The God Within

Including this mandala by Emma Hack because I've been thinking about Jung's assertion that mandalas represent the 'Centre' or the Self.

Previously I've thought of God as being the Centre.

I've never really allowed it to 'filter through' before, the idea that God and the higher Self are one and the same. That spiritual traditions like Buddhism make mention of 'the God within.'
I think (yet another 'think' to go and look up) that Jung referred to the relationship between God and the human psyche / soul as being comparable to that between the ocean and a drop of water...

I believe a similar concept is expressed in the phrase 'Brahman is Atman' or 'Atman is Brahman.'

Today is a day to celebrate my drop of water, and the ocean it points to, or relates to, or contains.

(The important thing for me with reflections like these is to allow them to drip or filter through me, rather than overthink them, overwrite... Using my brain too much and my intuition too little is what has led to anxiety in the past...)

['Exotic bird' by Emma Hack, 2010. Downloaded 11th May 2010, from:
http://www.franceskeevilart.com.au/emma_hack.htm].

Light and shade...

I've always thought I was 'on to' the whole concept of the shadow, the idea that if you repress it, it becomes darker and more intense and powerful. I always thought that I had a healthy appreciation of my own shadow... I've just realised that I have impossibly high expectations of myself and everyone else, that I expect myself to be pearly white and pure, that for this reason my shadow gets out of control, that for this reason I feel like a bad person...

How do I lower my expectations of myself and the world?

How do I learn to accept?

'Yin Yang Fish Portrait', by Mao Zhi (Yu Gong-Quan), downloaded 20th January, 2010, from:
http://www.orientaloutpost.com/proddetail.php?prod=0yyf.

A big slab of Jung!

...to get you (okay, probably only me) fired up for the week...

These quotes are from 'Psychology and alchemy', and resonate with my experience of 'spiritual anxiety'.

'The self is a union of opposites par excellence, and this is where it differs essentially from the Christ-symbol. The androgyny of Christ is the utmost concession the Church has made to the problem of opposites. The opposition between light and good on the one hand and darkness and evil on the other is left in a state of open conflict, since Christ simply represents good and his counterpart the devil, evil. This opposition is the real world problem, which at present is still unsolved. The self, however, is absolutely paradoxical in that it represents in every respect thesis and antithesis, and at the same time synthesis.' (Jung 1968, p.19).

'Without the experience of the opposites there is no wholeness and hence no inner approach to the sacred figures.' (Jung 1968, p.20).

'Although insight into the problem of opposites is absolutely imperative, there are very few people who can stand it in practice.' (Jung 1968, p.20).

'-for in the self good and evil are indeed closer than identical twins! The reality of evil and its incompatibility with good cleave the opposites asunder and lead inexorably to the crucifixion and suspension of everything that lives. Since 'the soul is by nature Christian' this result is bound to come as infallibly as it did in the life of Jesus: we all have to be 'crucified with Christ', ie., suspended in a moral suffering equivalent to a veritable crucifixion. In practice this is only possible up to a point, and apart from that is so unbearable that the ordinary human being can afford to get into such a state only occasionally, in fact as seldom as possible.' (Jung 1968, p.21).

'The point is that alchemy is rather like an undercurrent to the Christianity that ruled on the surface. It is to this surface as the dream is to consciousness, and just as the dream compensates the conflicts of the conscious mind, so alchemy endeavours to fill in the gaps left open by the Christian tension of opposites.' (Jung 1968, p.23).

Nothing to add...

Jung, C. G. (1968). Psychology and alchemy (2nd ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Yamantaka mandala (Overcoming Death mandala), downloaded 11th January, 2010, from:
http://www.artsmia.org/art-of-asia/buddhism/the-mandala.cfm.