Ash Wednesday

Tags

Ash Wednesday, Poetry, T.S. Eliot

Ash Wednesday is less than a month away, and next month’s blog will dedicated to something which I cannot yet reveal. So, I offer this, Part I of one of my favorite poems by T.S. Eliot:

Ash Wednesday

I

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift or that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow for there
is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death

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La Bête Noire

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Death, Fear, Terrorism

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

~~Franklin D. Roosevelt

And there it is—the ugly beast that has created a culture of fear in this country and many others—Fear.

In this case, it is fear of death. And yet, it’s not the instinctual, healthy fear of death but rather the fear of a highly unlikely death—that of a terrorist claiming one’s life.

So many people, many of them Christians, have been persuaded to live into this fear. They spout angry words and load themselves down with weapons. I can only speak from a Christian standpoint but doesn’t living in fear of death and one’s “so-called” enemies go against everything Jesus tried to teach us?

Is a Christian who is afraid of death not, in fact, a functional Atheist?

Obviously, we have to have some fear of death or otherwise we wouldn’t try to maintain our health and attempt to be safe in various aspects of our life. That being said, most of us seem oblivious to the fact that we could drop dead at any second from a heart attack, stroke or aneurysm. It happens all the time.

Those are just a few of the enemies within us that take our lives. And, from the exhaustive research I’ve done, I feel pretty confident in saying that the mortality rate is still right at 100 percent.

But, we have other very real enemies that can take our lives with no notice—from the accidents that happen such as simply slipping and falling to the greater potential of dying in a traffic accident every time we get into a car. Exhausted drivers, drunk drivers, distracted drivers take lives daily.

So why are so many people wrapped up in the terror of being killed by a religious extremist or some other fanatic? Honestly, I do not understand how being fearful will save them in the long run although it might bring about death from stress-related health issues.

Personally, I do not want to expend the energy it would take to live in that kind of fear when it could be used in a myriad of significantly more beneficial ways—from keeping my own soul peaceful and centered to helping those in actual need. And, as a Christian, I live in hope of something more. Whether it is as simple as becoming one with the universe, the collective unconsciousness, or something much more complex, I feel certain that there is something more.

I do not want to die, and yet I have resigned myself to death. I have even gone so far as to choose my readings, psalms, hymns, etc., for the Burial Service in the Book of Common Prayer. Being Episcopalian, that is made easy for me, but I imagine other denominations or faiths have similar options. When my grandmother died, and she had, naturally, planned every aspect of her funeral, the funeral director told us that he had found that in general the people who planned for death tended to live much longer than those who lived in fear of it.

I can see how that might be true as not worrying about death relieves one of a great burden. So, yes, while I do not want to die—I would love to see how my daughter’s life progresses, know her child or children should she choose to have any—I have come to terms with it and I do not live in fear.

Transformation: The Conclusion

Tags

Carl Jung, Inner Work, Robert A. Johnson

Rocinante

Presently the evidence of four-dimensional consciousness is not some form of perfection but rather the ability to tap in to that psychological space when needed

From the two-dimensional Don Quixote to the three-dimensional Hamlet, in which most of us reside, we can finally try to find our way to the fourth-dimension embodied by Faust.

“Almost all of us in Western society are Hamlets,” Robert A. Johnson writes. “Compulsory eduction, our social structure, the dictates of our lifestyle have obliterated the two-dimensional man from American life.”

We only experience that second dimension for a brief time in adolescence. So, how does man survive the Hamlet dilemma?

According to Johnson, the more intelligent he is, the more profound will be his suffering. But, there are two avenues of solace: We can maintain a bit of primitive behavior in our lives such as jogging, camping, or gardening. We can even, Johnson says, “have an array of adolescent equipment, including that which is most dear to every man’s heart, his car (every car should be named Rocinante).”

The second avenue of solace is much darker–vandalism, gang behavior and other types of juvenile delinquency, including drug and alcohol abuse.

“It is a bitter indictment of some of our attitudes that the only ‘juice’ left for many of our youth is in destructive behavior,” he says.

Inevitably, though, there will come a time in adulthood when you no longer find joy in things like jogging or gardening, and the full distress experienced by Hamlet begins to well up inside you. We have, Johnson says, created many terms for this–midlife crisis, identity crisis, the seven-year itch, the Big Four-Zero, and so on.

Saint John of the Cross says that this period, the “Dark Night of the Soul,” can last anywhere from seven weeks, months, years up to 21 years, depending on when you wake up to the next level of consciousness.

“When the dark night begins to lift,” Johnson writes, one morning there is an unaccountable touch of joy in the air. It is the tiniest trickle of energy, light, and hope, but enough to keep you alive.”

This, he says, is the first contact with the four-dimensional consciousness. “Something of the subtle inner world becomes your center of gravity: poetry, music, a new perceptiveness when you are jogging, a blossoming of philosophic inquiry, a new religious understanding.”

Johnson says that “Enlightenment” is never total or permanent in this lifetime.

“Presently the evidence of four-dimensional consciousness is not some form of perfection but rather the ability to tap in to that psychological space when needed,” he writes.

