it might not be

possible to play organ with only one leg but she was willing to try.

Not only did I acquire an organ teacher at that moment but gained a

Godmother who immediately began filling in the great vacuum in me

left from an inattentive mother.

Organ lessons began and I learned quickly that I was ill equipped both

physically and mentally for playing the organ but also that both in

music and the impact of a fine teacher I was launched into the

beginning of adulthood.

Few people are aware of how deeply important a Godparent can be if

one's parents are ill equipped to raise a child.

There are few organs available for students to use, but my father rose

to one of his infrequent generosities and found a funeral parlor next to

my high school where I could practice for half an hour before school.

Two years followed of some of the most complicated physical learning

tasks.

Organ requires skill with both hands and both feet simultaneously. For

me, this required improvising for a missing leg and also training a

mind not easily able to accomplish the multiple coordination required.

I worked very hard at organ practice and soon was able to play some

of the organ works of J. S. Bach, my favorite composer. One day I

discovered the famous set of organ recordings by Albert Schweitzer,

the world authority on the music of Bach recorded in 1935 and 1936.

The records were at 78 RPM, scratchy, divided up into two minute

sides, and the extreme range of pitch and volume characteristic of

organ tone badly overtaxing the recording capacity of the equipment.

But I loved those records with a passion and learned every

composition included in the album.

Later, I was appointed as organist/choirmaster of the second largest

church in Portland Oregon in 1942, an adventure very painful to me. I

had the musical skill for the job but was hopelessly deficient in the art

of relationship and social ability. I left the job at the end of the year

and never again tried to make a profession of music. This was both a

severe failure on my part but also gave me the impetus to explore the

psychological world which became my true profession.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 9:26 PM 0 comments

W E D N E S D A Y , A P R I L 3 0 , 2 0 0 8

The Ten Oxherding Pictures

The ten oxherding pictures of the Zen tradition make a wonderful

portrayal of a lifetime. In the first, the young man is looking for the ox.

In the second, he finds the footprints of the ox. In the third, he sees

the ox. In the fourth, he wrestles with the ox. In the fifth, he’s seated

upon the ox. In the sixth, he’s riding off with the ox. The seventh is

blank. That’s curious. You can make all kinds of things out of that. In

the eighth, he’s returning the ox to the field. In the ninth, the ox is in

the field and the man is walking away. In the tenth, which is possibly

the most beautiful statement I’ve heard in my life, the man, now old, is

utterly indistinguishable from anyone else as he walks through the

village streets. No one notices him, but the trees all burst into

blossom. This is the best definition of enlightenment I’ve found.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 12:55 PM 0 comments

The Promise of Return

There are a legends and predictions throughout the world of the once

and future king, someone who has brought about a Golden Age and

promises to come back in the future to restore it. King Arthur is one.

He was the great and noble king who brought England together in the

sense we know it now. It is said that he didn’t die at the end of his

reign in England. He was transported to the isle of Avalon, a place of

healing, and offered, when needed, to come back. The magician

Merlin, the introverted aspect of the Arthurian story, also as he was

leaving, said, “I will come back to you again.” In Mexico, just before

his death, the God-King Quetzalcoatl promised to come back if he was

needed.

According to Indian mythology, an avatar is sent to the earth every

thousand years, and at other times when there are special difficulties.

Buddha was one. India today is full of rumours that a new avatar has

been born, that he’s only a boy at present, but when he comes to

maturity, he will step forth and be a new saviour, a new avatar. If we

take this literally, we will probably be disappointed. They come and

they go. But in an interior sense, it’s possible. A point of intersection

between our time-bound world and eternity exists for us, and that’s

salvation. I’m fascinated with this promise of a return — the once and

future king. It’s a glorious promise that can give us hope.

The British philosopher Owen Barfield said something that still

reverberates in my mind every day. He said, “Literalism is idolatry.” If

you take the inner world literally into our time-space world, you lose

it.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I was in love with the

church and devoted to it. But as I grew older, I became critical and

left the church. I wouldn’t have anything to do with it. Later, I read a

medieval text that made Christianity real for me again. It said that

Christ is constantly being conceived, constantly being born in his

stable, constantly confounding the elders, constantly being tried by

Judas, constantly being crucified, constantly resurrecting, and, most

wonderful of all, constantly in his second coming.

But when we take this story out of literalism and into the interior

world, which has no time and no space, we have an immediate, living

fact. If we take the full story of Christianity inwardly, as a timeless

fact, these possibilities are available for us to touch when we’re ready,

or perhaps even when we choose. The Second Coming is not just

available to us; it is beating on our doors.

Envision the Second Coming as an inner reality that takes place on the

eighth day of the week. Eight is a symbol of infinity, as you can see

when you turn the eight (8) on its side. A Baptismal font has eight

sides to indicate that when a child is baptized, he’s initiated into the

eight-sided consciousness, eternity. In symbolism, there is nothing

past eight. You’ve annihilated the cyclic nature and completed life.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 12:18 PM 0 comments

F R I D A Y , A P R I L 2 5 , 2 0 0 8

Romantic Love and Our Search for Wholeness

Romantic love is a profoundly religious experience by which we all can

grow or falter. It is a painful fact that a good deal of what passes for

romance is actually our own unlived life reflected back to us.

Take a few moments to look back on your personal relationships. What

were the qualities that made your love interests attractive when you

first met? What made them shine? Those qualities that we most

admire in a prospective partner are those unlived potentials that are

ripe for development within ourselves. When we awaken to a new

possibility in our lives, we see it first in another person. A part of us

that has been hidden is about to emerge, but it doesn’t go in a straight

line from the unconscious to consciousness. It travels by way of an

intermediary. We project our developing potentials onto someone, and

suddenly we’re consumed with him or her. The first inkling that

something in us is attempting to change is when we see another

person sparkle for us.

This is how we grow, but if we do not become conscious of unlived life

our projections will undermine intimate relationships. As a

relationship progresses, so often we demand that others fill in our

missing pieces rather than utilizing the relationship for mutual growth

in consciousness. No one notices at the time, but in-loveness

obliterates the humanity of the beloved, for we are really looking at

our own incipient potentials. And precisely because we have not

reclaimed these as our own, we act out unfinished business and relive

old wounds with the very people we profess to love. So often we

unfairly require our partners to carry what is unlived in us. By

observing what we attribute to the other person, we can see our own

depth and meaning.

Love, as practiced from the egocentric perspective, is finding someone

to use. “I love you because you are good for me, you complete me.” I

once heard a client say that she had broken up with her husband

because “he doesn’t fulfill my needs anymore.” Now she wanted to use

someone new to get her requirements met. In contrast to this, love is

the understanding of the identity of oneself and the beloved. That’s

the only true union that a human being is capable of realizing,

otherwise it is just casting about for mutually agreeable bargains.

People think that hate is the opposite of love. Actually power is the

opposite of love. Love is identity with the other, while power is the

desire to control the other for our own purposes. In our culture,

mutual projection is regarded as the prerequisite for marriage.

As one painfully honest young man recently told me, explaining why

he was filing for divorce, “I’ve fallen out of love. She just doesn’t

satisfy my soul anymore.” I couldn’t help myself from replying, “Well,

what did you expect?”

If we could only understand that expecting someone else to carry our

unlived life is acceptable only for a period of time — until we get

stronger — and someday it must come to an end. We aren’t wise in

this respect, and it’s one of the most painful issues in our culture.

When, six months or one year or thirty years after the marriage

began, the relationship “isn’t working,” we don’t recognize that it’s

high time for us to withdraw our projection and actually relate to the

person — our partner, our spouse.

When you ask someone in a relationship to incubate your unlived life

for you, try to be conscious of what you’re doing. If you ask someone

to carry that numinous, glow-in-the-dark quality, understand that

doing so will obscure him or her from you as a person. Naming the

process helps. That’s the beginning. Why do I have this feeling when I

look at such-and-such a person? Do I really see him or her? Do I truly

love this person, or am I putting a bell jar over my beloved, which will

obliterate the real person from my sight?

Most of the time, we are not conscious of this; our unlived life is

bouncing around out of sight and out of control. It’s a serious problem,

how much we project in our relationships. We see our own unlived

potentials reflected as in a mirror, not the true reality of other people

or the outside world. The exchange of projections takes place much

more frequently than you might realize, and so you must try to be

conscious of it and do what you can to reclaim it as your own. The first

half of life feeds on projections – this is how the unconscious becomes

conscious. If we did not project idealism and love, we might never

leave home. However, in the second half of the journey our projected

values, hopes, and dreams lose some of their magical power. Our

illusions are disillusioned. It must be so if we are to collect our own

missing pieces and become more whole.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:35 AM 2 comments

Symbolic Life

The word “symbol” is as mysterious to most modern people as the

word soul. A clue to understanding is found in the etymology of the

words symbol and cymbal. There is the brass instrument in which two

metal pieces are crashed together to make a composite sound,

(cymbal), and then there is a symbol,” which stands for something

else, often something invisible, intangible, and unknown. The root of

these words is the Greek sumballein, which means “to throw

together,” and we might say that the symbolic process is putting back

together that which has been torn apart, that which has been split or

set aside. It is the power of symbols that heals the oppositions of

ordinary consciousness. This is a healing power that we need so

desperately in modern life.

Symbolic language does not primarily differentiate; it fuses things into

one another. For example, a flower in a poem opens itself up to

diverse possibilities. As the conscious mind explores a symbol, it is led

to ideas that lie beyond the grasp of reason

One of C.G. Jung’s great contributions to psychology was re-

discovering for us the healing power of symbolic life. It’s not a new

idea. All of our religious systems are filled with wonderful symbol

systems. But something seems to have gone wrong with them for so

many today. As we have become more rational, driven, and

materialistic, we have lost the power of many traditional symbols,

though we have not lost our need for them.

We may think we have shrugged off the need for symbolic life. Instead

of having a periodic holy fast – a meaningful, symbolic action that

many wisdom traditions prescribe – we’ve become slaves to perennial

diets, a low-grade ritual without connection to something deeper in

the unconscious. Instead of saying a blessing or a prayer when

crossing one of life’s thresholds, we check and double check our

appearance in the mirror, twist a strand of hair, light a cigarette, or

drink a cup of coffee.

To a great extent we have lost contact with the symbolic depths. But

the power of symbols and symbolic sensibility to daily life is still there.

If you will observe your own naturally occurring symbols and relate to

them through simple rituals, tailor-made for your situation, then much

of the old power of symbolic life is experienced again.

Every night in your dreams symbols arise naturally, for dreams

happen and are not invented. Dreams integrate the different energies

of our being utilizing symbols that seem to preexist in the

unconscious. If you dream of fruit salad you had for dinner last night,

the dream is speaking of that as a symbol, not just telling you what

you already know, the dinner menu. A symbol pulls together qualities,

ideas, or experiences that to the conscious mind seem separate or

even contradictory. Symbols integrate and heal the splitness of

modern life and open us to new possibilities. To read your life, the

daily events of life, symbolically will render it meaningful and filled

with possibilities. To see everything literally is to stay on the surface

of life.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:30 AM 0 comments

Surviving A Crisis

If God is anything, surely that divine force that we palpably

experience in times of crisis is … what is. You must sit quietly in that

still point at the center, without fear, desire, or expectation. If you will

stop fighting what is, you can remove half the suffering. Love will heal

the half that remains.

During a recent family medical crisis I found daily meditation upon the

following prayer quite useful:

Oh God, refresh and gladden my spirit. Purify my heart. illumine my

powers. I lay all my affairs in thy hand. Thou art my guide and my

refuge. I will no longer be sorrowful and grieved. I will be a happy and

joyful being. I will no longer be full of anxiety, nor will I let trouble

harass me. I will not dwell on the unpleasant things of life. O God,

thou art more friend to me than I am to myself. I dedicate myself to

thee. -- Abdu'l-Baha

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:28 AM 0 comments

To Be Alone With Oneself

“As a doctor it is my task to help the patient to cope with life. I cannot

presume to pass judgment on his final decisions, because I know from

experience that all coercion – be it suggestive, insinuation, or an other

method of persuasion – ultimately proves to be nothing but an

obstacle to the highest and most decisive experience of all, which is to

be alone with his own self…The patient must be alone if he is to find

out what it is that supports him when he can no longer support

himself. Only this experience can give him an indestructible

foundation.”

-- C.G. Jung, Collected Works, Vol. 12 Psychology and Alchemy, para

32.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:26 AM 0 comments

S A T U R D A Y , A P R I L 5 , 2 0 0 8

Robert's Desert House

My desert house has been one of the miraculous events that seem to

fall out the skies without any intelligence required from me.

The story - let's call it the 'falling' - began something like thirty five

years ago when I got up courage enough to explore my love for the

desert. I knew nothing to do but to pack up my car and drive east over

the Coast Range and watch the forest increase with the 6,000-foot

altitude, only to fall over the top range and abruptly decent into the

desert which is below sea level in Laguna Salada. What a dramatic

drive, which never fails to thrill me even after so many journeys! I

have a curious faculty of recalling events that become lifelong

memories at particular places: rain squalls, snow fall, below freezing

temperatures that startle even a new Californian, the time two

mountain lions were startled by my sudden appearance, took refuge in

a tall pine tree, only to get into a battle and fall from the tree to the

ground in a snarling noisy ball of fur. Most of all the journeys thrilled

me with the change in altitude, then humidity.

I found a barren bit of desert, spread out my sleeping bag and

explored temperatures from freezing to 120F (the highest I have ever

experienced).

Time was aware of the desert magic and condensed along with the

desert dryness. A week of solitude vanished into its own version of

eternity and the loneliness that has been my companion for so much of

life vanished. That enigma still remains unsolved, but more than half a

lifetime of mountain and desert magic have taught me the alchemical

art of turning loneliness into solitude. That remains as much mystery

as ever, but it is more plausible in desert or mountains than in any of

our modern constructions.

There are wonderful living creatures in the desert: rattlers,

sidewinders, rosy boas, tarantulas, chipmunks, large and small,

coyotes, and big horn sheep, birds in wonderful migrations. I learned

about them even before I came to fear some of them.

Sleeping bags spread out on the sand offer little protection, but the

desert seemed not to require any. This went on for several years,

vastly differing, and humidity, colour, wildflowers, and sunrises to

make the heart sing, winds to drive one to the bottom of the sleeping

bag.

One November night I bedded down in my bag already cold and

shivering, and disappeared into my cocoon. I poked my head out for

an instant at a time and discovered there was a riot of shooting stars

going on in an icy sky. I was not aware that I had come out for the

largest of the meteor showers, and even the brightest one visible for

the last several years. I was torn between watching and freezing.

My city life consisted of doing lectures in San Diego and eventually

places farther away. My audiences increased in size but I observed a

little old lady, snow white hair, who always sat middle front row when

I gave talks in San Diego. More good things falling out of the sky for

me, a friend introduced me to Bea Burch and explained that I loved

the desert and often slept on the sand in that lonely place. I learned

that Bea Burch and her husband had built a solitary house just near

where I had settled down to play desert creature. Bea's husband had

died some years ago but she kept the house to loan to her friends. It

was too lonely an experience for her alone.

Bea Burch immediately offered the desert house to me, "Where I

would be much safer," in her words, and soon I was making my desert

trips with water and electricity.

True: it was a nodal point in my life to love my desert with the comfort

of a house, but it was appropriate at that time of my life. Bea and I

made friends and I was able to surmount her nearly total deafness.

With the aid of my portable computer with screen we had many fine

exchanges at her La Jolla house. Deafness is the most isolating

experience one is likely to suffer - more so than blindness my friends

tell me.

One day I asked Bea if I could purchase her desert house. She

exploded in indignation and I wondered what indiscretion I had

blundered into. No more mention of buying the house, but several

years later she quietly mentioned

it was time for me now to buy the house.

It was an unexpected shock to me the first time I went again to the

desert house. A subtle change had taken place in it! The house had

depreciated with little care and I focused much of my energy to its

repair.

Some equally strange alteration is taking place now, since it is my

experience to stay in San Diego more of the time and loan out the

house to friends. Perspectives migrate so quietly!

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:57 PM 0 comments

S U N D A Y , M A R C H 3 0 , 2 0 0 8

The Good

A student asked his Chinese master for a definition of the GOOD. The

master replied,"If a man is JING (untranslatable Chinese term for a

man or woman who is Whole, or Complete), he need not concern

himself with the GOOD. He (she) IS GOOD."

Posted by ruhljohnson at 9:14 PM 0 comments

Confession: Making Conscious What Had Been Unconscious

In becoming whole, you must start where you are, even if waking up

only half an hour before your death. You don’t have to power your way

through every step. All that is required is to make the unconscious

conscious. You must learn to live your unlived life. Speaking it aloud

to another human being – the ancient practice of confession – that is

enough to redeem a sin. Of course, it is morally good and right to

repair what you can in outer life, but psychically, the only requirement

is that you become aware, put the opposites back together. As noted

earlier, I am not referring to some indiscriminate wholeness, but

rather your particular relationship to everything else. You become

more whole by working through the specificity of your life, not by

trying to evade or rise above the particulars of your life.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:37 PM 0 comments

Wrestling with Life-threatening Illness

Max Lerner, in writing of his experience of two successive cancers

followed by a heart attack, titled his illness narrative, Wrestling with

the Angel. He began by wrestling with his disease, determined to

emerge the victor. Lerner asserted a powerful will to survive,

assembled his medical team like a field general preparing for war, and

delighted in confounding the dire predictions of his doctors. But in the

process of fighting his illness, this most active and assertive of

patients also learned the limits of his own will. He came to realize that

he was wrestling with unfathomable mysteries just as the Bible’s

Jacob had wrestled with an angel. Reflecting upon this, Lerner wrote:

As I looked out at the opposite bank, at the river and the tugs, it came

to me that I no longer was sad about them, nor did I envy the people I

saw. Instead I felt elated. I was part of them and they part of me, part

of the same enterprise of life which flowed out of me into an indefinite

future, as the river flowed ... When you learn transcendence not in the

books but in the experience of a fight for life, it takes on a different

meaning ... For myself, I find all sorts of things now --even “profane”

things--to be sacred ... If I had to sum up in a phrase the difference my

illness made in me, it would be that I have become the familiar of the

sacral, and that every day of my life has learned to carry its own

transcendence."

Posted by ruhljohnson at 7:56 PM 0 comments

Illness and Unseen Shores

In serious illness, the limitations of willful control become apparent.

One sees how precarious and arbitrary conscious constructions really

are, how one’s plans, habits of personality, and the rules by which one

lives can be washed away like sand castles. Yet the suffering ego is

capable of building bridges to unseen shores and thereby can

consciously participate in the incarnation of a mystery, recognize a

continuity, and perceive a connectedness. This involves mythic

experience and the spiritual realm.

2007:

S U N D A Y , D E C E M B E R 2 3 , 2 0 0 7

Joy and grief

So many of us have strong emotions during the holiday season. For

years I have toyed with writing a book on the Christmas complex in

our culture. So many expectations are set up and materialism runs

rampant with viral contagion.

Having recently finished reading The Soul in Grief, by Robert

Romanyshyn, I was touched by the realization that individually and

collectively we fear grief and are impatient with it, and something

about this season, when we hunger for the return of the light, stirs our

grief.

Robert writes: "So often in these moments of rest, I felt that my

personal grief intersected with a collective one. On these occasions, I

was lost in a kind of reverie. Time would slip away, and for a while the

boundaries between myself and the world were erased, easing

somewhat the cold feeling of isolation which grief brings. I could hear

those other voices whispering that grief rises because we have dared

to love, that grief is the mark of the power of love, to love even when

we know that life is loss, to love even though we know that those

whom we love will one day pass away."

Posted by ruhljohnson at 11:38 AM 2 comments

For the Time Being

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,

Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes –

Some have got broken – and carrying them up to the attic.

The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,

And the children got ready for school. There are enough

Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week –

Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,

Stayed up so late, attempted – quite unsuccessfully –

To love all of our relatives, and in general

Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again

As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed

To do more than entertain it as an agreeable

Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,

Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,

The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.

The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory.

And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware

Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought

Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now

Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,

Back in the moderate Aristotelian city

Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid’s geometry

And Newton’s mechanics would account for our experience,

And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.

It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets

Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten

The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen

The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,

The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.

For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly

Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be

Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment

We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;

Remembering the stable where for once in our lives

Everything became a You and nothing was an It.

And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,

We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit

Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose

Would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son,

We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father;

“Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake.”

They will come, all right, don’t worry; probably in a form

That we do not expect, and certainly with a force

More dreadful that we can imagine. In the meantime

There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,

Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem

From insignificance. The happy morning is over,

The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:

When the Spirit must practise his scales of rejoicing

Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure

A silence that is neither for nor against her faith

That God’s Will will be done, that, in spite of her prayers,

God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.

--W.H. Auden

“For the time being”

Auden’s complete poem is about 50 pages long. It features all the

Christmas characters: Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the wise men,

Herod, Simon, and a narrator. (Our appreciation to Ulrike)

Posted by ruhljohnson at 10:31 AM 0 comments

S U N D A Y , D E C E M B E R 1 6 , 2 0 0 7

The Great Mango Tree

A friend named Amba Shankar in India once invited me to his village,

Halasangi, for a stay to experience traditional Indian life. One day he

took his American guest to a great mango tree. We picnicked,

meditated, told stories, and had a happy Indian day.

One of many stories shared that day was about a yogi, hundreds of

years old, who lived in this vicinity. It seems that one day Amba's

father had been meditating under this very mango tree, the old yogi

had come to take the father on a three-day initiation journey, during

which he tested him, tortured him, frightened him, and then gave the

father his enlightenment.

I was thrilled with this story and had profound thoughts under the

great mango tree that had been (mythologically speaking to my

Western mind) the scene of so sublime an event. Months later, back in

my base camp at the ashram in Pondicherry, a city nearly a thousand

miles away, I had an active imagination calling on the great mango

tree as scene; the old yogi came for me (in my imagination,

remember), took me on my initiation journey, tortured me, tested, me,

frightened me out of my wits, etc. and then gave me his blessings.

The next day I found Amba Shankar and told him -- careful to explain

this was in my room in Pondicherry and an imaginative journey -- what

had happened.

Amba was delighted and was in great excitement. " I knew the old

yogi would come for you! That is why I made you spend all day under

the great mango tree. I knew he would come for you!"

"Amba", I relied, "All this happened in my room in imagination right

here in Pondicherry."

"No matter, he came for you and gave you your enlightenment."

"Amba! You don't understand, this was yesterday right here in

Pondicherry!" I replied.

“No matter, the old yogi came for you just as I had intended!"

It was at that moment that I understood, for the first time in depth,

that India functions on a "reality" quite different from our own. It is

absolutely essential to know this of India and its teachings if one is to

understand their reality and "real" statements. The inner reality is

rich, instructive and absolutely essential for the health of an

individual. But it is chaos when it comes to the practical world of

business and outer reality.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 4:44 PM 0 comments

Our Struggle With Time and Options Good!

As modern people we have come to believe that we can have it all. In

the closing decades of the 20th century men and women in the West

struggled to balance careers, maintain intimate relationships, raise

children, keep up with dramatic social and technological change, and

still find time for leisure, personal growth, and spiritual development.

In our rush to accomplish all of this, time has become the enemy.

Harried by “deadlines,” rushing from appointment to appointment, we

struggle to defy limits with an intensity that has become “twenty-

four/seven.” The term “quality time” was coined in the 1990s to justify

what was actually less time with our children. The popular expression

“your biological clock is ticking” is another indicator of our struggle to

have it all and beat back the inherent limits of time.

A society’s relationship to time is an interesting and telling barometer

of its happiness. There is a timeless quality to heavenly experiences.

For example, when you fall in love it feels like clock time has stopped

or is suspended. People report a dramatic alteration of their sense of

time when they are in a life threatening situation and their ties to this

world are tenuous. In many traditional societies time seems to move

much more slowly, ebbing and flowing with the seasons and the rest

of nature.

Why is time such a problem for us? The popular myth— driven by

advertising and the media, that we really can have everything we

desire without limits or tradeoffs or loss—is a lie. The truth is that you

cannot have it all — at least not literally. For every path taken there is

another path forgone. Every thing you choose precludes some thing

not chosen. It is instructive to consider the root meaning of the word

decision. Just as an incision is a cutting in, as when a surgeon

operates on you, a decision is a cutting out. Life is filled with

decisions, and every selection results in potentials not realized,

experiences deferred or cut out.

You can try to get around this basic reality by cramming in more

quantity of experiences, but not without impacting the quality of your

life and turning time into your enemy. Kids don’t want quality time,

they want to be with us, play with us, learn at our sides—they want

quantity time, as much as we can give them. But, of course, that

requires modifications to adult schedules and priorities. It forces us to

admit that important aspects of our lives must be sacrificed in

parenthood. This is a bitter pill to swallow if we are in denial of the

fact that we cannot have everything. Into each and every existence a

great deal of unlived life must fall.

An extension of our problems with time is the pattern of trying to keep

all our options open for as long as possible. This attitude creates all

kinds of neurotic suffering. Many individuals come to the consulting

room with this kind of dilemma: the man who says, “I do really love

her, we’re very compatible, but I just can’t commit. What if there is

someone else out there who is even better?”

Or the new mother who says, “I want to be home with my new baby,

but the demands of my career won’t let up. I’m being torn apart!”

Or the aging baby boomer who complains, “I feel depressed most of

the time. I’m sick of the rat race, but I can’t afford to leave it. I want

my freedom, but nothing seems to really satisfy me for long.”

A deferred life is tragic, filled with lots of possibilities none of which

are fully realized. Dating three women rather than committing to one

means you don’t have deep intimacy with any of them. Juggling

competing demands of children and work often leaves women feeling

guilty and exhausted — no matter how many balls they are able to

keep in the air at one time.

The former Beatle John Lennon captured the dilemma of deferred life

in his lyric, “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other

plans.” Keeping your options open is a symptom rather than a

solution.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 4:38 PM 1 comments

Are You Related to Something Infinite?

"The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite

or not? That is the telling question of his life. Only if we know that the

thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our

interest upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of

real importance." -- C.G. Jung

Posted by ruhljohnson at 4:32 PM 1 comments

Projections and How Soul Problems Undermine Relationships

In Jungian psychology the anima (Latin for breath or soul) is the

feminine side of a man's unconscious psyche, while the animus is a

name for the masculine ideals contained within every woman.

Sigmund Freud recognized the fact that the analytical situation (in-

depth therapy) contained a lot of projections springing from family

patterns, from the transference of father and mother, brother and

sister images, creating dark and unrealistic erotic attractions filled

with infantile demands and prejudices. These projections also

constellate parallel inner images in one's marriage or life partner -- of

which we are not aware, and almost immediately the interwoven

problems thus become manifest.

The act of making projections conscious is first of all a question of

moral capacity, for the worst obstacle in the way of human

relationship is the power complex, the wish to conquer or possess the

other person. It is said that love and hate are opposites, but actually

love and power are opposite in relationships. Love is identity with the

other, while power is the desire to control our partner to meet our

own needs. A friendship can only develop when the demands coming

from the ego have been sacrificed to a certain degree on both sides.

Ego wishes always contain a secret power drive.

Even wanting to help a patient is illegitimate for an analyst and

contains power: "Too much helping is an encroachment upon the will

of others. Your attitude ought to be that of one who offers an

opportunity that can be taken or rejected. Otherwise you are most

likely to get into trouble. It is so, because man is not fundamentally

good, almost half of him is a devil," notes Jung.

A relationship needs love as well as understanding. The blind

dynamism of love must be mastered and corrected by the

psychological understanding of one’s own soul and the capacity to

differentiate human beings. Only then can a real relationship take

place.

As Marie-Louise von Franz has written, the four stages of the

development of the feminine element in man has four aspects: a man’s

anima can be Eve, i.e. biological attraction, the level of "participation

mystique.” The second stage can be personified as Helen, who belongs

to the romantic love phase and constellates the problems of

projections. The third stage is represented by Mary, who symbolizes

spiritual love, as for instance between St. Francis and St. Clara or

between Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. Finally there is a

fourth stage: Sophia. The image of Sophia symbolizes a subtle return

to the lower sphere, for from the point of view of wisdom, the less

sometimes means more.

Jung writes that the anima represents a desire or a system of

expectations which men project on women, in other words, a system

of erotic relationship. But if his (outer) expectations, like normal

sensuality, financial speculations, power drive, etc., interfere - then

everything is lost. To make one’s anima (the inner feminine ideal in

every man) conscious means to love one’s partner for herself and for

the sake of love.

Again, from von Franz: The development of the animus in a woman is

also reflected in four stages, determined by four types of inner

masculinity: the animus pictured as "physical force," as a man of

action (for instance James Bond), as "word," and finally as "meaning,"

i.e. the wise old man. A peaceful relationship with the other gender

can only be attained if all those four aspects have been made

conscious in the inner world of woman. The positive differentiated

animus means introspection and truth, but truth for its own sake,

without any interference coming from sensuality or lust for power.

