Ego and God-Image: Part IV
[T]he individual who wishes to have an answer to the problem of evil, as it is posed today, has need, first and foremost of self-knowledge, that is, the utmost possible knowledge of his own wholeness. He must know relentlessly how much good he can do, and what crimes he is capable of, and must beware […]
Ego and God-Image: Part II
“. . . man’s instinctive nature is divided between the instinct for self-preservation and the instinct for species-preservation.” Sigmund Freud “On Narcissism: An Introduction”, in Yearbook of Psycho-Analysis, Vol. 6, 1914, p. 78. The repression of the unknown parts of ourselves is a third definitive feature of the Epoch II ego. As human consciousness […]
Repression of Women and the Human Brain: Part I
One of the most eye-opening and consciousness-raising books I’ve ever read is the revolutionary The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by brain surgeon, Dr. Leonard Shlain. Shlain proposes the thesis that since the invention of writing and then the alphabet, Western culture has progressively moved into a left-hemisphere masculine mode of thinking which is intolerant of right-brain feminine […]
The Evolution of God-Images Part VII: An Outer Other God
As our bodies have a mysterious imperative to grow and develop physically, so our psyche has a mysterious compulsion to evolve. We don’t know what this is, we just know it is. Carl Jung thought of the psyche’s compulsion to evolve as the archetype of Divinity. He saw it as both the core and circumference […]
The Evolution of God-Images Part VI: A Conventionally Moral God
It is, however, true that much of the evil in the world comes from the fact that man in general is hopelessly unconscious, as it is also true that with increasing insight we can combat this evil at its source in ourselves, in the same way that science enables us to deal effectively with injuries […]
The Evolution of God-Images Part I: A Masculine God
“[T]he soul must contain in itself the faculty of relationship to God, i.e., a correspondence, otherwise a connection could never come about. This correspondence is, in psychological terms, the archetype of the God-image.” C.G. Jung, CW Vol.12, par. 11. “It is only through the psyche that we can establish that God acts upon us, but […]
Dream Mother Sends Me Some Reassuring Dream Mothers
Everything young grows old, all beauty fades, all heat cools, all brightness dims, and every truth becomes stale and trite. For all these things have taken on shape, and all shapes are worn thin by the working of time; they age, sicken, crumble to dust—unless they change. But change they can, for the invisible spark […]
Solstice: A Coming Together of Creativity and Hope
“This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year’s threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath”. Margaret Atwood Yesterday we celebrated the summer solstice, Father’s Day, and our twin grandsons’ 19th birthdays with our son’s family when they […]
Does God Have a Gender?
When you make the two One, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner, and the above as the below . . . then you will enter the Kingdom. ~ The Gospel of Thomas, Saying 22: 4, 7 When our primitive ancestors began to reflect on the mystery […]
Skinny Legs and All: A Refreshing Summer Read
Are you looking for some crazy fun yet soul-satisfying summer reading? Something to take your mind off your isolation in these dark and troubled times? If so, try Skinny Legs and All. When my friend, Bud, introduced me to Tom Robbins in the early nineties, this was the book he recommended. I had studied Jungian psychology for several […]
