Practicing Staying Present to the Now

Copyright © Harry Henshaw, Ed.D., LMHC, 2012 . All rights reserved.

Transformational Counseling is about assisting others to transform their life.

Transformational Counseling is a process of assisting others to learn how to let go of the past and live fully in the present. To live fully in the present is to become awaken to what is truly real and to our own natural power.

Much of our life is spent living in the past, and in the process, attempting to fix it, to make it something that it is or was not. It is from living in the past that we also attempt to create our future, the result always being a living of life as it was in the past.

Transformation takes place when we learn to exist in and be present to the Now. The practice of staying present to our natural power and to that which is real is becoming conscious to what is so, to the Now, to the present.

What is so, the Now, has no meaning and exists outside of thought and language. As human beings we tend to give meaning to everything, including other people, ourselves and even life itself. It is in our meaning making that we leave the present and create our life from the past, a life that can be filled with a great deal of anxiety, fear and stress.

What is so merely exists and it is in the experience of the Now that we begin to live a life of power and freedom, a life and way of being free from our past.

A specific technique that is very powerful for practicing staying present to the Now is meditation. It is in meditation that one creates the space to experience a very deep state of relaxation, a state that is very healing to both the mind and body.

As we know, in meditation one’s metabolism slows down, including heart rate and blood pressure. The consistent practice of meditation will reduce anxiety and stress. For some the practice of meditation allows them to access true Being. For others it is way of reconnecting to the Spirit within us.

It is in the consistent practice of meditation that the subject and object distinction inherent in language, thought and meaning making collapses thereby resulting in our access to the present, to the Now.

The meditative process can be enhanced by the use of therapeutic relaxation music. Music has always been a very powerful modality for promoting a very deep state of relaxation and even healings. I have found that musical compositions that are harmonically slow, repetitious, with sustained voices, which are rhythmically, random in tempo assists an individual in experiencing a very deep state of relaxation.

A second important component of the use of therapeutic relaxation music is the use of binaural audio tones that have been interwoven into the music. The binaural tones, through a process referred to as entrainment or frequency following, gently guides or directs the mind/body to generate more of the targeted frequency of brain wave activity for an even more profound state of relaxation.

The meditative process of practicing staying present to the Now is as follows:

1. Take a comfortable position in an upright sitting position.

2. Allow your legs and arms to be open.

3. Allow your eyes to focus upon a chosen object. The chosen object could be a candle light in a darkened room or any point that you choose.

4. As you focus on the chosen object, allow your muscles to slowly relax from the top of your head to the tips of your toes.

5. Take three slow deep breathes in through your nose as you inhale. Hold each breath to the mental count of four. Slowly exhale each breath out through your mouth. Continue to breath at a slow pace after the three breaths.

6. Continue to focus on the chosen object. When your mind wanders to some thought or thoughts slowly and gently bring it back to your focused concentration upon the chosen object. Simply let go of the thoughts that arise. The thoughts are from the past. Stay focused to what is so.

7. Continue the practice for a prescribed period of time and then go about your daily activities. Each day that you practice you may even choose to lengthen the time you spend with this technique.

The ability to stay in the present, to access the Now, can be enhanced with the consistent practice of meditation. What this will necessitate is one making the practice of meditation apart of his or her daily schedule. With the consistent practice of meditation one will also create the ability to stay even more present to what is so even when not actively engaged in the meditative process.

It is through a commitment to the practice of meditation on a daily basis that one will begin to live more fully in the Now.

Harry Henshaw, Ed.D., LMHC
http://www.enhancedhealing.com

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Some reflections on Carl Gustav Jung

Vision by Cornelia Kopp via Flickr

I cherish the anxious hope that meaning will… win the battle — C. G. Jung

I’ve been thinking about the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) for about three decades. Quite a few biographies have been written about Jung. Some writers are keen on recon-structing his early childhood, family influences, and so on. But as I grow older I’m becoming less interested in Jung’s personal life. I know enough of the backdrop – outlandish parties, extramarital infidelities, kissing up to the Nazi bureaucracy – to keep everything in context.

I’m more interested in Jung’s intellectual legacy. So when I talk about Jung its usually to introduce some of my own ideas about psychology, spirituality, and the journey to everlasting life.

Once a close friend and colleague of Sigmund Freud, in the early days of his remarkable career Jung found in Freud something of a kindly father figure. The elder Jew regarded the younger gentile as his star pupil among several luminaries in the emerging school of psychoanalysis. As a non-Jew, Jung was in a better position to help spread Freud’s psychoanalytic movement within a central Europe marked by anti-Semitism. But the two intellectual titans split in 1914 over a number of personal and professional differences, most notably, Jung’s rejection of Freud’s increasingly dogmatic insistence on the primacy of the libido.

What the critics say

Jung, himself, has been criticized on many counts. Conservative Christians see him as a dangerous, demonic threat, citing select quotations of his work which apparently support their arguments while ignoring, as extremists usually do, those aspects which would refute them.¹ Despite this conservative backlash, Jungian ideas continue to be taken seriously in popular Catholic literature, just as some of Luther’s ideas are said to agree with core Catholic teaching. Meanwhile, parapsychologists and spiritualists, usually scorned by traditional Christians, often say that Jung’s theory is limiting.²

Until recently, the major figures in Western cultural studies and rationalism largely ignored Jung in favor of Freud. Freud’s emphasis on sexuality, sublimation and the idea of the phallus resonated with neo-Marxist and postmodern interests.

As for those who took the time to actually read Jung, his work was often dismissed as a kind of fuzzy mysticism riddled with modernist stereotypes and elements of racism. Accordingly, a body of historical reconstruction emerged, claiming that Jung kowtowed to Hitler and the Nazi Party.³

Philosophers of logic tend to wince at the very thought of Jung. Most philosophers say that his arguments contain far too many assumptions to merit any kind of serious consideration. Not only philosophers, but many in religious studies say that Jung’s analogical use of mythological and religious ideas is weak because his data is removed from historical contexts. In disconnecting religious ideas from their originally intended meanings, Jung has been heavily criticized for distorting data to make it fit his own theory.⁴ Moreover, feminist and women’s studies analyses suggest that his views are sexist.⁵

Alchemical Images Courtesy The Alchemy Web Site

Another way to understand Jung’s work looks at the big picture. By appreciating his lasting contribution to the history of ideas, value is found not so much in Jung’s theoretical particulars but rather, in his spirit of innovation and genuine concern to synthesize depth psychology, empirical observation and rationality. Writing about Jung, Naomi Goldenberg says that Jung apparently was happy to be “Jung and not a Jungian.” As a Jungian one might slavishly follow the Grand Master without thinking for him or herself. But Jung, himself, was free to revise his theories according to his ongoing thoughts and observations.⁶

Among Jung’s wide ranging interests, his work on projection, the shadow, inflation, symbols, numinosity, synchronicity and the collective unconscious seem most useful.⁷ Not unlike Gandhi who said “be the change you want to see in the world,” Jung advocated self-knowledge as an essential component for personal and societal transformation. To make this happen, Jung believed that we had actively master the unconscious. For Jung, no amount of abstract talk without doing the real work of inner change would have any kind of lasting effect on outer change.

Jung also believed that a failure to control the powerful impulses of the unconscious could result in a kind of Dorian Gray scenario where the unconscious gradually comes to control the individual and society as a whole.

The collective unconscious: Is Freud so different?

Freud and Jung’s views about the unconscious differ, but not so much as most believe. Some pop psychologists and New Age gurus quickly dismiss Freud’s ideas, unaware that his model of the unconscious contains collective elements. They prefer Jung’s notion of the archetypes, which borrows from ideas previously found in anthropology, sociology, philosophy, religion and theology (the term archetype is actually traceable to St. Augustine, 354-430 CE).

Jung describes the archetype as a component of mankind’s psychological substratum—the collective unconscious. Freud similarly spoke of phylogenetic “schemata” and “prototypes.” And borrowing from ancient Greek and Jewish literature, Freud also devised the “Oedipus complex,” a “primal father” and likened the shadowy contents of the unconscious to archaeological ruins.

In addition, late in his career Freud revised his libido theory to include the general ideas of eros (life instinct) and thanatos (death instinct). Because Freud maintained that the fundamental aspects of the unconscious are universal, aspects of his theory of the self, like Jung’s, point to a collective unconscious.⁸ And not only that. Freud himself said that Jung introduced nothing new with the idea of the collective unconscious, for the “content of the unconscious is collective anyhow.”⁹

C. G. Jung at Küsnacht

Archetypes and the Unconscious

But Jung and Freud differ in that Jung’s archetypal theory elaborates on the unconscious to a greater degree than Freud’s rather basic schema of id, ego and superego.¹⁰ Jung’s archetypes, however, have themselves been criticized as ambiguous, simplistic constructs. On the charge of ambiguity, Jungians reply that archetypes are necessarily mysterious since they consist of matter/energy and a wide range of numinous potentials. Grounded in human experience, the archetypes transcend our conventional understanding of space and time. They are categories which to some extent explode contemporary assumptions about categories.

The archetypes point to essential mysteries or, in Jung’s way of speaking, they invite and sometimes demand an extraordinary encounter with the numinous. As for the apparent simplicity of the archetypes, Jungians reply that the archetypes, proper, are relatively few but their cultural expression as archetypal images are limitless.

