I still do this, protect myself from “abuse”. But a part of me is conflicted. As an adult, I have grown to believe that things are not random, that people are in my life for a reason. How am I going to find out what the reason is if I don’t allow the relationship to develop?

Should I accommodate people or not? Where do you draw the line between accommodating others and being abused.

Cutting people off

The whole new age movement is all for cutting people who don’t add to your happiness or success. Tough love is one example. Many life coaches, positive thinking representatives and personal growth guru’s are quite clear about how negative people drag you down. I myself have bought into it.

But yet there is that niggling at the back of my mind which has a problem with this approach. It just seems so selfish to me. I believe that the people in my life are there for a reason. Perhaps to teach me something about myself or for me to teach them something about themselves. Conflict certainly tests those boundaries and confrontation is never easy.

People are generally not aware of what they say or how they behave. Is it right to punish someone for something that they have no control over? Furthermore, at least 50% of the responsibility lies with me.  Any conflict consists of at least 2 parties after all.

But, It really isn’t that easy to turn the other cheek.  And should you?

I have tried. A few years back, I had a friendship which started to deteriorate and I really tried to accommodate her. But eventually it was so untenable that when I finally did end the relationship, my feelings were so hurt that it took me months to get over it. I think it would have been better off if I had ended it much earlier and moved on.

Yet recently, I had an issue with a new friend. My natural inclination was to let the friendship fade away, but after careful consideration, i confronted her and we sorted it out. Of course that doesn’t work every time.

A third option

So cutting off people or accommodating them are two options, but perhaps there is a different way.

A quote from Buddha, which resonates for me, sums up in essence how to approach this dilemma.

If it is not truthful and not helpful, don’t say it.
If it is truthful and not helpful, don’t say it.
If it is not truthful and helpful, don’t say it.
If it is truthful and helpful, wait for the right time.

This is really the ultimate in wisdom. (being wise has been a lifelong goal for me )

These wise words have a goal and that is to be truthful and helpful at all times towards others.

But what does the Buddha mean with this. What does it mean to be truthful.

I know enough about the psyche to know that to be truthful is very difficult, especially with yourself; unconscious complexes driving us to believe in a certain point of view often obscure any attempt at realising the “truth”. And then there is the problem of reaching deep down inside and finding the root of your anger or dissatisfaction. Often we say this or that is what upsets us, but actually it is something far deeper.

For example, you are arguing with your spouse about them being selfish supporting this with certain events that have happened and their behaviour. And perhaps it is true, that they are selfish, but the real problem is not being addressed because it is buried deep in your soul. Perhaps the underlying problem is that you don’t actually trust them.

Also, being truthful can only be in relation to yourself. You can’t be truthful about someone else’s experience. You cannot begin to assume that you know what they are experiencing or feeling or thinking. So being truthful is about your experience and feelings and thoughts.

So being truthful is about being able to express how you feel about a situation.

But behaving in a helpful manner is quite a different story. Let’s say that your colleague is trying to outdo you to get a promotion and they are spreading rumours about you. Yes, you can be honest and tell them how you feel. But how do you behave in a helpful way. Well I suppose it is easier to look at it from the opposite perspective and say what is not helpful. It is not helpful to be cruel, demeaning, rude, bitchy, bossy, bullying, spiteful, hurtful, horrible, selfish, and vengeful.

I don’t have the answer, but following Buddha’s advice, I would keep my mouth shut and not say a word and let the scenario play itself out. Not get caught in the tornado that this person creates and sucked into space to come crashing down afterwards.

My Goal

Unfortunately, when I am confronted with a situation that requires a solution, I get trapped by that old demon of being right and being heard.

I usually get caught up in my own stuff and react and stress and fight. But once the dust has settled, I ask myself, does it really matter? Next year will it be as important to me as it is today? When I am old one day, would I really remember this particular disagreement? Did I achieve anything?

If only I could hear between the words, listen carefully to the tone of voice and read the other’s expression without projecting my own issues, fears and wants, I could possibly get hold of the fear driving their anger and be able to say something to them that will give them some peace and respite. This must surely be the superior reaction.

At the end of the day, I think that there is only one question.

Have I added value to this person’s life in any way? Did I do and say what was needed to be said and done in order to help them on their path?

I’m sure going to try.

Until next time

Anja

“There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle.”
Deepak Chopra

Boardwalk Empire and the Human Experiment

I recently watched the first two seasons of Boardwalk Empire. The series is set in and around Atlantic City, during the infamous Prohibition in the nineteen twenties. Tracking the fortunes of Enoch “Nucky” Thompson and his associates based on historical characters from the period and active in various criminal enterprises. It is exceptionally good and the second season in particular plays like a Classical Greek Tragedy.

There is a character in the series, Richard Harrow, who is particularly interesting- at least from a psychological perspective. He is a former American Army marksman who has returned from the First World War having suffered a terrible injury. Half his face has been destroyed and his is obliged to wear a tin mask over it, which matches (rather poorly) the normal half of his face which is uncovered. He is reminiscent of Two-Face in the Batman Comic Book Series.

Richard is deeply scarred emotionally and spiritually by his injury and has seemingly lost all capacity for love and happiness. He has become, partly as a consequence of this, a very effective enforcer in the extended criminal empire of Nucky Thompson.

In one of the episodes Richard, having been truly seen by an artist who paints his portrait, is no longer able to suppress his deep level of despair and loss of hope and decides to commit suicide. As it happens, he is disturbed by the sudden arrival of a dog in the forest where he had gone to commit the act and does not go through with it.

Watching this scene I was reminded of the Deepak Chopra quote as well as Jung’s idea of individuation. Was Richard Harrow an aberration, an extra piece? Was the path of individuation also open to him? And if it was what would it look like? What would be an ideal destiny, an unfolding and the most complete form of self realisation for such a man?

Are there any extra pieces in the Universe?

The first time I read Chopra’s quote I was struck by how blindingly obvious it is. Like the greatest truths it is simple and obvious, and we immediately have the sense that we have always known it. Still it is not without problems.

How for example are we to understand the tremendous problems caused by the over population of the planet if ‘there are no extra pieces’? This strikes me as an interesting metaphysical dilemma. On the one hand the earth’s overpopulation is a critical problem. At the root of the ecological, political and economic crisis is this simple truth – there are too many people alive on the earth. Currently around 7 billion.

Furthermore it stands to reason that this growth curve cannot be sustained indefinitely. At some point, in the not too distant future, the planet will reach a critical threshold beyond which more people can simply not be accommodated. But long before that, the overall quality of life of earth’s inhabitants will diminish in direct proportion to this growth. Space and natural resources, as we know, are in limited supply.

But against this consider Chopra’s statement, ‘no extra pieces in the universe’. I think this is absolutely true, it has to be, how could we conceive of it otherwise? It is an idea which transcends, I believe, the debate between intelligent design and random mutation. If intelligent design, then naturally there are no extra pieces; however consider even if the universe is a governed by random design or mutation how could we infer the existence of ‘extra pieces’? Were we to, naturally that would be a judgment which we as man created and not a universal truth.

That is to say although we, as man, may come to believe there are extra or wasted pieces, we cannot come to believe that the universe shares this belief.

However in order to make this line of thinking genuinely meaningful one has to assume that the universe is also purposive. And I think this is implicit in Chopra’s statement, i.e. not only are there no extra pieces but each piece, as part of a purposive whole, is itself purposive.

The Hypothesis

Each and every life is an experiment. And in discovering and living our purpose we are putting forward our hypothesis.