Humans have the ability to incorporate new things in to their being. For example, we didn’t learn to perceive the color, blue, until about 2,000 years ago; we had to learn how to read silently, also learned within the past 2,000 years; and we didn’t learn to hear the harmonic structure, as opposed to the melodic line, until around the 15th or 16th century.

“Is it consistent to say that a new faculty,” he writes, “four-dimensional consciousness, as we lamely describe it, is only now appearing for ordinary men and women in our new human evolution?”

This would make that faculty extremely rare and fragile when it does appear, and very easily lost.

Johnson closes the book writing, “Dr. Jung spent his old age writing about and contemplating this new evolution of man, the progression from incompleteness to wholeness, from three to four. It is time for all of us to do the same.”

Reclaiming the Land from the Sea

Tags

Inner Work, Robert A. Johnson, Shadow Work

Gretchen argues for Faust’s soul–Ist gerettet

 

Having played Gretchen in a college version of Faust (auf Deutsch, natürlich), this is one of my favorite acts of the play. As the drama nears its end, Faust and Mephistopheles have drawn closer, somewhat tempered each other.

Unfortunately, this causes Mephistopheles to want to regain some of his control over Faust. He is the devil, our shadow, after all. So, he asks Faust if there is anything he would like.

Not as such, Faust replies. This is the man “whom infinity would scarcely satisfy” at the beginning of the book. Mephistopheles offers him the moon, but Faust says he would be content with “a piece of coastline so that he might reclaim land from sea.”

“Water, particularly the ocean, is a universal symbol of the unconscious,” Robert Johnson writes, “and Faust is asking for eternal connection with the depths represented by the sea.”

The true work of man in the latter part of his life, he says, is the cultural process of bringing up some of the contents of the unconscious and integrating them into consciousness.”

Goethe symbolizes this by having Faust reclaim land from the sea–dredging canals, building dikes–taking land from the sea and adding it to the land mass. In this process Faust finds great contentment.

But as we know, nothing is ever that simple. When Faust complains to Mephistopheles that a cottage owned by a couple (Baucis and Philemon), who have lived on his newly acquired property all of their lives, blocks his view, tragedy ensues once again. Mephistopheles frightens the old couple to death and burns their cottage to the ground.

Faust is horrified, particularly as he realizes that he is responsible for the tragic results.  It is now that Faust realizes just what his alliance with Mephistopheles is costing him.

“He learns,” Johnson notes, “that he has power over Mephistopheles and that he is capable of misusing that power.”

As he continues to reclaim land from the sea, he does not notice the approach of the “four gray sisters–Want, Debt, Need and Care.” Johnson says these dark forces are the power of necessity. Because of his wealth, Faust can easily ignore the first three as he has everything he needs. But no man can ignore Dame Care. She is something we all need.

When he doesn’t take her seriously, Dame Care blinds Faust. “This leads me to believe,” Johnson writes, “that the blinding was more an inner exchange of sight for insight, a transformation required of every man as he grows old.”

Faust’s excavation now becomes the digging of his own grave as he can no longer see what he is doing. Johnson says that here you can recognize one of the dangers of old age–digging or hacking away at a project out of inertia and habit rather than any sense of purpose.

Just before his death, Faust steps back from his labors and sees a utopian vision of a noble band of people inhabiting his newly claimed land, and utters the fatal words–“Linger, thou art so fair!”

Mephistopheles rushes in to claim Faust’s soul, according to the terms of the contract agreed upon 24 years previously. Faust has lost and Mephistopheles has won! What is the point of inner change if only to have it snatched away by a very human error at the end? Is absolute perfection required of us at the gates of heaven?

But then something miraculous happens. Despite everything, Gretchen’s love for Faust has never waned. She appears at the head of a choir of angels and pleads for Faust’s soul. It was a vision of heaven, they say, that made Faust utter those fatal words, not anything that Mephistopheles created. A technicality, perhaps, but it works. Gretchen leads Faust into heaven where grace, not justice, prevails.

“The masculine stuff of law and order and justice are superseded by grace and love,” Johnson writes.

The Fourth Puer–The Boy Angel

“We have seen no redemption of one in a pair of opposites is possible without the same redemption of the other,” Johnson says. Both Faust and Mephistopheles must be redeemed if either is to find wholeness.

While lamenting his loss, Mephistopheles catches sight of a boy angel in the heavenly band and falls in love with him, neglecting to press his partially limited charges against Faust.

“To understand the multitude of forms in which love may touch you is to gain some sense of its great mystery,” Johnson writes. “Mephistopheles has been touched by that form of love that is specific to his need and his transformation.”

Faust is redeemed by the love of Gretchen; Mephistopheles by his first experience of love. “Ego and shadow each finds its own level of redemption and its own appropriate salvation.”

The boy angel, symbolizing love (not unlike Cupid), is the fourth manifestation of the archetype of puer aeternis. To touch the puer is to touch eternity and love and be delivered from the time-space world, Johnson says.

The play ends with the following lines:

All that is perishable
is but an image;
Here the short-reaching
becomes result.
The indescribable–
here it is done;
The Eternal Feminine
draws us on.

This is more than a hint that wholeness is not attained by means of masculine law or contract. It is a gift from the feminine aspect of God.

Next Week: Conclusion