Love Yourself

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

I Corinthians 13:13

And when it comes to love, learning to love your self is one of the most important things you can do. That, and teaching your children to love themselves. Because, if you cannot love yourself, then you cannot fully love another.

Learning to love everything about your self is not easy. But, you must learn to love EVERY THING. And, if you can’t find it in yourself to love certain aspects of your self, at least accept them. Do not judge your self. Acknowledge and accept even if it is something you’re ashamed of.

Loving your self will then help you to heal your self in whatever way is needed.

Following are a few exercises to help you down the path to self love:

1) Every day write down five different compliments about your self. They can be anything from something physical to something nice you have done to something you have accomplished and so on.

2a) On one sheet of paper, write down the thing you’ve done that you are the most ashamed of.

2b) On a separate sheet of paper, write down what type of characteristics a person would have to have for you to be able to share that shameful thing with them

2c) Now which of those characteristics do you have?

2d) Finally, throw away the first sheet of paper, but keep the second. Read this second sheet to your self every day. Attempt to cultivate those qualities within your self.

3a) On one sheet of paper, share all the terrible things that have happened to you in your lifetime.

3b) Now, think back and see the 20-year-old you; now think about the 15-year-old you; go even further back, who were you when you were 10? Finally see the 5-year-old you.

3c) Knowing what you know now, what would you tell the 5-year-old you that would help them get through all the hard times that are coming. What can you tell them that would help to make that 5-year-old stronger and more capable of handling those problems when the time came?

3d) Now hug your self, and tell the 5-year-old you that you love them, and that you will always be there for them.

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Conclusion: The Kingdom Within

The early Christians lived under the impression that the world would soon end, so much so that Saint Paul advised them to avoid marriage if at all possible. They were so wrapped up in the conventional thinking of their times that they couldn’t even begin to comprehend the dynamic new psychological developments for humanity made possible by Jesus Christ.

It is all very Zen-ish, but the Western world was not prepared for that, and as a result Christian theology never developed a philosophy of the future or a theology of the workings of the Holy Spirit. That is why Christianity must now take into account the psychological dimension of Jesus’ sayings.

“Even as Jesus became a complete person,” John Sanford says, “so our calling is to imitate him, not by mimicking what we suppose to have been his virtues, but by approximating completeness ourselves as much as possible. In this way, we manifest Christ within us.”

If Christians, in general, were aware of this it would make Christianity the most psychological of all religions because of the emphasis it places on the inner development of the individual and the important role that it assigns to the ego as the bearer of consciousness, he says.

What prevents this from becoming a basically selfish concern is the fact that becoming self-actualized requires one to participate in the lives and needs of others.

“For completeness to develop in the life of an individual,” Sanford says, “that individual must be involved in the totality of life.”

In other words, becoming a person who is completely individuated is a matter of psychological development, but not of psychologizing. Totality arrives when life is lived completely and when the demands of both the inner and outer realities are met consciously.

“No one can hope to find his or her salvation without being deeply concerned with the salvation of other,” he says, “for human beings are complete in relationship and not as islands standing alone.”

The kingdom of God is a personal and psychologically real experience, yet it is not a purely personal experience. It has a transcendental as well as immediate character. The kingdom doesn’t belong to us. We belong to the kingdom.

“What the kingdom is in itself can never be contained by rational consciousness,” he says, “but can be expressed only in symbols.”

It cannot be thought but can only be embraced, even if only for a moment, in a mystical experience, for it far transcends personal consciousness and the limitations of the ego’s thinking.

“In its transcendence,” Sanford says, “the kingdom is a call into the future. In grounding our lives upon the kingdom within, we become a part of the evolving of human consciousness, which means being part of God’s intention.”

Here, in the evolution of consciousness, taking place through individuals but always transcending the individual in its significance, is the Christianity of the future, he concludes.

The Coming of the Kingdom, Part II

Castle by Griffin Logue

When doing the inner work needed to become self actualized, the image of the wedding might also be prevalent in our dreams. When we begin to dream of weddings, it can be a hopeful sign that the process of unification can finally begin, particularly if the ego (you in your dream) is not directly involved in the wedding.

By ‘directly involved,’ I mean that if you are one of the couple getting married then the dream is probably about something else like possession or seduction by certain aspects of the unconscious.

Because the wedding is a union of opposites bringing about unification, the main characters in the wedding are usually figures other than the ego itself.

“I tell you solemnly, nowhere in Israel have I found faith like this. And I tell you that many will come from east and west to take their places with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob at the feast in the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 8:10-11

And Luke 13:29 says, “And men from east and west, from north and south, will come to take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God.”