This idea comes from Jung.

My brother Michael, a keen Jungian in recent years, was reading about a visit by Jung to the Jungian Institute in New York. At a dinner Jung was reported to have got into a conversation about Christ and the crucifixion. And to have said that when Christ called out- Father why hast thou forsaken me, we can understand this as his questioning the entire purpose of his existence.

But, Jung went on to add, he (Christ) made his hypothesis (i.e. his entire life lived in service of his purpose). What else can any of us do, but just that? Live a life which is an actualisation of our hypothesis.

Richard Harrow and an Unconventional Destiny

So following this line of thinking the following emerges.

• Richard Harrow is meant to exist. We may not know why he is meant to exist in such a bizarre fashion, and he certainly does not seem to know why- but he is.
• The nature of his existence, inasmuch as we accept that he too is capable of individuating, is unusual, beyond the pale of convention. That is to say his is a special destiny in unchartered or at least seldom chartered waters.

It is important to add here though that in order to understand this destiny we (and he) need to transcend ego psychology. If Harrow has a purpose in the greater scheme of things, a cosmic purpose, then the brief he has been given comes from the objective soul of mankind, not from his personal prejudices. At least that is the view of analytical psychology, which is most eloquently articulated by Wolfgang Giegerich.

We can think of Richard Harrow as a metaphor for the ‘monster’ in all of us. In some way or another we all carry an awkward, socially inept or even blatantly anti-social, certainly unconventional, self in our psyches. The question to consider is whether it is better to suppress this highly unconventional aspect of who you are or to celebrate it. One thing seems certain one must decide, none of us can have it both ways.

It seems that Jung’s idea is that we should celebrate it.

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
― C.G. Jung

But consider that this is far from easy. To truly embrace your inner monster is not what you are educated or encouraged to do. And this external super-ego as Freud teaches us is internalised, we carry this voice of conventional morality in our own souls.

Still I think it is an interesting idea. In as much as you or I are different, unconventional, in as much as we don’t meet the gold standard of normality, we have the possibility of a new and valuable hypothesis. In as much as we conform we are generic, vanilla and non-descript; we add little of lasting value to the collective or objective soul life of mankind.

This I think is the lesson we can take away from Richard Harrow and his unusual fate. Whilst it is natural to yearn for “normality” there is something genuinely exciting, new, mysterious and valuable in finding yourself facing an unusual fate. And to some degree we all have this capacity for an unusual fate, because most often being “normal” and fitting in is a form of adaptation, almost of survival, rather than the dictates of the inner monster.

The key here is to make this fate, or brief from the objective soul, conscious; to take it onboard and make it your own. Then applying conscious discernment, to carefully consider how faced with the fate you are how you might best behave. So that the hypothesis of your life is an alchemical combination of what you are given and what you do with what you have been given.

Until we talk again,

Stephen.

In this post I look at Jobs the man and his legacy through the lens of Jungian psychology. What can we learn about the psyche of Jobs, what motivated him, what haunted him and to what can we attribute his legacy as imagineer extraordinaire. What does it take to ‘think different’, ‘make a dent in the universe’ and ‘stop making sugar water and change the world’.

Who was this man who so embodied the tech revolution, personal computing, Silicon Valley and its curious blend of counter culture, technology and massive commercialisation.

A (very) short biography

Jobs, born out of wedlock to a Syrian father, Abdulfattah Jandali, and American mother, Joanne Carole Schieble was given up for adoption by his birth parents. He was adopted and raised by Paul Reinhold Jobs and Clara Jobs (nee. Hagopian). He grew up in what would become Silicon Valley, in California, graduated from Homestead High in Cupertino and enrolled in Reed Collage (a Liberal Arts college in Portland, Oregon), but dropped out after a single semester.

Jobs started Apple Computer with his friend and partner, the engineering genius Steve Wozniak, in 1971, from the garage of his parent’s home. The initial success of Apple, besides for Jobs entrepreneurial flair, was driven by the phenomenal engineering feat by Wozniak of the Apple I and Apple II. Apple’s initial meteoric rise stalled in the mid eighties and internal conflict saw Jobs ousted from the company he founded with Wozniak.

After leaving Apple, Jobs founded NeXT Computer which had mixed fortunes until bought by Apple in 1997 for $429 million.

After NeXT came Pixar, a little known digital animation company Jobs bought from Lucasfilm for $10 million. Jobs funded Pixar, for a number of years, whilst it lost money, until it contracted to Disney to produce Toy Story and in the process redefined animated movies. Shortly after that Pixar listed, and Jobs’ share holding (about 80% of the company) was valued at around $1.2 billion!

In 2006 Disney bought Pixar outright for $7.4 billion. In the process Jobs was elected to the board of Disney and became the single largest shareholder in Disney owning about 7% of the stock.

Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. He was appointed as Apple’s CEO (iCEO or interim CEO for the first two years). This was Jobs triumphant return to the company he had founded with Wozniak all those years ago. Apple was in serious trouble at the time with massive losses and a complete lack of innovation. He famously only took a salary of $1 a year for the first two years. He was fond of telling people they pay me 50 cents for showing up and the other 50 cents is based on performance .

Jobs brought Apple back from the dead. Once its core business was stable and the company was once again profitable, Jobs did what he did best – innovate. And by innovate here we are talking about innovation that changed the digital world. After the iMac came the Apple Stores, IPod, ITunes, the Iphone and IPad. Products which took Apple from being a pioneer in the world of personal computers to (as of September 2011) the largest publicly traded company in the world by market capitalisation and the largest technology company in the world by revenue and profit.

In 2010 Forbes estimated Jobs’ personal net wealth at $8.3 billion dollars, making him the 42^nd wealthiest American. Jobs was named the most powerful person in business by Fortune in 2007 and the 17^th most powerful person in the world by Forbes in 2011.

Jobs developed health problems (despite being a strict vegan most of his life as well as an ascetic) in the late nineties, early two thousands. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003 which he fought to his early death age 56 in October 2011.

Visionary, inventor, innovator, technologist, entrepreneur – Jobs must go down as one of the most influential businessmen of the 20^th century.

Inside Steve Jobs

One thing becomes abundantly clear on reading Jobs’ biography. He was not a nice guy. He had an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. He was brutal with his staff, colleagues and members of the boards that oversaw him as CEO. He pushed people beyond their limits, demanded more than was reasonable “make it insanely great”, and did not balk at telling those who fell short of the bar, “your work is basically shit, you are a b player you shouldn’t be on this team”.

That was the nicer side of Jobs. The really ugly side came out if you were a business competitor. Jobs did not rest until he defeated those he stood against or stood against him. He either crushed them or lived in the aspiration of crushing them at some point in the future. This quote, from the Isaacson biography, sums up his approach to his competitors quite nicely:

Our lawsuit is saying, “Google, you fucking ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off.” Grand theft. I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. They are scared to death, because they know they are guilty. Outside of Search, Google’s products- Android, Google Docs- are shit.

No doubt Jobs would have been a worthy successor to Sun Tzu to write a version of The Art of War for the 20th and 21^st centuries.

This was Job’s shadow. And like all genius, the brighter and more penetrating its light, the darker the shadow.

Jobs was the archetypal perfectionist. Constantly striving to do things simpler, better and with more beauty. Constantly raising the bar on Apple’s products. Always restless, never satisfied.

He must have been hell to live or work with .

Jobs lived the Apple maxim- think different.

