Tosia H Zraikat

Wholeness

For Carl Jung, the aim of psychotherapy and individuation was not perfection but wholeness, a state of psychic integration based on psychological awareness, self-knowledge, and Self-acceptance. 

 

 

Too often, though, people speak of wholeness, of oneness as something easily achieved through practices like lighting candles, burning incense, yoga, retreats, and 'spiritual' language. While probably beneficial in themselves, these are simply trappings of inner work yet to be done, work that challenges our misconceptions about ourselves and reality.

 

Achieving wholeness is not easy... It is the work of a lifetime ... of lifetimes.  It requires courage, humility, and patience.

 

“... the right way to wholeness is made up, unfortunately, of fateful detours and wrong turnings. It is a longissima via, not straight but snakelike, a path that unites the opposites in the manner of the guiding caduceus, a path whose labryrinthine twists and turns are not lacking in terrors.” C.G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy

 

 

 

 

 

Projection: Is that too, me?

Projection. An automatic process whereby contents of one’s own unconscious are perceived to be in others. (Jungian analyst, Frith Luton @ frithluton.com)

One of the tasks of consciousness is to learn what is 'I' and what is not. For the personality, that means distinguishing what is Me, and what is not Me. It is nowhere as simple or as easy as it sounds, because of a natural psychological mechanism called Projection. On the level of personality - small self - we often project much of the worst - and of the very best - of us in others. "What a liar man that is!" "She is so disagreeable!" "How creative he is!" "I wish I were as desirable as that woman!"

 

Negative projections blind us to shadow aspects of our own personalities that need to be recognised, and for which we need to take responsibility. In so doing, they hinder our psychological maturation, trouble our relationships with others, and foster misconceptions and prejudices that prevent us from recognising and appreciating the true nature, qualities and potentialities of the person, race or group onto which we have projected.

 

Positive projections can hold us in destructive patterns of self criticism, helplessness and unworthiness, keeping us ignorant of our qualities. They also hinder us from seeing the person on whom we have projected as who she really is, which means that we do not genuinely relate to them.  Until we recognise and claim back our positive projections, we remain ignorant of totally acceptable, desirable or even exceptional qualities, and our unexpressed, undeveloped potential, so that we fail to grow into the person we could be.

“Just as we tend to assume that the world is as we see it, we naïvely suppose that people are as we imagine them to be. . . . All the contents of our unconscious are constantly being projected into our surroundings, and it is only by recognizing certain properties of the objects as projections or imagos that we are able to distinguish them from the real properties of the objects. . . .Unless we are possessed of an unusual degree of self-awareness we shall never see through our projections but must always succumb to them, because the mind in its natural state presupposes the existence of such projections. It is the natural and given thing for unconscious contents to be projected.”

Carl Jung, "General Aspects of Psychology," par. 507.

“ Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly.” ( Carl Jung, Archaic Man). 

I have been thinking about this a lot lately, as veils are dropping and exposing to me so much that I had thought was real, but is not. My ego is taking quite a beating, and it is not pleasant, though necessary.

"The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do," said Jung, "is to withdraw the projection of our own shadow onto others.” 

It feels a lot like finding fine silken threads in the mud, and one by one, drawing them out. No Aschenputtel (Cinderella) trying to pick lentils or peas from out of the ashes ever had to work so hard. 

Where are my birds?

Multidimensional Personality

As a uni student many years ago studying world history, cultural anthropology, geography and psychology, I was suddenly struck by the realisation that everything - everything - is interconnected and affects everything else. The flutter of a butterfly's wing might not seem to cause a hurricane but in the greater scheme of things, nothing in this world - not culture, not history or human thought - remains untouched by the reflected light of a tiny jewel on Indira's universal web.

 

(image from radiant child yoga)

 

That insight changed my view of the world. The world of separate nations, cultures and histories that I had lived in before simply ceased to be.

 

This week, I was overwhelmed by another aspect of this insight, this time regarding human psychology. In response to a question about Jung's approach, a psychotherapist friend wrote "it might be helpful to add something about Organismic Theory. It was a view developed in Biology that emphasized the holistic-developmental nature (as opposed to the reductive-deductive approach) of all living organisms."

 

That was it! I felt it. Something had hit home... so I did a little investigation.

 

Organismic theory is described by the APA* as "an approach to psychology that emphasizes the total organism, rejecting distinctions between mind and body. It embraces [an] ... approach that takes account of the interaction between the organism and its environment." *(American Psychological Association).

 

How obvious! yet until then, I had not really understood it, not in my bones, not viscerally. Now I did. I felt it in every cell of my body, which rang like a bell at the knowing that I am not a discrete object but an ever-evolving confluence of everything I have ever experienced, consciously and unconsciously: the texture of a wall, scent of a patch of earth, family, society, food, air I have breathed, every person to person interaction, mistakes, misunderstandings, regrets, hopes, belly laughs, people passed on the street .... Everything is connected, and I- all of what I am, could be or will be - am one tiny but valuable part of One Infinite Consciousness.

 

It is not enough to know it intellectually, all this talk about holism and oneness. I had to feel it in the cells of my body, in my gut, in my deepest heart to Know it.

 

 

 

Prometheus

Prometheus' love for humankind drove him to rebel against Zeus, whom he had only recently (in Olympian time) helped to overcome the Titans and claim the throne of the gods.