Depth psychologist James Hillman notes that the archetypes are just another construct and should not be taken as realities in themselves. This may surprise some but Jung, himself, knew full well that his apparently ‘scientific’ work was just another myth that he believed was more appropriate for moderns times. The pseudoscientific nature of Jung’s work did not deter him. He believed his new myth was necessary. And his growing popularity seems to confirm that belief.¹¹

Along these lines, Jung said the master archetype is that of the self, which directly or indirectly involves all lesser archetypes. As we journey through certain stages in life, the self strives to unify apparent contradictions. For Jung this process of becoming whole, called individuation, involves a multidimensional union of opposites and by implication, the experience of synchronicity and numinosity. And these two ideas of synchronicity and numinosity arguably raised Western psychology to a new plateau only hinted at by researchers such as Abraham Maslow, Alfred Alder and William James.¹²

Like his old mentor Freud, Jung sought to devise a fresh, meaningful map of the psyche. He sincerely tried to integrate the personal, social and spiritual dimensions of the self. A brilliant innovator, Jung anticipated the limitations that would inevitably compromise his working model. But despite these limitations, his ideas still inspire half a century after his passing.

Notes

¹ Fundamentalist Christian attacks against Jung seem to abstractly echo a frightening past of Inquisitions and the torture of so-called witches, a kind of mindset where it’s easier to demonize people on the basis of incomplete data instead of carefully assessing what they have to say. See, for instance, Marsha West’s: Carl Jung: Psychologist or Sorcerer?. Jung himself says that as a practicing psychiatrist he never tried to change his clients’ religious beliefs if they were happy with them. He did critique Christian churches, but his critique was intended to help those receiving no spiritual comfort within those traditions. And his critiques were not one-sided diatribes. For instance, the Protestant Jung commended the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary as declared by Pope Pius XII in 1950 because he felt that it solidified an important feminine element within Christian belief and practice. And because Catholicism now highlights the importance of freedom of religious belief, Catholic pogroms against those interested in Jung’s model arguably come from those Catholics unable to appreciate the fullness of Catholic thought.

² Ram Dass, for instance, said in The Only Dance There Is that Jung is afraid to go beyond identifying with the role of the famous psychologist. Dass says Jung fears taking the next step into mysticism.

³ The best example being Maidenbaum and Martin’s Lingering Shadows: Jungians, Freudians, and anti-Semitism.

⁴ See my papers Integration and the Orient and Ego, Archetype and Self.

⁵ Naomi Goldenberg, “Looking at Jung Looking at Himself,” Soundings, 73/2-3 (Summer/Fall 1990).

⁶ Ibid. Several recent Jungians claim to explore the psyche in the spirit of Jung, not being bound by any kind of Jungian dogma. To what extent they succeed arguably varies from theorist to theorist.

⁷ These concepts are accurately defined in Daryl Sharp’s Jung Lexicon.

⁸ Michael V. Adams illustrates this point in The Cambridge Companion to Jung, (ed.) Polly Young-Eisendrath and Terence Dawson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 101.

⁹ Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 209, cited in R. J. Lifton with Eric Olson (eds.), Explorations in Psychohistory: The Wellfleet Papers, New York: Simon and Shuster, 1974 p. 90.

¹⁰ Some of Jung’s archetypes are listed here.

¹¹ Some old school Jungians, being tied to their tidy Jungian teachings, are unwilling to further develop Jung’s concepts or, perhaps, see them in the postmodern sense of the “three C’s,” where context and connotation are taken as an important part of content.

¹² More recently, Stanislav Grof and a handful of others have built on Jung’s thought with a holotropic model of the self.

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Some reflections on Carl Gustav Jung Copyright © Michael Clark.

The Dislike of Catholicism: Understanding the Holy in the Catholic Tradition, 5 – Psychological reasons

Debate between Catholics and Oriental Christians in the 13th century, Acre 1290. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1 – Introduction
2 – Theory and method
3 – Theological reasons
4 – Social and political reasons
5 – Psychological reasons
6 – Philosophical and historical reasons and conclusion

Projection onto the Big Bad Institution

Now we turn to those who dislike Catholicism mostly because of their psychological baggage.

Some non-Catholic Christians routinely advocate angry, hateful behavior. And if they see any vice among individual Catholics they arguably project their own anger – and other shortcomings – onto Catholicism as a whole. This type of Christian is self-perceived as genuine while Catholics are seen as invalid.

The self-righteous Christian is often eager to get embroiled in long, heated messaging wars over specific points of doctrine. All too often the ideal of loving in Christ seems more like negative attention seeking—or shall we say, spoiling for a fight.

Non-Catholic Christians are not the only people who project their personal shortcomings onto “Big Religion.” All sorts of people are prone to projection. Projection is a convenient way to ignore personal issues by blaming something outside the self.

Individuals and groups from non-US nations, for instance, often single out the US as the Big Bad Wolf, as if other nations aren’t acting in their own self interest, and perhaps less humanely than the US.

Religion and Spirituality mutually exclusive?

Some New Agers and alleged psychics believe they have paranormal powers or, perhaps, special knowledge of unusual phenomena like ETs and UFOs. These folks typically see religion and spirituality as categorically different. For them, there’s no overlap.

If the psi perceptions of alleged psychics critical of Catholicism were from God, these impressions, insights and intuitions would be accurate and used for the common good. But sometimes we find in people with alleged psi abilities a haughty kind of arrogance. Little or no attempt is made to verify their truth claims, which are sometimes boldly proclaimed through the media. And the possibility of “analytic overlay” remains unchecked. Analytic overlay is a concept used in Remote Viewing but it could apply to psi in general.

Remote viewing also involves the awareness that we can incorrectly interpret incoming data. A misperception can occur when our conscious minds get in the way and our imagination or existing mindset fills in the blanks or jumps to a conclusion about a remote viewing impression. Remote viewers call this “analytic overlay” and good remote viewers take steps to minimize it.¹

In fact, some psychics seem so entrenched in their paranormal, imaginative, deluded or perhaps pretend world that they have no appreciation for Catholic mysticism. The self-important psychic knows best. And that is all. Most mature Catholics, however, don’t flaunt or advertise their spiritual gifts for profit or self-aggrandizement. Along these lines, St. Paul says that any such gifts are utterly meaningless without true, unselfish love.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.  (1 Corinthians 13:1-4).

Fallen Away Catholics

Another consideration is the so-called ‘fallen away’ Catholic who dislikes Catholicism. Assuming fallen away Catholics did not suffer sexual or other kinds of abuse in their past experience with the Church, it seems probable that some – certainly not all – began as cradle Catholics who routinely went to church, possibly coerced by their families.

Due to their personality and early conditioning these people might never have become firmly established in the Holy Spirit. Catholicism just didn’t work for them. And later in life they embrace something else that provides tangible numinous experience and communal support—for example, a non-Catholic religion or a cult.

These individuals might be quite happy with their new path for their entire lives. Memories of Catholicism could conjure up combined feelings of familial coercion, boredom, etc. No wonder they would dislike Catholicism as adults. Quite possibly they’ve never been consciously aware of the Holy within the Church. And if they once did experience the Holy within Catholicism, bad memories and new interests could combine to replace their memory of their positive Catholic experiences.

The parable in Mark 4:2-9 of seeds variously planted on a path, rocks, thorns and good soil comes to mind:

In his teaching he said, “Listen! A farmer went out to plant his seed. He scattered the seed on the ground. Some fell on a path. Birds came and ate it up. Some seed fell on rocky places, where there wasn’t much soil. The plants came up quickly, because the soil wasn’t deep. When the sun came up, it burned the plants. They dried up because they had no roots. Other seed fell among thorns. The thorns grew up and crowded out the plants. So the plants did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It grew up and produced a crop 30, 60, or even 100 times more than the farmer planted.” Then Jesus said, “Those who have ears should listen.”

But let’s not jump to conclusions or unfairly generalize. No doubt many who leave Catholicism continue to experience God in their lives. And many may be on an extremely healthy path, according to God’s plan. Some Catholics might stop going to church simply because the Mass no longer speaks to them or because the demands of work conflict with their desire to attend. In their heart, mind and soul, however, these individuals might still see themselves as true Catholics or, at least, as God-fearing persons.²

—

¹ Steve Hammons, ‘Remote Viewing’ has Basis in Science, Military Intelligence.

² This article isn’t too concerned with non-Catholic spirituality. Obviously, many non-Catholics, religious or not, enjoy extremely healthy relationships with God. And from a Catholic perspective even those who don’t necessarily believe in God or belong to a particular religion, to include agnostics and atheists, are integral to God’s plan.

Copyright © Michael W. Clark, 2012.

6 – Philosophical and Historical reasons (coming soon)

C. G. Jung and Numinosity

Copyright © Michael W. Clark
All rights reserved.

This essay was written in 1994 at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada.

My thinking has matured since that time but I post it here (with some minor edits) for its sound coverage of Jung’s ideas and for its extensive asides.

When citing this essay please use one of the standard citation styles for online sources.

—MC

In the Beginning…God said, “Let there be light”

~ Genesis 1-3

This paper will outline the significance of numinosity in C. G. Jung’s analytical psychology and, by implication, its relevance for those who may be termed, ‘persons of numinosity.’ It will be suggested, ala Jung, that both the positive and negative aspects of numinosity may be potentially useful for human psychological and spiritual development. Last, Jung’s stance on inflation and numinosity will be applied and contrasted to the Christian – especially Catholic – view of numinosity as spiritual influence.

* * *

Jung’s use of numinosity is modified from its long standing roots in the etymological tree. According to The Encyclopedia of Religion,(1) Numinosity is adapted from the Latin term numen, based on the Indo-European root neu-, from which the similar Greek term, neuma, arose.(2) Numen is further derived from the verbs adnuere and abnuere which respectively translate to “agree with a nod of the head” and “refuse with a nod in the head;” the term therefore has encoded within its linguistic past a dual meaning which as we shall see, is reflected in Jung’s definition of numinosity.

Before we look at Jung, however, mention of the German scholar, Rudolf Otto, is essential. Otto popularized the term numinosity*(3) [fn* A similar form was used by philosopher Immanuel Kant (see endnote 3)] in his ‘classic’(4) The Idea of the Holy,(5) which bears the test of time perhaps partly due to Otto’s travels in the Asian subcontinent and his knowledge of Sanskrit, the language which Indian scholars claim is phonetically suited to communicate the experience of the numinous.(6) As a Lutheran interested in the mystical aspects of Martin Luther’s life, however, Otto reveals a distinct bias for his own tradition; while for Otto the Judeo-Christian tradition contains a mature, “supreme and unparalleled”(7) form of religious mysticism, he suggests experience of the numinous may not be confined to it.