Only if love prevails, love for its own sake, can a woman fully integrate

her animus. Then her animus will become a bridge leading to an

awareness of the higher Self.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 4:14 PM 3 comments

Changing Rancid Unlived Life to Symbolic Life

The word symbol means to strike together, like the musical instrument

in an orchestra in which two pieces of brass are clashed together to

create a composite sound. A symbol brings back together that which

has been separated or torn asunder.

Civilization, our own especially, is masterful at differentiation, clarity,

division, abstraction, and taking things apart to analyze them. This

faculty of differentiation makes our civilization possible. In our

vocabulary, this word means one thing, and that word means another.

Differentiation is one of the divine aspects of the human mind. But if

one stops there, one has only half of the human experience. To find

the other half is a deep secret of human life.

Our culture has a deep heritage of symbolic life, but something has

gone wrong with our connection to many of the most powerful

symbols in Western experience. They no longer nourish us, as they

should, as they once did, as we require. Many hours could be spent

exploring why our inherited symbol systems no longer work as they

once did, but suffice it to say that they have lost their power for many

of us. When something is literalized or sentimentalized, then it loses

its' power.

We have such a high standard of living, yet we are poverty stricken

with respect to symbolic life, leading to neurosis, anxiety, loneliness,

restlessness. To talk about symbolic life is to address the post-modern

dilemma.

When something is missing in one's diet, then symptoms appear. A

symptom is a poor grade symbol. I became Dr. Jung's devotee when I

read and understood his idea that all neurosis is an effort to cure what

is wrong in us, but it is applied at the wrong level. So the cure for a

neurosis is to find out what the symptom is saying and then get that

on a more intelligent level.

Symbol is the art of putting back together, that which has been torn

apart. If you can learn to use symbolic life intelligently, it will provide

the solution for neurosis, anxiety and loneliness. It does this by

turning life's apparent contradiction and collision into paradox.

In the consulting room, so often my aim is to turn neurotic collisions

into paradoxical symbols. This is to discover a means by which life

comes back together again.

Holiness relates to wholeness, to live the god-given whole that you

are. We spend so much time civilizing our children so they will be

polite, kind, courteous, and fair. This is un-wholemaking, but it is the

stuff of civilization. As a result we all have a vast unlived life. The first

major task in the second half of life is to search out one's unlived life.

There is a terrible heresy in our culture that consists of denying the

dark things, to pretend that they are not there. This makes unlived life

in huge quantities. The unlived things are murderous; they prevent

peace. Unlived life in one is deprived of consciousness, air, and light,

and so it goes rancid. I shudder at that word rancid, yet everyone has

such symptom-making unlived life in them. These things are

dangerous. If you overdo one of a pair of opposites, the other one goes

rancid and you are in trouble.

It is terrifying to make a list of unlived life. If you are an introvert, you

are not an extravert. If you are married then you are not a bachelor. If

you are man, then you are not a woman, and some of the feminine

experience is closed to you. Beethoven was once asked how he

composed music, and he replied, "I unchoose notes and what remains

is the composition." What are the unchosen notes in your life, the

remainder making up the composition of your particular life? These

need to be coped with in some fashion.

If you can find the collision of two things that are at war within you,

then you can begin to get them on a better level. Think in terms of

symbol. For example, suppose you fall in love with your neighbor's

wife or husband. Without understanding symbolic life, it would appear

that the opposing forces are very troublesome indeed. Is one to act

out every time one is hit by cupid's arrow? Or is one to deny this God-

given Eros, just say no, and end up resenting your partner, getting

depressed, or going around angry.

If you have integrity enough -- that word integrity is quite wonderful

and means untouched, unbroken -- you can devise something to

encompass these two opposing forces in you. You don't have to tear

the neighborhood up, and you don't need to be neurotic. How could

you reconcile these opposing forces in a symbolic way?

This topic is explored at length in our book, Living Your Unlived Life.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 3:08 PM 0 comments

S A T U R D A Y , D E C E M B E R 1 , 2 0 0 7

A New View of Reincarnation

Many years ago while living in India I was confronted by an old yogi

who said: “You will incarnate in every possible life form before you are

finished.” This seemed to imply that I would be a rich man, a poor

man, a saint, a sinner. There would be incarnations to teach me

everything that is humanly possible. This was followed by a long pause

as he waited for the enormity of that statement to sink into my brain.

Then, he pointed at me and said, “You are in all of your incarnations

simultaneously.” Again, there was a pause. Next, he said, “That which

is in all of its incarnations simultaneously is God.” After a pregnant

pause he looked me directly in the eye and delivered a line that sent

me reeling: “And that is you!” Then he walked off. I have never been

the same since.

The idea of reincarnation is a fanciful way of addressing unlived life. If

we take it literally, it seems to suggest that we are reborn through

time as different people, or even animals. This is the ego’s attachment

to an identity. Literalism is always a form of idolatry, and the idol is

usually our own ego. The ego can’t imagine its transformation and so

literalizes it. A living mystery is concretized into a concept, a belief

rather than a lived experience.

Understood psychologically, reincarnation refers to the redemption of

our unlived life, the necessity of addressing all our potentials before

we can realize God (unity). There are thousands of potentialities

within, all of which are calling simultaneously to be expressed and

experienced. This is the meaning of reincarnation for a modern

person. All of our potentials want to be incarnated, to be lived out

before our journey back to wholeness is complete. All of them are

vying for attention simultaneously. Reincarnation is not for another

time, another place, another existence – it is now. Understood at the

proper level, we are in all our incarnations simultaneously. We

embody divine consciousness.

Yet this realization of paradise is nearly always perceived by the ego

to be a complete disaster. The ways of attempting to wriggle out of a

potential enlightenment are legion. The mystical world is just too

inconceivable for most people. But if you know what you are doing – it

is sublime.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:53 AM 1 comments

'Enlightenment' and Inflation

Spiritual advisors, from both East and West, often advise us to let go

of our egos.

I am always amused when an American or European informs me that

he or she is on the spiritual path and working on getting rid of his or

her ego; the intention is noble but the practical results are often

laughable if not miserable. Westerners trying to be rid of the ego

generally end up with an inflation in the guise of spirit. They go

around thinking that they are more than they really are, which is a far

cry from enlightenment. Modern people are generally too far gone,

too individuated, to return to simple pre-egoic consciousness – a

quality that I love so much among India’s rural villagers.

As our standard of living gets better and we have more leisure, the

tension of the opposites produced by egoic consciousness only

increases. When life is hard, necessity settles so many things. This is

perhaps why most people can’t stand too much freedom – it isn’t very

popular and may be heard as downright un-American, but the more

freedom, the more anxiety that arises due to the ego-based level of

awareness.

We live in an ego-driven culture. One must work very hard, until

exhaustion, just to get ego awareness working well in contemporary

life. It takes the whole educational system and all of our socialization

processes to promote this consciousness, and our entire society is

highly invested in this struggle. However, in the process of becoming

differentiated adults, we inevitably become split. We all have both a

lived and an unlived life. Most psychotherapies are designed to patch

up wounded people and then throw them back into the battle of

oppositions. They guide people in how to become better adapted

socially: more adept at making money, more highly disciplined, more

dutiful, more economically productive. Even when such therapy is

successful and gets an individual back out into the rat race again, you

can watch them wither over time under the weight of it all.

Our post-modern problem is ego consciousness. But what is one to do

with this on a day-to-day, practical level?

If you try to think about a unitive vision beyond duality, beyond the

oppositions and apparent contradictions that are tearing you apart,

you have already fractured it into the human dimension. Our language

and our very thought forms are dualistic. So how do we get outside

the limitations of ordinary thought? An intellectual understanding that

we are God and all is one does not equate to an enlightened life.

Krishnamurti once told me that the chief obstacle to heaven is one’s

ideas about heaven, and I believe this to be true.

To at least get started on the path to greater awareness, instead of

approaching life as a series of contradictions that must be fought, you

can fatefully embrace “what is” - that is, what happens in daily life.

This implies taking the ego and investing it somewhere. If your power

and freedom are invested fatefully, this will save you from the

constant anxiety of a split world.

So simple, but not easily accomplished.

As Buddhism teaches so eloquently, anything you do to escape the

fundamental duality of ego consciousness just kicks more energy into

it. Your only choice is to stop. That unsplit, unifying place is found at

the fulcrum. This is the holy place, the whole place. The demand for

human consciousness to have the “right” thing at the exclusion of

something else just sets the wheel in motion again.

It might appear that the best solution is to do nothing, but that is not

exactly right. There is a kind of consciousness that assists slowing

down. If you can honestly assess what is true in your life, looking at it

with objectivity and intelligence, this is getting closer.

Practically speaking, if we would spend as much time being alert and

aware as we do worrying, we would be out of any mess fairly soon.

When you stop fighting your situation, you just have the situation but

no longer the struggle to cope with. Generally one can endure that.

This is to cease wounding yourself on the jailhouse bars of reality.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:47 AM 0 comments

T U E S D A Y , N O V E M B E R 2 7 , 2 0 0 7

Faith and the Slender Threads

In the early part of my life, and well into adulthood, I was a well-

trained, rational American who thought that I had to be responsible

for everything in life. Over time I came to see this is too great a

weight for anyone to bear and maintain a contented existence.

Only gradually did I stumble upon a concept that I call the slender

threads. This concept of slender threads is a way to talk about faith

that the people, the money, the inspiration, the insights that I most

need at any point in life will turn up -- unasked! I only need to have

the awareness to recognize them. You could call this destiny.

The right things will turn up. What a curious concept in a culture that

works so hard to control reality. I must admit that it has taken

decades for me to learn to trust this phenomenon, which is certainly

quite irrational. There is still a stage in the decision-making process in

which I am afraid to turn my life over to the slender threads, though I

pass through it with less turmoil these days.

In Christian terminology you might refer to this as faith. These slender

threads rule my life, whether I acknowledge them or not.

I have always been a great worrier. I used to worry about everything:

What will I do this weekend? What is going to happen next in life? I

became so overwhelmed with worry that I couldn't stand it anymore

and, out of despair, came upon what is essentially a religious creed --

the concept that I am cared for. Slender threads bring what I need,

unwilled by conscious effort. In other words, I don't need to push

reality around. Naturally, my ego resists this and feels insulted. "I run

your life," it insists. But this sense of "control" is purchased with

tremendous anxiety.

Of course, I must keep the ego sharp and clear; this is not some sloppy

"going with the flow." It is the job of the ego to keep track of the

practicalities of my life, yet the flow and meaning of life come from the

slender threads. Skeptics always are quick to ask: How do you know

the difference between a slender thread and mere chance or wishful

thinking? It is true that mistakes and losses occur, but as I age I have

come to appreciate that even these have divinity in them. So, I have

gradually learned to accept that there is an intelligent force at work

guiding my life if I will only trust it -- even in those things that I do not

consciously want.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 12:24 PM 1 comments

African Story

There once was a father in Africa who had a son. The father loved his

boy, and would have done anything to safeguard the son. He worried a

lot about keeping the boy safe. He worried and worried. When the

youth grew to the point where he was approaching manhood, the

father knew he had to communicate to his son a piece of very

important information. It was so crucial; he felt nothing else in life

would be its equal.

So one evening the father went to the boy and said, "I have something

to tell you. I have to warn you that one of these nights the Heavenly

Maiden is going to come, and she is going to stand beside you. She

will be so ravishingly beautiful that you will lose site of all else. She

will want to spend the night with you. I must tell you that if you agree

to this, and you consent to spend the night with this Heavenly Maiden,

then you will be dead in the morning."

The boy didn't utter a sound. The father, too, was silent, as there was

nothing more to say. The boy wondered what this was all about.

A short time later the boy was about to go to sleep when the Heavenly

Maiden came without a sound. She so overwhelmed the boy with her

beauty that he could not speak or move. When she suggested that she

wanted to spend the night with the boy, the word "No" was the

farthest thing from his mind. So the boy spent the night with the

Heavenly Maiden, and in the morning the boy was found dead in his

bed. The mother discovered him, and she immediately burst into tears.

The father heard the uproar, and knew that the worst of his fears must

have come true. He then understood why the worry had been so great

in his heart.

There was a beating of drums, but nothing could bring the boy back.

The father didn't know what to do. Finally someone in the tribe offered

the desperate idea that there was an old shaman who lived a day's

journey away. Perhaps he might be of some assistance. A messenger

was quickly dispatched to the old shaman. He ran all day and arrived

by nightfall. The shaman heard of the distress and nodded. Despite the

urgency of the messenger, the shaman took his time getting ready for

the journey back to the tribe, disappearing into a hut and placing

things in a bag. When they finally arrived back at the village the

following day, the shaman looked around and said plainly, "Build a big

fire."

No one knew what the fire was for, but with hope that the shaman had

some magic to bring the boy back to life, the tribe worked together

and quickly built a big fire. The shaman then pulled from his sack a

huge lizard.

There are lizards, like the ancient phoenix, that have the curious

capacity to live in fire. So, the shaman tossed the lizard into the

blazing fire. In the middle of the coals his eyes were glowing.

Everyone in the tribe was speechless.

Then the shaman said, "Anyone who loves the boy enough to go into

the fire and bring out the lizard, only you can make it so the boy will

live."

The mother, frantic, dashed into the fire to get the lizard. She was

quickly burned and was driven back by the intense heat. She collapsed

in grief, sobbing because she was unable to save her boy.

Then it was the father's turn. No matter what, the father was

determined to retrieve the lizard. But, again, the heat was so great

that he, too, was driven back against his will. The father could not

bring the lizard out.

Unexpectedly, a most remarkable thing happened. A plain girl who

had loved the boy quietly and privately, who had never told anyone of

the love in her heart for this boy, stepped up. She calmly entered into

the fire. She brought the lizard out.

The dead boy sat up. He looked bewildered, and asked aloud what had

happened. There was great rejoicing. Everyone exploded with joy. The

village was astonished by what they had witnessed: The mother could

not save the boy. The father could not save the boy. Only the plain

maiden could save him. Nobody understood what this meant, but they

celebrated and gave the shaman a generous fee.

The boy chattered away about what he had seen in his big dream

while he was dead. Eventually things calmed down, and the old

shaman said, "There is one more thing before I go. You must build up

the fire again."

Everyone was astonished by this command. But they did as they were

told, as they would do anything the shaman said at this point. The

shaman took the lizard and tossed it into the fire again. Then he

turned to the boy and said: "Your part in this is not finished yet. You

have extraordinary supra-personal powers now. Because you have

been dead and returned, you can go in the fire and bring the lizard

out. If you bring the lizard out, however, your mother will die and the

plain maiden will live. If you leave the lizard in the fire, the plain

maiden will die, and your mother will live."