Jobs was a minimalist, deeply influenced by Zen Buddhism. He had a tremendous love of beauty, art and design. His favourite course at Reed College (after he dropped out and was simply auditing the classes) was in calligraphy. And this combination of aesthetic sensitivity and minimalism has become the signature design style of Apple’s products.

The Steve Jobs Paradox

A paradox one has to come to terms with, in attempting to understand Steve Jobs, was his personal adoption of ascetic values and disavowal of materialism, influenced by the counterculture of the sixties and the influence of Indian spirituality and Zen Buddhism, juxtaposed against the almost obscene commercialisation of Apple and the digital revolution it so exemplified. On the one hand Jobs preached non-attachment to material possessions (not only preached but embraced this philosophy personally) and on the other was fanatical in creating objects designed to maximise the buyer’s desire and subsequent attachment.

He liked to think of himself as belonging to the counter-culture embodied by the hacker mentality in the digital space and by artists like Bob Dylan (Jobs’ hero). Yet he was true blue capitalist obsessed with market share, market domination and profit; a shareholders dream CEO. Furthermore his business philosophy of building closed systems was in direct opposition to the open system as the highest value of the techno/digital community.

In this, I believe, Jobs embodied the central paradox of the digital revolution which is possibly best seen in the WWW culture and its espoused values. An open service for sharing information and forming mutually beneficial communities i.e. overtly socialist in nature, and simultaneously the breeding ground of spectacular capitalisation in the form of companies such as Google, Amazon and facebook.

7 Great Lessons from Steve Jobs

1. His life provides some insight into the key elements for excellence. Amongst these are passion, desire, belief and drive. Steve loved what he did so much he gave his life for it; and his level of commitment was absolute and unswerving.

2. The belief that the bar can always be raised. Steve was never complacent, never accepted that a product that wasn’t ‘insanely great’ could not be made to better. He was not afraid to press pause on a project and redo it, even going back to the drawing board if necessary if he wasn’t 100% convinced the product was the best it could be.

3. There is real value in beauty; the world has not yet succumbed to purely utilitarian values. In beauty we see transcendence and this is deeply important to the human spirit.

4. Genius comes at a high price. Rarely does a life of genius go hand in hand with a life of happiness. Jobs was not a ‘happy’ man, he no doubt experienced moments of sublime satisfaction and deep meaning, but happiness I think eluded him.

5. “Making a dent in the universe”, for those with the possibility of doing this, means living a life in service of that purpose. Stepping beyond the ego’s personal concerns such as comfort and happiness and living a life dedicated to that purpose.

6. It is still possible to be original, to have original ideas. Although to truly embrace such originality takes a tremendously strong personality. To be original means letting go of what is considered right, i.e. deemed correct by the masses, and stepping into the void –a scary place.

7. Being all you can be and doing all you can do means giving 100%. The question of what it takes to give 100% has long fascinated me. So few of us ever reach that level. I have suspected for some time that one way of realising that level of commitment is the awareness of death.

This is what Jobs’ had to say about it at the Stanford commencement speech in June 2005 (after he had been diagnosed with cancer):

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving what is only truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

An 8^th (insanely) Great Lesson

I frequently refer in my posts to the Jungian idea of paradox. It is at the very core of understanding consciousness for Jung. This idea is beautifully illustrated by Steve Jobs. I have already made reference to the paradox of being an avowed non materialist and simultaneously being a golden boy of Western Capitalism.

Jobs was able to hold the intense tension of the opposites and allow them to propel him to ever greater heights.

These included:

• The opposites values of the arts and liberal humanities and the reductive and pragmatic values of technology brought together so brilliantly in Apple’s products.
• Being loved and hated, adored and vilified, frequently by the same people at different times.
• Being an Arab by birth and simultaneously living the life of the all American blue eyed boy.
• Having a very dark side and yet engendering love, beauty and truly meaningful innovation which improved the quality of peoples lives through his work.
• Finally, in the face of his own death, continuing to work tirelessly at something which would continue beyond him and also without him.

Steve Jobs understood the deceptively simple principle: life is not black or white, it is black and white.

A caveat (always read the fine print )

To be 100% clear. I am not suggesting that if you embrace the 8 points above, or if you study his biography from cover to cover, a very worthwhile read (Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson), or even if you say a sutra is his honour morning noon and night, you are going to be the next Steve Jobs. That is highly unlikely.

Steve Jobs was a genius of the calibre that does not come around too often. He also happened to be born in the right place, at the right time and to the right parents (his adopted rather than birth parents). These are gifts of grace rather than any personal act of will.

Also the essence of what breeds success is ineffable and impossible to define in its totality. In the case of Jobs his Arabic bloodline mixed with a good all American Calvinist upbringing proved a very effective combination. Giving him both cunning and a spectacular work ethic. Furthermore his obvious androgyny made him attractive and frequently irresistible to both men and woman.

All of these and countless other reasons all contributed to the final product that was Steve Jobs.

However I do believe we each harbour genius within us, and what we can learn from Steve Jobs is something of what it takes to give birth to that genius.

Finally then, a choice we all face: Self or Ego?

What really strikes me as significant in understanding Jobs’ story, the narrative of his life is the juxtaposition between being and doing. Steve Jobs like all of us was in the final analysis mortal, he was flawed and frail. This, in his case, is most noticeable in his premature death and the suffering he endured as a cancer patient.

For all his determination, genius, vision and passion he was unable to transcend the human condition. Particularly cruel, to my mind, is that a man who clearly was not immoderate in his appetites and followed an ascetic regime his entire adult life, should have his body fail him.

However, what can be argued is that his actions, his legacy, transcends his mortal frailties. That what he did, what he accomplished, is more important than his personal, subjective existence. An ethos that elevates doing over being, actions over thoughts. An attitude that was so well expressed in the archetypal English Gentleman of the Enlightenment, acting not for personal interest but for King and country.

Do your actions transcend you, in as much as you are identified with your personal existence?

If they do this is probably best understood as a cultural product rather than a universal truth. However, is culture not the very epitome of what is greatest about humanity; because of the very reason that it transcends our mortal and animal existence?

For Jung this was the battle between the Self and the ego. The Self being the big you the you capable of greatness, of meaningful contribution. However, as is so well illustrated in Jobs’ life, it comes at the price of the ego’s desires, which have to necessarily be sacrificed.

In as much as each of can stand back from our lives and view that life as a cosmic experiment the following applies. In order to make that experiment, in order to forward our hypothesis we need to give our lives to that experiment. By no means an easy point to come to for us mere mortals.

Are you willing to give your life to your experiment?

This is a question only you can answer.

The truth is not obvious. It is easy to stand in awe of a man like Steve Jobs, but less obvious whether or not you would choose to trade places with him.

To repeat though, I think what we can learn from Jobs and others who have so exemplified their purpose in their lives is that is what it takes. You need to give everything you have, without reservation unto (as in Jobs’ case) your dying breath.

I would like to conclude with a song from Dylan, Job’s spiritual mentor.

Are You Ready?

Are you ready, are you ready?

Are you ready, are you ready?

Are you ready to meet Jesus?

Are you where you ought to be?

Will He know you when He sees you

Or will He say, “Depart from Me”?

Are you ready, hope you’re ready

Am I ready, am I ready?

Am I ready, am I ready?

Am I ready to lay down my life for the brethren

And to take up my cross?

Have I surrendered to the will of God

Or am I still acting like the boss?