In defining numinosity, Otto designates it as an actual and powerful aspect of religion. That is, unlike his French contemporary, Emile Durkheim,(8 ) who saw religious experience as a fundamentally biological, emotional “effervescence” generated by socio-religious rites and rituals,(9) Otto terms the numinous in the converse—not in the Durkheimian ‘below to above’ (essential ‘ground of being’ resting in the physical, empirical world), but in an ‘above to below’ mode (essential ground in a non-physical, supramundane locus or loci). This “science/religion” dichotomy,(10) initiated perhaps at the dawn of human history,(11) is continued throughout social and intellectual history and remains today with diverse paradigms and systems of approach co-existing – often uneasily – within the international political, denominational, and pedagogical spheres: i.e. in the overall societal scene.(12)

For Otto, the numinous does not replace, but supplements and vivifies the socio-structures of religion. Otto describes the numinous as an awe-filled encounter with ultimate reality (UR).(13) UR is designated by Otto as a mysterium tremendum(14) and a majestus(15) as it is experienced as a powerful sentient force, worthy of utmost respect. It inspires not only awe, but also fear. While the subject is urgently attracted to this ineffable source of creation, it may in some instances frighten, humble and ‘purify.’ Otto also notes subjects may perceive some sense of creaturely wretchedness and unworthiness, standing naked, as it were, in the face of a great and powerful, “wholly other”(16) UR-Creator-God.(17)

This is Otto’s version of UR as found within Christianity. The numinous, however, may take an ‘inferior,’ ‘dark’ form; for Otto, this is found in other religious systems and in pantheism.(18 ) The human psychological experience of the presence of a ‘lesser’ pagan god may translate into an impressive instance of numinosity, but not necessarily equal in character and quality to the Christian variety.(19) This rather basic distinction of Otto’s is important, for Jung too makes a somewhat elementary distinction between types of numinosity, and like Otto, he too displays what I shall term a ‘Christocentric’ preference.

Jung’s concept of numinosity is essential to the dynamic of change and growth within his model of the Self.(20) According to Jung, through what he metaphorically describes as an ‘alchemical’(21) process, the Self undergoes something akin to the ordeal of a lobster, or the dismemberment of Osiris—it ‘dies,’ ‘cooks,’ ‘boils,’ is torn apart, and yet through numinosity it is also properly cooked or reconfigured; in psychological parlance, it is restored to a new and balanced sense of life, what Jung terms ‘wholeness.’(22) Jung adapts Otto’s definition of numinosity to refer to unusual, non-ordinary or heightened modes of psychological awareness. To fully understand Jung’s development of the term numinosity, however, we must briefly look at his notion of the archetype.(23)

The archetype acts as an underlying organizing principle where constellations of collectively unconscious libido(24) impulses are rendered into recognizable and meaningful gestalts to be grasped by the human ego. According to Jung

Archetypes, so far as we can observe and experience them at all, manifest themselves only through their ability to organize images and ideas, and this will always be an unconscious process which cannot be detected until afterward.(25)

Jung differentiates the archetypal image from the archetype itself by suggesting the archetype proper is never amenable to representation(26) and cannot reach ego consciousness.(27) The diverse ‘crystal lattice’ structures of the archetypes are represented through various archetypal images and ideas.(28 ) These imagos are expressed in art, architecture, religion – i.e, human civilization – and are individually experienced either in dream or waking consciousness with corresponding ‘feeling values.’ It is these feeling values which may take the form of the ‘numinous.’

For Jung, the precipitating object of numinosity may be externally or inwardly perceived stimuli. In the latter, the object is not immediately subject to verification through observable consensus.(29)

The numinosum is either a quality belonging to a visible object or the influence of an invisible presence that causes a peculiar alteration of consciousness.(30)

Thus not perceptible in itself, one of the hallmarks of the archetype’s influence on the ego is numinosity.

Numinosity from archetypal experience may appear simply destructive, but if properly guided through the analytical, or some other functional process, it aids the individuation process of the Self. Success for, and the uniquely individual outcome of, individuation depends on many factors. One’s cultural location – to include gender, ethnic, and socio-economic status – to a large extent influences the optimal relation between the numinous and the ego.(31)

For Westerners, then, if regulated and made conscious by the ego, Jung says archetypal numinosity is enriching; on the negative side, it may invoke regression or a host of other psychological maladies.(32) Concerning one of these, Jungian inflation, I would like to elaborate on its relation to numinosity. For this, Jung’s account of inflation is useful:

An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with…inflation is a regression of consciousness into unconsciousness(33)

Elsewhere(34) I have noted the monumental role the ego plays in mediating the various internal and external demands of the psyche/world continuum as postulated by Jung’s theory. While inflation represents one of the dangers involved in the individuation process, Jung says it should not be confused with conscious self-aggrandizement.(35) Inflation is entirely hidden and unconscious. The distinguishing feature is the subject’s ability or inability to “discriminate” between conscious and unconscious contents, which for Jung is the “sin qua non of all consciousness.”(36)

In comparison with the Christian aspiring towards the ideal of perfection instead of completeness, in this instance the power of discrimination does not vanish; it is, however, altered and renamed. Discrimination becomes ‘discernment’ (“the gift for judging spirits”)(37) and instead of ‘discriminating’ between consciousness and unconsciousness, certain sectors of Christian faith(38 ) contend the ego ‘discerns’ between things good (of God) and evil (of Satan). This discernment ideally takes place both within one’s own self and towards other selves. That is, the true discerner recognizes the influence of evil spirits within her or his own consciousness and has also been given the ability to recognize this dynamic in others.(39)

Unfortunately this monochromatic world view is contradicted within both the parameters of Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular. The Anglican, Baptist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian and United Churches disagree on key and fundamental issues – for example the role of women, lesbians/dikes, and gays/queers(40) in the “good vs. evil” diad – and the Catholic Church which claims legitimate authority to deliver a chosen portion of individuals to salvation through discernment itself lacks integration, and despite its newly released catechism, is rife with internal disagreement, sometimes taking the form of protectionism and other alleged issues.(41)

The official Papal response to such failings asserts that faulty praxis does not invalidate infallible doctrine. That is, it attempts to incorporate evil within the original premises of Catholicism, these being reinforced by various ‘church-verified’ apparitional appearances said to have emanated from Mary, the Madonna.* [fn* At Mudjegorje the apparitions but not the messages are authorized by the church. The overall discourse, nonetheless, is important to Catholic belief and practice]. In essence, these alleged contemporary manifestations of Mary inform believers, “excuse me for this, but you must realize that Satan exists”…this is “the hour of Satan.”(42) To summarize the discourse reportedly given to Mirjana Dragicevic at Medjugorje:

Lucifer went to God’s throne and asked permission to unleash his minions of evil – demons – throughout the Church for one century [ours]. God granted his evil and fallen archangel such license so as to submit the Church to a period of trial and to fulfil Old and New Testament scripture for ultimately good reasons impossible to mortal comprehension.(43)

Satan, Catholics(44) now believe, is present in the Church. His evil influence makes the importance of discernment even greater than before, where the church apparently could be relied on for ‘good counsel.’(45)

If Satan has just recently infiltrated the church, internal myopia to the greed and horrors of the crusades, inquisitions and political poisonings makes Jung and specifically, inflation, again relevant. The Catholic discernment of evil spirits adhering to the true self is loosely analogous to Jung’s differentiation of the shadow from mature ego consciousness. From Jung’s standpoint, however, rather than being “wise like serpents and harmless as doves,”(46) Catholics are the opposite. They are hypnotized by their own unconsciousness, and their ‘discernments’ emerge from within the bounds of a relatively small archetypal area—that is, they are unwittingly fixated in an unconscious type and must view everything external from within the ‘borders’ of that socio-psychological structure, or ‘space’ (a space created by highly intransigent, more or less rigid and largely inert rules and regulations).(47) Interestingly, they retain ego consciousness, but as Jung suggests, it seems limited and un-whole,(48 ) at times discerning between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ on what from a scholarly perspective seems not merely insipid, but unethical and perhaps even clannishly destructive. Consider ex-journalist and Catholic Michael H. Brown’s lamentations concerning the influence of Satan in postwar popular culture:

Instead of Yoruba drums, we had movies, the stereo, the television. One of the hit TV shows was called Bewitched.(49)

As exemplifying the careless – or perhaps careful – selectivity of the Catholic approach, Brown overlooks the fact that the Yoruba themselves distinguish between good and evil,(50) that stereos and televisions may be used to further one’s relation to a believed in God (for surely that same Catholic-defined omniscient God directs all of creation), and concerning Bewitched, he also overlooks the fact that the protagonist, ‘Samantha,’ was depicted as a good witch who declined to use her powers unless absolutely necessary—usually as a countermeasure to her meddling Mother, Endora.(51) While Judeo-Christian saints and wonder-workers with similar powers emphasise personal humility, attributing all agency to God, Brown disregards the NT statement of “ye are gods.”(52) For the NT Son of God himself says the ‘gods’ may act as he does—in the service of the creator-God.(53) Regarding the possibility of miraculous abilities, Jung would contend such ‘powers’ originate from an archetype.(54) In occidental societies that often misconstrue numinosity as indicative of deviance, popular depictions of unearthly abilities – as in Bewitched – could inspire personal and mass acceptance of the potentially numinous aspects of psychological growth.*(55) [fn* See my graduate paper, "Synchronicity: Carl Jung, Consciousness and Chance" for Dr. Naomi R. Goldenberg at the University of Ottawa (April, 1994:10) re the temporary utility of inflation for the traumatized personal unconscious. I would suggest that personal complexes created in the childhood/family/significant-other spheres and deposed to the 'personal' unconscious ultimately stem from both interpersonal and collective-historical forces of human development. That is, a seemingly personal cumulative trauma may be transmitted - unconsciously - to progeny, throughout generations (studies of child molestation demonstrate a statistically high percentage of repeated generational abuse. And if not physically repeated, it may be psychologically)]

Concerning inflation, Jung links it to numinosity when it evokes the experience of an archetype. Although rendered in a philosophical-scientific code for acceptance for a primarily scientific audience, Jung’s “archetype” is alternately represented within other discursive areas – both positively and negatively – by such competing terms as ‘ghost’ ‘spirit,’ ‘god,’ ‘Devil,’ and ‘God,’(56) to note a just a few. And with Jung’s division of the archetypal ‘image’ from the ‘archetype proper,’ theological philosophers such as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine likewise suggest that ‘angels’ manifest themselves in forms recognizable to humans, yet not in accordance with their true unmanifest angelic character,(57) which is comparable – but not identical -to Jung’s description of the archetypal image—a numinous psychological content which mediates a tension of opposites via the ‘transcendent function,’ leading the ego but never fully connecting it to the ‘psychoid’ aspect of the archetype. However, Jung’s recency does not instantly provide his ideas a higher degree of accuracy over Aquinas’ ideas, or any other so-called ‘great’ thought. This fallacy of chronological progress over linear time(58 ) is often used to justify scholarly emphasis on “current thought” while valuable insights from the past may be overlooked or simply and unknowingly reiterated.

At any rate, to close with a challenge to, instead of a mere summary of, Jung’s thoughts on numinosity, the Indian guru and the Judeo-Christian nun, monk, saint, or religious/spiritually-minded lay-person offer alternatives to Jung’s view. Here a human individual is, as Max Weber puts it, “empowered to distribute grace,” and to some extent sanctified – and/or rejected(59) – by others. In this interactive model, the Jungian shadow contents, or in the Catholic sense, ‘hindering spirits’ and ‘demons’ are transferred from the afflicted person to an apparently benevolent religious who in the process of prayer, ritual and/or concentration on God (or some godly manifestation of God) rids her or himself – and by implication, the first person – of the evil and is propelled to a higher level of self-knowledge.(60) We could imagine such a system of reciprocal yet upwardly sequential sanctification to increase endlessly, or near endlessly up to the heavens (as the OT account of Jacob’s Ladder might be interpreted to indicate).(61)

A tentative parallel of this to Jungian thought is found in his distinction between devouring (regressive or inflatory) and nurturing (healing, purifying and/or humbling)(62) types of numinosity, and Jung mentions, if in a comparatively underdeveloped way, the possibility of an interactive, interpersonal dynamic to numinosity.(63) Yet while the other-worldly theodicean doctrine of St. Irenaeus views ‘necessary evil’ as something that propels believers towards an eternal afterlife in a paradisal heaven, Jung suggests in a more worldly vein that if regulated, the entire ‘alchemical’ process of both devouring and nurturing archetypal numinosity is conducive to individuation in this world. Moreover, while many Catholics(64) might see the numinous influences of various archetypes as the workings of evil gods, Jung suggests these ‘lesser gods’ may be integrated within his concept of the Self as a psychic totality, consisting of the conjunctio oppositorium. As Jung sees it:

On account of his sinlessness Christ…lives in the Platonic realm of pure ideas whither only man’s thoughts can reach but not he himself in his totality.(65)

* * *

This brief survey of the various goals and orientations of Jungian and religious models of the psyche will be developed in subsequent work. The key, and it must be stressed, general difference, however, seems to be an increased concern for one’s afterlife status in most religious models,(66) while Jung emphasizes this-worldly life, describing it as a possible but unproved(67) precursor to other-worldly afterlife.

With his discussion on numinosity, Jung continues the ongoing science vs. religion debate noted at the outset. As a psychologist, he hopes to harness the psychological power and grace of the numinous by appropriating philosophies and religions of antiquity. By so doing he attempts to straddle positivist and mystical methodologies as most of his cosmological data suggest a temporal, effete, earthly ‘becoming’ which undergirds, supports,(68 ) or precedes finer afterlife realms of ‘true being.’(69) Thus claiming to use but extending positivism to the edge of the ineffable, Jung echoes Plato’s view on life as something of a ‘preparation’ for death—that is, new life in an eternal world of Forms.(70)

Endnotes

1) The Encyclopedia of Religion, Vol. 11, Mircea Eliade ed. (New York: Macmillan Pub. Co., 1987: 21-22, 178 ).

2) Daryl Sharp, C. G. Jung Lexicon (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1991: 92).

3) Immanuel Kant’s realm of the noumena is ineffable in itself but ‘practically’ known by the “intelligible order of things” in the world of phenomena. Immanuel Kant cited in Roger Scruton, A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein (London: Ark Paperbacks 1984: 157).

4) See endnote 20(a) and (b).

5) Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, John W. Harvey, trans. (London: Oxford University Press, 1973 (1923)).

6) Ibid., 192-193.

7) Ibid., 142.

8 ) Durkheim was the first Jew admitted to the Catholic École Normal Superieure in France.

9) Originally a Jew, Durkheim converted to Catholicism. In his theoretical work, however, he argued the ‘science’ of sociology could justifiably describe religious and economic activity as ‘social facts.’ See the discussion on ‘totemism’ in Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Joseph Ward Swain trans. (London: Allen & Unwin 1964).

10) P. D. Ouspensky suggests this split may be traced to the ‘Scholastic’ philosophy of Aristotelian logic where truth was approached by reasoning from “seemingly incontestable premises,” vs. the “more or less occult” approach of Platonic and Pythagorian schools apparently derived from Egyptian philosophy (the ‘Hermetic’ philosophy founded by Hermes Trismegistus). P. D. Ouspensky, A New Model of the Universe (New York: Vintage Books, 1971 (1931): 196).

11) Perhaps cave-persons debated the relative importance of sketching gods on cave walls versus tool-making and hunting. Likely, the two were seen as intertwined—i.e. the ‘god’ represented on the wall was also believed to inspire (via spiritual influence) technological inventions. Whether or not the cave-persons saw it as such, or if this indeed was so, is open to debate.

12) On the ‘scientific’ side of the spectrum, current studies link specific types of numinous experience to physio-biological alterations. Henry James, for example, notes a relationship between neuroendocrine activity, emotion, and the religious archetype. He suggests early family/social events engender biological “triggers” that internally enhance psychological experience during such “sacred moments” as mother-infant bonding. In the event of psychic trauma, access to emotions and archetypes [Jung postulates these as biologically encoded] is inhibited. See Henry P. James, “Religious Experience, Archetypes and the Neurophysiology of Emotions” Zygon, 1986 Mar Vol 21(1) 47-74 in PsycLIT Database, American Psychological Assn. (1987). Disregarding the reference to archetypes, James’ study may be partially explained by Freudian theory. Freud, himself a neurologist, precursed the notion of afferent and efferent neurons with his theory of defence mechanisms. For Freud trauma blocks libidinal energy and in fact re-directs it to protect the stricken area through the defence mechanism of repression or any one of the various other types of defences which stem from and/or are elaborations of this ‘master’ mechanism. Notes from undergraduate course conducted by Dr. Donald Carveth (York University: Fall, 1981). While Jung is often seen as underemphasizing what he terms the personal unconscious, he does point out that an undifferentiated personal unconscious will distort one’s perceptions of an essential archetypal purity, and potentially project the distortion onto objects in one’s surroundings. C. G. Jung, Alchemical Studies in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, ed. William McGuire et al., trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series XX (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954-79) Vol. 13, 348; and C. G. Jung, in Sharp, Jung Lexicon, 104.

13) The term ‘ultimate reality’ is borrowed from the Christian scholar, Joachim Wach, who separates religious from magical experience: The former is a continuous (yet with intermittences) response to a “powerful, comprehensive, shattering, and profound” experience of UR that must simultaneously involve the hierarchical elements of intellect, affect, and volition, and which leads to definite and imperative action, while the latter is a mere series of “unconnected thrills.” Interestingly, Wach’s ‘action’ includes contemplation, and in distinguishing this from slothful indifference, Wach notes William James’ pragmatism: “Our practice is the only sure evidence even to ourselves, that we are genuinely Christians.” In Joachim Wach, The Comparative Study of Religions, Joseph M. Kitagawa ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958: 31-35).

14) Otto, The Idea of the Holy, 12.

15) Ibid., 19.

16) Ibid., 25-27, 28.

17) Ibid., 8-49.

18 ) Ibid., 29, 31-33.

19) Ibid., 142.

20) (a) Various current publications on numinosity seem to reinforce both Otto and, as we shall see, Jung’s position. This is impressive for both Otto and Jung, who could be seen as the ‘Founding Fathers’ [see (b) below] for the discursive formulation of an apparently non-discursive phenomenon. In comparing the near-death experience to the numinosum, for instance, Sally Leighton argues a high degree of similarity. Sally M. Leighton, “God and the God Image,” Journal of Near-Death Studies, 1991 Sum Vol. 9(4) 233-246 in PsycLIT Database APA (1992). Likewise, in contrast to the experience of artists, Paul Pruyser suggests aspects of the artistic process may relate to the numinous element of religious experience, yet the latter apparently has a unique and indivisible quality not found in the former. Paul W. Pruyser, “Lessons from Art Theory for the Psychology of Religion,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1976 Mar Vol. 15(1) 1-14 in PsycLIT Database APA (1976). In this connection, William Henkin describes a personal semi-conscious encounter with a numinous female figure which later fostered his artistic creativity. William A. Henkin, “Two Non-Ordinary Experiences of Reality and their Integration,” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 1983 Vol. 15(2) 137-142 in PsycLIT Database APA (1985). From this it would seem the numinous spawns creativity and not the converse. (b)Feminist scholars point out that most intellectual and social history is written within a patriarchal context (attributed to men, by men, from a male perspective), and does not credit novel ideas to women by largely ignoring their contributions, persepectives, and actual accounts (except a salient few, such as Joan of Arc).

