The following is a Dream by Anandh, and my interpretation, which highlights the concept that symbolic meaning is derived from three levels of association.

Anandh K • I want to share a dream I had about six years ago... I would like your comments.... 

THE DREAM 

I am walking along a winding pathway inside the gates of a premises, towards a building. I reach the building and ring the bell. The door opens and an usher smiles and invites me in. That usher is me too. 'Please sit down. He will see you in a few minutes.' he says. It is a large hall. At a corner of the hall is a spiral staircase. He climbs up and gets back within a minute and says. 'You may go to him now. he is waiting for you.' 
I climb up the stairs. As I reach the landing I see two doors. One door is plain. The other one has some poster stuck on it. I can hear the muffled noise of some loud music filtering through the closed door. The usher (me) guides me to the plain door. He softly knocks on the door and tells me, 'You may go in now.' 
I step in. It is a large, bright room. The wall facing the door is a large window. Outside the window is a big tree, with branch quite close to the window. The walls are white the furniture is white, the sofa is white and the person who rises from the sofa is wearing a white kurta and white pyjamas. The floor is covered by an off-white carpet. On the small, low tea table a vase holds fresh flowers. His face is serene, his eyes are deep like pools of silence. And it is me! He ever so gently extends his hands and holds mine. His touch is cool and soft. Silence pervaded the room. He made me sit beside him on the sofa. In a soft, low voice he started talking to me. He spoke very little. Then he pointed to the window. As I turned to the window I saw a kingfisher alight on the branch near the window. I could see the flourescent turqoise feathers under the wings. The branch gently swayed before it settled again. It sang for a short while and then flew away. The branch swayed again and it took longer to settle this time. He smiled at me. I could sense that the meeting was over. He placed his hand on my shoulder and smiled into my eyes. As I opened the door and was about to step out, he said, 'Now that you are here, meet my brother in the next room before you leave.' 
I knock on the other door. 'Hi, come on in,' shouts a voice above the din. As I push open the door the noise of loud music fills my ears with a shock. I enter the room. It ais of the same size as the other one, but the floor is strewn with books, CDs, papers, picture cards and posters of pop stars adorn the walls. It takes a moment for me to find him amongst all that. He too is me! He is waering a pair of faded blue jeans which is frayed at the bottom. He is wearing a tea shirt with loud colours. 'Hi, come, sit,' he shows me to a straight chair without arms. I go and sit down. 'So, you met him, didn't you? Ok, good. All who meet him meet me too. I like you. I want to show you something. Let me find it for you. he dashes here and there and from amidst the jumble of books and cds, he picks a CD. 'I am sure you would like this one,' he says and in a moment, the sound of a different kind of music fills the room; a kind of a folk melody. That somehow suits the atmosphere of the room. He talks to me about the recent trends in art and literature. I feel quite easy with him. After a while I get up and take leave of him. 'I am gald you came. do come again, he says. I think him and come out. As the door is shut there is a sudden silence. 
The usher waits for e at the foot of the spiral staircase. He walks along with me upto the door. ' I am sure both of them are gald that you came. So am I,' he says and close the door softly behind me. 

I woke up with the feeling that the kingfisher is the most important aspect of the dream.

On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 9:44 AM, John Brusseau <jn.brusseau@hotmail.com> wrote:
Anandh, please feel free to question me about any of this.THE DREAM 

I am walking along a winding pathway inside the gates of a premises, towards a building.
This is your path in life (whether it is current with the dream, or current with the interpretation isn’t clear.). You are following a winding spiritual path toward an unknown conscious existence (the building).
I reach the building and ring the bell.
You finally become conscious of this new conscious point of view (house) and seek to enter in-ring the bell (familiarize yourself with this new point of view).
The door opens and an usher smiles and invites me in. That usher is me too.
Within this new point of view, you find yourself at home (you usher yourself in).
Please sit down. He will see you in a few minutes.' he says.
You tell yourself to relax, and that you will soon find yourself.
 It is a large hall.
You are now in a place of transition (the hall).
At a corner of the hall is a spiral staircase.
In this place of transition there is spiritual growth spread out before you (the spiral staircase).

He climbs up and gets back within a minute and says. 'You may go to him now. he is waiting for you.' 
You soon come to the moment of asking yourself to experience this spiritual growth in order to find our self (ascend the stairs to meet you).

I climb up the stairs. As I reach the landing I see two doors.
In going on this spiritual quest, you come to see two options set before you.

One door is plain.
One option is simple, unadorned, perhaps not very appealing looking.

The other one has some poster stuck on it. I can hear the muffled noise of some loud music filtering through the closed door. {Is the noisy room the room behind the postered door?}
There is some culturally conceived embellishment recommending this option (the poster). Beyond this option you hear a lot of noise of busyness.

The usher (me) guides me to the plain door.
You guide yourself to the plain option.

He softly knocks on the door and tells me, 'You may go in now.' 
You peacefully ask entrance to this option, and then tell yourself it is okay to take this option now.

I step in. It is a large, bright room.
In taking this plain-looking option you find a frame of mind (room) that is full of enlightenment.

The wall facing the door is a large window.
You encounter a perspective on life (window) that is the source of the enlightenment.

Outside the window is a big tree, with branch quite close to the window.
Through this new perspective on life you can see a significant, big, truth/archetype (large tree), that is closely associated with this new perspective on life.

The walls are white the furniture is white, the sofa is white and the person who rises from the sofa is wearing a white kurta and white pyjamas. {Isn’t a kurta a kind of pajama? What is your cultural association with the kurta?}
Everything is righteous/harmonious (white), the conscious supports for this new point of view (walls), the trust you place in this new point of view (sofa), and the mentality (man) which you encounter there, is clothed in the garments of trust/rest (pajamas), and righteousness/harmony (white).[ I don’t yet understand your association with the kurta.]

The floor is covered by an off-white carpet. {What is your personal, and /or cultural association with this color?}
And the foundation of this new conscious point of view (the floor of the room/house) is also covered in a sense of righteousness/ harmony.

On the small, low tea table a vase holds fresh flowers.
There is a very intimate, personal kind of fellowship, that is humble, that holds pleasant associations for you (the small, low, tea table and the flowers).

His face is serene, his eyes are deep like pools of silence. And it is me!
You are surprised to find that you are able to feel serenity, and have a peaceful vision of life. It is implied that you wonder at yourself for having this wonderful spiritual experience.

He ever so gently extends his hands and holds mine.
This new righteous/harmonious mentality you have discovered within you now begins to extend to, and effect, your actions. (Actions = hands)

His touch is cool and soft.
The effect your new spiritual mentality is having upon your actions is soothing.

Silence pervaded the room.
Whereas the other option presented to you was full of noise, busyness, this spiritual option, where you have found to your pleasant surprise this spiritual mentality, is able to be comfortable with non-activity, with stillness.

He made me sit beside him on the sofa.
This new spiritual mentality prevailed upon you to trust/rest your relationship with him to him (sit beside him on the sofa).

In a soft, low voice he started talking to me. He spoke very little.
Then this spiritual aspect of you began to communicate concepts, and ideas, and thoughts to you in a very intimate/personal (not loud and clear) voice.

Then he pointed to the window.
Then the spiritual aspect of you pointed out the new perspective on life.

As I turned to the window I saw a kingfisher alight on the branch near the window.
As you began to use this new perspective on life, you began to notice an intuition of a time of peace between times of storm (the kingfisher). [according to Ovid and Hyginus, the kingfisher is the origin of the expression, ‘Halcyon days’the period of time in which the kingfisher laid her eggs was a time in which there would be no storms. {Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingfisher}  under the section, Relationship with Humans] 

 I could see the flourescent turqoise feathers under the wings.
You could see the ability of this intuition, to spread spiritual enlightenment.
Kingfishers iridescent colors are not actually iridescent colors (accept in American kingfishers), but are the result of the composition of their wings spreading the blue light in the spectrum. {Wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingfisher}

The branch gently swayed before it settled again.
The idea (branch) you were getting from this intuition was gently moving in your mind.

It sang for a short while and then flew away.
This intuition lasted only a short time (as most intrusions do. They flit across our field of vision, and then are gone).

The branch swayed again and it took longer to settle this time.
The idea I got from this intuition resonated in my mind for while, and bit longer than when I first saw it, and then it passed.

He smiled at me. I could sense that the meeting was over.
This spiritual mentality you experienced signaled you that your interaction with it was pleasantly (smiled) at an end, for the time being.

He placed his hand on my shoulder and smiled into my eyes.
This spiritual mentality in you wanted to decisively communicate to you that you were acceptable.

As I opened the door and was about to step out, he said, 'Now that you are here, meet my brother in the next room before you leave.' 
As you were about to conclude your encounter with this spiritual mentality in you, you were directed to see that there is a related mentality waiting behind the other option.

I knock on the other door. 'Hi, come on in,' shouts a voice above the din. As I push open the door the noise of loud music fills my ears with a shock. I enter the room. It ais of the same size as the other one, but the floor is strewn with books, CDs, papers, picture cards and posters of pop stars adorn the walls.
The other option in your life, looks like this room. It is full of knowledge (books), artistic expression (CDs), developing intellectual ideas (papers), personal communications of concepts (postcards), and various concepts of what society celebrates (pop-star posters).

This room is like the room of a college student. I would guess that this symbol is a picture of the aspect of your life as a student of higher learning/higher intellectual pursuits (as in the quest for information related to psychology, sociology, and possibly anthropology.)

 

It takes a moment for me to find him amongst all that. He too is me! He is waering a pair of faded blue jeans which is frayed at the bottom. He is wearing a tea shirt with loud colours. 'Hi, come, sit,' he shows me to a straight chair without arms. I go and sit down. 'So, you met him, didn't you? Ok, good. All who meet him meet me too. I like you. I want to show you something. Let me find it for you. he dashes here and there and from amidst the jumble of books and cds, he picks a CD. 'I am sure you would like this one,' he says and in a moment, the sound of a different kind of music fills the room; a kind of a folk melody. That somehow suits the atmosphere of the room. He talks to me about the recent trends in art and literature. I feel quite easy with him. After a while I get up and take leave of him. 'I am gald you came. do come again, he says. I think him and come out. As the door is shut there is a sudden silence. 
The usher waits for e at the foot of the spiral staircase. He walks along with me upto the door. ' I am sure both of them are gald that you came. So am I,' he says and close the door softly behind me. 

I woke up with the feeling that the kingfisher is the most important aspect of the dream.
This section of your dream seems to be telling you that the part of you that can be still, which is the part of you that can receive intuitions that there will be periods of calm amidst the storms of life, is related to the aspect of you that can get very busy, and that you need both parts of you.

The kingfisher stands out to you, because it is not simply insight about life in general, as the rest of the dream is, but is specifically telling you what is going to happen in your life. There will be some halcyon days, in which you can attend to your own spiritual growth (eggs). And these halcyon days will not last forever, but are for the purpose of preparing you to reengage with your busy life of service to others.

It occurs to me that if you cannot place the circumstances presented in this dream in some specific past time frame, then it may be about to unfold in your life now. Dreams sometimes hold up these sorts of predictive dreams to us, years in advance, in order to highlight the spiritual nature of our life. Spiritual things are not limited to the time/space continuum.



John...In the period that has passed since I had that dream, so many things have come to pass. I was serving as an officer in the Govt of India for nearly thirty five years. I had been contemplating on a change of career for a few years. During the period after the dream I took voluntary retirement from govt service. I am now practicing as a therapist, which is deeply fulfilling and my clients think very highly of me. I started reading Jung when I was nineteen. Now I am sixty. when I decided to take voluntary retirement I did not have clear plans as to what I was going to do. And what I am doing now is the best thing that could have happened to me. 

I will share more as time goes by. 

love

anandh



On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 7:50 PM, John Brusseau <jn.brusseau@hotmail.com> wrote:
Yes, obviously your dream was pointing to a place in which you were going to be reintroduced to yourself, to aspects of you that you needed to become more conscious of. A change in vocation can give us the time to focus on different aspects of ourselves. Your change from working as an officer to working as a counselor definitely would have allowed you to focus upon the aspect of your soul that was a spiritual force (like the man in the plain room). The two doors are a classic symbolic expression of the existence of two options, or a dilemma.The officer, I would guess, is concerned with the management of a group of people. The counselor is concerned about people and their personal issues.  Both sides of you are connected in the dream, and I think that that is because the way our subconscious mind directs the development of our soul is by first giving us a vocation that is a symbolic representation of what we are ultimately going to be doing. So, perhaps the work you did as an officer, somehow developed in you the skills you were going to need as an officer.
So, it does perhaps look like the Kingfisher may have been a spiritual/intuitional sense of the ensuing period of transition (from one vocation to the other).
I have noticed that many of us who have read Jung extensively have tended to take Jung's interpretation of particular symbols as an exact one for one interpretation (my father tended to do this). Symbolic meaning does not lend itself to one for one interpretations however. Symbolic meaning is derived from our associations with things on three distinct levels of experience. Jung had not developed his understanding of symbolism this far, and so he did not know this (as far as I am currently aware).The Kingfisher,or birds in general, could adequately be interpreted to mean a spiritual force, in as much as in a more axiomatic sense it is a force that mediates between the spiritual and the psychical aspects of our human consciousness. What I am trying to say in this point is that a chair could mean different things to us on different levels of association. My personal experience with chairs comes to add a layer to what a chair means to me. My culture's experience with chairs would add a layer of meaning to the chair symbol for me (take for example of the difference in the way a Japanese person would interpret the meaning of chairs, and an Englishman's interpretation of the same symbol), and my universal human association with chairs, a chairs axiomatic definition, would add a foundational layer to what a chair means to me. Thus a Kingfisher could represent one thing to one person, who was required to apply a personal associative layer of meaning to the Kingfisher symbol, and another interpretation to a person who needed to apply a cultural layer of meaning to the symbol.  Universally speaking (or axiomatically) I currently see a bird to be a symbol of an intuition about something. It registers in our minds as a fleeting thought, as a bird flitting across our field of vision. The Kingfisher is a particular kind of bird,and thus it would represent a particular intuition. In this case, I simply looked up the Wikipedia entry on the Kingfisher, and extracted the essential elements of our human associations with this particular bird. Fortunately, the Kingfisher entry had sufficient historical, sociological, information on the bird to allow me to get a distillate of its meaning. [If you had had a personal association with the Kingfisher, this would then be built on top of its more universal, or cultural meaning.]Anandh, would you be comfortable with me posting this last little part of our discussion of your dream on the LI Jungian forum? I think it would add an important discussion to the group, on the interpretation of symbolic meaning. If you'd rather not, of course, feel free to tell me so. I could just as easily introduce this topic in another way that did not involve you.

    God is perhaps the most significant idea humans have ever pondered. In the God idea we have something that attempts to account for the context of everything. The God idea is the first, and on a symbolic level, the grandest, version of a unified field theory. It is a subconscious attempt to depict for our inherently subjective conscious mind the notion of the ordering factor behind the unfolding material universe.

     As such, the God idea is also a symbol of those sub-categories of the idea of the oneness of everything (the idea that everything belongs to one set), ideas such as love/harmony/order, and context/objectivity/insight. With this in mind, the Christian idea of there being a need for humans to have harmony with God restored, is by extension, the psychological reality that we humans need to have our connection with love and objective insight restored to us.

     We humans need to be reconnected with a mentality that everything in the universe (which, of course, we are a part of) is a manifestation of love. On a practical philosophical level (I know those two words are seldom used together, but work with me here) mater is in existence only because of the presence of order. In fact, it could logically be said that matter IS order.  And if matter exists because order exists, then logically, order predates and prevails over, matter.

     And it could be said that order in the universe necessarily implies the harmony of components, and that harmony is an expression of love. Order implies purpose, in as much as order is the ultimate purpose for things, mapped out.

     The reason the restoration of the God idea is so important to us is that the dual aspects of our instinctual drive to become conscious (the Will and the Heart, or in modern terminology, The Rational mind and the Super ego) have been damaged, have been made less conscious, by our alienation from the god idea.

     The question for humans then is what does harmony with the idea of the context for everything being love’s order, look like, and what happens in a human that damages this idea. It is probably clear to many of you that it is trauma and disorienting pain that is factor that damages our concept of the harmonious ordering of our life, our world, and our universe. Pain, and specifically, fear (Satan/Lucifer) teaches us that there is no order, that there is no love, and that if there were an absolute context for things in the universe, we would not have had to suffer.

     Of course such an idea is merely the subjective reaction of a wounded human consciousness. It is this woundedness that must be repaired in us. Satan/Lucifer is a symbol of this wounded, subtle yet harmful, too intelligent for our own good, emotionally wounded mentality in mankind. In the book of revelations, in fact, we see that it is Satan who comes as a dragon, a symbol of trauma (fear), and who generates the wild, harmful, un-domesticated (that is, compulsive/obsessive) instinctual desires within us (the Beast). Fear usually seems intelligent to us when it is our fear, and yet it is only a subtle delusion that brings destruction and death.

     If we could have every human emotional wound fully healed, what would our consciousness look like? Would it not look like a mentality of absolute peace, serenity, in the face of everything that happens to, and around us? We would understand completely that all that is happening is a part of the grand, perfectly ordered, loving, factor behind the unfolding material universe, and we would feel joy. Every sorrow, and every pleasure, every moment of suffering, and satisfaction would be met with an intense inner peace and joy. We could still feel sorrow and pain, but it would always be wrapped up in peace and joy.