Am I ready, hope I’m ready

When destruction cometh swiftly

And there’s no time to say a fare-thee-well

Have you decided whether you want to be

In heaven or in hell?

Are you ready, are you ready?

Have you got some unfinished business?

Is there something holding you back?

Are you thinking for yourself

Or are you following the pack?

Are you ready, hope you’re ready

Are you ready?

Are you ready for the judgment?

Are you ready for that terrible swift sword?

Are you ready for Armageddon?

Are you ready for the day of the Lord?

Are you ready, I hope you’re ready

Copyright © 1980 by Special Rider Music (source: http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/are-you-ready).

Sources:

Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson, 2011).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_jobs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_inc

When I was younger, I had a real issue with Summercon Developers. We stayed in one of their townhouses for a few months and just hated it. Stephen and I were in a young relationship and we were fighting like cats and dogs. And of course EVERYONE heard it.

I could not understand why Summercon were allowed to put up these terrible little boxy houses, with no privacy that were ridiculously priced. Also only the bottom units actually ‘owned’ the land. They were built badly and quickly. They were all the same, and I felt like a prisoner in them. Yet they were building everywhere and people were just buying into this ridiculous housing system. It was criminal! If I were a terrorist I would bomb their head office. Who gave them this power to manipulate people into believing that this type of living is ‘good’ and acceptable? I can carry on here about Summercon and what bastards they were at length.

Now, years later, I realize that I was projecting. All the unconscious feelings of being trapped, manipulated and oppressed by my relationship at the time, were projected onto Summercon. (thank God I didn’t go and bomb them )

And that my friends, is a really good example of projection.

PROJECTION IN A NUTSHELL.

That is exactly how it works. You dislike someone or something intensely? You are projecting! You are taking unconscious content within your own psyche and putting it out there onto someone/something else. The stuff you don’t want to deal with, or look at, or accept about yourself ‘ that stuff is all projected outwards. After all, it’s got to go somewhere if you can’t deal with it.

Just think about all the things/people/ideas out in the world that rile you up. What does that say about you?

GOOD FOR TRANSFORMATION

Of course, on a positive note, the opportunities for yourself to change and grow increases when you have this realization. Every time you catch yourself reacting to something external, you can use that emotion to guide you to insecurities, vulnerabilities, repressed beliefs about yourself. In Jungian terms we call this process becoming ‘conscious’. Just imagine how much less friction, disagreements, fights and hatred would exist if everyone took responsibility for their own reactions.

But that means a life without blaming others. Are we all ready for that? Think about how many times a day you blame others on the road, in queues, on TV, in newspapers, in your relationships, your children, your parents, your friends etc. What would you do with all that time if you were to stop blaming?

POSITIVE PROJECTION

Projection can also be incredibly positive and motivating. Just think of people you think are wonderful and do meaningful work, or are successful, or kind or happy. Whatever you think is important, you will project out there onto someone who you think is embodying this quality. These people are inspiring and motivate you to become more like them.

For example, I find Redi Thlapi very inspirational. She is assertive, opinionated, doesn’t get intimidated and does a great job of bringing various opinions on topics to light. I think that is fabulous! A bit of fame mixed with doing good.

She inspired me to start blogging and I would love to be on her show as a regular guest . Positive projection in action. You may totally disagree with me and see her in a very different light. But that is what is so great about projections ‘ they are uniquely yours!

THE LIMITATIONS OF PROJECTION

Now I would like to get into the nitty gritty of projection. This is where it gets complicated.

Lets say that I make a new friend. I think she is fabulous. She displays all the characteristics in an individual that I really like. She is outgoing, intelligent, successful in her line of work, together, etc. I get to know her and after a few months, she suddenly confronts me about something I said to her. I am stunned. I can’t even remember when I said it and in what context I said it. Now what! I get really irritated and all of a sudden I start realizing how she behaved badly towards me. She did this and she said that. I should have seen it coming!

This is a typical experience of projection gone wrong. In the beginning of the relationship we were both projecting onto each other. Although it helped us to bond and develop a friendship based on similarities, the truth is that neither of us were able to see the other clearly. We both viewed the other through rose tinted glasses. Eventually the projection starts waning and then we start seeing each other more clearly. All the stuff that you could not/would not see before is now visible. It is not that your friend has changed, it is that you now see her more clearly than before. Everyone has good qualities and bad qualities. Can you accommodate the bad qualities? If not, this friendship is doomed. The same with your friend. Can she accommodate your bad qualities?

And this is the crux of the matter. Projection is a double edged blade. On the one hand it helps to develop relationships, but on the other hand it separates you from the other.

It can really work against you in isolating yourself from others. Unless you manage to work through your projections and start seeing those around you for who they really are AND accepting them for who they really are, you are having relationships that are one sided and limited.

When you are projecting, you only see yourself reflected back to you. You are missing out on the magic and joy of knowing, seeing, appreciating and learning from someone else.

Until next time.
Anja

I frequently suggest both in my posts and to those I work with personally, the importance of facing up to the reality of death. To face the fact that you are not immortal. That the candle flame of your life will be blown out one day by the unfeeling and unrelenting wind of time.

This fundamental truth has to be understood and come to terms with, by anyone wanting to get to grips with the basic coordinates of human existence. No spiritual system or teacher is worth its mustard unless it can deal with this awkward reality. I would hardly call myself a Buddhist but one story attributed to the Buddha stays with me.

Walking with his disciples they came across a human skeleton at the side of the road. Buddha told his disciples to look carefully at it and to know that soon they too would assume just such a form.

The reason it is worth placing such emphasis on this unpleasant truth is because its recognition is frequently essential to engender a sense of urgency for, i.e. to live, an authentic life.

There are two competing myths about death. Of which, most of mankind have bought into one or the other.

The first myth: the Afterlife

This idea comes to us from the great religions, both Eastern and Western. Your soul or spirit is immortal and will survive the death of your physical body. There is a reward in the afterlife for a life ‘well lived’, either in the form of a utopian, paradisiacal, existence, or a rebirth into the physical realm in a more ‘evolved’ form.

Naturally the inverse applies here also, a life that fails to reach a certain standard, usually of moral conduct, is punished by a failure to reach paradise or a reincarnation with an increased Karmic debt.

What is convergent across the many permutations of this myth is that you are not synonamous with, or reducable to, your physical body. You have (or essentially are) a ‘spiritual’ component that will remain after you depart this mortal coil.

The second myth: Materialism

The second myth comes to us from natural science. You are a physical organism, born into the universe. You birth was preceded by billions of years in which the universe existed without you, and in which time life evolved to the point that an organism such as you could come into existence.

Beyond that, you are one of some 7 billion people alive on the planet today and your life occupies a short span of time measured against the history and possible future of mankind. The immanent (relatively speaking) death of your body means the absolute termination of your existence.

You are, in other words, in cosmic terms, supremely insignificant.

The above expositions on the two prevalent myths are admittedly simplistic and too brief. However being alive at this time means you cannot but be aware of these two positions and their arguments and counter-arguments, by the champions of spirituality and secularism.

That being noted though it must be acknowledged that, death is a profound mystery.

Rationally it is a veil beyond which we cannot see. And it is hard to imagine, no matter how much human knowledge grows, how this mystery might ever reveal its answer to the living. Of course it may never reveal its mystery to the dead either, but the point is whether it will or will not, can only be known once you cross the threshold, the mythical river Styx.

The philosopher Immanuel Kant suggested that there are certain concepts which fall outside of the domain of reason. Certain truths transcend the reach of reason and are constitutively unknowable. These include ideas such as the first cause, God, infinity and the ‘I‘.