He is not overly impressed by Zeus, though, perhaps because he is himself of the older race, the Titans, and in the ancient poem, Prometheus Bound, it is also said that some of the older gods and nymphs do not like him much.  Hephaestus observes that "Zeus's heart is pitilessly harsh, and everyone whose ruling power is new is cruel and ruthless." The nymphs, daughters of Oceanus, who come to sympathise with Prometheus, say, "New gods now rule on Mount Olympus, and, like a tyrant, Zeus is governing with new-fangled laws, overpowering those gods who were so strong before." 

Prometheus the Titan had helped Zeus overcome the Titans because of their cruelty, but he soon realises that Zeus is also sometimes cruel, and arrogant, and rather dismissive of humanity, whom Prometheus loves. His tricking Zeus into accepting the worst part of a sacrifice can be seen, then, as a little prick to deflate Zeus' ego a bit, but it makes the new Father-of-heaven furious, and he rather pettily, I think, withholds fire from humankind so that they languish almost to extinction. So Prometheus steals some it back for them, for which he is cruelly punished.

                        painting by Heinrich Feuger

Prometheus is nailed to the side of a high mountain in the Caucuses where a great eagle daily eats his liver (the symbol of life, lifeblood), which regrows to be eaten again the next day. My grandfather from the Caucuses told me how the wind there rushes through wide valleys and whips around mountain tops in storms and thick mists and gales, that eagles soar, and are seen as sacred. No coincidence that it is an eagle, royal denizen of the air, that eats Prometheus' liver every day.

                        Painting by Jacob Jordaens

Some mythologists and psychologists see Prometheus as representing the urge of human consciousness to awaken, to grow and become autonomous. Yes, I can see that. More than that, though, I see in his love for humankind and his refusal to bow to unjust authority expressions of Free Will, of an autonomous Mind with its own morality and valuations. Aeschylus' poem seems to confirm that.

It also describes the bringing of fire to humans as a conscious, intentional sacrifice. With foresight, Prometheus knew that he would be severely punished for it, though not so cruelly, for had he not been Zeus' ally?

"Thanks to my advice, the gloomy pit of Tartarus now hides old Cronos and his allies. I helped Zeus, that tyrant of the gods—now he repays me with this foul torment. It is a sickness which somehow comes with every tyranny to place no trust in friends."

Prometheus' identification with humankind, and his contempt for Zeus and the gods of Olympus who dare not offend him are expressed in this poem.

Hymn: Prometheus / Cover thy spacious heavens, Zeus (Goethe, 1772-1774)

Cover Your heavens, Zeus,
With cloud vapor
And try Your strike, as a boy 
Beheading thistles,
Against oaken tree and mountain height;
You still must leave me
My Earth standing 
And my hut which You did not build,
And my hearth, home's glowing
Fire which You begrudge me.

I know of nothing poorer
Under the sun than You gods!
Indigently You feed
Your majesty
On proffered sacrifice 
And breathfuls of prayer.
You would starve to naught
If children and beggars
Were not such fools full of hope.

When I was a child
That knew not its way in the world
I would lift my deluded eyes
To the sun as though out beyond it
There were an ear to hear my complaints
A heart like mine
That would take pity on my oppression.

Who came to my aid
Against the Titans' and their insolent rage?
Who delivered me from death,
From slavery?
Was it not you, sacred heart ablaze,
Who achieved it all?
And, swindled in your youth and good will,
Did you not glow, with thanks fit for a Savior,
For that mere Sleeper on high?

I should honor You? For what?
Did You ever gentle
The ache of my burden?
Did You ever dry
The tears of tribulation?
Was I not forged to manhood
By Time Almighty
And Eternal Destiny,
My masters and Yours?

Perhaps You believed
I should find life hateful,
And flee to the wilderness
Because not all my blossom-dreams 
Reached ripeness?

Behold
Here I sit, fashioning men
In my own image,
A race after my likeness,
A race that will suffer and weep,
And rejoice and delight with heads held high
And heed Your will no more
Than I!

(Translated by A.Z. Foreman @ poemsintranslation.blogspot.com)

 

Jung says that "sacrifice proves that you possess yourself, for it does not mean just letting yourself be passively taken: it is a conscious and deliberate self-surrender, which proves that you have full control of yourself, that is, of your ego….” (CW11, ¶390.). Yes. Prometheus’ sacrifice shows a quality of mind that one does not find in the other gods, its strength, its morality and sovereignty.

No other god of Olympus sacrificed as Prometheus did.

This is no ordinary trickster or obedient god. This is a Titan, created from the original elemental forces of the world, a grandson or heir to the Mesopotamian Tiamat whose body became the earth’s mountains and rivers. He is primal, fire and air, the fierce and creative power of love, of mind, of imagination. And Hesiod wrote that it was he, Prometheus, and his brother, Epimetheus, hindsight, not the gods, who created humankind from earth itself, and Athena breathed life into them. 

The work of Old Age

"An ever-deepening self-knowledge is, I’m afraid, indispensable for the continuation of real life in old age, no matter how unpopular self-knowledge may be. Looking outwards has got to be turned into looking into oneself. Discovering yourself provides you with all you are, were meant to be, and all you are living from and for. The whole of yourself is certainly an irrational entity, but this is just precisely yourself, which is meant to live as a unique and unrepeatable experience."

- C.G. Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters