Tag: Psychology

Replacing our myths

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Society today prides itself at times at having thrown out some of the outdated myths that guided our forefathers and grandparents. We have progressed and base ourselves on more rational forces now. However, we are always guided by some myths, whether we are aware of it or not. We simply replace one philosophy by another, and worship in a different type of temple.

The collective fantasies of the modern world are that the old myths can be revived by acts of will, or that by acts of will new myths will be generated. While we have suffered the loss of the old, tribal myths, by and large,  we cannot generate new ones – though for sure many have tried. We transfer the need for the experience of the transcendent onto persons, objects, and causes and wonder why they disappoint.

Another way of putting this is that when the gods are not experienced inwardly, they will be projected outwardly. The energy we project onto the things of our world – objects, causes, ideologies, relationships – possess a kind of autonomy, for they momentarily carry spirituality for us. As Jung warns “Our consciousness only imagines that it has lost the gods; in reality they are still there and it only needs general conditions to bring them back in full force”.  Whenever the level of personal attention is lowered…the tendency of the ego to project what is not addressed in the inner life increases its fascination with the outer.

James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life

How we avoid meeting our deepest needs

Karl Duffy3 Comments
“Hundreds of shoppers flood Oxford Street, London, before 7am” Daily Mail,  December 26th 2011

It is curious how modern people will go to almost any length to stay busy and thereby avoid examining unlived life. Contemporary people have an almost insatiable appetite for amusements and addictions – to drugs, food, television, shopping, wealth, power, and all the other diversions of our culture. For many years I believed that our avoidance of soulful engagement is the result of a fear of being overtaken by “uncivilized” qualities from the unconscious. But I have come to understand that we resist our highest potentials even more persistently than we reject our so-called primitive energies. Much of what remains undeveloped in us, psychologically speaking, is excluded because it is too good to bear. We often refuse to accept our most noble traits and instead find a shallow substitute for them. For example…. instead of our god-given right to the ecstatic, we settle for temporary highs from consuming something or possessing someone.

We all have places where we cut ourselves off from potentially exciting and fulfilling experiences due to habit, fear or laziness. A simple way to locate some fo your complexes (which are by definition, unconscious) is to reflect upon the past week and notice what situations disturbed you. Where did you have a run-in with someone? When and how did you procrastinate or avoid something? In what ways did you fail to engage life fully? There are a diverse number of complexes, as many as there are typical situations in life. These clusters of experiential energy are trying to protect you…by drawing on past experiences, but they also limit your freedom and bind you to the past.

Robert A Johnson, Jungian Analyst, Living your Unlived LIfe.

Sunday Quote: Giving

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Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a “standing in,” not a “falling for.”

In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.

Erich Fromm

Observing our mental states

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Your practice of mindfulness has taught you that it is not your mental states themselves that make you uncomfortable, but your attitude toward them. You may have the idea that mental states are part of your own personality, part of your existence. Then you try to reject the unpleasant ones as if they were foreign bodies. But you cannot really reject them because they were not yours in the first place. Your best response is to maintain a steady practice of observing the mind, without reacting with clinging or aversion to anything that comes up, but skilfully working to free the mind from all unwholesome states. 

Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness

Trusting, even when our energy is low

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There seems to be an expectation today that we should always be in good mood, and unhappiness is taken as a sign that something is wrong. Therefore we are continually bombarded in advertising with images of smiling and cheerful people and families.  When we find that the reality of our day-to-day encounters with life involves occasional challenges or simply ordinary routine, we can be tempted to think that something is wrong. The prevailing model has no place for the dips in mood or even depressions that are a normal part of life and which can be seen in the cycles of nature. We have to learn not to fear those moments when we do not feel completely in control or lose our sense of direction for a while. Often our psyches are wise and know when they need to rest.  As Jung states here, the lack of energy is marking a period of transition as the energies needed for growth are stored for the future and  this is felt as a lack of energy in the present. This can happen over a weekend or over months or even years. What I have learned in listening to people on their journey is to hold a space and trust, even though the meaning of what they are going through is not clear just yet.

There are moments in human life when a new page is turned. New interests and tendencies appear which have hitherto received no attention, or there is a sudden change of personality. During the incubation period of such a change we can often observe a loss of conscious energy: the new development has drawn off the energy it needs from consciousness. This lowering of energy can be seen most clearly before the onset of certain psychoses and also in the empty stillness which precedes creative work.

Jung, The Psychology of the Transference, CW 16.

How we grow and mature

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Healing does not mean that one will reach an end-point where all is clear and conflict free. How could we imagine that the attitudes of one stage of our life would be adequate for subsequent stages and altered realities? While it is the secret hope of the nervous ego to fix the world and make it more predictable and secure, all is in flux. Finding the secret sources of our distress, and being enlarged by the suffering of this conflict, is how we grow and mature. As Jung notes, “Suffering is not an illness; it is the normal counterpole to happiness”.  Our goal is not happiness, which is evanescent and impossible to sustain; it is meaning which broadens us and carries us toward our destiny

James Holllis, Creating a Life: Finding your Individual Path.