Jung and Ubuntu

In my last post I waxed on about Freud, not because I get Freud or feel he has definitively defined the human psyche.  I wrote about him because I think he provides a good basis for how we talk about things like the psyche, ego, unconscious self, conscious self, pleasure, flight, etc., etc.  Maybe that's how Jung was feeling about him when he wrote to Dr. Freud.  I can just imagine the letter.  Hey Sigmund, You don't know me but I think we may have some common interests - dreams, early life experiences, sub conscious mind, super conscious mind - you know, stuff like that.  Want to get together and talk about it sometime? And so they did.  As with many May-December relationships, Jung kept searching for what was around the next idea and Freud just wanted to stay where he felt comfortable.  I'm told the relationship ended when Jung kept expanding his ideas and Freud said, "enough already."

Speaking of expanding ideas, it was Jung that brought us the concept of a collective consciousness.  Several years ago I was in a dream group.  A fellow member was an analyst/psychologist.  Once when we were talking about symbols, he was trying to explain that Jung believed that there were certain symbols,  or archetypes, that appeared in all cultures and that had similar meanings in all cultures.  When someone asked how that could be, he drew this big circle.  Then he drew several smaller circles with large parts of the little circles overlapping the large circle, sort of like a venn diagram.  He said, "the small circles represent individual minds, which are all part of a larger mind - the collective consciousness."  He said there was nothing we had to do, nothing to learn or study, in order to be a part of that collective consciousness.  That moment was transformative for me.  I felt somehow less weird, not less unique, but more connected to all of humanity and even all of the universe.  Ideas, feelings, knowings - things that I didn't even have language for, suddenly made sense to me.  Thank you Dr. J.

Now, here I am years later in a similar setting, studying to be a spiritual director.  We do talk of dreams and symbols and their meanings sometimes, but rather than looking at things through a psychological lens, we are looking at them through, well beyond spiritual, an ethereal lens.  My teachers base their teachings and practices on early contemplative mystical christianity.  As they teach they try to understand and define the practices of the christian mystics of the third century and earlier - the desert mothers and fathers.  The works of scholars and theologians like Merton, Keating, Armstrong, Norris, Bourgeault, and Newell are assigned regularly.  Six months into this program, a pattern is emerging for me.  That pattern is, to quote Dr. J., "the small circles represent individual minds (not just our minds but our souls, our very essence I say), which are part of a larger mind (not just a larger mind, Our larger Mind, our Souls, the very Essence of all living things I say) - the collective consciousness."  It seems simple, but it is true, I believe the collective consciousness is what we call God.  At least that is how I understand and define God.  The continual thesis of my current studies is simply put, God is in everyone of us, every one of us is in God.  These are my words, the best I can do with a this concept that seems beyond our simple verbal language.

Back to Jung.  While Jung was not a religious person, he did speak of psychological maladies as spiritual illnesses and deficiencies.  His own experiences with what he called neurosis and hearing voices convinced him that when psychological symptoms present, it is an indication an absence of wholeness.  He suggested that alcohol and drug abusers were seeking to fill or repair a spiritual void or brokenness with chemical experiences.  Jung is credited with influencing Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, their correspondence affirms that.  Jung more or less declared that psychological health and wholeness was not possible without a spiritual health and wholeness.

So, I would like to say thank you to Carl Jung, introduced to me by Dr. J and more deeply by Dr. B., for helping eradicate my early concept of God.  That early God - father, omnipotent, all seeing, punishing, angry and loving (can you say schizoid personality disorder???), never ever made sense or helped me feel good about myself or the world.  The God I now can get my mind around, or rather the God that can get it's mind around mine, is the God I can believe in.  In this kind of a relationship with God, I have to take some responsibility (and credit) for what's happening in the universe as well as my smaller world.  Every thought, every action taken by all of us becomes a part of that collective consciousness.  We - all of the universe known and unknown, comprise God.

In closing this post I say Ubuntu.  No, not the cola, the computer font, or the Linux operating system. Ubuntu - an ethical concept of African origin which if it has to be translated into words loosely means - "I am because You are, You are because I am."