I suggest death qualifies as one of these mysteries.

All of which brings us to the original question: what face do you see when you contemplate death? Because, I think, one thing is clear, whatever face you do see has got more to do with who you are and what you believe, than what may be objectively true.

I would wager that you have established yourself in one of these two myths or vacillate between them. And even if you have adopted one of the two myths as your own truth you are keenly aware and troubled at times by the possibility of the other.

This kind of paradoxical formulation, is for Jung at least, the essence of truth. Ultimate truth transcending our rational capacities presents itself to our minds as a paradox. One sees the same idea in Zen practise where the student is given a paradoxical koan to solve as way of teaching him to transcend dualistic thinking.

Is there a 3^rd Possibility?

Is there another possibility not contained in the two myths noted above? Personally I think there is, although I cannot offer you conclusive or even particularly persuasive evidence of this. It is more of an intuition that has guided me to this belief. For what it is worth, let me share it with you.

Jung, in common with many other wise men, believed in the power of paradox. That truth is revealed through paradox in a more profound way than in a simplistic one sided formulation. Well I think, in both of the above myths, what is missing is you; your individual and subjective perspective.

Both of these myths objectify, and in a sense commoditise, you. In these formulations the objective world of which you are but an infinitely small and relatively insignificant part contain you. You are born into them and they set the co-ordinates of your existence.

But is this the only way of looking at yourself and your life?

What is the subjective perspective?

Have you ever personally experienced the world as existing without your presence?

Now, trust me, I know that on the face of it this seems a ridiculous question . And in fact I’m not even disputing that the world continues to exist without you, objectively speaking. (Although there is in fact some debate in physics about that fact currently as you may know, but let us accept this as being true for now). The point is although it may continue to exist objectively without you, it certainly doesn’t exist subjectively without you, unless you decide to bestow that truth upon it.

All you know is that when you open your eyes the world is there and when you close them it goes away- for you at least. This is an absolute, not subject to change and an indisputable truth. It is far more real than anything else you have been told, which may or may not be true i.e. you are a single part of a cosmic system, one small part etc. etc.

What you absolutely know is that you are.

Consider the possibility that the world is contained in you, as opposed to you in it.

There is a story from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Series, by Douglas Adams) that illustrates this idea quite nicely.

Zaphod enters the Total Perspective Vortex, a torture device which annihilates by showing you how infinitesimally small you are compared to the universe. However when Zaphod enters it the Vortex shows him he is the most important being in the universe. This not because the Vortex has malfunctioned but because Zarniwoop has created a virtual universe for the sole benefit of Zaphod, in which he is the most important creature ‘ source, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Restaurant_at_the_End_of_the_Universe

The question is which is the virtual universe and which the ‘objectively real’? Or to put it in Jungian terms, is it possible that both of these conceptual truths are merely simulations of an underlying, hidden reality.

This line of thinking is hardly original and allusions to this are made in many mystical systems, but the possibility of this truth is definitely esoteric rather than exoteric.

Anyway, I think this idea is well worth considering as a counterbalance to your objectification in the traditional and contemporary death myths.

Until we speak again.

Stephen.

At the time, I wasn’t sure why the movie affected me so profoundly and I spent many hours speculating about the reason. I eventually decided that I was suffering from an existential crisis. This stayed with me for months.

Now, 3 years later, I am starting to understand what really happened to me and I think that this is a natural process that all human beings go through.

We also call it a midlife crises.

The Root of the problem for me

I come from a standard Christian upbringing (well, how standard that could be I don’t know). So as an adult, I have had to confront quite a number of ‘bad’ belief systems that I picked up from this upbringing. For example, you have to suffer. You are not a decent Christian until you are suffering and bearing your lot in life.

So when Stephen came home all excited and told me about the concept of freedom, (which he speaks about in his last blog The Philosophy of Freedom) I actually realized something fundamental. Freedom is the realization that your destiny will not reveal itself. It is up to you to create it. There is no pre-determined destiny waiting to be uncovered.

And this belief was at the root of my crises.

The blindness of youth

When you are young, all that lies ahead of you is potential. The potential of being the ideal you. I thought that destiny will reveal itself. I believed that my destiny was waiting in the wings and I would see a sign, meet the right people, come across it naturally, because it is destined after all.

And God help you if you don’t, because your life will be wasted!

When the truth is that the very belief in destiny is what wastes your life.- a destiny out there that you are going to ‘discover’.

Of course, when you finally get to your late 30′s, your potential is over so to speak. If you were going to become someone great, it would have happened already. You realize that you have been waiting and waiting and the reality starts dawning on you that perhaps it is not going to happen.

All those years spent waiting for my life to begin.

Suddenly you realize you need glasses, or your hair is thinning. You are not able to physically do the things you could when you were younger. The reality of growing old is there in your face (excuse the pun) and you cannot rationalize it away. You have a limited lifespan and this starts dawning on you.

Time is running out!

This is a process of disenchantment, of growing up. The fairytale falls away and all that is left is you. You are confronted by the Gorgon. Stay there and you will be paralyzed, petrified.

And now what?

Of course there are many things that you can do then.

You can buy yourself a new car or get a new lover to distract yourself.

Another option is to go into therapy. The depression/melancholy that you suffer from may push you to do this and then it is time to deal with some old wounds before you can move on.

The other option is to accept that your life will only have meaning if you give it some meaning. This is when people make radical change in their careers or start to travel etc.

This is the time when you enter the life of the spirit. The material goals no longer feed your soul. Some are unable to take this step because what is required is a redefining of oneself. And this is hard.

Self realization is no walk in the park

When you have been a certain way all your life, it is not easy to give up on it. I remember years ago reading somewhere that the only events that cause real change is a crises or conversion. I think that is true. To shift the human psyche takes enormous psychic energy and this usually comes in the form of a crises. But even then, you may not want to go through the eye of the needle, or die in flames to be reborn.

Real change is traumatic, painful and hard work. You have to let go of who you were and redefine yourself. You have to confront all your beliefs about yourself to see if they are valid and what they mean.

How can you recognize opportunity and commit to goals unless you truly understand what complexes makes up your psyche and needs to be fulfilled and expressed.

For example, if you have an unconscious desire to create and teach, being a doctor is not going to make you happy.

Redemption

Of course, if there is no pre-determined destiny, you are free to choose who you want to be, how you want to express yourself. You can choose what path you want to walk. You can determine the legacy you want to leave behind. You become the creator of your future.

You are unique. Your interests, skills, passions, desires and needs all make up one unique individual. You have to find a way to express this in the world.

The path to self fulfillment, creating meaning and becoming whole is not a smooth path which will unfold itself as you walk on it.

No, you have to find it and drag it out of your unconscious soul. You have to turn inward and uncover who you really are.

This is the process of individuation.

Until next time
Anja

I have very recently come across a concept of freedom which is so radical and so groundbreaking that it changes everything. Seriously. I have been able to think of little else since I encountered this idea a few days ago. In this post I am going to do my level best to communicate the essence of this idea to you and exactly why it is as powerful as it is.

Let me begin though by giving you some context.

Are we truly free?

Do we have free choice?

What does it mean to be free?

These are questions that philosophy has been grappling with for the last two and a half thousand years. And yet still today these questions plague contemporary philosophers. I have spent the best part of the last six months engaged with this question on a daily basis.

During this time I was busy with three concurrent projects:

I wrote my MA dissertation, at Essex University, on the subject of Jung on Consciousness, Articulating the Archimedean Point. In this dissertation I argued that the defining feature of consciousness, for Jung, is that it is capable of making free (unconditioned) choices.

I participated in the Philosophy of Mind module at Wits University where one of the central themes under consideration was the idea of free choice (is it possible and if so what would it look like). The thesis we considered is known as compatibilism, which means simply that we are free inasmuch as we act in accordance with our given nature.

I was part of a study group reading Rudolf Steiner’s definitive work The Philosophy of Freedom. In this book Steiner argues that freedom is our fundamental and true nature.

That is to say I spent quite a bit of time thinking about the nature of freedom and some of the problems in believing in the possibility of freedom.

Why is freedom such a difficult concept to believe in?

Firstly let’s be clear on this, the freedom we are talking about here is the freedom to make your own choices. Choices which are not predetermined or governed by any factor external to you. Also we are considering this in relation to mind or personal freedom, i.e. this is not political or social freedom we are considering here.

The problem with this idea is: what does it mean to make a choice that is not governed by an external factor or predetermined? I cannot make a choice in a vacuum after all; I need to consult ‘myself’. Meaning two things need to happen:

1) I ask myself what I want.

2) I ask whether the satisfaction of this want is appropriate. By appropriate here we mean: will it serve me and is it aligned with my ethical framework and worldview (simply my beliefs in other words)?

However in going through a process like this where exactly is the freedom? Firstly the desire itself is a given, I do not create desires, desires are given to me. That is to say I am subject to my desires not master or creator of them. Secondly, on what does my ethical framework rest, an external moral authority, personal preferences and prejudices ‘ and where did this originate?

In what sense can I claim ownership of my ethical framework/worldview? Yes okay I adopted it along with my prejudices, but why? Surely because of prior prejudices. That is to say that my ethical framework/worldview is necessarily always constructed from a prior ethical framework/worldview.

Why should I choose a over b?

In order to make this choice I consult my current inventory of prejudices, I am never at the 0 point so to speak. There is always a framework that I am operating within and which dictates which choice is the ‘right’ one.

I hope the problem is starting to emerge here. This I think is the hard problem of free choice.

Beyond this though, in a simpler sense, the scientific-naturalistic worldview is predicated on the law of cause and effect. This means that the effects we are living today are the consequence of a prior casual chain. Following this line of thinking how can our choices escape the universal law of causality? Surely the choices you think you are making are determined by this same casual chain. This suggests that the idea you have of making choices is purely an experiential rather than fundamental truth.

Is freedom then still a real possibility and if so how?

Steiner’s idea of freedom

Steiner makes a very persuasive argument for freedom. This is what he suggests.

The essence, the being, or the concept, of everything in the world is given. Life, the universe and everything in it is objective, in that its behaviour is given to it. A tomato, a chicken, or a star are only given the possibility of acting and being one singular and homogenous way. Each in accord not with its subjective dictates but in accord with its objective law.

Only a human being posses a subjectivity which creates the possibility of transcendence. Only a person has the capacity to ask what does it mean to be a man (or a woman), and even more significantly, what does it mean to be me?

Not everything in you is given.

You must complete yourself.

My god! Just think about the power of that statement for a moment!

You must complete yourself.

Your nature is fundamentally free; it is not given what you will become. You are an incomplete project. And as long as you are alive you will remain incomplete. Your essential nature is only given in part; I repeat the quote this post started with,

Nature makes of man merely a natural being; society makes of him a law-abiding being; only he himself can make of himself a free man.

Yes okay, but in a profound sense freedom is our very constitution. Think about it:

Only he himself can make himself a free man.

Only he himself can make himself an unfree man.

Only he himself can make himself a happy man.

Only he himself can make himself an adventurous man.

Only he himself can make himself and inquisitive man.

Only he himself can make himself a transcendent man.

The point is you have a choice. Of all the beings in this cosmos (that we know of), of all life in this world, only you have this unique gift.

You can choose.

So encompassing is this freedom you can even choose not to choose.

What does this mean practically?

Well for one thing it means realising that you do not have a destiny; at least not in the sense that there is a ‘destiny’ out there in the world waiting for you to arrive. As long as you are alive what you have is possibility. Only once you die does that possibility become your destiny.

It means that there is no objective meaning, at least not for you and me. Now at first that may sound less than comforting. But really, on consideration, it is incredibly liberating. Just think about it for a moment.

If there is no objective meaning, no objective destiny, no objective truth for you to access, then, and only then, can you be free.

You are free to create that meaning, destiny and truth.

A Jungian Perspective: the Road to Freedom

Jung seems to be agreement with Steiner here. Jung too believes that freedom is possible. However Jung equates this possibility to access freedom with consciousness. That is to say we are only as free, or can only be as free, as we are conscious.

As long as my actions are dictated by my unconscious mind I remain unfree. To the extent that I make the unconscious conscious the possibility of freedom opens up. I do think Jung, being a proponent of the unconscious, is a lot more cautious in his formulation of freedom.

Freedom for Jung is a more limited possibility because of the significant role of the unconscious in the psychic economy. But still the possibility exists inasmuch as I bring the searchlight of consciousness to bear on my psyche and in my life.

To put this in a Jungian frame, we need to let go of the idea that to individuate means the realisation of our ideal destiny- in the sense that that destiny is latent, somehow lying in wait for us to uncover it. In this sense to individuate means rather to choose my ideal destiny, to create it, to live it.

To individuate means to realise that over and above the given qualities of your physical, social, and cultural being, you exist. You are an intangible, irreducible, unquantifiable entity. An entity that is capable of becoming that which it chooses to become.

And becoming that, is what it means to individuate.

My own experience of freedom

I have had two very specific occasions when I can honestly say it felt as though I was making a free conscious choice, as opposed to running on unconscious autopilot. Let me tell you about one of these occasions, the more recent one, which happened about 18 odd months ago.

After a decade of studying Jungian psychology through a private institution in South Africa as well as later self-studying and then teaching it, I was given the opportunity to go to Essex University, in England, to do a Masters Degree in Jungian Studies. To put this in perspective, the Master’s at Essex is unique, one of a kind in the world; and in addition to that it is taught by some of the leading Jungian thinkers in Europe.

I knew this was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Okay so far so good.

There were a few challenges though in deciding whether this was in fact the path I should choose.

I have a wife and three young children who could not travel to England and spend a year there; they would need to stay in South Africa. So I would spend the best part of a year away from my young family.

I run my own business. My business is based in South Africa it too could not travel to England for a year . And at the time that I had to make the decision to do the MA, my business was facing a crisis more serious than any other in the 10 odd years we had been in business. So serious was this crisis I was not sure if there would still be a business when I got back from England.

In a challenging financial climate the budget for this little excursion worked out to R200 000 odd.

Whilst all of this was going on I was in the middle of a very serious conflict with my brother and business partner.

I decided to take a leap of faith into the great unknown and went to England and did the MA.

It may have been one of the best and most life affirming decisions I have ever made.

The story ends with me back in SA with my family, reconciled with my brother, my business survived the crisis and is thriving, and I have recently been awarded the MA with distinction. That is to say the story had a happy ending. However there was no way that I could anticipate that ending when I decided to do the MA.

So how did I make the decision?

Well the truth is I don’t know, but what I learnt in making that decision is that I have a choice. I am free to make choices which are counter-intuitive, which defy ‘common sense’, which defy my very own prior programming.