21) Jung, The Collected Works, Vol. 8, 427-428.

22) Not to be confused with the Christian sense of the term, wholeness. As described more fully in pp. 5-7, Christian ‘wholeness’ implies complete rejection of all ‘evil’ and the reception of a new level of existential grace to be carried into afterlife, while Jung’s term advocates an at times volatile integration of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ to realistically combat the pressures of earthly life, and to prevent the projection of one’s shadow onto others.

23) The three paragraphs following this note have been modified from my unpublished graduate paper “Ego, Archetype and Self: C. G. Jung and Modernity” for Dr. Naomi R. Goldenberg at the University of Ottawa (May, 1993:2-3).

24) Jung’s definition of libido has been critically assessed in my unpublished paper, “Plumbing the Depths: Carl Jung, Freud and Hinduism” for Dr. N. Goldenberg, Graduate Studies in Religious Studies, University of Ottawa. Jung defines libido as: …an energy value which is able to communicate itself to any field of activity whatsoever, be it power, hunger, hatred, sexuality, or religion, without ever being a specific instinct. Jung, Symbols of Transformation in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, ed. William McGuire et al., trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series XX (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954-79) Vol. 5, 137.

25) Ibid, 231.

26) C. G. Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, ed. William McGuire et al., trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series XX (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954-79) Vol. 8, 214. Jung seems to overlook the fact that the words he writes are a type of representation.

27) Ibid, 213. Granted Jung’s formulation of archetypal images and ideas, we must still ask: if the numinosity of the archetypal image or idea originates from the archetype, is not the ego at least dimly aware of that archetypal source which it ‘feels’?

28 ) Ibid, 214.

29) Jung claims to have to overcome the problem of consensus by correlating a vast amount of what he interprets as analogous dream and mythological material. As only a select few dreams were published, we are impelled to trust he did indeed observe a great number of them. See Jung, Psychology and Alchemy in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, ed. William McGuire et al., trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series XX (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954-79) Vol. 12, 46.

30) C. G. Jung, Psychology and Religion: West and East in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, ed. William McGuire et al., trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series XX (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954-79) Vol. 11, 7.

31) Ibid, 205.

32) C. G. Jung, Civilization in Transition in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, ed. William McGuire et al., trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series XX (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954-79) Vol. 10, 237.

33) Jung, The Collected Works Vol. 12, 480-481.

34) Unpublished graduate paper “Ego, Archetype and Self” (2, 9-10).

35) In a similar vein, Joseph Campbell argues that cultural notions of God’s (or gods’) immanence may take the form of mythic identification (ego absorbed by spirit), mythic inflation (spirit overcome by aggrandized ego), mythic subordination (ego is instrument of spirit) or mythic dissociation (ego has a ‘relationship’ with God). Whether or not the examples Campbell provides to support these categories indeed reflect actual social-historical conditions remains open to question. See Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology (New York: Penguin Books, 1962: 80, 101-107).

36) Jung, The Collected Works, Vol. 12, 480-481.

37) Michael H. Brown, Prayer of the Warrior (Milford, OH: Faith Publishing Co., 1993: 193).

38 ) Michael Brown being an excellent example.

39) Compare to Jung’s definition of ‘demonism.’ As Jung contends: Demonism (synonomous with daemonomania=possession) denotes a peculiar state of mind characterized by the fact that certain psychic contents, the so-called complexes, take over the control of the total personality in place of the ego, at least temporarily, to such a degree that the free will of the ego is suspended. In certain of these states ego-consciousness is present, in others it is eclipsed. C. G. Jung, The Symbolic Life in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, ed. William McGuire et al., trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series XX (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954-79) Vol. 18, 648.

40) In citing 1 Corinthians 6:9,10 and Romans 1:26,27, Catholic writer Michael H. Brown views homosexuality as possession by a contrasexual spirit or spirits. See Brown, Prayer, 180-186.

41) To the point of sheltering numerous priest and brother child molesters from public notice and other allegations. Brown, Prayer 129-131. We must remember that the only publicly verified allegations are about sex abuse and sheltering offenders. All the rest outlined by Brown in Prayer remain mere allegations strongly denied by the Vatican (Michael Clark, November 2, 2008 ).

42) Brown, Prayer, 67-68.

43) Ibid.

44) My observations on “Catholics” are in part from an ongoing participant observational study conducted for approximately 1 year, in both Ottawa and Toronto. This involved ‘undercover’ practice as a pseudo Catholic (as far as Papally permitted for non-Catholics) and interviews with several priests, the Vicar General of Ottawa, a current Cistercian monk, an ex-Franciscan monk, and with various laity in bookstores, churches, and devotional outlets.

45) A major 20th century and ‘Church-approved’ mystic, Sister Mary Faustina Kowalska writes in the context of confession, now re-termed reconciliation: “A priest who is not at peace with himself will not be able to inspire peace in another soul.” Sister Mary Faustina Kowalska, Divine Mercy in My Soul: The Diary of the Servant of God Sister M. Faustina Kowalska (Stockbridge, Mass.: Marian Press, 1987: 38 ). This rather heroic statement made by a 1920′s convent nun implies one should regulate the openness of one’s confidences in confession according to the purity of the priest—perhaps a truism for secular individuals confiding amongst themselves. If uttered in the medieval era, Faustina likely would have been branded as a witch, tortured by trial, and executed for heresy, in accordance with legitimized church practice. See Stuart Gordon, The Encyclopedia of Myths and Legends (London: Headline House, 1993: 735-737).

46) Matt. 10:16

47) Jung, The Collected Works, Vol. 11, 109-200.

48 ) Ibid.

49) (a) Brown, Prayer 103. This type of cultural and individual scapegoating is hardly unprecedented. See J. G. Frazer, “The Transference of Evil,” “The Public Expulsion of Evils” and “On Scapegoats in General” in The Golden Bough, abridged (London: Papermac, 1987: 538-582).

50) Ulli Beier, ed. Yoruba Myths (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980).

51) Endora embodies the Jungian ‘trickster’ archetype: not evil, but mischievous ultimately to a good end.

52) John 10:34; Brown, Prayer, 149.

53) John, 10:34.

54) In less contemporary terms, Greek pre-Socratics believed this power emanated from a ‘god’ (in the OT sense of pagan ‘gods’) and operated in the service of a master deity, Zeus. This idea is repeated in Virgil where various superhuman beings must inevitably “submit to the divine will.” Virgil, The Aeneid, Betty Radice and Robert Baldick eds. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1956: 133).

55) (a) Using abstract mathematics to argue the limits of rationalistic materialism, Robin Robertson argues that common, ‘physical reality’ is no more nor less actual than common ‘mystical realities.’ Robin Robertson. “Godel and Jung: The Twilight of Rational Consciousness?” in Psychological Perspectives, Fall Vol. 18/2, 1987: 304-318 in PsycLIT Database APA, 1988. (b) Jung defines the numinous as if it occurs rarely, yet seems to imply its recurrence throughout his own and the life of his patients. See Daniel Hoy, “Numinous Experience, Frequent or Rare?” in Journal of Analytical Psychology, Jan. Vol. 28/1, 1983: 17-32 in PsycLIT Database APA, 1983.

56) Vera M. Buhrmann suggests occidental fear of the numinous has lead to its general rejection, with acceptance only in highly circumscribed social contexts—such as Jungian analysis. Vera M. Buhrmann’s “correspondence” to Daniel Hoy [see endnote 55 (b)] in Journal of Analytical Psychology Jan: Vol. 29/1 1984:79-80 in PsycLIT Database APA, 1985.

57) See St. Thomas Aquinas, “Whether Angels Assume Bodies” in The Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Anton C. Pegis ed. (New York: Random House, 1945:493) where it is argued angels intercede via imagination -Jung’s archetypal image – or in bodily form. St. Augustine makes a simpler distinction between angelic ‘celestial’ and ‘earthly’ bodies. St. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, Anna S. Benjamin and L. H. Hackstaff, trans. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merril Co., 1984:114).

58 ) See the discussion on temporality in my unpublished graduate paper “Synchronicity: Carl Jung, Consciousness and Chance” for Dr. Naomi R. Goldenberg, at the University of Ottawa (April, 1994:8 ).

59) (a) Weber notes in his treatment of prophets that miraculous powers are said to originate from the godhead; the socio-political system and the specific nature of the prophet, he contends, determines their expression. See Max Weber, “The Prophet” and “Soteriology and Types of Salvation” in The Sociology of Religion, Ephraim Fischoff, trans. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964 (1922):46-59, 184-206, 189). (b) Mircea Eliade notes that Tungus shamans abandon their special vocation if not recognized nor supported by their culture. He further notes that potential shamans usually undergo a spiritual crisis marked by confusion; an experienced spiritual teacher acts as guide towards the disciple’s new supramundane vocation. See Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, trans. Willard R. Trask, Bollingen Series LXVIII (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964: 17, 33. (c) The influence of greater socio-cultural evaluation of ‘nonordinary experience’ is noted by Larry G. Peters, “The Tamang Shamanism of Nepal” in Shamanism: An Expanded View of Reality, Shirley Nicholson, ed. (Wheaton, IL.: Theosophical Publishing House, 1987: 166-167).

60) (a) In the case of the Shaman, s/he is believed to ‘travel’ – while in inviolate trance – to an otherworld abode of spirits to recover ‘stolen’ souls to the rightful bodies of afflicted individuals. See Eliade, Shamanism, 309. (b) In discussion with two Catholic monks and one Catholic religious layperson, they suggested one would receive ‘evil’ and ‘human spirits’ from other people, but ultimately benefit from the process.

61) Here angels are described as “ascending and descending.” Gen. 28:12

62) C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, revised, ed. Aniela Jaffé, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Vintage Books, 1961:154).

63) Jung says projected psychic facts may influence others in a magical manner. See C. G. Jung, Alchemical Studies in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, ed. William McGuire et al., trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series XX (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954-79) Vol. 13, 24-25.

64) This is based on statements made in the field of actual practice by lay, priestly and monastic Catholics in discussing Jung and non-Catholic and non-Christian religions (See endnote 44). Opinions varied, from non-Catholic ‘otherness’ representing or partially representing Satan, to being highly acceptable; interestingly, the Cistercian Monastery in Orangeville, Ontario, sells non-Catholic books, and the liason Monk-Priest appreciated Japanese art and seemed to convey approval when informed I had lived in India. Likewise, the Catholic monk Thomas Merton advocates the poetic discourse of the Chinese philosopher Chaung Tzu (circa 300 B.C.) and expresses kinship with other non-Catholics who find “something they vastly prefer in solitude.” The Way of Chuang Tzu, Thomas Merton, ed., secondary trans. (New York: Penguin, 1965: 10).

65) Jung, The Collected Works, Vol. 11, 177. Jung overlooks that Plato’s ‘pure ideas’ exist on a wholly different ontological level than imperfect ‘human thoughts.’ Likewise, Judeo-Christian scripture (and most mystics of that tradition) claim heaven to be ‘higher’ than human thoughts. See for instance, Isaiah 55:6-9.

66) Hindu and Judeo-Christian perspectives contain ‘this-worldly’ elements: for example, Swami Vivekananda’s ‘Practical Vedanta’ and the Protestant emphasis on ‘good works.’ Believing Jehovah’s Witness anticipate an immortal physical, earth-bound life on the basis of OT passages pertaining to inheritances of land “for ever and ever.” Sam. 7:16, 1 Chron. 17:23-27. See Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga and Bhakti Yoga (New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1955: 54-55), and Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Talcott Parsons, trans. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958:53-54, 108 ).

67) Elizabeth Kübler-Ross would disagree; she claims to have studied 20,000 cases of people declared clinically dead and then restored to life, and regards their testimonials as proof of an afterlife. Regarding visions of dead friends and relatives she suggests: The only thing that prevents…people from sharing their experience…is the incredible tendency to label, to belittle, or to deny such stories when they make us uncomfortable and don’t fit into our own scientific or religious model. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Life After Death (Berkeley: Celestial Arts, 1991: 9, 55-56).

68 ) Both Egyptian and Indian ‘gods’ reportedly require human devotees to sustain their divine life. Frazer, The Golden Bough 52.

69) (a) A view proposed by Platonic, Christian, and much ‘New Age’ discourse. Not to imply these to be identical, however. In Orhpic and Homeric cosmologies, for instance, one goes to the abode of death in much the same manner as he or she existed in earthly life (warriors take their human form and even weapons) whereas in the NT the faithful believer is transformed into something like an angel, “neither male nor female.” See Vittorio D. Macchioro, From Orpheus to Paul: A History of Orphism (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1930: 32-52); Matt. 22:30, Mark 12:25, Luke 20:36. (b) Jung speaks of blissful “deliriums and visions” experienced while ill and likens death to “stepping out of a tight shoe.” See Jung, Memories, 289-298.

70) Jungian legend has it that as Jung died his favourite tree in the garden at Küsnacht was struck by lightning, and on the day before hearing of Jung’s death his old friend Laurens van der Post dreamed Jung waved to him and said ‘I’ll be seeing you.’ Gordon, Encyclopedia of Myths, 385.

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Numinosity – Another kind of light

Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,
Said then the lost Arch Angel, this the seat
That we must change for Heav’n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light?

—John Milton, Paradise Lost

The term numinosity isn’t too well-known beyond the academic world of religious studies and anthropology. In a sense numinosity is like the more familiar term luminosity. But numinosity refers to a subtle, spiritual light instead of an outwardly visible light like the luminosity of the moon.

While numinosity and luminosity may coexist, they remain somehow different. The term first appears, perhaps, in 1647 when Nathaniel Ward wrote in The simple cobler of Aggawam in America:

The Will of a King is very numinous; it hath a kinde of vast universality in it.¹

Rudolf Otto

In his groundbreaking work The Idea of the Holy (1923), the Lutheran theologian Rudolf Otto uses the term numinous to describe a personal experience of spiritual power. Otto borrows from the ancient Latin, numen, usually translated as “the presence of a god or goddess,” or more precisely, “the power or nod of a deity.”

For Otto, numinosity originates from outside the self but is perceived within. And as a higher process than the magical, the numinous takes many forms. Otto says the numinous has primitive, daemonic and dark as well as elevated, noble and pure aspects.² He calls the absolute and purest experience of the numen “the Holy.” Sometimes Otto implies that the numinous is identical among all religions. Other times he reveals a definite Christian bias, suggesting that the numinosity experienced through the Bible and by various Christian mystics is absolute and pure.

From today’s standards, Otto’s definition of numinosity seems a bit vague and unsystematic. But his work is regarded as a milestone and continues to have a profound influence within depth psychology and comparative religion.

C. G. Jung

The Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung’s view of numinosity builds on Otto’s. For Jung, numinosity is an alteration of consciousness involving an experience of spiritual power. Like Otto, Jung differentiates types or qualities of numinosity. But Jung’s work is arguably more detailed and systematic than Otto’s.

According to Jung, numinosity may be healing or destructive, this depending on the strength and attitude of the conscious ego along with the particular character of a given numinous power. Psychologically speaking, healing numinosity involves personal humility while destructive numinosity may lead to neurotic self-dabasement or, alternately, self-aggrandizement.

But this just scratches the surface. In actual fact, the relation between the character of the psyche and type of numinosity experienced is as complicated as life, itself.

Jung also says the light of the numinous passes through the lens of the personal unconscious. A traumatized person, for instance, may distort the numinous, turning what could be positive spiritual experiences into paranoia. Accordingly, an unhealthy psyche may distort some forms of the numinous into something frightening and demonic. Meanwhile, a healthy psyche may be able to distance itself from a dark numinous trigger, thus converting the whole experience into a positive—e.g. enjoying a scary Batman movie.

But it’s not quite that simple because Jung says the experience of the numinous is really the experience of an archetype. And not all archetypes are created equally.

Through years of professional practice Jung observed different types of archetypal energies. Specific types of numinosity are often attracted by the psyche. And the type of power attracted depends, in large part, on the health of the psyche. Imbalanced, immature and grandiose personalities, for instance, may invite and come to identify with archetypal forces reinforcing an imbalanced, grandiose outlook on life.

On the other hand, Jung says that the psyche is on a natural trajectory towards health and balance, which he calls wholeness. This natural tendency to become whole involves the experience of positive, healing instances of numinosity which may heal psychological wounds lingering in the personal unconscious.

Mircea Eliade

Many suggest that the numinous is identical among all spiritual and religious paths. Some say that visiting a Mosque or a Hindu temple is just the same as entering into a Catholic cathedral or Jewish temple. The Romanian scholar, Mircea Eliade, however, builds on Otto and Jung’s work by noting that numinosity exhibits diverse intensities, qualities and effects.³

Never trying to place religious experience into some kind of forced, politically correct homogeneity, Eliade is just as interested in difference as he is in similarity. And he does an admirable job of outlining these differences by examining a staggering amount of religious data (something that many mediocre scholars fail to do).

Freud, Marx, Weber and Beyond

While the experience of the numinous may be influenced by the unconscious, it seems superficial to reduce so many diverse accounts of numinosity to mere regression. And that’s pretty much what Sigmund Freud did.

Freud saw the numinous in terms of remembering a unified “oceanic bliss” which everyone apparently basked in within the mother’s womb. Perhaps Freud’s greatest flaw was his inability to appreciate the upper reaches of the spiritual life. A genius no doubt, Freud nonetheless reduced all things spiritual to all things psychological.

For centuries, saints, seers, gurus and shamans have claimed to work in numinous realms. The idea of the numinous is found in virtually all spiritual traditions. This emphasis on the numinous arguably separates religion from mere social movements such as Marxism and the often reductive claims of postmodernism. Some say, however, that Max Weber’s sociological term charisma might act as a bridge between spirit and society.⁴

The scholar of religion, Ninian Smart, suggests that people using the term numinous tend to view the Godhead as something other—that is, beyond self and cosmos. Those using the term mysticism, Smart says, tend to see self and Godhead as one.

Although riddled with generalities and, arguably, errors, I quote Smart at length because he provides some thought-provoking contrasts:

If you stress the numinous, you stress that our salvation or liberation (our becoming holy) must flow from God or the Other…though his grace. You also stress the supreme power and dynamism of God as creator of this cosmos. If on the other hand, you stress the mystical and the non-dual, you tend to stress how we attain salvation or liberation through our own efforts at meditation… There is another way in which we may look at the distinction between the numinous and the mystical. In the numinous, the Eternal lies, so to speak, beyond the cosmos and outside the human being. In the mystical, the Eternal somehow lies within us. In the first case we need to be dependent on the Other, in the second case we may rely on our own powers. The numinous, in encouraging worship, encourages a loving dependence on the Other. The mystical, in encouraging meditation, encourages a sense of self-emptying…The two can go together. But there are differing accents.⁵

Again, this is an oversimplification beset with difficulties. But in his defense, Smart attempts to differentiate various modalities of religious experience.

Joseph Campbell in The Masks of God also differentiates several types of religious experience. For our purposes we’ll break these down into two Weberian ideal types:

1. Those who see themselves as perfectly holy and equal to God—i.e. a pure manifestation of God on Earth.
2. Those who see God as holy, regarding themselves as imperfect, individual creatures created by God.

