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.

'The World is not Enough'

I caught myself out the other day, making fun of myself to my partner, PB. I said, 'The world isn't good enough for me. People aren't good enough, and I'm not good enough. I'm going to have words with God.'

I really need to listen to myself here! Pema Chodron, in a talk I've listened to, says something like, 'Lower your standards, and enjoy life...' (I'll look up the exact wording.)

In particular, though I need constant forgiveness, I've been hanging on to resentment and unforgiveness in the deluded hope that it will prevent me from ever being hurt again. Instead, what it's doing is eating me up inside, making it impossible for me to trust anyone, and isolating me from any community I may once have been a part of.

It's time to let go...


'La grande famille,' by Rene Magritte, downloaded 20th January, 2010, from:
http://en.easyart.com/art-print-search/pigeons.html.

Fowler and monotheistic faith

In his book 'Stages of faith: the psychology of human development and the quest for meaning,' Fowler (1995) writes about the concept of monotheism, which for him has nothing to do with how many gods one worships: it is as possible to be a 'monotheist' whether one is Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, or a person of 'secular faith.'* Instead, monotheism refers to a unity of purpose, (to paraphrase) to having one reason for getting out of bed in the morning! The way that Fowler talks about 'polytheists', with their diffuse, diluted sense of purpose, leads me to believe he is describing the difference between living a meaningful life, and leading a life 'light on' for meaning. Polytheists are invested in so many priorities and pastimes that their investment becomes broad rather than deep.

For me the temptation has always been to move beyond monotheism into monomania. Growing up in the charismatic and evangelical movements, I was taught that God is everything, that almost nothing else matters. This is a distortion which can have unhealthy results. (One expression of it was the notion that for any relationship to be successful each partner must put God before the other, always. This exaggerated view has probably meant that I've had trouble recognising the love and provision of God in the person and loving actions of my partner.)

When I'm able to get in touch with faith and with God, I can tend to get obsessive about them, making them everything, shutting out all else. I can find it difficult to 'go gently' as my spiritual director used to say. I can neglect the balance that is essential to wellbeing. This monomania in turn leads to anxiety.

I was talking to Dr I. about this anxiety yesterday. He suggested that perhaps the anxiety is a sign that I'm 'pushing it' too much, that I've had enough of something (reading a book on spirituality etc.) and that it's time to move on to something else. This rings true for me...

* See my previous post discussing this book by Fowler, 'The Fear of the Lord Part I'.
When I think of secular faith, I am reminded of the monotheism some atheists display regarding art or science as an overarching life purpose.

Fowler, J. W. (1995). Stages of faith: the psychology of human development and the quest for meaning. San Francisco: HarperCollins.

[Untitled image of Ganesh], downloaded 20th January, 2010, from:
http://www.telugubhakti.com/TELUGUPAGES/Pdfs/Ganesh/Ganesh.htm.

Mystery

No answer, no teacher, no paradigm...

Three more things I've realised frighten me:

1. Trying to simplify spiritual matters (usually by agreeing with someone else).

2. Believing there is any authority outside of myself, any tradition, that knows what is true or how I should live more than my own intuition knows.

3. Believing there is any kind of 'answer', either to my anxiety problem, or more generally. Every time I think, 'Alchemy's the answer', 'Buddhism's the answer', even 'There is no answer' (when I know deep down I am using that AS an answer), anxiety follows.

I've read a little bit about paradigm shifts: how we view the world through a certain frame, and when we learn, we either need to stretch that frame to allow the new information in, or, if the learning is radical, revolutionary, we need to find a new frame. I've read that one of the primary ways we obtain information or learning from beyond our current paradigm is through meditation. In my mind's eye, I've always pictured these paradigms as white squares, and the realm beyond them, where revolutionary learning comes from, as black, open space. Recently I've been wondering whether in a spiritual sense, an old paradigm was displaced, and I never really replaced it with another. I feel as though I am living in that black, open space.

And would that be such a bad thing? Artists and writers need to be so open. They need to create from a space where they can describe 'whatever arises' rather than prescribe based on their own paradigms. And I believe the best way to express spiritual 'truths' (whatever that means) for me now, when I feel I'm floating in space, is through art (in my case, fiction writing).

So, no answer, no teacher, no paradigm... Only openness, intuition and mystery...

'Space collision 1', downloaded 12th January, 2010, from:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/space-collision.htm.

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.

['Electric cross'], downloaded 11th January, 2010, from:
http://thewriterandthewhitecat.blogspot.com/2008/10/modern-weapons-against-ancient-enemy.html.

'Predator Day'*

Recently I've been reading Atwood's 'The Year of the Flood,' the latest of her speculative fiction novels. It features the God's Gardeners, a religious sect devoted to environmentalist principles and preparing for survival in the predicted holocaust referred to as 'The Waterless Flood'. The God's Gardeners remind me of some left-wing church congregations I've belonged to (though they don't really do the Jesus thing). I actually find the theology in the sermons of the sect's leader, Adam One, reasonably sound. In the book, one of the group's feast days is called Predator Day. In his sermon on this day, Adam One says,

'Thus on Predator Day we meditate on the Alpha Predator aspects of God. The suddenness and ferocity with which an apprehension of the Divine may appear to us; our smallness and fearfulness - may I say, our Mouselikeness - in the face of such Power; our feelings of individual annihilation in the brightness of that splendid Light. God walks in the tender dawn Gardens of the mind, but He also prowls in its night Forests. He is not a tame Being, my Friends: he is a wild Being...' (Atwood 2009, p.346)

The link between these ideas and my feelings of fear in God's presence is obvious...

However, a couple of people I know - a psychologist and a friend - have suggested that fear is only about God and spirituality on the surface, that on a deeper level, it may be the result of an event or pattern of events in childhood. This psychologist believed that my fear was brought about by a feeling of distance from both of my parents as a young child, and that this would have felt tantamount to having no parents at all. From an evolutionary standpoint, he argued, this would be like being a very small, defenseless animal, unprotected from any predator that might swoop down and snap me up. According to this psychologist, my fear is at root a fear of death.

My friend wonders why I turned to a fundamentalist form of faith to begin with, and suggests that the reason for this and the cause of my anxiety may be one and the same. It makes sense that I would follow a religious path that heavily emphasises the gaining of eternal life.

So now, the image of God as Alpha Predator resonates with me, and causes far less anxiety than other images. Is this an unhealthy thing, the result of childhood issues that need to be untangled? Maybe, but I believe there is also wisdom in this picture of the Divine.

*(Atwood 2009, pp.345-348)

Atwood, M. (2009). The Year of the Flood. London, Berlin and New York: Bloomsbury.




[Image of Aslan from 'The Chronicles of Narnia'], downloaded 10th January, 2010, from:
http://entertainment.desktopnexus.com/wallpaper/71566/.