End of story.

Every male will go through this experience. Something awakens that

will incapacitate him. At some point, he will come down to breakfast

with the knowledge that something in him has suddenly died. The

divine feminine awakes, and this kills the orientation to life that

preceded it. This "unfits" him for the world in crucial ways. He sees

something supra-personal and there is the sudden recognition of a

vast world that was previously inaccessible. His mother and father

cannot save him. Even the Divine Maiden cannot save him. Only a

flesh-and-blood plain maiden can help bring him to life again.

This is the difference between falling in love and loving.

Copyright ©2007 by Robert Johnson and Jerry M. Ruhl

Posted by ruhljohnson at 11:34 AM 0 comments

Thanksgiving

Thankfulness is of various kinds. There is a verbal thanksgiving which

is confined to a mere utterance of gratitude. The tongue may give

thanks while the heart is unaware of it. This is mere usage, just as

when we meet, receive a gift and say thank you, speaking the words

without significance. One may say thank you a thousand times while

the heart remains thankless, ungrateful. But real thankfulness is a

cordial giving of thanks from the heart. When, in response to the

favors of the Divine, we manifest conscience, the heart is happy, the

spirit is exhilarated. These spiritual susceptibilities are ideal

thanksgiving.

--Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace

Posted by ruhljohnson at 11:19 AM 0 comments

T H U R S D A Y , N O V E M B E R 1 5 , 2 0 0 7

A Dream of Adobe Heaven

I recently had a dream about heaven that seemed designed to flesh-

out or correct my view of the afterlife (angels, harps, streets of gold,

sweetness and light -- a perspective that I inherited from my Baptist

grandmother who raised me). I dreamed that I was in the next world,

and there I saw a one-story building all made of adobe mud. There

was no vibrant color in sight apart from an intense golden light

shining from somewhere, and there were no straight lines in the

architecture or anywhere else. Everything was brown and curved.

I am taking this dream seriously as a correction of a somewhat

sentimental idea of what heaven might be like. I can tell you that even

though there were no angels or heavenly choirs, it was a very happy

dream.

At first I didn’t know who I was in this dream, and then I noticed that

there were about a dozen people in the adobe hut with me. No one

had a name or an identity. This was distressing. I asked, "Is nobody

anybody here?" I worked hard and, with great effort, I began to recall

my name and the identity from earth gradually became re-established.

There was some overlap of the previous world after all! Then I went

around and questioned the people one by one until they all

remembered who they were. I got all of them back on a conscious

track, which seemed to be the essence of this dream.

Why would I dream such images?

The dream says that at this time it is important to hang on to my

earthly identity (who I am culturally), though there are days when I

would like to close that door. The dream may suggest that I must

remember who I am and not just drift off into senility. The dream also

suggests that I need to sweep out more of the simplistic and

sentimental view about the next world. This dream has brought a lot

of happiness and simplicity into my life. Each day I muse that heaven

is simple brown adobe and identity has some continuity.

It helps to talk with someone else about your dream. This assists in

gaining consciousness. Almost everyone who comes to my consulting

room starts by saying “I had a dream, but it is just silly and

meaningless.” One seems to have to say this. It is the ego resisting the

dream. The recipient who hears your dream doesn’t have to be trained

as a therapist (though he or she should not be so cynical as to make

fun of dreams). Dr. Jung once was asked who he took his dreams to,

and he explained that often he told his dreams to a farmer who lived

nearby, a man who knew nothing about dreams or psychology.

The important thing is to share a dream and state it aloud. Only then

might you realize you have been given a pearl of great price.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 5:22 PM 0 comments

W E D N E S D A Y , O C T O B E R 3 1 , 2 0 0 7

The Sacred and the Profane

It is instructive to explore the origin of the terms sacred and profane.

In medieval times the sacred was the ceremony for the elite held

inside the church with considerable pomp and ritual. The word

profane referred to the activities that took place on "the porch" of the

church. Morality plays were performed for illiterate peasants on the

outside of the church proper. What is interesting is that holy things

were going on both inside and outside, just utilizing different

language. It has been helpful for me to realize that the sacred and the

profane are the same things going on -- just at different levels and

places in our lives.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 2:00 PM 0 comments

M O N D A Y , O C T O B E R 2 9 , 2 0 0 7

Bhakti Yoga and the Power of Love

Certainly India's greatest gift to me was the art of Bhakti Yoga. I had

read volumes on this way of worship long before I arrived in India, but

neither the translations into English nor my level of development

allowed me more than an intuitive understanding of this simplest of all

forms of worship. Simplicity seems the hardest art for a western mind

to comprehend, and it has taken me most of a lifetime to gain even a

slender hold on this jewel of India.

India is far richer in its comprehension of the inner life than we are,

and it is naive to think that we can appreciate their depth with our

present language and thought forms. India apparently gave over its

major energy to study and development of the inner world much as we

did just that to study the outer world. This resulted in a genius of

understanding of what we call the unconscious or inner world.

India devised four disciplines to correspond with the four basic

patterns of temperament which appear in humans whatever age,

culture or language one observes. To simplify outrageously, it only

remains to find the discipline that fits one's native temperament and

devote one's self to that path. The great teachers all agree that each

path leads to the same goal and Rama Krishna likens the journey to

choosing which of four paths leading up the four basic cardinal sides

of a mountain he will choose. They all lead to the same mountain top.

He chose his own native path, Bhakti, but later trod each of the other

three to attain the same mountain top.

The four paths:

Gnani yoga is the art of using one's thinking function to pierce

through the illusion of our faulty view of reality. This is so foreign to

my own natural functions that I can hardly do more than observe it in

its most rudimentary form. I think I see such a path in some of my

friends who find an ecstatic beauty and joy in a mathematical

formulation or an Einstein devoting his life to a Holy Grail he called

The Unified Theory of Matter. If this were the only path to salvation I

would not have the slightest chance!

Hatha Yoga is the art of observing and obeying the laws of physical

nature - chiefly one's own body - until one sees the divine workings in

all their mystery and glory. This is for the sensation type individuals. I

sometimes find this in the eyes of a friend who has the genius of

seeing the human body as the temple of God and I am near enough to

the art to be overwhelmed by the appreciation of the physical beauty

of another person. But I don't have the physical endurance to travel

that side of the mountain any farther than I managed the Matterhorn

years ago in Switzerland. Hatha yoga is the most popular of the arts in

the western world and most people identify yoga with the art of

physical control of the body.

Raja Yoga, the 'Royal Yoga' is for intuitive type people and consists of

'listening' in meditation until one begins to hear the divine music or

hears/sees/intuits the Splendor of God. Of course this is not any

ordinary audible hearing but 'hearing ' the reality in back of every

sound or sight or impression. One is promised the sound as of bells,

then of the most sublime music, then an indescribable harmony, then

the sound of the universe itself. I see this shining in the eyes of

intuitives, more often a woman than a man, and suffer with that

individual in trying to find any possible expression of the vision in our

earth-bound culture and language.

Then to Bhakti yoga which has touched me so deeply and seems a

language so well suited for the impasse we find ourselves in now. This

is for the feeling type, that orphan faculty which the west finds so

puzzling.

The art of Bhakti consists of so simple a process that it seems near

incomprehensible; but that is only because of our rudimentary

development of the feeling function itself. One is instructed to chose a

person - man, woman, someone known personally to you, or a

historical figure - and pour out one's love for that individual with no

intention of any feeling being returned. Most of the instructions are

what NOT to do; one must not pester the recipient of one's love,

expect anything in reply, presume a friendship, expect any sexual

response, or fantasy any extension of that love into the time-space

world. It is the simplest form of love - simply to BE.

I have been on both sides of this Indian exchange and found each to

be the most profound experience of my life. Indian Bhakti teachers,

with remarkable generosity, often point out Jesus Christ as the

greatest of the Bhakti masters.

And that is the heart of the matter, to BE. Our language and customs

are so far from this understanding that it is all but impossible for a

Westerner to embrace such a discipline. So often when I speak of the

possibility of being, the reply is, "Yes, but what do I DO"?

There is one suggestion of differentiation in our language which offers

a clue. We do use two terms, to love, and to fall in love. If one can

follow this possibility we can observe two levels of love; to love as

applicable to loving another person for the attributes of that person,

his/her characteristics, likes, dislikes, virtues, faults, idiosyncrasies.

This is cool love, human in dimensions, durable and lending itself to

long term relationships. It is the stable stuff of marriage, friendship

and long-term commitments.

To fall in love is an abyss of ecstasy and bewilderment that is far

beyond our western understanding. It is nothing less than seeing the

image of God in the form of another person and being transfixed by a

splendor beyond our comprehension. The art of falling in love is

recent in human experience, probably not much known before the

advent of our own modern age. It is still not known, or honored, in the

eastern world except as they drink up our customs and ideals by the

sudden deluge of the information age. It is astonishing to see how

quickly an easterner takes on western characteristics - both good and

bad - as he adopts the English language and western customs. Only

one generation is required to turn a traditional easterner into a jeans-

clad ambitious youth clambering to get to America where the streets

are paved with gold.

So, what is the strange love required of the Bhakti yogi? It is very

much akin to our romantic love, or falling in love. I am inclined to

think that our capacity to fall in love is a new faculty of religious

comprehension for which we have so little insight as to be

catastrophic.

We naively presume that falling in love is the ideal preparation for

marriage, when the facts are that virtually no ordinary human

arrangement can hold the immense power of the Divine Love which

has fallen upon us. Perhaps romantic love, falling in love, appeared

when our traditional religious forms began to lose their power to

mediate the Splendor of God for us. To ask another fallible human

being to carry this splendor is to ask the household wiring of our

ordinary life to carry the hundred thousand volt power of the Vision of

Heaven.

I observed traditional Indian youths going to the temples frequently,

sitting in yoga position before an image of God, tremble with the

power of the experience, then go about their daily work and family

without being tempted to ask that vast impersonal experience of a

mortal human.

Probably the most volatile problem our modern world faces is what to

do with the uncontrollable power of the love that is greater than any

individual. Little wonder that romantic love, that lightning bolt that

falls from the heavens, when laid at the feet of a mortal human , fails

both persons involved. The origin of the term Honeymoon implies that

it lasts for a month.

But what about 'reality'?

Bhakti yoga offers a possibility of investing the great love in a way

which can support it and thus leave our human love to a realm which

is appropriate for it. To mix the two is a sure program for

disillusionment and bitter disappointment.

All models prove inadequate finally, and it must be admitted that all

loves are the same love - of divine origin ; but this is a rare experience

to be found only after the most careful differentiation. Freud was

right: everything depends on sex as the origin of its power: however,

he declined ever to define his term, perhaps in humility at the power

of it. He might have been better understood if he had used the term

Love. But it is a rare individual who has earned the right to this

Unitive vision.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 3:24 PM 2 comments

The Language of Dreams

How to define a dream? You could say that a dream contains what you

should know about your psyche, but do not.

A dream does not tell what you already know, but what you need to

learn. Dreams speak in stories, and newcomers to the world of

working with the inner world of dreams must relearn the "as if"

language of childhood. This is the language of stories and symbols. So

much of our formal education is superimposing rationality (which is

not a synonym for intelligence) upon our language and thought. To

understand dreams one must recover the archaic and mythological

language of childhood.

If there is too much of something in your life, the dreams will tell you.

If there is too little of something, your dreams will inform you of this.

If you are overdoing or underdoing, the dream will serve as your

guide.

If your dream includes falling, ask of the dream image, What is

fallling? From grace? From esteem? In love?

If there is an image of flying, ask yourself, What am I flying over in my

conscious attitude? Am I flying off the handle? How am I inflated? Am

I flying toward or away from something? Is a transcendent perspective

trying to free me in some way?

The goal is to create an actual experience in the here and now as you

interact with the dream images rather than a dry analysis of a dream.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 2:59 PM 2 comments

Labels: dreams

W E D N E S D A Y , O C T O B E R 2 4 , 2 0 0 7

Back from the Book Tour for Living Your Unlived Life

Dear Readers:

There have not been entries to the Inner Work blog for the past two

weeks while I was participating in a book tour for Living Your Unlived

Life. A thousand thanks to so many who attended talks in Boulder,

Denver, Seattle, Santa Cruz, Oakland, Pasadena, West Hollywood, and

Los Angeles. There were many highlights, such as nearly three hours

of discussion in Boulder with Duncan Campbell for his radio show

Living Dialogues. You will be able to access this conversation at

www.Living Dialogues.com. Duncan is a treasure.

Michele Daniel and Christophe Le Mouel were most gracious hosts at

the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles, where there was lively

discussion about living your unlived life and the myth of Castor and

Pollux as a prototype for all who are on the journey into wholeness. To

speak at the podium where Robert A. Johnson, as well as wise souls

such as Marie Louise von Franz and Edward Edinger have shared

their insights, was truly a pleasure and a privilege.

--Dr. Jerry M. Ruhl

More than one person asked for a quote from Dr. Jung that I

paraphrased during presentations. My apologies, but I have misplaced

some of your personal email addresses. Here is the quote:

“To this day ‘God’ is the name by which I designate all things which

cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset

my subjective views, plans and intentions, and change the course of

my life for better or for worse.” – C.G. Jung

This is an enigmatic statement. Jung often insisted that he was not a

theologian and could not address the mystery of the transcendent, a

totality that is far beyond human understanding. He did, however,

often speak of the human experience of what he called the inner "God

image," that spark or energy or potential within each of us that

represents our highest value. Jung is suggesting that we take

seemingly irrational and unexplainable events in life fatefully -- an

illness, a loss, a tragedy -- all those occurrences that upset our sense

of control. We can treat such experiences, events we never would

have chosen, as teaching tools rather than something that should not

be. Within our deepest suffering can be found our highest values.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 2:40 PM 0 comments

S U N D A Y , O C T O B E R 7 , 2 0 0 7

Ecstatic Experience

The word ecstatic in its original sense means to stand outside of

oneself. We work so hard to make a personal self, an “I” or ego, with

clarity and continuity. This is extremely valuable, but one pays a price

for this “I” -- we become small, personal and limited; we are a highly

circumscribed entity in our “I-ness.”

The ecstatic experience involves escaping from the “I-ness.” This

requires that we break the boundaries of our separateness to

experience a greater realm, a realm that taxes our finest poets and

artists to convey. It is the most valuable experience any person can

ever have. The beauty of the golden world is that one sees a vastness,

something so much greater than oneself that one is left speechless

with awe, admiration, delight and rapture.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 11:54 AM 3 comments

Listening to Your Interior Intelligence

Robert, on his first meeting with Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung in 1948,

as discussed in our book, Balancing Heaven and Earth:

Dr. Jung saw the potential in me as well as the dangers ahead. I

remember sitting there thinking, “This man is just like me, except

infinitely wiser. He understands me completely. He understands.”