Here the kingdom of heaven is shown as a great gathering together that includes all humanity. In Luke’s Gospel, Sanford says, because he mentions all four compass points, the image is that of a mandala, which suggests wholeness or totality.

“The unity of the kingdom is a creative, not a static, unity,” Sanford says. “It is not a peace of quiescence, but a creative inner relatedness.”

Because God is primarily a Creator, his kingdom generates a continual source of new energies and possibilities. That is why, on an experiential level, no human being ever reaches the end of his or her journey, he says. For, as the kingdom begins to become a reality within, there is generated from within a host of new possibilities that consciousness can fulfill. So, the life of the kingdom is dynamic and continually evolving.

This brings new meaning to the story of the great catch of fish:

“[Jesus] said to Simon, ‘Put out in deep water and pay out your nets for a catch.’ ‘Master,’ Simon replied, ‘we worked hard all night long and caught nothing, but if you say so, I will pay out the nets.’ And when they had done this they netted such a huge number of fish that their nets began to tear, so they signaled to their companions in the other boat to come and help them; when these came, they filled the two boats to sinking point.” Luke 5:4-7

Fish are a favorite dream symbol because they can represent the contents of the inner world. While they may lurk under the surface and may be difficult to see, they can also be caught with patience and skill. And when they are caught, they may be eaten and, as such, taken into oneself. The contents of the inner world are also below the surface and, similar to the fish, taken into consciousness and become as food for our lives.

Obviously, the above is not the only reference to fish in the New Testament: the disciples are fishermen, the multitudes are fed with fish, a fish is caught to supply tax money, and it is the first food Jesus eats after his resurrection, to name a few.

According to Sanford, creativity is a function of the inner imagination, not of the ego. Creativity comes when we are in contact with the living contents of the inner world–the inner fish–and, bringing them to the surface, give them expression in life.

“When one is in contact with the creative aspects of the inner world,” he says, “one comes into possession of a vast treasure. Their is no higher gift in life than the gift of creativity.”

“Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moths and woodworms destroy them and thieves can break in and steal. But, store up treasure for yourselves in heaven, where neither moth nor woodworms destroy them and thieves cannot break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Matthew 6:19-21/Luke 12:33-34.

Sanford says that in the Bible, “heaven” does not refer to a geographical location, but rather to spiritual reality. Treasures on earth are obviously material values and possessions which are notoriously perishable. Treasures in heaven are inner values, treasures of the spirit, a creative inner wealth, and these are imperishable.

This same motif appears in our dreams when we encounter a treasure. Coins can be found hidden in the ground, or a marvelous piece of jewelry may appear, or a large sum of money may come our way. These often refer to inner treasures with a spiritual or psychological value.

It is not about rejecting the material aspects of life for the sake of the spiritual. The material is needed to survive. Rather, we are asked to put the spiritual first; to realize that the material is necessary but not the ultimate goal.

So, in essence, the coming of the kingdom represents the “end of the world,” in the psychological sense that it is the end of an old order and the establishment of a new order of being, Sanford says.

“The ‘complete human being’–that is the Son of Man–is at the heart the heart of this new person born into the kingdom of God,” he says. “Because personality is the ultimately valuable thing in creation, since it’s life most unique expression, and because the kingdom is the goal of personality, the kingdom is futuristic and goal-centered.”

“If then they say to you, ‘Look, he is in the desert,’ do not go there; ‘Look he is in some hiding place,’ do not believe it; because the coming of the Son of Man will be like lightning striking in the east and flashing far into the west.” Matthew 24:26-27/Luke 17:23-24

Necessarily, the establishment of the kingdom brings great insight (lightning). Two kinds of knowledge have always been available to humans: knowledge of the outer, physical world, which is available through the methods of science; and knowledge of the inner world, spiritual knowledge that comes through inner gnosis or insight.

Our dreams often pick up on this lightning imagery, as well. A person on the verge of a significant and revealing inner experience may dream of a great flash of lightning, or a resplendent mountain, or go on a mysterious journey under the sea on some mission of great importance, or discover some mysteriously significant object.

The suddeness with which our inner reality may burst upon us is often represented by a flood in our dreams. Because water, in the form of the ocean, rivers, floods, torrents, streams, pools, etc., is a favorite symbol for inner reality, it is the symbol par excellence for the origin of our psychic life. Therefore, a flood is a sign that our inner reality has caught us unawares.