I believe in making that choice I proved a point, to myself at least, about our capacity for free choice. And in making that choice I took one step forward to actualising my own individuation.

Final thoughts

I am not sure if I have been able to accurately or fully convey this idea of freedom, I hope at least I have given you some sense of it. It truly is the most profound truth if you can come to terms with it. We spend so much of our lives living out a truth someone told us, taught us, or somehow inculcated in us.

One of the more nefarious of those ‘truths’ is the idea that who you are is given to you and that you are simply living out a pre-destined plan.

Bullshit!

The only plan is that you are.

You are here and now.

The rest is up to you.

It was probably the most traumatic and painful experience I have ever lived through.

My third child’s birth was also natural, but this time I was like Superwoman. I breathed through the pain and delivered an abnormally happy baby. (referring here to heartrate and other indicators )

The midwife was uber impressed.

Why was I able to do it again and better?

Because the second time around, I knew what to expect and I was not afraid.

Fear is the most paralyzing, painful and debilitating emotion.

Evil all around us?

When I was a young woman, I went to visit a relative who had two small sons. She told me at the time that they were not allowed to watch anything on TV with martial arts in it, so no Power Rangers, Ninja turtles etc. Why?

It was evil.

Never mind that this is absolute nonsense, I was stunned that someone would consciously raise their children in fear. She was sending her children a message ‘ to be afraid of the world, because evil lurks in it everywhere. Anticipate evil in everything and everyone. Albert Einstein said that one of the most important questions you will ever ask is whether the universe is a friendly place.

I don’t want my children to be paralyzed by fear. So I have made a conscious effort in raising my children differently. To teach them that pain is ok, it happens and it doesn’t have to be traumatic.

First hand experience

When Ruarc was a toddler, he was terrified of everything. He was constantly holding onto me afraid and crying. Someone mentioned to me to play courage games with him, and being Jungian, I thought it was a fabulous idea. So I started chasing him through the house, sometimes a wolf, sometimes a vampire, etc.

Is my approach working?

I would say so. My 5 year old recently needed a deep filling in his tooth. The dentist suggested theater. I had done that before with my daughter. It was an incredibly unpleasant experience, so I suggested an injection and asked Ruarc if he was ok with that. He said sure and the dentist injected him. He never even flinched (I was terrified). The dentist was astounded.

I had a similar experience with my 4 year old. He had an accident and ended up with a deep cut on his hairline. GP suggested theater. I said let’s ask him if he will accept injections. Teague received 6 injections in his head! I had to tell him his favourite story to distract myself.The GP had never seen anything like it before.

Now, I am not saying that fear won’t eventually surface, but I believe that they will handle it well. It won’t be debilitating or paralyzing.

How did I do it?

Anthroposophically speaking, you are the child’s ego until they develop their own as a teenager. Children learn behavior by observing you. If your child falls down and you become hysterical, trust me, your child will become hysterical whenever they hurt themselves. Similarly, if you react to disappointment verbally or emotionally, so will they.

So from little, when they fell down, I would look at them and smile at them. I would kiss the sore better and acknowledge that it was sore, but just that. I never gave accidents attention or spoke about how sore it was at length. I don’t indulge pain or fear. It just is, and it passes.

Everyone has a need to sometimes howl and scream and gnash their teeth. That is ok, we all have bad days. But don’t impose your bad moods and noise pollution on the other people in the household. Stop howling and talk to me, or go to your room. But when you have calmed down, you can come back and join us and there will be no reprimands, guilt or judgment.

Indulging children’s screaming and crying, is submitting them to absolutely unnecessary trauma. The child loses control over themselves and is overwhelmed by fear and/or negative emotion. What purpose does that serve? How is this helping the child at all? They are taught a pattern of behaviour and response to pain and resistance that will be extremely difficult to overcome when they grow up.

What children need is love, respect, attention, lots of praise, hugs, kindness, understanding and above all acceptance. These are the qualities you want them to internalize as they grow older.

I feel strongly that it is my responsibility as a parent to prepare my children for the journey of self discovery which will require courage, self discipline and self love.

And although my children are not perfect (they are complete hooligans actually ) I know that what I am giving them is an attitude towards life that will help them achieve self fulfillment and meaning.

I leave you with a wonderful quote.

It’s not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself. ~Joyce Maynard

Until next time.
Anja

Ps. If you enjoyed this article, I’m sure you will enjoy 5 Building Blocks to Healthy Loving.

This awakening came to me the way so many truths do. It is something I have been aware of for a long time. Naturally being involved in Jungian studies I am well aware of the extended Jungian community and much of the Jungian and pseudo-Jungian inspired work that goes on. Now in that world feminism, feeling and goddess work has been, and continues to be, one of the dominant themes. Connecting with the feminine archetype, with what has been lost and disavowed in our overtly patriarchal society.

I have never felt much affinity for this work- not only because I am a typically chauvinist male. I feel much the same about movements like the Mankind Project and Boys to Men. I’m not sure why but they just don’t resonate for me. A bunch of older men teaching boys what it is to be men, singing hymns to the moon and running around naked on a mountain…

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but basically I don’t buy it. It’s not psychology that’s for sure, and I seriously doubt it is what Jung had in mind when he birthed Analytical Psychology into the world. I think if one is attempting to access the Dionysian archetype then the inter-gender, trance music, outdoor transformational dance festivals, besides being more honest, are also a lot more potent.

Anyway forgive me I have digressed.

My point is that although I have known for a long time about Goddess work ‘ I never really got it. I’m not saying I have it now either, but I have had this insight that makes me feel a lot closer to the work; and also to the feminine psyche.

So what is the insight?

Meeting the Genius-Demon

For whatever reason woman approaching and in mid-life seems to have a tough time of things psychologically. With the fading of the first bloom of their youthful beauty and procreative potential, questions are asked for which there are no readymade answers. Women, much like men, exist for the first half of their lives in a state of grace. The instinctive drives dictate the way forward. The existential dilemma could not be further from their minds.

However once the kiddies have been born and are well on their way to growing up, the procreative instinct no longer contains the feminine psyche. Generally speaking we can identify certain typical responses:

• Their youthful beauty and sexual attractiveness is defended, supported, fought for, reengineered, financed and desperately held onto against the inexorable and cruel hand of time.
• A younger, different or more exciting lover is sought to rekindle the dying flame.
• The available libido gets directed into a career or project. This is the mature and no-nonsense-woman-of-the-world who knows how to get things done and is certainly not standing around waiting for a man to do what she can so much better.
• A life lived in service of hubby and the children.
• A new spirituality is discovered! One that has a decidedly pagan flavour, is closer to mother earth and seeks to reconnect with the divine feminine principle.

Not to exhaust the options I think that is a fairly encompassing list of the principle containers. Of course there are others and a convergence and cross habitation between those listed. What I think is consistent though, across all of these, is that the women acting out one or more of these roles are, by and large, uncontained by them.

That the second half of life is tough is something we all know. But from my observation I would have to say it is tougher on woman than men. With few exceptions women bettween the ages of 35 and 55 spend much of their lives in quiet desperation, clinging by their fingernails to the purpose that animated them so serenely in their youth.

Now this is not an original finding . It is these woman and their legion of neurosis that have kept a million psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, psychologists and psychotherapists in business for the last century. And I am sure that there are many well established, researched and scientific reasons for this phenomenon.

Freud for his part attributed hysteria (and I think the subject under discussion could fall into that categorisation) in woman to a sexual disturbance. Whilst Jung focused on the contra-sexual soul or animus in the woman as being at the source of the disturbance.