But I can see now that was part of his genius. He was not like me at

all, but he was capable of making me feel as if we were of one mind.

Later, when I saw him in other circumstances I realized that our

personalities were quite different, then I thought, “This man has

deceived me. He tricked and manipulated me.” But as I reflected on

that day in Kusnacht, I realized that he had given me a very special

gift. Not only did he know how to speak English to me, he knew how

to speak in the typology I could best relate to. He chose examples and

even figures of speech that were consistent with my introverted

feeling type of personality.

This, it seems to me, is pure genius. Many brilliant people display

their knowledge by talking in big words and mighty concepts that

serve the dual purpose of inflating the speaker and confusing the

listener. They sit like Olympian Gods and expect other people to learn

their language. But Jung could adjust his discourse in a way that

would best serve the needs of the other person. He was a great

intuitive thinker, but he did not speak to me in abstract intellectual

language; he addressed me in the feeling language that I could relate

to.

This is the essence of what I learned from Dr. Jung: Listen to your

interior intelligence, take it seriously, stay true to it, and -- most

importantly -- approach it with a religious attitude. His psychological

term for this is individuation -- the discovery of the uniqueness of

yourself, finding out what you are not and finding out what you are.

Individuation relates to wholeness, but it is not some indiscriminate

wholeness, but rather your particular relationship to everything else.

You get to the whole only by working with the particularity of your

life, not by trying to evade or rise above the specificity of your life.

This is the blending of the golden world and the earthly world. This

can provide a truly religious life in modern times.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 11:45 AM 0 comments

More on Timeliness

Timely action is both patient and decisive. If we are rushed or

impulsive we may force the situation too soon. If we are slow or

apathetic the moment passes us by. Timeliness knows when an action

is in rhythm with how things unfold.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 11:40 AM 0 comments

That Awake Feeling

“So I made up my mind, that’s the way I want to live my life. Nothing

else makes any sense. I want to do something fine. I want to be totally

involved in the doing. As long as I live, I want that awake feeling.

Anything else is just kidding yourself.”

--Tim, age 17

Posted by ruhljohnson at 11:39 AM 0 comments

S A T U R D A Y , O C T O B E R 6 , 2 0 0 7

Following the Will of God

It is an audacious notion to put forth in this age of science and willful

determination that one’s existence is somehow inspired, guided or

even managed by unseen forces outside our control. Call it fate,

destiny, the hand of God, or the workings of the Self, these slender

threads bring coherence and continuity to our lives. Over time they

weave a remarkable tapestry.

What are these slender threads? Being in a particular place at just the

right time, meeting someone who steers you in an unforeseen

direction, the unexpected appearance of work or money or inspiration

just when they are most needed.

These are the mysterious forces that guide us and shape who we are.

Patterns that give meaning to our experiences.

Life is not meaningless, but has more connection and meaning than

we can stand. To live in active relationship to the slender threads is to

receive guidance, knowledge and illumination from a mysterious

source beyond the ego or personal self.

This notion of slender threads is essentially a religious idea. Each age

needs its own language for understanding enduring truths. We must

have a religious attitude in dealing with life's depth and mystery. By

religious attitude I am not referring to following a path toward

redemption or salvation or even necessarily to membership in a

particular religious institution. A religious attitude relates to the

cultivation of soul -- an openness to wonder, awe, fear, and reverence

with respect to the “other,” those mysterious forces that exist outside

our conscious control. These powers have been called at various times

fate, destiny, the hand of God, or to use our term -- slender threads.

While most modern people are preoccupied with getting and

spending, constantly fretting and struggling to manipulate external

reality so that it goes their way, life can follow a different flow. You

can tune your awareness to the slender threads, listen attentively, and

act when the proper course has been suggested.

After many years of struggling with this, I feel that the ego is properly

used as the organ of awareness, not the organ of decision. Almost

everyone in our society tries to use their ego as an organ of decision.

For example, we may say to ourselves, “I am going to Europe. I will

buy the air tickets for this date and I will stay at this hotel when I

arrive.” The ego is useful as the organ of awareness, at collecting

information about ticket fares and accommodations and things to see

and do when you arrive. But the ego does not determine the

experience you will have on your trip. People get so preoccupied with

trying to control things that are not in the ego’s province that they

neglect what is the ego’s business -- heightened awareness.

The ego should be collecting data and watching. The ego serves as the

eyes and ears of God. It gathers the facts, but it does not make the

ultimate decisions. The decisions come from the Self, a modern

attempt by Dr. Jung to describe a center of intelligence that is not

limited to the ego but contains all of the faculties -- conscious and

unconscious -- of the personality. Obviously, this is but a new attempt

at describing the old concept of the divine.

How do we know if we are truly following the will of God? One knows

instinctively, there is a sense of peace, balance and fullness, an

unhurriedness.

Here I am not talking about following scripture to the letter. That is

one way of being happy, but for a growing number of modern people

this is not a viable solution. Looking for a manual to tell you what to

do, whether that manual is the Bible or the latest psychological

theory, does not advance psychological and spiritual growth. Listening

to the will of God as it manifests within your own consciousness,

hearing what has been called the still, small voice within -- this is

becoming the religious life for people of the new millenium.

This cannot be reduced to a tidy formula, but one general guideline is

to ask yourself what is needed for wholeness in any situation. Instead

of asking what is good, or what coincides with our personal interest,

ask what is whole-making. Sainthood is the result of wholeness, not

goodness. What is required for more wholeness will be different for

each person, and it changes moment by moment. This requires

realigning yourself each day, each hour and each moment. When one

can live in this fashion, aligning the ego with the inner Self, it has a

profound effect on the quality of our lives. Abiding by the will of God

gives life -- including its misfortunes -- meaning, purpose and dignity.

It also removes a great deal of the anxiety of modern life.

I must also caution that following the slender threads does not mean

manipulating things so that the ego can get its way. Egocentric

spirituality just gets one into more intense suffering. Going after the

splendor of heaven as an ego project is very different from having

heaven open itself up to you.

Many so-called “spiritual” people set about the task of increasing the

amount of goodness in their life or the amount of lightness or

brightness or happiness. I disagree with that entirely. It is an

egocentric journey with no nobility in it. More often than not, seeking

more goodness or happiness just leads to their exact opposite. I

sometimes think that exhaustion is the best tool for enlightenment, as

it gets the ego out of the way. It finally just wears down so that the

divine can pour through.

It is deceiving to say, “I will know,” and more correct to say “it will be

revealed to me.”

The best way to approach this manner of living is to start with

extremely small things. If you start thinking about it too much, you

will just end up in contradiction. Instead of weighing all the pros and

cons and forcing a decision with your ego, just try to keep your ego

alert and slap its hand gently when it tries to do too much.

For example: I have to get groceries this afternoon. Should I go to the

small market nearest my house or the larger one with a greater

selection several miles away? Instead of trying to decide, I will just

wait until I know where to go. This is some ways a ridiculous example,

but if you practice you will find that there is a difference when the ego

says something and when the Self says something; I know from

experience that the impetus comes from different places in me.

You can almost feel in your body the difference between an ego

decision and a Self decision. The ego decision seems to come from

your head while the Self decision seems to come from your heart or

your stomach (we sometimes call it a “gut feeling”).

How do we know when to exert our will and when to let go and

surrender to the will of God? There are times when we need to exert

our wills. For most young people, the focus must be on strengthening

the ego, passing the necessary exams, graduating from school, staying

with the marriage, and so on. The focus must be on learning to direct

the will to accomplish the cultural tasks of life.

Following the will of God isn’t about resignation or sipping a can of

beer and watching television. Rather, it is applying the ego to gather

as much information as possible, to serve as the eyes and ears of God.

But for the major decisions of life, it must learn to listen to the heart

to hear what is the right thing to do.

(To learn more about Slender Threads, please see our book, Balancing

Heaven and Earth).

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:24 AM 0 comments

C.G. Jung on Symbolic Life

“Health calls for the all-embracing vision of myth, as expressed in

symbols. If the symbol is lacking, man’s wholeness is not represented

in consciousness. A symbol cannot be made to order, as the rationalist

would like to believe. It is a legitimate symbol only if it gives

expression to the immutable structure of the unconscious and can

therefore command general acceptance. So long as it evokes belief

spontaneously, it does not require to be understood in any other way."

“A symbol is the best possible representation of something that can

never be completely known.”

“A word or an image is symbolic when it implies something more than

its obvious and immediate meaning. It has a wider unconscious aspect

that is never precisely defined or fully explained … As the mind

explores the symbol, it is led to ideas that lied beyond the grasp of

reason.”

“Since we are dealing with invisible and unknowable things (for God is

beyond human understanding, and there is no means of proving

immortality), why should we bother about evidence? Even if we did

not know by reason our need for salt in our food, we should

nonetheless profit from its use. There is, however a strong empirical

reason why we should cultivate thoughts that can never be proved. It

is that they are known to be useful.”

“Man positively needs general ideas and convictions that will give a

meaning to his life and enable him to find a place for himself in the

universe. He can stand the most incredible hardships when he is

convinced that they make sense … A sense of a wider meaning to

one’s existence is what raises a man bond mere getting and spending.

If he lacks this sense, he is lost and miserable."

“Man is in need of a symbolic life — badly in need. We only live banal,

ordinary, rational, or irrational things…where do we live symbolically?

Nowhere, except where we participate in the ritual of life … Have you

got a corner somewhere in your house where you perform the rites, as

you can see in India? We have art galleries, yes — where we kill the

gods by thousands. We have robbed the churches of their mysterious

images, of their magical images, and we put them into art galleries.

That is worse than the killing of the three hundred children in

Bethlehem; it is a blasphemy …”

“Only the symbolic life can express the need of the soul—the daily

need of the soul, mind you! Everything is banal, everything is “nothing

but”; and that is the reason why people are neurotic…They are all glad

when there is a war: they say, “Thank heaven, now something is going

to happen—something bigger than ourselves! You can see them, these

travelling tourists, always looking for something, always in the vain

hope of finding something. On my many travels I have found people

who were on their third trip round the world. Just travelling,

travelling, seeking, seeking … the eyes of a hunted, a cornered animal

—seeking, seeking, always in the hope of something…A career,

producing of children, are all Maya compared with that one thing, that

your life is meaningful.”

“We cannot turn the wheel backwards; we cannot go back to the

symbolism that is gone. No sooner do you know that this thing is

symbolic than you say, “Oh, well, it presumably means something

else.” Doubt has killed it. My psychological condition wants

something; I must have a situation in which that thing becomes true

once more. I need a new form…I am not going to found a religion, and

I know nothing about a future religion I only know that in certain

cases such things develop…You have to guide people quite slowly and

wait for a long time until the unconscious produces the symbols that

bring them back into the original symbolic life. Then you have to know

a great deal about the language of the unconscious, the language of

dreams. That is modern psychology, and that is the future."

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:16 AM 0 comments

F R I D A Y , O C T O B E R 5 , 2 0 0 7

High School Reunions, Regrets, and Paths Not Taken

Most of us can recall a class reunion – that institutionalized venue for

parading one’s accomplishments and reflecting upon one’s unlived

life. We encounter former schoolmates who were promising

youngsters, but who, years later, seem to have grown cramped in their

high school persona. This is the result of clinging to the identity won

in early adulthood. When we see how stubbornly youthful illusions and

assumptions and egoistic habits persist years later, we gain an idea of

the energies that were needed to form them. The guiding ideas and

attitudes that led us out into life, for which we struggled and suffered,

become part of who we are, and so we seek to perpetuate them

indefinitely.

A friend recently attended her thirtieth high school reunion. “It was

really depressing,” she told me. “There were so many people who

were desperately looking to change their lives. One guy, who was a

star athlete in high school, had bought into the family printing

business and now at the age of forty-eight realized he hated printing.

He was in the middle of a divorce and had decided to join the forest

service. Another gal, who was the life of the party in our youth, now

seemed like a drunken floozy; she wore a low-cut sweater, drank too

much and threw up in the bathroom at the reunion dinner. I overheard

her tearfully telling a classmate, ‘You didn’t make all the mistakes I

did.’ Her friend responded, ‘Oh, I made them alright, I just didn’t

marry them!’”

Posted by ruhljohnson at 9:59 PM 0 comments

Upcoming Appearances

On Monday, Oct. 8, Dr. Ruhl is scheduled to discuss unlived life on

"Daily Cafe" a national news program that airs on DirecTV and

Comcast. Hosts Mary Alice Williams and Felicia Taylor will interview

Jerry at 3:15 p.m. ET. The program premiered in June 2007 and guests

have included Tina Brown on "The Diana Chronicles", Douglas

Brinkley on "The Reagan Diaries", Ted Koppel and his wife, Grace

Anne, Sam Donaldson, and Fran Drescher on her new cancer

foundation.

On Oct. 9 Jerry will be a guest on the Barbara Alexander Show on the

Health Radio Network. Barbara will take listener call-ins during a one-

hour broadcast from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. ET. Please tune in in you

would like to hear more about Living Your Unlived Life.

And if you live in the San Francisco Bay area, Jerry will appear at 3

p.m. PT on Oct. 15 on "View From the Bay," KGO-TV (ABC). The hosts

are Spencer Christian and Janelle Wang.

Robert Johnson will be interviewed by Carol Marks on "A Touch of

Grey," a live radio program that is syndicated to more than 50 radio

stations including WOR in NYC and KRLA in Los Angeles. This

interview can be heard on Oct. 9 at 11:30 a.m. ET (8:30 a.m. PT).

Posted by ruhljohnson at 9:32 PM 0 comments

The Anxiety of A Split World

We live in an ego-driven culture. One must work very hard, until

exhaustion, just to get ego awareness working well in contemporary

life. It takes the whole educational system and all of our socialization

processes to promote this consciousness, and our entire society is

highly invested in this struggle.

However, in the process of becoming differentiated adults, we

inevitably become split. We all have both a lived and an unlived life.

Most psychotherapies are designed to patch up wounded people and

then throw them back into the battle of oppositions. They guide people

in how to become better adapted socially: more adept at making

money, more highly disciplined, more dutiful, more economically

productive. Even when such therapy is successful and gets an

individual back out into the rat race again, you can watch them wither

over time under the weight of it all.

Everything human is relative because everything rests on an inner

polarity, a phenomenon of energy. There must always be high and low,

hot and cold, so the equilibrating process, which is energy, can take

place.

Everything that conscious human beings experience is brought to us

in pairs of opposites. Anything you do or can experience in your life

always has some unlived opposite in the unconscious. This is difficult

for us to bear. It is not fair. And yet it is true.

As our standard of living gets better and we have more leisure, the

tension of the opposites only increases. When life is hard, necessity

settles so many things. This is perhaps why most people can’t stand

too much freedom – it isn’t very popular and may be heard as

downright un-American, but the more freedom, the more anxiety that

arises due to the ego-based level of awareness.

If you try to think about a unitive vision beyond duality, you have

already fractured it into the human dimension. Krishnamurti once said

that the chief obstacle to heaven is one’s ideas about heaven, and I

believe this to be true.

To get on the path to greater awareness, instead of approaching life

as a series of contradictions that must be fought, you can fatefully

embrace “what is” -- that is, what happens in daily life. This implies

taking the ego and investing it somewhere. If your power and freedom

are invested fatefully, this will begin to help save you from the

constant anxiety of a split world.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 9:24 PM 0 comments

The One Spirit Book Club to Offer Living Your Unlived Life

We are pleased to announce that Living Your Unlived Life, which went

on sale Oct. 4, has been chosen as an alternate selection by the One

Spirit Book Club, a premier direct marketer of general interest and

specialty book clubs with millions of members and over 40 book clubs

including Book-of-the-Month Club®, The Literary Guild®, and Quality

Paperback Book Club®.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 9:07 PM 0 comments

T H U R S D A Y , O C T O B E R 4 , 2 0 0 7

Finding A Synthesis of Life's Oppositions

One generally affixes to the ego what one’s culture and family decide

is right and good. For example, in our society there is a consensus

that it is good to be kind, courteous, solvent, and economically

productive. These are elements of a so-called civilized life. But we

must ask: What happens to the other side of each of these virtues?

Everything comes in pairs, like the electricity in the AC outlet of your

wall plug. There is a positive pole and a negative pole, and so it is with

the things of the psyche. What is one to do with the unlived,

unacceptable, and refused aspects of one’s character?

I count myself a courteous and kind person. When I was a teenager I

watched what my parents, neighbors, and teachers did, and I chose

more or less consciously to take on a certain set of values, including

courtesy and kindness. But I also have a bitter and nasty streak in me

that I cannot obliterate. It is painful to admit it, but it is there. I do my

best to keep it under control, but under stress it will come out. What

am I to do with this?

Everything that conscious human beings experience is brought to us

in pairs of opposites. Anything you do or can experience in your life

always has some unlived opposite in the unconscious. Truths always

come in pairs, and one endures this to be in accord with reality. Most

of the time, we support two warring points of view and evade the

confrontation. For example, I need to go to work but I don’t want to; I

don’t like my neighbor, but still must be civil with him or her; I should

lose some weight, but I like certain foods so much. We live with such

contradictions on a daily basis.

You cannot just eliminate one side of the balance, and it is not healthy

to project one side upon your neighbor. But you can change your way

of looking at the problem. These need not be viewed as contradictory.

They exist in contrary relationship to each other, that is, they increase

and decrease in relationship to one another and both are necessary.

When you embrace both sides of the opposing elements in full

consciousness, you embrace paradox. True religious experience

occurs exactly at the point of insolubility.

You must allow both sides of any issue to exist in equal dignity and

worth. If you sit with the tension, a solution will emerge that is better

than either one. The two forces will teach each other something and

produce new insight. To advance from opposition (always a quarrel) to

paradox (always holy) is to make a leap of consciousness.

Fortunately there are inner tools for dealing with unlived qualities in

us. One of the most powerful of these we call active imagination.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 6:08 PM 0 comments

W E D N E S D A Y , O C T O B E R 3 , 2 0 0 7

Following the Meandering Path

It is interesting to note that nature's creations rarely have straight

lines (one exception I can think of is the structure of crystals). The

root of the word for civilization and our word civil derives from a Latin

term for creating straight lines. Civilization is our attempt to

straighten up nature. In primitive villages the streets meander like a

stream. I am told that in California highway engineers in the 1950s

discovered that when they built freeways that stretched for miles the

monotony of the straight lines contributed to accidents; eventually

they learned that they had to put some curves in the road or people

would go into a kind of trance, doze off, or fall asleep at the wheel.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 9:24 PM 1 comments

T H U R S D A Y , S E P T E M B E R 2 7 , 2 0 0 7

The Springs of Suffering Went Dry

There is a story from India, The Ramayana, which means a great deal

to me, and there is one particular passage that goes through me like a

hot piece of metal. Briefly, the story is that King Rama’s partner, Sita,

has been abducted by the evil one, Rawana, and spirited off to Ceylon

(also known as Sri Lanka). Rama is helpless, and calls upon the

monkey god to assist him in finding Sita.

After considerable struggle they do manage to recover Sita, and the

entire kingdom goes into a year-long celebration. Day and night there

is dancing, singing, and happiness. Then there comes a sentence in

the story of this epic from India that knocked me over: “The springs of

suffering went dry.”

In the story it is told that someone starts a bit of gossip going to the

effect that Sita had not been “blameless” during her abduction. The

rumor spread like wildfire and Rama, by law and custom, had to exile

the now-pregnant Sita because her reputation had been sullied. It

seems no one bothered to ask in those days if the rumor was true (a

bit like the tabloid journalism of today).

So, poor Sita was banished into the forest, where she gave birth to

twins outside the protection of the royal palace. She wept continually

and suffered greatly, as did Rama. Eventually the entire kingdom went

into mourning.

What in the name of heaven or hell does this phrase mean: “The

springs of suffering went dry”?

Every time I traveled to India over the course of nineteen years I

would ask learned people what this meant, and I never got a

satisfactory answer. A Brahmin priest friend, Simanta Chaterjee,

provided a 20-minute dissertation, but his explanation either went

over my head or under my feet. I couldn’t stand it. Some years went

by, and as I grew stronger perhaps, I began to understand this

passage from The Ramayana.

If you overdo one of any pair of opposites, the other one goes dry. This

is unlived life. If you try too hard to be good, there will be a rat’s nest

of darkness sitting somewhere in your unconscious (as can be seen in

recent months in celebrated falls from grace by clergy, politicians, and

other public figures). Unlived life doesn’t just fade away; it goes into

the unconscious and eventually it goes rancid and gets acted out,

projected upon others, or is played out as symptom. When we become

too one-sided, the opposite of any quality eventually has its revenge on

us. It may come out in a depression, vague dissatisfaction with our

lives, resentment or rage. Eventually, the whole kingdom suffers. In

the ancient Hindu epic, The Ramayana, the spring of suffering (an

irreducible aspect of reality) went dry and half of the royal pair was

banished. There would be no story if there were not difficulties and

the tension of opposites, but how are we to live with this?

If you are feeling torn by some impossible neurotic split in your life

(for example, you are tempted to have a "fling" with someone new, yet

you love your family and do not want to create a mess), or you are

aging and cannot find the meaning of your life, or even if you are on

your death bed – it is not too late to find what is unlived in you and

make it conscious by working with it symbolically. Symbolic life is the

only solution for the modern dilemma of unlived life.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 4:41 PM 0 comments

Achieving Our Death

Carl Jung suggested that each of us must achieve our death. What

does this mean?

A life directed to a goal and purpose is far healthier and richer than an

aimless life, and death is the natural goal of every existence.

Shrinking away from this goal robs the second half of life of its

purpose. A dying person who cannot let go of life is as neurotic and

stuck as a young person who is unable to embrace it. In many cases,

the same childish greediness, fears, defiance and willfulness are

displayed in both situations. This is why all religions, which view death

as only a transition, are psychologically as well as spiritually health-

promoting.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 4:38 PM 0 comments

T H U R S D A Y , S E P T E M B E R 2 0 , 2 0 0 7

Myth and Ties That Bind

I just finished reading The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, a highly

recommended phantasmagoria of ancient Greek stories by the Italian

Robert Calasso. I won't write a full review, but this passage bears

upon recent blog entries:

"The more obtuse still argue around the notion of belief, a fatal word

when it comes to mythology ... we enter the mythical when we enter

the realm of risk, and myth is the enchantment we generate in

ourselves at such moments. More than a belief, it is a magical bond

that tightens around us. It is a spell the soul casts on itself."

What we must do with these things (the myths) is enchant ourselves.

And later, Calasso describes the ancient practice of tying colorful

strips of wool upon people and things as a form of ritual marking the

intersection of the sacred and the everyday:

"Whenever the dullness of the profane was left behind, whenever life

grew more intense in whatever way, through honour or death, victory

or sacrifice, marriage or prayer, initiation or possession, purification

or mourning, anything and everything that stirred a person and

demanded a meaning, the Greeks would celebrate with fluttering

strips of wool, white or red for the most part, which they tied around

heads, or arms, or to a branch, the prow of a ship, a stature, an axe, a

cooking pot...

"What was it those woolen strips, those tassels represented? It was a

momentary surfacing of a link in that invisible net which enfolds the

world, which descends from heaven to earth, binding the two together

and swaying in the breeze. Men (sic) wouldn't be able to bear seeing

that net in its entirety all the time ... the connection of everything with

everything else, which alone gives meaning to life. We live every

moment of our lives swathed in those ties ... We feel them blowing

about us the minute something happens to dispel our apathy, and we

become aware of being carried along on a stream that flows toward

something unknown."

Posted by ruhljohnson at 3:16 PM 0 comments

Intimations of Greater Presence Good!

Out society teaches that the only reality is the one we can hold onto. It

values outer experiences and material possessions. But in truth, we

are doorways between different dimensions or worlds. Experience

flows through us like breath, enlivening and enriching, moving in and

out. From our outer world the door opens inward to another life. From

that inner world flows meaning, spirit, and vitality. Our task as human

beings is to become portals to the vital force.

The key is not so much what we do, but the source from which we do

it.

We are conduits for a greater power. You can learn to sense the

greater presence in times of decision. We sometimes call this "gut

instinct," or listening to your "heart." The Greater is ever present and,

upon reflection, we can see its influence as slender threads of fate. It

comes to us in dreams, intuitions, and synchronicities that too often

we dismiss as mere chance.

Exercise: Find a quiet place to sit comfortably. Breathe. Perhaps close

your eyes or focus on a single point across the room.

Now notice how you are thinking -- what is going on in your mind?

There is probably a flow of clearer thoughts against a background of

more vague ones. Don't chase them, just notice the tone, quality.

With these thoughts go certain feelings and judgments, either as a

general state or in response to what is happening around you. These

are usually simple: good/bad; like/dislike; agree/disagree;

comply/resist. Let your self sense these subtle feelings.

Now just be aware that your body is sending you signals, making small

movements with or without your awareness. You may slightly shift

posture, blink your eyes, wiggle your toes. Notice these small shifts.

You are noticing your processes at different levels; the way in which

you engage with life -- this is your outer process.

Now notice how you are feeling. What is your present state. Just be

aware of subtle inner responses, the background flow to your way of

experiencing. Notice what happens when I ask the question: Who are

you?

Notice sensations in your hands, any tension in your neck or tingling

in your feet. How is your energy? Is it stuck anywhere in your body, or

can it move freely? Ask yourself: Why am I doing this exercise? Am I

still interested? Notice the feelings that come up: excitement,

irritation, unease, boredom. Remember things that you need to do

today, a forgotten errand, a feeling of hunger or thirst, a wish to be

outside. Now noticing yourself noticing these things.

Sustaining these thoughts, feelings and sensations is a pattern of

association and connection, a way of organizing your inner world. This

pattern is your inner process. This is how your inner self takes form.

Now we will do the impossible: drift inward and simultaneously be

aware and not aware. Let your attention become fuzzy and diffuse,

your mind wanders in a relaxed reverie. Remember drifting off to

sleep last night or waking this morning. Stay there for a few moments.

Sensations, images, memories float up from the back of your mind --

connecting together in compound images or fragmented stories.

Everything becomes increasingly fluid and drifting. The landscape of

dreams, symbol, myth, metaphor. Your consciousness emerges from

this underworld.

Now imagine everything flowing in its natural way. Rest quietly in

your own center of awareness. Sense the unity and participation of all

things. Brightness, meaningfulness, lightness of body and soul.

Imagine yourself filling with the joy of being -- there is no need to be

anywhere else, with anyone else, doing anything. You are content just

to be. This is greater process.

In daily life the outer process needs reminding that is it not always the

most essential. Meditation, contemplation, prayer, inspiration, these

are different ways to become aligned with something greater than the

small bounded self. Experience of Greater process arises through

intentional surrender.

This exercise, which we sometimes use in therapy, was developed with

the help of our friend, Roland Evans. It is a tool you can try on your

own to begin to differentiate levels of awareness.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 2:32 PM 0 comments

W E D N E S D A Y , S E P T E M B E R 1 9 , 2 0 0 7

Vision and Timeliness

Every time you go to work start a project, make a phone call, drive

some place, envision the route and the outcome as strongly as you

can. Don't force it to be too detailed but get a sense of the best way in

which it can happen.

As you create your vision, notice the quality of your motivation. Are

you willing to allow your vision to be real however it happens? Do you

need to control it, not only the goal but also the path to that goal? Can

you surrender to the way things come about? Test your intention

against a sense of rightness, the flow of the Greater process.

While vision gives direction, intention is the force that keeps us

moving. Intention is willingness rather than willfulness. You must stay

receptive and accepting of the mysterious ways that events come

about.

You must keep testing your intention, checking along the way.

Envisioning requires patience and a sense of the necessary unfolding

of human events in time. Everything has its own time, as Ecclesiastes

informs us: For everything there is a season, and a time for every

purpose under heaven.

Nature teaches timeliness, for example, in planting a garden. Therapy

teaches timeliness. My clients do not change until they are ready, no

matter how much I push, no matter how good my technique -- if the

time is not ripe my efforts just create resistance.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 5:50 PM 0 comments

Reincarnation and the Ubiquity of Unlived Life

A different perspective on reincarnation is that it is a fanciful way of

talking about unlived life. The stuff you carry with you, regrets,

unfinished situations, stays with you. All of us carry with us this

unlived life.

As one person put it jokingly, life is not long enough to marry all the

people that you fall in love with, but those lost opportunities all sit

there in your psyche. When you choose something, you unchoose

something else, and the unchosen thing goes rancid if you don’t do

something with it; it doesn’t just vanish but sets up a minor infection

in some corner of the unconscious and then takes its revenge on you

later. That is unlived life.

No matter how courageous you are, no matter how conscious and

aware you think that you are, you have an unconscious full of unlived

potenials. There is no escaping it.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 5:42 PM 0 comments

It Doesn't Interest Me

The following was recently sent to Robert from a friend, and the

source was not identified. We both liked it so much that we wanted to

share it, with hopes that a reader might help us to identify the author.

An astute reader from Germany has written that this quote is from

Oriah Mountain Dreamer, for which we are most grateful. You can find

the appropriate link to this author's website by clicking on comments.

Enjoy.

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.

I want to know what you ache for,

and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.

I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love,

for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.

I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow.

if you have been opened by life's betrayals or

have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,

without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own;

if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you

to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful,

be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true,

I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself.

if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own

soul.

I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it is not pretty every

day,

and if you can source your life from God's presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours or mine,

and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full

moon, "YES!"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you

have.

I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair,

weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the

children.

It doesn't interest me who you are or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and

not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.

I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls

away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself,

and if you truly like the company you keep

in the empty moments.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 5:32 PM 4 comments

S U N D A Y , S E P T E M B E R 1 6 , 2 0 0 7

One Less Blind Man in Pondicherry

An eye ailment, conjunctivitis, has been plaguing me for a couple of

weeks. Two kinds of drops and ointment are slowly getting it in check.

Purchase of the ointment brought back an Indian story I want to tell

you now:

Long, long ago I was having my usual breakfast routine in

Pondicherry, which consisted of cereal at the Ashram dining hall, then

tea at a cafe near by (the Ashram never had tea or coffee), then to my

coconut vender where he lopped off the top of a green coconut,

inserted a straw, and gave me the third course of my breakfast.

Somewhere in the coconut ritual I was appointed by a little bare

bodied Indian boy of four or five years of age (clothed by the sky, as

an Indian poet defined it) each morning to give him the dry coconut

for him to scrape out the unripe meat of the nut - often called Indian

ice cream. I guessed that was the only thing he got to eat for

breakfast.

I am infinitely vulnerable to that kind of poverty. When I noticed he

had a case of conjuctivitis I went to the local pharmacy and asked if

there was anyting I could buy to cure his ailment. Madras and

Pondicherry bear the nickname of Conjunctivitis Haven and have huge

numbers of blind people since that is the inevitable end product of the

eye infection if left untreated. The pharmacist gave me a small tube of

antibiotic ointment and instructions how to get a tiny ribbon of the

ointment in each eye, morning and evening. Cost? Twenty-six cents

American money.

Next day after "Indian ice cream" for the boy, I followed him back

home. I had no idea where he lived, and ended up four blocks away to

a place in the gutter where his mother and older sister existed on a

dirty sheet of plastic.

You would have laughed watching me trying to train his mother to

apply the ointment morning and evening when neither of us had a

single word in a common language. It all worked out well, the boy's

eyes recovered and there is one less blind man in Pondicherry now. All

for the cost of twenty-six cents.

All this came back into my memory when I produced $54 for my tiny

tube of ointment for my own present case of conjunctivitis.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 7:19 AM 0 comments

T U E S D A Y , S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 0 7

Accessing the Four Dimensions of Awareness: Greater

In earlier posts, we have discussed four different levels or dimensions

of awareness: inner, outer, deeper, and greater. (See Differentiating

Levels of Awareness, posted on Aug. 17. To access more blog entries,

just click the months in the archive to the right of this blog.)

Outer is a dimension of external experiences and outer activity – how

effectively and comfortably you approach the doing aspects of your

life.

Inner is a dimension of subjective experiences of your personal self –

how you feel about yourself, your self-confidence and your personal

relationships with others.

Deeper is the dimension of intuitive and creative experiences – how

you relate to those aspects of your experience that seem outside

conscious control.

Greater is a dimension of the higher Self, transpersonal connection to

the divine – how you relate to spirituality, core values, and aspirations.

You can use this framework – outer, inner, deeper, greater – to check

in periodically with different aspects of yourself. The goal is to keep a

dynamic balance, accessing all the different possibilities of your self as

you go through life. The path to wholeness is not about becoming

cured or enlightened so much as managing different experiences and

responding with resilience and creativity to life’s ongoing changes. As

you tune into its different aspects, life becomes more interesting.

Today, we will discuss the Greater. Awareness of this dimension is the

realm of experience beyond anything that is spoken or understood

rationally — the numinous transpersonal dimension of our being. It

makes itself known as a quiet, encompassing awareness that

something greater is going on than we realize. Greater awareness

refers to both that aspect of the transpersonal that we can embody

(immanence) and for the totality of all processes (transcendence).

Divine inspiration is present and available to us in every moment.

Greater awareness is generally inaccessible only because we fail to

notice the extraordinary in the ordinary.

My intention is to be aware of the Greater potential in each daily

encounter or situation — but naturally I forget much of the time.

Saints and enlightened individuals seem to spend more of their time in

this awareness. Meditation, contemplation, prayer, inspiration – these

can assist us in reawakening or tuning in to divine presence, but the

Greater process cannot be willed. It seems to come as grace. We can

gently unravel the knot that keeps us tied to ordinary ego awareness.

Or, to use another metaphor, the cramp of consciousness can

gradually be released through non-action.

Look for the sacred in the every day circumstances of your life. In any

situation, instead of asking, "What's in it for me," ask instead, "What is

needed right now for greater wholeness?"

Posted by ruhljohnson at 3:58 PM 0 comments

M O N D A Y , S E P T E M B E R 1 0 , 2 0 0 7

The Need to 'Decently Go Unconscious' by Stopping the Mind's Chatter

There is a deep fear in our culture that if we stop or even slow down

someone else will catch us, they might even pass us in the rat race of

life. The saying “24/7” is used today as shorthand in advertising and

increasingly in conversations to indicate around-the-clock

commitment. “This deodorant will protect you 24/7,” or, “I’m on the

job 24/7/365.” This is the collective thought. It does not allow for

stopping, for standing still.

When I can, I like to go swimming at the local YMCA. I am a regular

there and many people know me. Not long ago one of the lifeguards

saw me coming. Her manager told her that I wrote books, so she

approached me looking for an inspirational quote to write on the

blackboard for the people who were exercising. I thought for a

moment, and a proverb from the Upanishads came to mind: “By

standing still we overtake those who are running.” The teenager heard

me out, thought for a moment and then replied, “No way!” She walked

to the blackboard and instead wrote: “Go, go, go!”

We live in a “go, go, go” society. It is increasingly difficult to find a

moment of repose.

Although it is hard for us to slow down, the synthesis of life’s tensions

and contradictions requires a quiet place. Continuous doing generally

flips more energy into the complications that already exist in our lives.

We must find ways to, in the felicitous phrase of Jung, “decently go

unconscious.” We all require relief from the tension and burdens of

ordinary consciousness. To decently go unconscious means

purposefully stopping the constant, droning buzz of information that

floods the mind – but not by blotting out consciousness through

excessive and soulless work, eating, drugs, shopping, sex, television,

or other compulsive and repetitious behaviors.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 12:23 PM 1 comments

Carrying A Parent's Unlived Life

“The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of the

parents." --C.G. Jung

The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung meant that where and how our

caretakers were stuck in their development, this becomes an internal

paradigm for us also to be stuck. Frequently, we find ourselves

dealing with a parent’s unresolved issues. At times we may replicate

the patterns of our ancestors or we may rebel and attempt to do the

opposite. Interestingly, antagonism to the influences of parents binds

just as tightly as compliance. Either way, antecedents confine and

limit us. Perhaps this is behind the ancient Biblical admonition that

the sins of a man shall be visited “upon the children's children, unto

the third and to the fourth generation.”

What was unlived in the lives of your parents/grandparents? How has

their unlived life burdened your own life? How are you caught in the

unlived life of a parent by doing the opposite of what he or she did?

How have your solutions to these difficulties, developed at an early

age, become limited in their effectiveness for your life today?

Posted by ruhljohnson at 12:16 PM 0 comments

W E D N E S D A Y , S E P T E M B E R 5 , 2 0 0 7

A Dream of The Ring

A few years back Robert had a most interesting dream. He had read

J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as a boy, and

was fascinated by these stories. As dreams often do, this one picked

up imagery from outer experience and applied it to the inner situation

of the psyche that Robert was experiencing at the time. It is a dream

of a lifetime. Here is the dream:

“I dreamed of a power that controls the world, and whoever has the

mystic ring has absolute power. He (or she) can teleport, become

invisible, and is essentially invulnerable; no one can contest him (or

her). This condition lasts for 20 years. Over time, the power of this

ring diminishes for the person who possesses it, until there is almost

no power left.

A young man is in possession of the ring. Then, just at that point of

realizing the power is nearly gone, this young man comes running up

-- he is exhausted and panting and the police are after him trying to

get the ring! The man in my dream alters his path slightly and

suddenly places the ring into my hand as he runs by.

Somehow, I know instantly that I have about five seconds to decide

whether or not to accept the ring. It was very tempting, the power of

the ring, but I intuitively knew that somehow it would fade in 20

years; so, in that five seconds, while I still had the power of decision

and before the ring could overpower me, I threw the right into the

ground with all my might. I did this just as the police converged on

me.

The police and I got down on our hands and knees to see that the ring

had completely disintegrated. The ground around the ring was golden,

but there was not a piece of the ring itself anywhere. All power had

been grounded by me.

And then, in one of those strange shifts that occur in dreams, the

police and I walked together a short distance away to look in a pool.

We were admiring the golden fish. With that, my dream ended.

That is a brief history of what was going on inside me (Robert) at the

time. I believe this was a dream of discovering that my thoughts

create what is “out there,” and this dream heralded a change of

consciousness in me. During my nineteen years of wintering in India,

traditional Hindu culture tried to teach me what is distilled in this

dream of the ring: objective reality that we think is “out there” is

actually only of our inner construction. Somehow in the dream I had

the good sense not to become inflated or identified with the ring; I

grounded the divine energy by throwing it to the ground.

This has been going on within me for years, but at the time of the

dream I began waking up to this reality of the psyche.

When you wake up to it, nothing has changed in the outer reality -- yet

everything in your experience changes. I suspect that is true at a

certain stage for everyone on the journey into wholeness. No change,

yet at a critical point of awakening there is a 180-degree shift of

perspective. My attitude changed dramatically after having this small

dream. I was nearly overwhelmed for days and weeks with pure joy

and revelation. A huge sense of relief. I believe it was the dream of a

new consciousness, one that the previous state of my ego had been

preparing for (yet also fighting at every turn) for many years.

We all fight until there is no fight left in us before we accept the

realization of greater consciousness.

Please note there is very little drama in this dream. It states in simple

symbolic form a transformation that theology fills volumes speculating

about: a shift from earthly to heavenly consciousness.

There isn’t any movement required at all to get to heavenly

consciousness, it involves just waking up to what has always been. It’s

no big news ... and yet it’s the biggest news in the history of the world.

There is substantiation for this from Zen Buddhism which tells us:

Before enlightenment you chop wood, draw water; after

enlightenment, you chop wood, draw water. Nothing needs to happen,

because it is already so. Most of the work in spiritual practice is

preparing for the day when you are handed the ring.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:47 AM 1 comments

Ego Consciousness: A Thin, Inadequate Diet

In the 1890s there was an enterprising young British physician living

in the East Indies. This man of science observed something quite

unexpected; he grew curious and went to work to understand this

phenomenon.

It was the custom in India at this time to feed prisoners brown rice

and water and nothing else. It wasn't an ideal diet, but the prisoners

survived on it. Then the missionaries came and declared, “You really

must do better by your prisoners than this; you must feed these people

properly.” In response, the prison officials began doling white rice out

to their captives. When they did this, all the prisoners soon died.

Observing this cultural clash and looking into the cause of the deaths,

the British physician discovered that the polishings of the brown rice

contained an essential element for the human diet—he had discovered

vitamins, and it was he who named then; vita (life) min (source).

In the interim period of a hundred years we are now doing much

better in understanding basic human needs on the physical level. But

on the symbolic level, we have become poverty stricken. As soon as

something is missing in the human diet, be it physical or

psychological, symptoms appear. Something essential is missing from

our psychological diet today, and that something is as important to life

as any vitamin—it is connection with the deeper and greater realm

through symbols. Jung called this symbolic life.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:24 AM 0 comments

Complexes: How Past Experience Keeps You from Experiencing the Vitality and Radiance of NOW

The word complex has passed into common speech. In simplest terms,

a complex is an unconscious pattern by which we organize experience.

Everyone knows nowadays that people “have complexes.” In

seemingly automatic responses, these emotion-laden patterns for

making sense of experience catch us and take over.

Today’s neuroscience applies advanced technology such as PET-scans

and powerful computers to help us understand how these mental

patterns operate. The human brain is made up of an estimated one

hundred billion tiny nerve cells called neurons; these neurons reach

out to other neurons to form networks. Neurons provide cell-to-cell

signaling -- the places where they connect are experienced as ideas,

thoughts or memories. Just as a computer has electronic signals

flashing off and on, neurons in the brain fire in a certain sequence.

Neurons that fire together once develop a bond with each other and

therefore are more likely to fire together again.

Based upon these patterns we essentially tell ourselves a story about

how the outside world is. Any information we take in from the

environment is always colored by the experiences that we have

already had and the emotional response we were having at the time.

When we experience something in the present, we assimilate it into

known patterns, including the attached emotionality.

In this manner what we have seen and felt dictates what we can see

and feel.

We continue to interpret present reality on the basis of these

established pathways -- and some of them are non-adaptive, sub-

optimal or downright wrong. But they become structural, part of our

self-identity. It is difficult to think around or outside of your complexes

because they are the structures by which you think. Even though you

cannot think your way out of a complex, you can change it.

Just as we have all the standard physical organs, we develop

complexes to organize experience for the typical things in life. It is not

pathological to have complexes; it only is problematic when a

particular complex is too limiting or it begins to usurp its neighbors or

repeat itself even when a thought, behavior or the associated

emotions are no longer optimally adaptive.

The whole-making force in us attempts to create something integrated

out of every experience, but certain aspects of our being invariably

become partitioned off, hidden away or awkwardly cobbled together,

and this gives rise to complexes that are troublesome. If someone is

touchy we say they have a negative complex on that subject, in other

words there is an illegitimate stuck point. These are obstacles that

confront us all.

A spider once bit Naomi when she was four years old. Now, forty

years later, she sees a spider and goes into a panic attack rather than

picking up a shoe and squashing the offending creature (or gently

brushing it out of doors). This is her “spider complex” at work; she

knows it is not rational, but all the same it is an enduring pattern by

which she organizes experience. As everyone knows, old habits are

hard to break. Formative experiences with strong emotions lay down

the most resilient patterns.

While we cannot think our way out of limiting mental patterns,

complexes can be changed. How? The most powerful tool for

reformulating stuck patterns is called active imagination.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 8:14 AM 0 comments

W E D N E S D A Y , A U G U S T 2 9 , 2 0 0 7

Feminine Voices

"Imagination is the highest kite one can fly." --Lauren Bacall

"Many of us are living out the unlived lives of our mothers, because

they were not able to become the unique people they were born to

be." -- Gloria Steinem

Posted by ruhljohnson at 5:05 PM 0 comments

T U E S D A Y , A U G U S T 2 8 , 2 0 0 7

Starred Review for Living Your Unlived Life

In the most recent issue of Publishers Weekly the new book by Robert

A. Johnson and Jerry M. Ruhl, Living Your Unlived Life, earned a

starred review, which follows:

Starred Review. As one grows older and life's choices seem to

diminish, it's easy to regret the roads not taken, which then lead to an

inability to embrace your life as it is now. A remedy can be found in

Johnson and Ruhl's wonderfully insightful, possibly even life-changing

book. Jungian psychologists and the co-authors of Contentment,

Johnson and Ruhl believe the roads-not-taken needn't be cast aside;

they can—and must—be integrated into present-day life and used to

find new opportunities for fulfillment and wholeness. How? By

engaging in what the authors refer to as active imagination—a

disciplined, spiritual form of inner dialogue. The book is intelligent,

refreshingly free of psychobabble and best of all heralds the power of

the imagination to transform and possibly keep you out of trouble.

(Oct.)

Imagining the Roads Not Taken

by Marylyn Donahue -- Publishers Weekly, 8/27/2007

Two Jungian psychoanalysts suggest an inner dialogue called “active

imagination” as a way to deal with unrealized dreams in Living Your

Unlived Life (Reviews, Aug. 20).

Why attend to your unlived life? Why not just put it to rest?

Ruhl: You can’t just ignore or forget that which is urgent in you. If you

try to shut it down, it comes back up as a mood, or an acting out, or

some type of illness. To try to ignore it and to think these powerful

feelings will go underground and vanish is the arrogance of

consciousness. Sometimes it’s just a matter of making it conscious,

devising some simple way to respond to it on an inner basis. Then you

can put it to rest.

In relying on active imagination as a way of experiencing unlived

moments, is there a danger of fantasizing away the life you are

actually living now?

Johnson: My favorite vulgar quote is, Fantasies are like masturbation:

nothing comes of it. Imagination is creation. I engaged and comforted

myself with the same fantasy for years in my youth: South Sea island,

girl, sunshine, palm trees. Dr. Jung taught me active imagination, and

that fantasy got, so to speak, unstuck, and it immediately began to be

a creative evolution in my life.

Dr. Johnson, having studied with Jung, do you find anything left

unlived about that experience?

Johnson: It would take 10 incarnations, if one believes in such things,

to explore what Jung opened up in me. He changed my life. He gave

me tools wherein I could grow out of the childhood and adolescent

mess I was stuck in.

Was there something in your own lives active imagination helped you

with?

Ruhl: It was no accident when Robert and I met at a conference 20

years ago—we seemed to understand each other. We both limped

across the room to each other. Robert lost a leg when he was eight

and hit by a car. I suffered from polio when I was 18 months old.

When you are wounded in an obvious way such as this, then you are

confronted early on with obvious unlived life. In Robert’s case, it was

an inability to run, and in my case I could run sort of but not well. So

one begins searching for answers about suffering and meaning.

Johnson: The most encouraging thing I think I know is, on some level

we can live any aspect of life which is presented to us. If you can't run,

then all right—if one will pay the price of consciousness, one can find

something to do with that energy. Most people want to drop the

limitation. Well, you can’t, but you can transform it.

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier

Inc. All rights reserved.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 1:30 PM 0 comments

T H U R S D A Y , A U G U S T 2 3 , 2 0 0 7

Homo complingere, "man (or woman) the complainer"

It is doubtful that human beings can live outside the yoke of necessity

for long. Much of one’s life is set; most people have to get up in the

morning and go to work. We complain and have daydreams, “If only I

could win a million dollars things would be great,” but in fact they

grow worse. The meaning of life often falls apart for those individuals

who actually win the lottery or unexpectedly come into a great sum of

money. Recall this recent news item:

CHARLESTON, West Virginia (AP) -- The wife of the lottery winner

who took home the richest undivided jackpot in U.S. history says she

regrets his purchase of the $314.9 million ticket that has thrust her

family into the public spotlight.

"I wish all of this never would have happened," Jewel Whittaker told

The Charleston Gazette for Tuesday's editions. "I wish I would have

torn the ticket up."

Since winning the lottery two years ago, her husband, Jack Whittaker,

has been arrested twice for drunken driving and has been ordered

into rehab. He pleaded no contest Monday to a misdemeanor assault

charge for attacking a bar manager, and is accused in two lawsuits of

making trouble at a nightclub and a racetrack.

There have been several thefts involving Whittaker's vehicle, his office

and his house. One of the thefts occurred at his home in September on

the same day an eighteen-year-old friend of Whittaker's

granddaughter was found dead there. The death remains under

investigation.

Last week Whittaker, 57, reported his granddaughter missing. Putnam

County sheriff's Sgt. Lisa Arthur said the granddaughter is not

considered a kidnapping victim.

It is true that too much grinding necessity dulls a person and reduces

him or her to the lowest common denominator. But not enough

necessity is a guaranteed ticket to neurosis for most people. So we

complain – about our family, about our job, about where we live, about

the weather. Instead of homo erectus, the human species should have

been called homo complingere, which means man the complainer.

It is difficult for us to accept that contentment grows out of a

willingness to surrender preconceived ideas and affirm reality as it is.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 3:58 PM 1 comments

T U E S D A Y , A U G U S T 2 1 , 2 0 0 7

Finding Harmony with The Way

Once there was a devastating drought afflicting a village in China. The

villagers sent for a rainmaker who was known to live in the farthest

corner of the country, a great distance away. (Of course that would be

so, because we never fully appreciate or trust a prophet — or a

consultant — who lives in our region; it is best if he or she comes from

far away and charges a sizeable fee).

So the wise rainmaker arrived, and he found the village in a miserable

state. The vegetation was dying, domestic animals were starving, and

the people were greatly affected. The villagers crowded around the

rainmaker hopefully, and were very curious about what he would do.

He said, “Well, just give me a little hut, and leave me alone for a few

days.”

So, the rainmaker went into this little hut, and the people were

nervous and wondering what might happen. A full day went by, and

everyone waited with considerable expectation. Two days passed, and

the villagers were growing increasingly anxious. On the third day,

everyone was about to give up hope, but toward sundown it began

raining, and it rained all night.

Everyone was overjoyed. The people cheered and crowded around the

hut waiting for the rainmaker to come out. When he did, they

beseeched him: "It worked, it worked! It’s so wonderful. What did you

do?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The rain, what did you to make it rain?”

“Oh, that,” he said, “I did nothing.”

“But look, “ the puzzled village chief insisted, “before it was a

disaster, and now it rains. What happened?”

So the rainmaker explained, “I come from an area that is in Tao, in

balance. We have rain; we have sunshine. Nothing is out of order. I

come into your land and find that it is chaotic. The rhythm of life is

disturbed. Soon I, too, am disturbed. The whole thing affects me, and I

am out of sorts. So, what can I do? I want a little hut to be by myself,

to meditate, to set myself straight. I listen to the disturbance within

myself until it resolves. And then, when I am able to get myself in

order, everything around is set right. We are now in Tao, and since

the rain was missing, now it rains.”

The greatest use of inner work (such as dreams and active

imagination) is to put us, like the rainmaker, into harmony with the

Tao (the West has no equivalent word, but this term often is translated

as “the way” or “meaning”), so that the right things may happen

around us instead of the wrong.

Reference to the Chinese notion of Tao lends an exotic flavor to the

story, but this is a simple matter of everyday experience — we find the

same intent in the expression, “He (or she) must have got out of the

wrong side of the bed this morning.” This describes a psychological

condition in which we did not arise in harmony with the unconscious.

We become disagreeable. On other days life seems to flow smoothly.

The art of letting things happen is the key that opens the door to the

Tao. Generally we try to push reality around and force it to go our

way. Instead, we must be able to let things happen in the psyche.

Unfortunately, consciousness is forever interfering, helping,

correcting, interpreting, negating. One must learn when and how to

surrender conscious agendas and listen to the underlying patterns of

the unconscious.

Whether the state of one man can actually influence the weather is not

the point of this story. It is aimed at getting us to consider what

proceeds from a harmonious versus a disordered relationship between

man (or woman) and the unconscious. This is what inner work can

help us to achieve. In the deepest sense this imaginal work developed

by the Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung becomes more than a technique, it

expresses the inner-directed symbolic attitude that is at the core of

psychological development.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 9:51 PM 0 comments

F R I D A Y , A U G U S T 1 7 , 2 0 0 7

Savoring Dream Images

The whole business of trying to figure out what a dream means is

secondary.

Just live with the dream and lay yourself open to its mysterious forces

for as long as you can. Keep the dream going in your imagination; just

savor it, don’t be to quick to jump in and say it means this or that, or

I’m doing it right or wrong. Dreams aren’t much concerned with

what’s right or what’s wrong or whether you are doing well, they are

much more interested in a kind of cosmic dance that each of us is

involved in.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 1:35 PM 0 comments

Differentiating Levels of Awareness

While looking through a picture book on Greek mythology, one of the

authors (Jerry), was recently asked by his son, “Dad, what is a myth.”

After struggling to reduce the answer to the simplest of terms, I

replied, “A myth is a story that is sometimes true on the outside, but is

always and forever true on the inside.” The boy thought about this for

a few moments and then replied with satisfaction, “So, it’s like Santa

or Grandpa (who died sometime back); they’re always there in our

hearts,” and he moved on to his next game.

Children have a natural, intuitive understanding that reality takes

place at more than one level. This is an appreciation that many of us

lose track of as adults.

If you accept the concept that reality has to do with different levels,

then you never have to stop believing in Santa. St. Nicholas is the

spirit of giving, the joy of surprise, the feeling of goodwill. There may

be a time in early childhood when you understand Santa as externally

true, that a jolly man in a red and white suit will come by on

Christmas eve and leave presents for you — if you have been good.

But this doesn’t need to become a childish illusion. When we

appreciate that there is more than one level of awareness, our

appreciation of Santa need not be lost, it just shifts to a different

conceptualization. As a symbol of an inner reality, Santa is powerfully

true for us at any age.

What are these inner and outer aspects of reality?

It is interesting to ponder the many dimensions of inner and outer.

Every inside also is an outside to somewhere else. Our experience

extends inward and outward into realms where “in” and “out” join to

create some greater whole.

To facilitate an understanding of levels of experience, try a simple

exercise: You are currently holding a computer keyboard and you see

typed words on the computer screen. As you read, you probably don’t

distinguish the individual letters because your mind is focused more

on the meaning of the words and trying to understand them. Take a

moment to notice this process of reading. It involves outer experience

(holding the objects, moving your eyes) but as you think about the

words, it shifts to an inner experience. Even as you are thinking about

the words your body is sending you signals, with only minimal

awareness. You click the mouse button, shift your posture, blink your

eyes, perhaps wiggle your toes. Just notice all these little shifts that

surround the outer activity of reading. The entire way that you engage

with the world is your outer experience, some aspects of this are more

conscious than others. A working definition of “outer” is the manner in

which we "do" our lives.

Now suppose you take a break from reading and check in with how

you are feeling just now. Notice your energy. Ask yourself, “Why am I

reading this stuff? Notice any feelings that come up such as curiousity,

irritation, unease, boredom. Remember things that you need or want

to do, such as eat, go outside, run an errand. Sustaining your thoughts

and feelings and sensations is a pattern of connection, a way of

organizing the content of your inner world. This is subjective personal

experience — this is your inner process.

If you take the outer and the inner processes together they make up

our ordinary sense of who we are in life. The outer constitutes the

active, objective aspects of existence while the inner is the subjective

sense of self. They are closely intertwined. Outer events effect who we

are, and who we are affects what we do. But there is more — there are

other levels of experience that must be accounted for.

If you now stop reading and gently close your eyes and allow your

mind to drift you will find that your attention becomes more fuzzy and

diffuse. Just take a breath and notice how ideas and feelings float by in

a dream-like way. They float up from somewhere and then move on

like clouds in the sky. Recall drifting off to sleep last night, that in-

between place before sleep. Sensations, images and memories arise in

a fragmented way.

If you can witness this letting go of attention you will notice that your

experience becomes increasingly fluid and ambiguous. This is the

territory of imagination, symbol, dreams and it is what we call deeper

experience. This deeper realm is critically important because it

provides the infrastructure for all our physical, emotional and mental

experiences. It is a place where inner and outer come together. It is a

dimension of experience that unites the apparent oppositions that tear

us apart in daily life. It is the dimension of whole making, in which

aspects of outer reality that have been keenly differentiated and set in

an endless stream of conflict and opposition, come back together

again.

We must learn to better appreciate how these different levels of

awareness — outer, inner, and deeper — exist simultaneously in every

experience of our lives. By learning, first, to distinguish different

levels of awareness, and then to apply them to our perceptions and

our decision making, our lives can become much more vital and

meaningful. Each of these forms of awareness are available in every

moment.

The goal of psychological development involves developing the

capacity to shift awareness states. There is yet another level of

awareness that we call the “greater,” or divine consciousness, or

grace … but that is the topic for another time.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 1:23 PM 0 comments

Necessity vs. Anxiety

A few years ago a friend from a small village in India was brought to

America for a visit. After landing at the airport in San Diego, one of

the first things we had to do was visit a supermarket to buy food for

meals. We arrived at the market, parked the car, and walked inside.

Surrounded by aisle after aisle of produce, canned goods, bakery

items, deli snacks, toys, drugs, clothes, our humble rural visitor

became so dizzy that he literally had to sit down on a bench outside

the store to regain his equilibrium. He was overwhelmed by the

multitude of choices that a Westerner takes for granted and finds at

every turn. In traditional India life is ordered by necessity.

Too much grinding necessity dulls a person and reduces him or her to

the lowest common denominator. But not enough necessity is a

guaranteed ticket to neurosis for most people. Necessity relieves us of

consciousness because it settles so many things. This is a trade-off

that we have not made consciously. As modern society has less

necessity and more choice, there is correspondingly increased tension

in the human psyche.

Posted by ruhljohnson at 1:15 PM 0 comments