“Inner reality is beyond our control,” Sanford says. “We cannot predict or control the inner realm any more than we can predict and control our dreams. We can only be conscious and seek to be prepared to understand.”

Jesus says, “So stay awake, because you do not know the day when your master is coming. . . . Therefore, you too must stand ready because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” Matthew 24:42/Luke 12:39-40

When the Son of Man does arrive, when inner reality floods our consciousness, it will bring with it a reorganization of the personality so violent and complete that it can be described in only apocalyptic images. This reorganization might take place very quickly or over a long period of time, but the result will still be the same: the old attitudes and structures of the personality must give way to the new ones.

Jesus portrayed this vividly: “Immediately after the distress of those days the sun will be  darkened, the moon will lose its brightness, the stars will fall from the sky and the powers of heaven will be shaken. And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven; then too all the people of the earth will beat their breasts; and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet to gather his chosen from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” Matthew 24:29-31/Luke 21:25-27/Mark 13:24-27

Dreams frequently occur in which the heavenly bodies play a major role. We dream of the sun or moon or find ourselves gazing up into a brilliant starry night. The heavenly bodies refer to the archetypal contents of the inner world, the dominant psychic forces that powerfully influence consciousness. And, once again, the image of the four winds, signifies a mandala or totality and completeness.

“Another way in which the mystery of the coming of the kingdom is expressed is in the image of the Undivided Person,” Sanford says. “Unity is the goal of the kingdom.”

Thus the masculine-feminine division represented by the wedding as the male and female unite as one: both physically through intercourse, and psychologically through the act of sex representing an image of a higher unity that can take place within the individual as the diverse parts become one with each other. The union of masculine and feminine is therefore the symbol for the union of the psyche, and the image of marriage is, naturally, the primary representation of their inner mystery.

The opposite sides of the personality are so different that only a great force can draw them together in union. This power is love. Love is a stronger power than the forces of disunion. In love, even opposites can become one, and their differences unite in one indivisible whole. This is why love is the strongest power there is, stronger than sin, or death, or evil.

In the end, nothing can be excluded that belongs to human wholeness. In the kingdom, body, soul, and spirit, sexuality, eros, and meaning–all are part of totality.

Next Week: Conclusion: Christianity–A Religion for a Modern Era

The Coming of the Kingdom, Part I

Once we’ve managed to incorporate what was rejected by the conscious, the kingdom can be established as our inner center. This is both a surrender of the ego to the supremacy of the kingdom, Sanford says, and the fulfillment of the ego and its establishment in a position of strength and importance as the representative of the totality of the personality.

Jesus says, “Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.” Matthew 10:30/Luke 9:24/Mark 8:35

And:

“Anyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and anyone who humbles himself will be exalted.” Matthew 23:12/Luke 14:11Once again his sayings can be applied both inwardly and outwardly. Outwardly it is a call by Christ to a life marked by commitment rather than self-seeking, which is possible only if the same event has happened within and the ego has sacrificed its egocentricity to the larger life within.

“This is not a call to extinguish, nullify, or devalue the ego,” Sanford says, because the ego is important to the total personality. “There can be no wholeness, no strength, no capacity to be used by God without a strong ego,” he continues. “It is only an ego made strong by inner confrontation that is capable of performing the act of self-sacrifice.”

He says that a weak ego feels compelled to fight and struggle for its very existence, and since we cannot sacrifice what we do not have, if we are not in possession of ourselves, we cannot turn ourselves over to God. A person with a strong ego is humble, not proud, because they have no need for self-pride. They are confident in their authenticity, their totality.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus says in Matthew 5:3, KJV and Luke 6:20.

As ‘poor’ in Greek literally means ‘beggarly,’ the ‘poor in spirit’ are those who recognize that they must beg for their spirit from a source beyond themselves. If one is too self-sufficient, they sacrifice their chance at the kingdom.

Unfortunately, most humans are all too willing to do this because it is our unconscious inclination to seek power for ourselves and to try and exploit life to our own purposes. In fear of losing our ego, we become anxious, which prevents us from doing the very work necessary to die to the old ego so that the new ego may be born.

Jesus said, “Enter by the narrow, since the road that leads to perdition is wide and spacious, and many take it; but it is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” Matthew 7:13-14/Luke 13:24.

The narrow way is the anxious way,” Sanford says, “and the anxious way occurs when the ego must give place to the kingdom.”