However it is ironically this goddess or archetypal feminine element that I want to focus on and that has really captured my attention.

According to Jung we are all caught between two autonomous personalities, a conscious and an unconscious personality. And I am leaning more and more to understanding this, unconscious personality in women, as being dominated by this goddess archetype rather than the animus or contra sexual soul.

What are the challenges in connecting with this unconscious personality?

The challenges are formidable. We are already aware of the overt patriarchal structure of our society. Although arguably this may be shifting, it no doubt still creates a significant challenge to the expression in the ‘real world’ of this archetype. Beyond this, connecting with what has effectively become unconscious in the personal and the collective is no easy feat. It requires time, attention and perhaps most importantly desire.

Very often the distress that sets in, which signals the archetype being activated, is treated pathologically. It is something to be ‘cured’. I would certainly argue that this is the role of psychoanalysis in the masculine dominated social system. The psychoanalysis itself becomes the panacea with which this impulse is rendered harmless or impotent. It is far more acceptable to the subject in question’s husband and to her, in as much as she has adopted the patriarchal values, that this is contained in analysis.

This is not surprising consider the alternatives. A radical break with the status quo. The re-imagining and practice of ancient pagan traditions in honour of the Mother. Women not recognising their husband’s conjugal rights. I don’t think it is going too far to say that the very fabric of our society depends of the suppression of the Goddess or an expression that is effectively only window dressing, so that nothing fundamental to the patriarchy is meaningfully challenged.

I think the greatest gift of this feminine archetype is an appreciation of the irrational and it is this that is most threatening to the current order. The gift of the Enlightenment is the gift or reason and our modern society is founded on its ‘superior value’.

These political and social considerations aside, the very act of entering into discourse with the Goddess is difficult. For one, what language does the Goddess speak? Is it the language of love, of creation, of the earth? Is it the voice of the irrational that is so violently opposed? Or does She speak the language of the Patriarchy, of the Bible, of the Lawgivers?

What do you think?

So what does the Female Demon-Genius want?

Well of course it is not without irony that I, as a man, feel entitled and believe myself qualified to speak on Her behalf . Nevertheless these are my thoughts, you do with them as you will. The following suggestions, about the archetype’s intention, are not meant be read as commandments but rather as a vague intimation of what may be the case.

• She wants autonomy.
• Not to be the supplicant to the masculine but a lawgiver in her own right.
• She sees herself as innately superior to the masculine- at least as it is manifest in the world.
• Men are there to serve a s specific purpose for the Feminine- and that purpose is definitely not to be the sun around whom they revolve.
• She loves the children, the animals and the earth.
• She is highly protective of that which she loves or which needs love.
• She is a storyteller.
• She is fiercely independent, sometimes excessively so- to her own detriment.
• She sees, She hears and She knows.
• She creates.
• She destroys.
• She binds.
• She breaks.

That is about as much as I want to say about who She is and what She does at least in her archetypal, abstract, form. The challenge, as with any archetypal presence, is to understand what form She assumes in you, in your soul and in your life.

How does She love, create and destroy in you?

What does She ask of you?

This is what needs to be understood in order to bring the unconscious into consciousness. Whilst this impulse remains an abstraction, an archetype, an idea, it is both very dangerous to your individual psyche and almost impossible to do anything meaningful with.

However if you are able to listen carefully to what is being communicated by the Goddess and then translate this into meaningful action in your life, personalise the impersonal, well then I think the result may be very different and very interesting.

Until we talk again.

Stephen

They were the first government to print paper money, they had invented gunpowder, used a compass to derive true north and had a permanent navy. They printed books and the people were well educated. Women were respected and ran their own successful businesses. There were retirement villages and public clinics supported by a social welfare infrastructure. They traded iron, silk, velvet and porcelain.

Thinking about the various great civilizations in history, it seems that once a nation reaches their pinnacle of civilization, it somehow collapses. This made me wonder what it is that destroys civilizations that are flourishing.

Then I received an email (synchronistically) which spoke about Alexander Fraser Tytler, Scottish historian and professor who wrote several books in the late 1700s and early 1800s. What he had to say was this:

‘Great nations rise and fall and when they fall there is always a dictatorship that follows:
The people go from bondage to spiritual truth,
From spiritual truth to great courage,
from courage to liberty,
from liberty to abundance,
from abundance to selfishness,
from selfishness to complacency,
from complacency to apathy,
from apathy to dependence,
from dependence back again to bondage.’

Currently, a lot of Western Countries, especially in Europe, lie in the region of apathy and dependence, so according to this cycle, they are well on their way to bondage. By contrast, there have been a few countries, e.g. Libya who has now shaken off dictatorship, so they would be right at the beginning of the cycle. Here in South Africa, we are somewhere between liberty, abundance and selfishness (depending on geographics and political affiliations ). So we still have a way to go.

Of course, the real question is, are we as the human race ever going to be spiritually or emotionally evolved to stop this cycle? Surely the humanitarian goal is for the whole world to be somewhere between liberty and abundance.

But is this realistic?

I think not. Not unless we escape duality.

Duality in a nutshell

Our world is up and down, left and right, back and front, wrong and right, Yin and Yang. There is no escaping it. It moves from the one to the other constantly. It is the flow of life and the cause of movement, change and growth.

If there were no duality, there would be no life. No birth, no death. The circle of life would be at an end. There would be no creativity, no passion, no wonder.

Let me break it down for you:

If there was no duality:
You would not know what it is you want vs what you have
That would result in no passion or desire for change
There would be no growth or transformation
There would be no need for you to cry or laugh

You would not exist

And this is the key to the Jungian approach. Becoming conscious of the paradoxes in your own life, is a gift ‘ the possibility of change is open to you.

The potent opposite

We are all complex psychological beings full of contradictions and paradoxes. What is really interesting is that my opposite to a problem is totally different to your opposite. For example, your idea of success is different to mine. I may think success is fame, but it could be wealth, happiness, love, etc. it all depends who you are and what you value. I may envy your fame, but you may envy my happiness. You get the idea .

Think about that. Let’s use the example of fame being a goal. There is the situation you are in now (what you have) and then there is the idea of what you want. How do you get from here to there? That tension is what is going to make you transform, change, grow and learn. If you did not have that goal, you would never move forward. You would not become a better you.

The actual gain

So, I would like to point out here, just in case you are missing my point, that the goal itself may be the thing you think you want, but the real gold, the real magic is in the process of achieving the goal.

The courage, the persistence, the tears, the doubt are all gifts of pursuing your goals. I was told once that suffering builds character and that really rings true for me. As it states in the cycle, complacency leads to apathy, which in turn leads to dependency and finally bondage.

Where does the energy comes from to change.

It takes an enormous amount of energy to change.

Where do you get this energy from?

From that tension that exists between your current situation and the future that you want. The Nigredo, or the Dark night of the Soul, is part of the alchemical process of change. This is the time you draw back the arrow to gain the strength to fly off into the future.

In the modern world, we have bought into this idea of pursuing a utopia, of living a life without the existence of pain or suffering. But consider that this could be the worst thing that you can do for yourself. Every time you repress your needs and goals, try to convince yourself that you can do without, stop wishing and dreaming, you are robbing yourself of the most potent gifts of all ‘ the potential for transformation.

The greater the tension, the greater is the potential. Great energy springs from a correspondingly great tension of opposites.- Carl Jung

Until next time.
Anja