While these are ideal types, the differences they suggest are observable. Like Jung, Campbell says the first type usually leads to self-aggrandizement as the ego identifies with a spiritual power or powers which are less than God. The second type often leads to humility and the experience of God’s grace, a grace which originates from beyond the self.

Great historical figures have spoken about the numinous as a spiritual realm pervading the visible world. The Bengali Nobel Prize laureate, Rabindranath Tagore, for instance, termed this subtle presence the surplus. But it’s important to remember that this ‘surplus’ is described differently among world traditions. And even within a single tradition, individual difference seems to be the norm.

One could spend a lifetime experiencing and reflecting on the complexities of the numinous. And even then, its diversity and subtle interpersonal dynamics most likely would not fully be understood.⁶

In my Father’s house there are many mansions

- John 14:2

Notes

1. Oxford English Dictionary

2. a) Otto says a morally evil action is “self-depreciating” and “pollutes,” leading toward imagery that suggests the need for “washing and cleansing.” Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy, second edition, trans. John W. Harvey, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973 [1923], p. 55.

b) See my outline of Otto’s The Idea of the Holy.

3. See for instance, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom.

4. The issue of Weber’s term charisma as a bridge between sociology and spirituality is elaborated upon by George Hansen in The Trickster and the Paranormal.

5. Ninian Smart, Worldviews: Crosscultural Explorations of Human Beliefs (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1983), pp. 71-72. Many use the term mysticism in the I-Thou sense as outlined by Martin Buber.

6. The interpenetration of numinosity from one living being to another is hinted at in many traditions, to include C. G. Jung’s psychological treatment of alchemy. The psychoanalytic terms transference and countertransference arguably point in a similar direction—especially the idea of syntonic countertransference. As for the transfer and intermingling of numinosity from an object to a person, here we have the much misunderstood anthropological term, fetish.

Numinosity – Another kind of light Copyright © Michael Clark. All rights reserved.

A Tale Most Strange?

Under the surface - Earthpages.org

Copyright © Terry Stokes, 2012. All rights reserved

Many alternative medical clinics now have a practitioner of psychic skills among their staff, and Sigmund Freud, Hans Eysenck and Carl Jung saw the day when all counseling would be intuitively based. Yet once in a while a story happens that defies the putting into any category, normal or paranormal. Such an event occurred when a guy came into the clinic and told me the following tale.

This guy, a powerfully built and articulate surfboarder with a London accent, said he took his sport very seriously and he was listed as among the very best at his craft which took him to venues and events all over the world. His face, voice and mannerisms told me that something must have very seriously shattered the even tenor of his thought patterning and disrupted his auric energy flow…

He said that although surfing the waves was his life and that it gave him an incredible high, he had this deep fear that he would be eaten by a huge shark which on occasion over the years he would see in his dreams watching him, and stalking him before the dreaded attack.

On a recent visit to a popular surfing spot overseas, he had got up early one morning walked the short distance to the seashore from the small hotel with his surfboard, when as he reached the beach he could see perhaps eight or ten guys scattered across the sands, just sitting watching him with their boards, he nodded to one chap who was holding a bar of abrasive soap and rubbing along the base of his board, he thought; “conditions are just right why is no one in the water”? And enthusiastically in he went.

He was out some way when on looking down he could see the sand on the sea bottom, when a large dark shape glided between the sea bottom and his surf board, and a large eye looked up coldly at him, he started to make for the shore as quick as he could, then he said he saw it all as if watching a film, the creature again swam by under him, this time as the water had got shallower, very close to him indeed, and the large eye was so close he could see it very plainly, and fear overwhelmed him, when the creature came up under him a third time filling him with a deep peculiar horror, throwing him and the board high into the air, he grabbed the board thinking he may be able to help fend it of with it when, he realized he had been thrown onto a small submerged coral reef and he ran along it with water up to his belly button, he saw the creature swimming slowly alongside and it seemed to be smiling at him, and again the huge eye watched him, when the dreadful thought occurred that the ragged coral which was tearing his feet as he ran on it would be putting blood in the water ensuring his awful fate.

The blind panic as he saw the guys on the beach calmly watching him splashing madly for shore as the beast was alongside him watching him with the very eye he knew so well from his dreams. He was suddenly conscious that this may be his last few heart beats, his last terrified breaths, his last exhausted thoughts, and he would never be able to tell his new girl friend how much he loved her or thank his mum for loaning him the money for the holiday. Everything became silent and in slow motion. He no longer heard the seagulls above, the wind went calm, and he waited for the worst.

His next thought as he came round was that he had momentarily lost consciousness in the panic and was now breathing heavily and trembling badly on the sand with his board, his feet were blood spattered from running on the sharp coral, but he was alive and although scared witless the attack had not happened.

He looked around at the guys on the beach, the camaraderie which all surf boarders usually shared was definitely missing here, as he looked round at the guy still slowly using the abrasive soap on the board, and the awful thought occurred to him that they had not gone into the water in these perfect conditions because they knew a shark was out there, and by allowing him to go out and become a meal for the beast to slake its hunger, it would then be safe for them to surf.

He could not get his head round all this and did not go in the water again. He told me the scenario was so similar to the warnings in his dream, but he had survived when the shark could so easily have got him, and what did it all mean?

There are many explanations here, I would like to hear yours.

—Terry Stokes, Lecturer in Paranormal Studies

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Keeping Secrets and Their Negative Effects

secret 1: BSG Geek by amysphere via Flickr

Author: Sonya Visor

Everybody has a secret; something about them that they never want anyone to find out. In general, secrets are inevitable and everyone will have something to hide at one point or another. Secrets help a person maintain a certain sense of individuality and uniqueness, helping make them feel distinct from everyone else.

However, keeping secrets can take a turn for the worse when they start to take control of your life. This means that the keeping of the secret has led to a ‘secret life,’ or the maintenance of a façade that revolves around this hidden fact. When secrets are of the nature that they cannot be revealed to anyone, that is the time that it results in negative effects for the bearer.

How Secrets Can Negatively Affect You

Even if it hasn’t taken on the form of a secret life for the keeper, inner conflict is one negative, inescapable effect of harboring these secrets. Do you reveal or continue concealing? Who is the best and most trustworthy person you can reveal this secret to? Are you prepared to face whatever reaction they may have to your revelation? This one question of ‘to tell or not to tell’ creates anxiety, stress, and worry, which can even be manifested physically. Such stress and worrying can affect you physically through headaches, back pains, high blood pressure, digestive problems, and even depression in some cases.

Another adverse effect of keeping secrets is that they can ultimately destroy relationships–with family, friends, spouses, and other people you may deem important in your life. Some secrets have been kept for so long and have been carried on through a façade that when it gets out, it takes everyone by surprise and eventually hurts certain relationships. Secret affairs, illnesses, addictions, or past actions can all have this effect. In some of the most extreme cases, the loss and depression that the keeper may feel over these ruined relationships may even lead them suicide just to be able to escape this very heavy consequence.

Why It’s Time to Tell

Revealing your personal secrets to someone is a step in the right direction if you want to rid yourself of the burden of hiding something from everyone for the rest of your life. Revealing your secret relieves you of all the anxiety and stress of concealing and deception. The truth is, most secret keepers are really looking for an outlet– wanting to release themselves from the burden of keeping the secret and hearing what other people have to say about it. They are looking for someone to empathize with them.

The key to successfully freeing yourself lies in the confidant you choose. You want someone you can trust and who can bring you new insight into your secret. You want a person who will listen and avoid judgment, be discreet, think constructively, and help you get through the process righting any wrongs this secret may have caused.

Who I’ve Become is NOT who I AM, is Sonya Visor’s first non-fiction book. Her passion is to minister to the people who hide behind masks. Sonya’s calling is to break and destroy the yokes of bondage, releasing the power of God into the lives of others by the preached Word and prayers of deliverance. When you can find the strength, to step into who you truly are; you can find the strength to BE THE (TRU U). TRU U is the women’s ministry that God has charged her with to help other’s become free. For more information visit http://www.sonyavisor.com/blog/

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/religion-articles/keeping-secrets-and-their-negative-effects-4157036.html

About the Author

Sonya Visor is the author of this article on Depression. Find more information about Christian Women here.

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WERE NEANDERTHALS KILLED OFF OR ASSIMILATED?

Comparison of Neanderthal and Modern human skulls from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History by hairymuseummatt via Wikipedia and Flickr

By Rabbi Allen S. Maller

Many anthropologists believe that modern humans ancestors directly or indirectly killed off   Neanderthal and Denisovan populations as they moved into Neanderthal and Denisovan territory. A new study of the issue argues that it’s more likely that Neanderthals and Denisovans were assimilated into the human gene pool thirty to forty thousand years ago during the Upper Pleistocene era as cultural and climatic forces brought the two groups together, according to Arizona State University Professor C. Michael Barton.

Recent sequencing of ancient Neanderthal DNA indicates that Neanderthal genes make up from 1 to 4 percent of the genome of modern populations—especially those of European descent.  Denisovans genes (Denisovans are a sister species to Neanderthals, who were recently found in central and eastern Asia).were found to make up 2 to 6 percent of human genes in southeast Asia. South of the Sahara Africans show no signs of Neanderthal genes.

The researchers used archaeological data to track cultural and socio-ecological changes in behavior in Western Eurasia during the past 120,000 years. As Neanderthals and early humans land-use patterns shifted during the last ice age, computer modeling showed that the two populations began to interact and mate, leading to the “extinction” of one of the groups due to hybridization, a well-recognized phenomenon in conservation biology. Neanderthals were limited to western Asia and Europe, while Denisovans, a sister species to Neanderthals, were recently found in central and eastern Asia. Usually it is the smaller population that becomes “extinct”  but succeeding hybrid populations still carry some genes from the regional group that disappeared, according to the researchers.