This giving way of the ego to the greater reality within is often portrayed in our dreams as a death. We might dream of dying, or of having a mortal illness, or of finding ourselves under sentence of death. If we are working on this inner process, yet deny this “death,” it is not unusual to experience compulsive thoughts about dying or be convinced that we have cancer or some other deadly disease.

It is only the death of the ego, not actual physical death, which is symbolized by death in our dreams, and death of the ego is symbolic of the psychological process. Jesus often represents the new personality in his sayings as a child.

“At this time the disciples came to Jesus and said, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ So he called a little child to him and set the child in front of them. Then he said, ‘I tell you solemnly, unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. And so, the one who makes himself as little as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.’” Matthew 18:1-4/Luke 9:46-48/Mark 9:33-37

Jesus uses the example of a child as one who has entered the kingdom because, as I noted earlier, children have not yet developed their mask—they are what they seem to be. Children also have a free connection to the inner world. So, one must enter the kingdom as a little child—with no false façade, a newborn (ego), and closely connected to the inner world, from which spring imagination, spontaneity and creativity.

We all have a child-self within us, which is partly a remnant of our own childhood psyche and partly archetypal in nature. The inner child is an important part of our psychology. If we deny the inner child, we become childish, which is the opposite of what we want. When we become childish we are infantile, regressive and dependent. But, if recognize the legitimacy of the child-self in the positive sense, then it is expressed in our personalities as freedom, creativity, and the continual generation within us of new life.

That is why the appearance of a child in our dreams is always important. If the child appears as forlorn, orphaned, neglected, or crippled in some way, our subconscious is calling our attention to the need to recognize and accept the child-self. If the child is a happy companion, takes us by the hand, or is seen at play, for example, it represents inner creativity. If the dream shows the birth of a child or a newborn infant, it represents new life within. Another alternative is one of a group of mischievous children, which shows creative elements within us which are likely to be disturbing the status quo of consciousness, but are valuable for the future growth of the personality. The child can also symbolize the kingdom itself, as in Isaiah 11:6-8: “The wolf lives with the lamb . . . with a little boy to lead them . . .”

Ordinarily, Sanford says, our personality is fragmented because it is split up into pairs of opposites that are hostile and antagonistic. This is expressed in dreams in which there is a motif or war, violence, enmity, or opposition in one form or another.

“The kingdom comes as a unity,” he says, “a paradoxical unity since it is the union of factors that are different from each other and so have a natural inclination to opposition.”

It is for this reason that the most important single image of the kingdom is the image of a wedding since it is here that opposing elements are united. In his parable of the wedding feast (Matthew 22:2-14/Luke 14:15-24), Jesus notes:

“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a feast for his son’s wedding.” Matthew 22:2The king may be likened to God as the Father, and the son likened to Christ; those who would not come are the Jews. This allegorical interpretation is not particularly edifying. But there is a deeper meaning to its inner significance. God is the king, and the wedding we are called to is the inner wedding, and the union of the opposites within us.

“But the great bulk of humanity is too concerned with outward things to appreciate the value of the inner realm,” Sanford says. “Only those forced by God to come in, good and bad alike, join the wedding feast.”

Another wedding parable Jesus uses is the parable of the ten bridesmaids:

“The kingdom of heaven will be like this: Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. “ Matthew 25:1

Of the ten (once again, the number of totality), only half are prepared with oil ready to go in their lamps. While the others hurry out to get oil, the bridegroom arrives, and doors are closed against them.

The parable ends:

“So stay awake, because you do not know either the day or the hour.” Matthew 25:13

Taken outwardly, the parable suggests the need for constantly being on the alert so that we will be ready to receive the Lord when he comes at the Last Day. Once again, the passage fits with inner reality more readily than outer. The parable speaks of the approach of the kingdom from within. As the kingdom is a wedding, the union of opposites, initiated by God, the bridegroom is the larger Christ-like personality who unites the soul in the inner mystery of coming into selfhood.

But the ego must remain alert (or conscious) so that the lamps, which symbolize the light of consciousness, remain ready to constantly shine that light on our ongoing relationship to the inner life. Events happen from within quite unexpectedly. One never knows what will trigger them to begin the wedding of unification. If we are not prepared, we may miss it and languish far too long in unconsciousness where we will remain forever shut out from the wedding feast because our inner darkness is too great to overcome.

The motif of being too late is often seen in our dreams when we arrive to late to catch a plane or train, ship or bus. Or, we may find ourselves starting a journey but with the feeling of being far behind, or alternately, have a great task set before us that we are overwhelmed by because it is too late to start it, and variations on those themes.

Next Week: The Coming of the Kingdom, Part II