 

    Okay, so where does the Christian notion of a savior enter this psychological equation?

1. The Christian notion of a savior is constructed on the theme that the ordering force that generated the unfolding material universe, needs the presence of free will in some components of this universe in order to be fully actualized, realized, and that,

2. in as much as this free will is given to us humans, and we have chosen a trust in the knowledge of good and evil, in place of our more natural trust in the idea and mentality of love’s ordering force (in guiding our decisions in life), we have disengaged somewhat from our harmony with the order factor of the universe we are a part of.

3. And in as much as this ordering factor generated our existence, and produced such a choosing factor within us, the ordering factor must also produce the means for our restoration (while, at the same time maintaining the viability of our freedom to chose or reject restoration of our lost harmony with the ordering factor unfolding in the material universe.

    The Christ/messiah idea is essentially a carefully constructed, and very detailed, myth that fully develops the idea that there is an ordering factor unfolding in all there is. If there is such a factor, and the universe does unfold as matter (which is essentially order), then even our detour into a misbegotten choice of disharmony with this order, will necessarily have been accounted for by this ordering factor. The messiah myth is about this ordering factor accounting for our choice to opt out of harmony with it, by subjectively being driven by fear to grasp for the control, the ego/conscience control, of our decisions. 

    This universal ordering factor is what we humans have always experienced as spirituality. Our human spirit is our means of becoming conscious of the ordering factor unfolding in as the material universe, of which we are a part.

    Trusting in Jesus, is trusting in the ordering factor, and turning away from mankind’s tendency to trust in the super ego, in our decision making process. If God, the ordering factor, is truly love/harmony/order, and God gave us the ability to make choices, within a naturally subjective (deceivable) consciousness, then God will naturally also produce the means for us to recover from the trauma of our bad decisions. This recovery means is embodied in the idea of forgiveness. The Christ myth is the embodiment of the idea of forgiveness, and it lets us know that forgiveness is totally natural, totally an expression of the universal order.

    Thus trusting Jesus is a psychologically effective path to embracing the idea of forgiveness for our bad choices. We would all like to believe we could be forgiven for our horrible decisions, but until we can see that forgiveness is a natural expression of the universal order, we don’t have the means we require to embrace forgiveness. We can attempt to intellectually convince ourselves that forgiveness is the reasonable and fair thing to embrace, but until we see that it is natural, we just can’t get there. We need a myth to get us there, because only a myth holds the archetypal expressions of the spiritual core, the ordering factor, within the unfolding material universe we are apart of.

 THE STORY OF JONAH is a perfect symbolic representation of the will being overwhelmed by depression (an enormous emotion) rising up from the depths of our heart. In running from our true life, our divine call, we begin to pursue something that will help us escape from the thing we are called to. At some point we give up altogether on pursuing what we want. This is depression, and is further defined by the sense of being swallowed up by an enormous subconscious emotion.

Depression always seems to come to us in the midst of a great storm threatening our soul. During a depression event we are exceptionally out of control. We find our self simply waiting whatever fate is to come. This out of control sensation is an important aspect of depression. It is a statement to out subjective, task-oriented, reasoning, choosing minds that we are not driving our own car. Someone else is. In other words, we are not doing what we really want to be doing. We have been coerced by our need for approval, into doing what we think someone else would want us to do.

The thing that releases us from our depression is if when we realize that we are powerless to escape our depression, we thus throw our self upon God’s mercy. This is important because it was our acting to avoid judgment that caused us to forgo our true life in the first place. Thus, being in a place in which the success of, the wellbeing of, our life rests upon God, not our performance, allows us to reconnect with our true life, our self. We have mercifully been ripped away from our conscience’s tyrannical mistaken governance of our life by the onset of depression, and are now freed to choose to trust love/God to rule our life instead of performance. When we trust God to govern us by his mentality of love, we are freed from the rule of a mentality of performance-based acceptance.

Depression originates in condemnation from one’s parent of the same gender. One grows up needing to earn approval, rather than find fulfillment. One may have had a generally good man for a father, or a good woman for a mother, and still have received a sense of condemnation from him/her, in as much as they have probably been dealing with self-condemnation for all of their life, and are thus going to see their self condemnation spill over onto you in moments of frustration, and disappointment, and failure.

Often it is not possible to sift through one’s memories and find specific occasions in which one’s parent condemned us. This is because it usually did not happen in obvious moments of judgment. Instead it happened by us hearing our parent’s values expressed, over and over again, and  us realizing we could never live up to those values.

This is where the personality type factor enters the depression equation. Jesus said, “a prophet is not without honor, except in his own land and his own home.” Jonah grew to adulthood in a family culture that could not honor what he brought to the table of community. He was the proverbial ugly duckling in his family.

The way this ugly duckling/prophet thing unfolds in a family environment is often somewhat subtle. The prophet is a child (male or female) who has the opposite personality/psychological type from that of their parent of the same gender. This child grows up naturally identifying closely with the parent of the opposite gender (who has the same psychological type as themselves). And here’s is the subtle part. The child identifies with their opposite gender parent, who happens to desire, and love, and thus highly value the very personality traits they don’t possess.

This affects the child in such a way that they are incapable of valuing their own personality traits. Thus they feel intrinsically wrong, and attempt to compensate by being what their identified with parent values. A boy attempts to be like his father, who he is inherently unlike, and a girl attempts to be like her mother, who she is inherently unlike. The boy identifies with his mother who loves and is drawn to, and thus highly values, his father’s personality. The daughter identifies with her father who loves, and values the personality of her mother.

As the child of such a family situation develops they increasingly attempt to perform in the manner there same gender opposite personality parent does, in order to gain a sense that they are valid. Of course this will never do. They are valid already. They have simply embraced the wrong conclusion as a child from watching there parents interrelationship. They will push hard to be who they aren’t, and do what they don’t naturally want to do, thus leaving them suppressing their true calling, their God-given destiny (like Jonah).

Depression is the rising to the surface of behavior that has been taking place internally for years. We have been shutting down our true will and desires (motivations) in an effort to win the approval of one whom we have felt condemned by. Often, condemnation is reinforced by the self-condemnation our parent of the same gender feels. They are insecure about the value of their own personality traits, and in an attempt to validate their personality they leave their child with the false impression that they need their child to be like them in personality in order for them to like their child.

Sometimes the damage to the parents self image is so deep, that the parent actually overtly states that their child is not valid unless they are like them in personality. More often, it is not overtly stated or even thought by the parent.

An odd afterward is added to the Jonah story. He was bitter after finally giving out his prophecy, which he just knew would be met with rejection and condemnation, only to find that it was accepted wholeheartedly. He was bitter because he was externalizing his own self condemnation for having unnecessarily put himself through misery.

When we finally do get with the program (of our true identity, and purpose, our true life) we are usually a little bitter for having gone through so much trouble in our attempt to avoid the possibility of getting condemned by others who don’t believe in our God (our self, our identity, purpose, and destiny). We invariably come to see that it was not their condemnation that we were running from, but our own self-condemnation.

We look a little pale (literally, Jonah’s skin was bleached white by the whale’s stomach acid), that is, we must endure a humbled self-image (as we begin to realize it was our fear that kept us from our SELF, not others condemnation). Here, in this biblical account of the prophet Jonah, we see the best definition of the causes and effects of depression we will ever find.

 

Toward a New Model of Human Conscious Existence

 

  The model we are currently using is hardly a model. It is, in fact, an amalgamation of confusing and vague ideas, clothed in incompatible terminology from incongruent philosophies, and intellectual disciplines.

  We have only the vaguest notion of what we are saying when we use the word Ego, for example. Freud was constantly massaging the term, to make it mean that aspect of our mind (conscious and unconscious) that tries to make our instinctual desires (our id) socially useful. In an effort to define what that aspect is, with more clarity, Freud associated the Ego (without telling us why he thought he should) with aspects of our conscious existence such as the intellect, judgment, tolerance, reality testing, control planning, defense, synthesis of information, and memory.

  And Jung, desiring to improve on Freud’s still inadequate model of human conscious existence, altered the definition of Ego to mean the conscious thoughts we have that are coming from the viewpoint in which we are the subject (thus implying that the Ego is a relatively subjective aspect of human consciousness).

  These two definitions contain something of value for our quest to build a model of human conscious existence, but their level of definition is still so shallow that they remain practically useless as a definition. And because so much of their respective models of human consciousness is based upon these shallow definitions of Ego, we are left with the need to continue what they started, and finish building a usable model of human conscious existence.

  What is needed is a really complete analogy. If we had one, we could understand what is what inside our conscious existence, and why it is so. I have found just such a useful analogy, in the religious text of the Hebrew creation myth.

  This account suggested itself to me because of its patently philosophical approach to the events of our world’s creation. This indicated to me that it might turn out to be an analogy of our human world, of human being. I was correct.


Note the way Moses uses repeating unitary, dual, and triad patterns in his description of the unfolding of our world.

First, the dual accounting of all that has transpired in the universe leading up to the myth that will now unfold.

1. In the beginning God made everything.
2. Then something came along and destroyed all life upon our planet. (for this interpretation of Genesis 1:2 read Isa 45:18

For thus saith Jehovah that created the heavens,

the God that formed the earth and made it, that

established it and created it not a waste, that formed it to be inhabited.

 

Then God moves to resurrect our corpse of a planet. The overall breakdown of this resurrection process is expressed in the following triad;

1. God-Ruah (spirit-breath) empathizes, God broods over the damage.

2. God-Elohim speaks the plan of resurrection into action.

3. After our planet is resurrected, God-YHWH, presides over the unfolding story of this resurrected planet.

 

This resurrection of our world is, itself, achieved by restoration of the three aspects of our existence;

1. sky, which equals the spiritual aspect of our being,
2. hydrosphere, which equals the psyche aspect of our being, and
3. land, which equals our physical being.

 

  This Resurrection is achieved by restoring the planet to its harmonious relationship with the Self (the sun). The restoration of harmony with our SELF is the catalyst that triggers the three stage restoration of the three aspects of our human existence (our planet’s atmosphere/spirit, hydrosphere/ psyche, and land/body).

1. The first stage of restoration is the restarting of the revolution of our planet (our human existence) on its axis, which manifests as night and day (conscious, and unconscious, passive, and active states). This is another duality.
2. and the differentiation of our psyche/hydrosphere from our spirit/atmosphere, and the resulting emergence of our physical form/land.
3. Finally our planet is given vegetation, which equals the archetypes, in order to normalize the atmosphere, still heavy with water vapor, thus making our planet able to sustain life once again.

 

  Another thing accomplished by the normalization of our atmosphere (our relationship with our spiritual existence) is that we are now able to see, become conscious of, the three aspects of our self,

1. the sun= our true identity,
2. the moon = our life’s purpose, and
3. the stars, our life’s ultimate absolute meaning.

 

  When the foundational aspects of our being, spirit/soul/body, are restored to a state in which they can sustain life, God then restores the three forms our human being is animated in;

1. Birds, the intuition,
2. fish, emotion, and
3. land animals, our instincts.

 

1. Our intuitions/birds are that aspect of our soul/psyche/hydrosphere that are associated with (are all about connecting us with) our spiritual being/atmosphere.
2. Our emotions/fish are that aspect of our soul that is associated with (are all about connecting us with) our soul.
3. Our instincts are the aspect of our soul that are associated with (are all about connecting us with) our body.

 

  Finally, there develops an aspect of our instinctual life that is capable of governing, and nurturing the instinctual, emotional, and intuitional life of our soul, and that aspect is humankind. Humankind is a symbol of the instinctual drive to become conscious.

 

The instinctual drive to become conscious becomes differentiated into a dual formation,

1. the Will (male), our drive to become conscious of what we want/need at the present time, all things considered, and
2. our Heart (female), our drive to become conscious of the value of things, based upon our experience. This feminine aspect of our instinctual drive to become conscious is commonly known as the conscience.

 
  The anima/animus ideas put forward with a significant degree of clarity by C.G Jung are archetypes of these two aspects of the instinctual drive to become conscious. The anima (the inner female in men, is the arch-example of the state of the man's relationship with his conscience, first symbolized as his Grandmother/mother, and then as his wife, and finally as his daughter/granddaughter. Likewise, the animus (the inner male in women) is an arch-example of the state of woman's relationship with her will, her sense of what she needs/wants at the present time, and all things considered.
  
  These twp aspects of human consciousness are meant to compliment one another, and when they do, we become more aware of what's really taking place in our life. When they are at odds with one another, our awareness of what's really happening in our life is damaged. We become psychologically, emotionally, instinctually impaired.

  It is important to note that our instincts (including our drive to become conscious), our emotions, and our intuition, all must feed upon our archetypal life (vegetation), either directly, or indirectly, in order to survive. This is another way of saying that our conscious life is based upon arch-examples of  what our life will entail, archetypes that are embedded in us genetically, before we have any experiences of life of our own.

  Consider this; if you did not have these genetically inherited arch-examples of what human life entails, you would have no foundational conscious categories into which you could place your own experiences.

  Archetypes allow us to become conscious of the things, and events, and circumstances we are experiencing, by giving us an analogy that correlates with our experience. We, thus, come to say; the system that I am experiencing, is connected to the intrinsic catalyst of authority in the same way the mother/matrix is connected with the father. Authority is father-like. The system is mother-like. When they become one (in harmony) they are capable of producing life, or a desired outcome.

  Without a mother and a father archetype, we could never understand what authority, or system is, or what their interrelationship with each other is. Thus our instinctual desire to become conscious (mankind) must feed upon our archetypes in order to survive and thrive.

  The way our intuitions, and emotions, and our other instinctual drives feed upon our archetypes, is that we cannot become conscious of what we are sensing intuitively, or feeling emotionally, or desiring instinctually without these templates of human life.

  This then is a somewhat more complete model of human existence, and human conscious existence, in particular. I have found that it explains an amazing amount of my experience of life. I have not yet found anything in my experience of human existence not covered in some way by this model.

  Even the genetically passed on nature of archetypes is covered in this model. This idea is represented by the roots which tie vegetation to our land (body). Our archetypes are rooted in our physiology, and yet are something more that physical matter. They are the building blocks of consciousness.

My current understanding of the anima/animus concept and its relation to same gender sexual orientation is that the symbolism is the same for a same-gender sexual orientation as it is for a heterosexual orientation.

 

The animus is those aspects of our own mentality (or will) that we:

1.      have not yet faced within our self (in the case of a negative animus), or

2.      have not learned to love in our self (n the case of a positive anima).

 

And the anima is those aspects of our values that we:

1.      have not yet faced within our self (in the case of a negative anima),

2.      or have not yet learned to love (in the case of a positive anima).

 

A woman sexually oriented toward females is symbolically living out a psychological reality by virtue of her orientation; that is, that she must have her will (animus) restored to her in order for her to be complete. 

The same is true of a gay male; he must come to have his sense of values (his anima) restored to him in order for him to become complete. 

These psychological realities are not subject to our political, or religious, views on issues relating to sexual orientation, and we should remember that when being tempted to fiddle with symbolic interrelationships. They are way too important to screw with, out of a miss-guided attempt to make psychological theory fit with our contemporary political/religious/ or cultural views. 

Yes, this idea implies that something is damaged within persons with a same-gender sexual orientation. Whether this damage is genetically passed on, or is environmentally produced, there is clearly damage that must be addressed in order for psychological wholeness to be possible.

This may trouble those of us who are fighting against the fear-driven judgments of people who condemn gay/lesbian persons, causing them incredible emotional damage, but playing politics with psychological reality is not a solution to bigotry, just as playing theologian with psychological reality is not a solution to unwholeness. 

Can we look at people with a same gender sexual orientation objectively enough to put aside our religious/cultural/ and political convictions, and observe whether there is in fact such damage in the psyche of these persons? I can say, from my own observations, that there is such a limitation in persons of a same-gender sexual orientation. 

Of course, given the current level of politicization of sexual orientation issues, this may not even be a welcome topic to discuss within the United States, in the year 2011. I have found very few people, on either side of the political debates (I am not on either side) who are capable of openly, objectively, discussing issues relative to sexual orientation. 

The religious conservatives I know are only concerned with making sexual orientation primarily a theological issue. I have no interest whatever in making it primarily a theological issue. 

And the people I know who are fighting against the bigotry of people, which is aimed at same-gender sexual orientation persons, are so afraid of the conservative folk’s malevolence that they cannot even consider whether or not there are psychological/ and emotional factors that mirror the physiological and psychosexual factors within those within this community. 

Whether this damage is thought to be an integral part of same-gender sexual orientation, or it is thought to be ancillary to it, the damage still needs to be addressed.

So, what would damage to the core values (in the lesbian population) look like?

And what would damage to the will (in the gay population) look like? 

In women, it looks like a suppression of ego/conscience in favor of their sense of what they want (the will). 

In men it looks like a suppression of their sense of what they want/Will, in favor of their ego/conscience.

Whether their sexual orientation ever changes, this psychological imbalance needs to be addressed. in order for these persons to move toward wholeness.

That is my current view.

 

I think the cost of questing to find and accept the individual we are is essentially paid in the giving up the acceptance we had built up in the relationships that matter to us by selling our soul for that acceptance.

Individuation is a natural process, in which a person begins as an undifferentiated part of a family system. If the person is loved completely by this family system, he/she begins to differentiate themselves within the family system. Of course no one has been loved completely, or perfectly by their family system, and as a result we learn to pay for the love we didn't get by being what others wanted us to be. 

This spiritual/Social/emotional prostitution is so deeply ingrained within our psyche by the time we reach adulthood that it requires the death of our prostitution in order for us to become ourselves. We couldn't be ourselves when we were young, and now our false solution to our lack of love has become a part of our way of life. 

And because this process of being loved for who and what we are (or not) happens on an unconscious level, we don't even know just how much love we didn't receive, or need yet to get, in order for us to successfully individuate. 

Of course, when you have grown up you can no longer get the love from family that you need in order to be yourself. You needed it when you were still becoming you, still developing, and most importantly, still in a dependent relationship. Now that you are an adult you will need to find a dependent relationship that can effectively be substituted for the family system you outgrew. 

This is where the God idea comes in. And this is where the quality of love in this god-idea must be better at loving who and what we are than our family system. What we needed as children was a practically expressed acceptance of who and what we are.

What we need as adults is the same thing, only by some factor that can effectively be more significant to us than those relationships that screwed us up in the first place, and thus effectively motivate us to risk losing the relationships we have sold /and are selling our true selves in. 

You cannot take an old dried out musty bone away from a dog unless you have a juicy stake to replace it with. And we are all that dog.

Acceptance of us is the key, not moral performance. It wasn't important that our families saw as as morally perfect, only that they accepted us, and it isn't important now. 

Trust-based (as opposed to performance-based) Christianity is a powerful individuating force, because it offers this very kind of perfect, complete acceptance. Unfortunately this kind of Christianity has become largely bastardized by the same un-individuated factors that have shaped us all. One hardly can find it in its purest form in any Church today. Never-the-less it is still there for those willing to count the tremendous cost, and pay the tremendous price to hold it. 

Are we willing to lose acceptance from our siblings, and then our parents, and then our spouse, and then our social groups (including our academic peers, and our religious peers), and then ultimately (if you become this individuated) from even the society as a whole. 

This is the cost of individuation. If you are going to pay this cost, you will need to have a relationship that can effectively outweigh in value those relationships you will be forfeiting. This is a psychological fact of human life.  

We are all prostitutes! We are all firmly entrenched prostitutes. This wont be an easy process for us now.

 

The reason our childhood is so formative in our relationship with individuation is because it involves a significant degree of dependency. In that place of dependency upon our parents, whatever ratio of love to selfish fear we got from our parents comes to be a psychic template for our own relating with our real individual self. 

Where they were afraid of the real us, our real humanity, our real emotions, our real desires, our real personalities, etc, we also become afraid of the real us.

The importance of bringing up this issue of dependence is that unless we can find an emotional force the equivalent of the trust we placed in our parents, we will remain bound in the limits of our childhood.

I have danced with the Bob Dylan type when I was emerging from adolescence, and this helped me define my need to stubbornly persist in my own voice, however unacceptable it was to my surrounding culture. As I came to practically live out this type in my own life, I came to be able to define this type, and its meaning for me. Of course, this meant that it was then no longer of use to me, and I moved on to another type. 

The thing is, I only came to be able to live out this type because I had formed a fabulously rich, highly individualistic relationship with what I took to be God. And as I lived out my life with God, I began to find the dependent relationship I required in order to risk the loss of the relationships with my prostituted self that I was chained to from childhood. 

I would regularly come to a point of decision in which I had to choose between the flowering relationship I was experiencing with God, and my relationships with the people in my life. And even though I tremendously loathed the possibility of losing those relationships, I had come to feel a quality of acceptance in my relationship with what I took to be God that I could always choose God. And choosing this God of high quality acceptance led invariably to me accepting my humanity (in the face of my ego, and my conscience, and the values of my family, and civilization).  

And this relationship with God was never about God asking me to obey the rules. Instead is has always been about God asking me to trust his love to be able to govern my desires, and sort out my emotions, and define my intuitions, etc. 

This is the path of individuation I have been following, and so I have never stopped experiencing the death of prostitution of my soul, and the rebirth of my true person. It continues now in my life, with as much force as when I was an adolescent.

Of course, I am far from completely individuated, but the individuation I have experienced has added a ton of productivity, and creativity, and industriousness, and not mention insight into the human condition, to my life. Each of these spiritual deaths and rebirths has become a gusher of creativity for me, that does not play out.

Individuation in Three Stages

  Lao Tsu said; “First there was the One. The One begat the Two. The Two begat the Three. And the Three begat all else.

  Without going into the mountain of philosophical reality found in the archetype of the triad, it is important to bring up Lao’s magnificently pithy statement in order to convey the idea that there is a natural three stage development for a system, that when it is completed renders the system capable of producing, creating.

  Our human consciousness is also a system, and thus, we also must go through this three stage process in order for us to become realized beings.

  I specifically want to bring this three-stage process of individuation up, because it will help us see how our current level of individuation (and non-individuation) is manifesting in the state of our interpersonal relationships.

  In a person’s conscious development, their sense of who they are begins as a sense of being an undifferentiated part of the family.  If this family has a great degree of harmony, between mother and father, and parents and children, then there is set up inside the mind of the child, a natural emotional foundation requisite to the child seeing themselves as being part of the whole.

  If the child of an harmonious family system sees this Oneness aspect of their being; that they are an aspect of one set, one family entity, then they have what is required to move onto the next phase of their development, the differentiated phase. In order for a child to see themselves as a part of the whole, they must be accepted, and cherished by the parents and other members of the family.

  In the differentiation phase, the child begins to get a concept of who they uniquely are, by first noticing differences between them and the other siblings, and then by noticing the differences between them and their parents. This differentiation phase produces first, a dichotomy, like fire and ice, and this dichotomy is generated in order for the child to get enough conscious separation from the known, the inherited, the undifferentiated them, in order to see themselves with some objectivity. Another way to say objectivity here is to say, they come to see themselves with an overview of their identity within the larger context of family.

  This dichotomy, if it is fully developed, metamorphoses into a dualism. The dualistic marriage of compliments is the completion of the process of differentiation, and is thus the third stage of individuation. In this third stage, one sees that although there are differences, these differences are there in order to complete their family.

  This is what happens if the process of individuation happens within a perfectly harmonious family system, which of course, none of us had. We are the un-individuated children of un-individuated parents, and this fact of our life has meant that we have a great deal of internal and external resistance to becoming individuated.

  As the child moves into the differentiation phase, the parents and the siblings within the family system view the rise of dichotomous perceptions as a threat to the family system. They tend to see such dichotomous thoughts as a rejection of the family, instead of the realization of the family, which, of course, it is.

  Thus the child is prevented from, or at least greatly opposed in, their attaining the necessary separation required to see who they uniquely are in the grand scheme of things (in the overall family system). This opposition takes many forms, but is typically experienced as those passionate arguments between a parent and a child, and between siblings, in which the quality of the family system is somehow viewed as needing defending.

  So, because we don’t become differentiated, we tend to compensate for the lack of support we experienced by either overdeveloping those aspects of us that were viewed as being a threat to the family system, or by suppressing them to such an extent the we don’t even know that we have those aspects of us. We are, each of us, a combination of the two.

  And we grow up, in this condition, and begin to raise our own families, so that there develops in our own family systems, a mirror of our unsuccessful attempts to individuate. There is no freedom to allow for differentiation in our relationship with our significant other, and if we have children, there is no freedom for our children to express differences, either.

  If we cannot express differences of values, and perception, and belief, and desires, and approaches to attaining goals, etc, we don’t ever get to continue on to see ourselves as compliments of each other. We did see ourselves as compliments, back when we were falling in love with each other, back before we had to learn how to live in harmony with the mountain of differences in each other, but now that we have come to be faced with this mountain of differences, we think it is no longer possible to act as compliments of one another.

  As a couple, we get stuck at the same phase of the individuation process that we did as a child growing up in our un-individuated family system. We get stuck at the differentiation phase.

  And  if we remain together, in a state of constant tension, we grow into a bad version of the Good Cop/Bad Cop  scenario. One of us (typically, the one who is most assertive) gets to be the bad parent/spouse, and the other gets to be the good parent/spouse. And as our children grow into adults within our un-individuated family system they learn that there is no such thing as realized people in harmonious relationships, there is only a tragically managed cold-war dance of competitors for the limited supply of gratification.

  We need to see harmony, oneness in our families, as we are growing up, in order to grow into the differentiation phase, and onto the marriage of compliments phase, and since we have not grown up in such a family system, we need to find the oneness required to dare to differentiate, within a highly personal spiritual quest. If this spiritual quest (Abraham’s Journey away from Ur to Canaan, Moses leading the Children of Israel out of Egypt) is successful, we begin to experience some degree of individuation, and we pass the truth of the possibility of individuation on to everyone around us.

   Jungians have discovered the use of archetypes, which are used as a kind of vivid spiritual vision of those aspects of us that are different from anything embraced within our childhood family system. Experiencing the revelation of these archetypes can be a hugely validating thing in our life. Yet the freedom to differentiate is only the second phase of the process of becoming the individual we truly are. If we can’t come to see that we are meant to be a part of our family system, and this can be a very painful thing to see, we will never fully individuate, we will only mutate into an individualistic soul, who is incapable of taking up their divinely appointed role within the grand family system of mankind.

  Our divinely appointed role is a thing that will cost us everything. The resistance we experienced within our family system will be magnified a thousand fold, by the larger community family around us. If you or I become the real individual we are, we will arouse great emotional reaction in the world around us, who will feel that same old fear that our embrace of difference is a rejection of the value of their culture, or society, rather than the realization of the valuable aspects of their culture, or society.

  The little bit of individuation I have experienced has cost me my place in my family (for a time), and my place in my Christian community (for a time). My place in the American culture, or the world community has not been a factor, as of yet, because I have not become differentiated to that point yet. I hope I will get to experience that. Every bit of individuation I have experienced has been way more precious than the cost to me, in the loss of relationship with family (however long or short of duration).

  There are those who will tell you that individuation is simply about coming to wholeness. It make be, but it needs to be pointed out that there is always a great cost involved, and to not count the cost ahead of time is to sabotage your quest. Jesus was a fully individuated human, and look what it cost him. 

    There are two causal (spiritual) factors responsible for all of the creativity and destructiveness engendered in humanity; love and fear.

    Love IS the very force behind creativity. There is nothing else that generates creativity.

    Imagination is a subconsciously-driven aspect of human consciousness whose purpose is to bring love to our soul’s present state of disharmony. Imagination has both a literal and a figurative aspect to it.  For example, some preacher may imagine a giant crystal cathedral, and literally go about building such a structure.            

    The most significant aspect of this particular imagination, however, is the symbolically encoded statement from this man’s subconscious mind, telling him that perhaps it would be good if he could live out his religious life (the cathedral) a lot more transparently (crystal) than he is at present.

    Now, this man may never look at the symbolic aspect of this message from his creative self, but it there for him to access, should he ever want to. Likewise, our creativity is a message to us from our subconscious mind, and if we listen to the non-literal aspect of it, we will see love expressing itself through us.

    Love is creative, it is proactive, it is industrious, it is practical, it is humble, and it is brilliant.

    Fear is chaos, destructiveness, disorientation, subjectivity, insanity, disharmony, and pride.

    This love/fear equation is the fundamental reality of human existence.

    Love inspires creativity in the work-place, in the home, in the marketplace, in the religious world, in the sphere of intellectual pursuits. We may choose to ignore this catalyst behind the unfolding of creativity, but we will do so at the expense of creativity.