According to Barton, “There is a perception that biological evolution determines culture during the Pleistocene era and that cultural influences only predominate afterwards. The reality is that the two forces have been working together and they were as important 50,000 years ago as they are today. Other than the fact that they disappeared, there is no evidence that Neanderthals were any less fit as hunter-gatherers of the late Pleistocene than any other human ancestor living at that time. It looks like they were as capable as anyone else,”

So why did they assimilate into us rather than us into them? Humans might have had the advantage of a higher birth rate. Neanderthals had slightly bigger heads and brains than humans so they might have had greater difficulty in giving birth. Humans also benefited from their belief that a birth goddess would help them.  Without successful reproduction no species can flourish, or even survive. Homo sapiens were as subject to the biological imperative (commandment) to be fruitful and multiply as all other species. But the intelligent minds of Homo sapiens knew the dangers of childbirth. Infant mortality rates in most tribes were more than one in four. The maternal death rate for every four births was more than one in ten. Pregnancy was highly desired and birth anxiously awaited. Pregnant women naturally sought the physical help of their mothers and grandmothers who in turn sought the spiritual help of their now departed mothers and grandmothers. Among the earliest Gods were birth Goddesses. Small stone figures of very pregnant birth Goddesses often referred to as “Venus” figures go back 30-35,000 years. They are the first examples of iconic religion. The worship of spirits within natural phenomena does not need iconic representation. But birth rarely took place in the open or in public.  A birth Goddess needed to be present in some tangible way in order to ease the anxiety of women in labor. Even today in some African countries the maternal mortality rate is 3% per birth. A woman who gave birth to 8 children had a one in four chance of dying from giving birth. Any band would benefit even if the presence of Goddesses reduced that mortality rate by only 5%. Carvings in wood of birth Goddesses probably preceded stone statues by many millennia and may have originated 50-100,000 years ago.

A small birth Goddess that fits in the palm of  a woman’s hand, carved of Mammoth ivory with exaggerated sexual features was described in the May 14, 2009 issue of Nature. The figurine is dated to more than 35,000 years ago, when all three species were alive. Dozens of these figurines have been found at human sites, none at Neanderthal sites. Indeed, archeological evidence of religious rituals in general is much more extensive at human sites than at Neanderthal sites. Thus, religion may have been the single most significant factor in Neanderthal and Denisovan assimilation into humans rather than human assimilation into them.

For further information see my article in Popular Archeology  June, 2011 or my web site: rabbimaller.com

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Tears in a Bottle: The Uniquely Human Phenomenon of Crying

Woman crying, scene from the Via Sacra, by Aleijadinho. Congonhas do Campo, Brazil via Wikipedia

by: Lisa J. Lehr

Crying—the shedding of tears—has physiological, anthropological, and psychological components. It also has a spiritual component. Read on to find out why the ability to cry is a precious gift from God.

The physiology of tears

Tears are produced by the lachrymal gland. The salt they contain acts as a lubricant; without the moisture provided by tears, our eyeballs would scrape painfully on the insides of our eyelids. (The labels of eye drop and contact lens products show that they usually contain salt.) Tears also contain a mild germicide, lysozyme, which kills bacteria and other potentially harmful microbes.

Most higher animals—those that live in an aerobic (oxygen-containing) environment—produce tears to keep their eyes moist. Constant tears are produced to lubricate the eye at all times; reflex tears arise in response to irritation or injury.

The psychology of tears

Emotional tears are stimulated by happy, sad, or other strong feelings. They eliminate a stress hormone.

While most animals cry tears of physical cause, human beings are the only creatures that cry emotional tears. Charles Darwin said that weeping is “one of the special expressions of man.” (Please see endnote.)

Interestingly, children do not cry at happy endings; the understanding of the fleeting, fragile nature of human happiness comes only with a degree of emotional maturity.

Ancient thoughts about tears

Long ago, in the Eastern part of the world, it was customary for mourners to catch their tears in bottles and place them at the tombs of their loved ones as a visual measure of their grief. Ancient Greeks buried their dead with lacrimatories, vials full of mourners’ tears.

The ancient Greek doctors thought tears originated directly from the brain.

Leonardo daVinci (1452-1519)—famous even in his own time as a master painter, sculptor, architect, musician, engineer, scientist, and inventor—created drawings of the inner workings of the human body that are accurate down to the smallest detail. Yet in one of his drawings he shows a tube going from the tear ducts…to the heart.

These old “anatomically incorrect” depictions of the human crying mechanism, however unscientific, reveal something of the mystical nature of tears attributed to them by societies’ most educated individuals.

The Bible on tears

Consider the psalmist David’s prayer in time of distress: “I am weary with my groaning; all night I make my bed swim; I drench my couch with my tears. My eye wastes away because of grief; It grows old because of all my enemies.” Now compare that (Psalm 6:6), with Psalm 56:8—“You…[p]ut my tears in Your bottle; Are they not in Your book?”

David believed that God was keeping track of each individual teardrop in the rivers he cried.

Scientific corroboration of the special properties of human tears

Science has discovered that each tear—just as every snowflake and every fingerprint—is unique. That is, unique in the pure sense of the word—one of a kind.

Put this discovery together with the psalmist’s thoughts. All the suffering billions of people currently populating the earth, and those already departed, multiplied by the countless tears one can cry in a lifetime…gives us a virtually infinite number of tears, each unique, each saved in a bottle, not one unnoticed by God.

That’s because when we cry, God hears. He may not give us answers; we may not even feel His presence. But there He is, collecting each of our tears in a bottle. That’s a vivid illustration of the special—yes, unique—place of humankind in the realm of living things.

Endnote

Incidentally, Charles Darwin is not the villain as traditionally portrayed in the ongoing battle between evolutionists and creationists. Most of the humanistic, Godless ideas attributed to his belief system were added by others who came later.

About The Author

Lisa J. Lehr is a freelance writer with a specialty in business and marketing communications. She holds a biology degree and has worked in a variety of fields, including the pharmaceutical industry and teaching, and has a particular interest in both science and Biblical tradition. She is also a graduate of American Writers and Artists Institute (AWAI), America’s leading course on copywriting. Contact Lisa J. Lehr Copywriting www.ljlcopywriting.com, Lisa@ljlcopywriting.com for help with your business writing needs.

This article ©Lisa J. Lehr 2005.

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Authenticity – Why people arent themselves and what that costs them

Diagram of Maslow's hierarchy of needs via Wikipedia

by: Bella Enahoro

Why should you be yourself? The simple answer is ‘because everyone else is taken’ – it’s both the simple answer and an accurate answer. The important question is ‘why are we not ourselves?’ What is the pay off for not being ourselves? Ahhh, now we’re talking.

To begin with, what would cause us to not want to be ourselves? For some of us, we may have been raised in environments where it was dangerous to be who we are. Even as adults we may be working in environments that demand that we be other than who we are in order to ensure job security. So we conclude, I have to be other than I am to get what I want i.e. love, safety, income etc.

We may have learned to believe ‘who I am is not good enough to be loved, guaranteed safety, approved of’. We may have been told ‘who you are is not worth treating well’. We may have learned ‘who you are is not good enough to meet my standards for ‘being good enough’. We may become convinced that we are less than we should be.

When we feel not good enough what happens to our lives? We end up putting things on hold until we feel we ‘deserve’ by becoming good enough. We spend so much time striving to feel that we’re good enough. Have I accomplished enough, am I good looking enough, is my car big/fast/exclusive enough, is my job title high enough, do I have enough awards to be good enough? Exhausting isn’t it?

Self worth and authenticity are intrinsically linked. The worth we have in our own eyes, a sense of worth not built on acquisition, job title, appearance, credentials – is the only worth, worth living out of. How many of us realise that we have an intrinsic worth greater than anything on the outside? If we go through life with a sense of being deficient then we are motivated to acquire value – the things that others value in the world then become our aim in life. I may not be good enough in and of myself but look what I’ve got, becomes our calling card.

Sooner or later, things fall apart, if we’re lucky. It can take many forms e.g we can lose everything we spent our whole lives accruing or we meet someone or a situation who places no value on our ‘social bling’. We run helter skelter trying to get them to ‘see’ us as our bling or we go somewhere else. But there’s a crack in the tea cup. When it finally breaks open, our break down becomes our breakthrough.

We begin to look for another way. What we’ve been looking for is a way to feel good about who we are, under all circumstance. We don’t always realise it at first since there’s much howling in pain and hanging onto fast disappearing ‘bling’.

The breakthrough cracks us wide open and everything we’ve been taught is ‘wrong’ with us, all the things we’ve been taught make us ‘not good enough’ stare us in the face. Excruciating at first but if we stay, refuse to take flight, we can transform. Now begins the re-acquainting ourselves with the ‘real’ us, all of it.

There are many transformation technologies from journaling, meditation, prayer, walking, body work, sound, vibrational healing. We tend to gravitate towards one that works for us. Soon the pain subsides, loses its edge. We don’t feel so raw. Our lives may be in shambles around us but we can stand to be alive and increasingly we can stand to be ourselves. We live in a time of infinite help with wonderful teachers who can assist us in moving out of our debris; emotional, psychological and spiritual.

Not being who we are, may be something we picked up at our beginning but was never a part of our being and we need not continue with it.

November’s LiveWell Audio features Sarah Ban Breathnach who guides the listener on a journey to reclaim our authentic selves and the beauty of the life we can create from our ‘real’ selves.

About The Author:  Bella Enahoro is the founder of http://www.livewellaudio.com a Motivational company that helps individuals,non-profits and companies improve their lives, build communities, profts and positive impact. Visit her website for the latest on audiobooks, downloads and articles on self-help, personal growth, professional development and spirituality.

The author invites you to visit: http://www.livewellaudio.com

Article Source: http://www.articlecity.com/articles/self_improvement_and_motivation/article_9357.shtml

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