Tag Archives: Shadow

“Waging the Collective War We Are”

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W. H. Auden’s observation, “We wage the war we are” also applies to human collectives. Carl Jung eloquently described the “collective unconscious,” one example seen often in mob psychology where otherwise law-abiding people can have subterranean demons stirred up to the point of violent behavior. And sociologists and anthropologists…and other social scientists…are adept at delineating how our connection with social groups influences our behavior much more than we ever would like to acknowledge. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has very interesting recordings on YouTube and TedTalks in which he shows evidence that my “firm conviction” to be a liberal Democrat is not without unconscious motivation just as Conservative Republicans are also driven by similar needs.

Even the species as a whole can be compared to an individual child, still early in development, struggling to integrate fragmented impulses into a working, harmonious whole. Just in my lifetime, with technological advances like computers and the internet, our world is so much “smaller,” so much more a “whole”, and we are so very near, yet so very far, to being able to come much closer to world peace and harmony than ever before. We have the means, but lack the will. And I recently came across someone who pointed out the “coincidence” that terrorism has emerged as a formless (i.e. “stateless”) expression of the violent dimensions of our collective unconscious. Jung would say that our collective unconscious is telling us that all of our accomplishments deriving from our conscious need for structure and organization, are finding their complement in the chaos of violence. It is as if our collective unconscious is reminding us, “Oh yes. Technology and progress is great. But it comes by sublimating repressed violent impulses and these violent impulses need to be given attention.” The goal is to continue to seek meaning and coherence in our world while simultaneously acknowledging and addressing the violent unconscious impulses that are within us all. And this can be done through sublimation such as with religion, literature, art and mythology. But I issue a caveat re religion—“Danger, danger Will Robinson.” For religion can easily become just another form of violence as we see so often today.

The Malady of Christian the Faith

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The unacknowledged malady of the Christian faith has surfaced again leading to tragedy. A 36 year old former mega-church pastor, Isaac Hunter, has committed suicide after a sex scandal. Another dimension of this tragedy is that his father…also a mega-church pastor…is Joel Hunter and he is a confidante of President Obama. Within the past year the son of mega-church pastor Rick Warren also committed suicide after a long-term battle with “mental illness.” Within the past year the pastor of a large, prominent evangelical church in Hammond, Indiana went to prison for having sex with a teen-age parishioner. And, from my youth on, I can recall the recurrent issue of “sex scandal” and “financial impropriety” and other misconduct surfacing in the clergy. When very young, it would usually lead to a sudden decision of the pastor that “the Lord” was leading him to pastor a different church, with the truth coming out much later. And, of course, we cannot overlook the horrible sexual-abuse scandal that the Catholic church is still dealing with.

My point here is not to point an accusing or shaming finger, or to snicker at the apparent hypocrisy but to express profound sorrow that men with deep spiritual direction in their life succumb to the lure of such poor choices that they wreck their lives and the lives of those around them. And, as in the present case, the anguish is so intense, that sometimes they even despair of living and take their own life. My concern is that these men have demonstrated that an essential element in faith has been missing in their life and that is an acknowledgement and embracing of dark impulses that are always present in all of our hearts. The problem is not in having these impulses but in refusal to acknowledge them and, when beset by them and the temptation to act on them, having no one to whom they can “unpack their heart with words.” They cannot disclose this shadow side of their heart because the Christian faith they have been taught does not permit them to acknowledge this darkness. Their faith is often a sanitized version in which “human-ness” is denied in the effort to trot out each day of their life a squeaky-clean “Christian” persona. They glibly quote Paul, “I will to do good, but evil is present with me,” but do not fully appreciate the extent of that evil; for the real “evil” is the evil that lurks in the “thoughts and intents of the heart” which needs to find the light of day somewhere.

This most recent suicide brought to my mind the anguish that sexuality can bring in a man’s life. And, I don’t care how “spiritual” you are or how “noble” or “good” you are you will continue to be a sexual creature and that will always involve the temptation to…shall we say…err and might include impulses with which one is uncomfortable. As Woody Allen put it, “Of course sex is dirty, if you do it right!” But whatever impulses surfaces in our sexual life they are just that…impulses…and don’t have to necessarily be acted on. Someone in the position of spiritual leadership needs to have someone to talk to about them. But my central point here is that in some faith traditions, opening-up about sexual matters will not be permitted. Because the real intent of this type of faith is to provide a denial system, a facade that will allow the individual avoid reality; and that type of  person will inevitably be leading his flock to live the very same kind of life.

Christian faith…or any faith…involves honesty and the first step in honesty is to admit that we are not honest. We are born with blinders on and, when we see this, we will still have blinders on. But, if we can accepted the “possibility” that we have blinders on, we can be given pause, and perhaps be a little more human and less “pious.” Yes, we will then later discover more blinders…and more, and more. But that is merely to discover that you are human. That is merely to learn that, being a mere mortal, you tend to see only what you want to see.

 

Richard Rohr and the church

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Richard Rohr was recently on a PBS program on religion and ethics.  I provide here a link to his 10-minute presentation and high recommend it.   Some of my regular readers are evangelical and I really think that Rohr’s spirituality and teachings is relevant to evangelicism although he is a Franciscan monk.

In this presentation, Rohr takes to task the church for opting for a “religious comfort zone” rather than meaningful spiritual development.  He also noted the need of “shadow boxing” to address the dark side that is with us all, even Christians.  “We need to clean the lens,” he said, pointing to his glasses.  He was here referring to the fact that we “see through a glass darkly” and our “glasses” are always being “dirtied” by this dark side, this ever-present shadow.

He emphasized the need of prayer and not hollow, empty, formulaic, meaningless prayer.  Instead he recommends meditative prayer in which one clears his/her mind of the clutter, engages in primordial silence, and follows the biblical mandate, “Be still and know that I am God.”  He declares that prayer helps us to let go of our self, to let go of “repetitive compulsive thoughts.”

(You will have to copy-and-paste the following link to your address bar)

<http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/november-11-2011/richard-rohr/9902/&gt;

the shadow

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Karl Jung wrote extensively of “the shadow”.  He described this dark side of human nature as always with it and insisted…iin my own words…“Resistance is futile”.  Or to use one of his bromides, “What we resist, persists.”  His teaching, of course, was not that this dark side should be indulged or acted upon, but that it should be embraced as part of our nature.  He taught that in this embracement we diminished the power of this shadow, given us more freedom to make mature, appropriate decisions.  In recent readings of Buddhist literature, I’ve learned that the Buddha called this shadow-side “mara” and reported that it was a daily part of his life.  Even the Apostle Paul lamented, “I will to do good, but evil is present with me.”  And, of course, in the Christian tradition, there is the ever-present “Satan.”

I think the Catholics have the right idea in confession.  There in the confessional booth, Catholics are encouraged to come and bare their deepest, darkest secrets.  In my work as a mental health counselor, much of the work I did was merely to listen to my clients lament their short-comings, to acknowledge their baser instincts.

The key is to just not pretend!  It is there and it will always be there.  To live in a world of duality is to realize that “mara” is there but to believe its power is diminished as we openly acknowledge it.  Even more so, as we openly acknowledge it “to another human being.”