As I said in the previous blog (July 2019), one of the more troubling issues I see in my practice as a psychotherapist is an individual's abuse of oneself and others in the name of that individual's religion. What make this abuse so troubling is the fact that the abuse is rationalized and justified because it carries the sanctity of one's most deeply held beliefs. These beliefs are considered to be demanded by the particular deity of the abuser's religion which may condone shaming, judging, condemning, rejecting, expulsion from family, and in some extreme cases even punishment by death.

This toxic, destructive behavior in religious practice does not characterize all religious life. But variations of these aberrant actions are likely to appear in religious fundamentalism which we can find throughout the world. How do we account for the rise of this religious phenomenon in our present age? One would hope that our level of education and our knowledge of the potential in each of us to exploit and dehumanize others would serve as a safeguard against fundamentalism. But such is not the case. Fundamentalism thrives in our world, in our society, and in our religion. It has nestled within the TV evangelists, it has aligned itself with political extremism, and it has copied the flare of the entertainment world's personality cult with the style of both high-fashion as well as the hyper-cool persona of T-shirts, ragged jeans with holes, and the must-have baseball cap worn backwards! From whatever vantage point you view fundamentalism it must be seen as a potent force in our homes, our institutions, and our society. So let's dig deeper into the robber of our humanity's potential and spiritual destiny.

The American Heritage College Dictionary defines fundamentalism as "an organized, militant Evangelical movement originating in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century in opposition to Protestant liberalism and secularism, insisting on the inerrancy of scripture."  That well describes fundamentalism from the perspective of Protestantism. However, fundamentalism is a term now used to describe movements within most of the world's major religions. The movements may usually be defined by specific beliefs that people are not to question, as well as an attitude of superiority. The beliefs center around a confession of certain tenants or propositions considered to be "fundamental" or basic to the particular faith; these beliefs are supported by militant fervor with accompanying programs designed to convince and convert other persons or groups to the "right" and "authoritative" way of believing, with the threat of damnation and judgment for non-believers at the end of the world which is expected to come soon in a likely apocalyptic catastrophe. This last characteristic does not surface as a theme within Hinduism but is quite prominent especially within Christian fundamentalism. In summary, Protestant Christian fundamentalism is a movement of zealously committed persons who regard the Bible as supernaturally communicated by God to inspired individuals who recorded the divine and infallible words in the original documents for the purpose of revealing knowledge of God, Christ, and the morally perfect conduct of life as the only means of avoiding eternal damnation at the Last Judgment.

The roots of Christian fundamentalism may well be traced back to the Holiness Code of the Old Testament Pentateuch, its development and implementations by Ezra and Nehemiah following the Jewish Exile, an other-worldly emphasis on purity by the Pharisees, and the mood of apocalyptic doom which seeped into early Christian thought from an ancient Persian dualism via the Jewish experience of anticipating the coming of the "day of Yahweh." However, within the United States, the term itself first appeared in the early twentieth century with the publication of a series of books called The Fundamentals: A Testimony of Truth. Between 1910 and 1912, these books became circulated quite widely, financed by two wealthy laymen who sought to resist the tendencies of major theological schools to use scientific principles in studying scripture.

The Fundamentals stressed the need to bring Christian thought and practice back to a doctrinally sound position. Such a "sound position" would be based upon five articles of faith: the inerrancy of the Bible in every detail, the Virgin birth of Christ, the physical resurrection, the substitutionary theory of the atonement (Christ was "substituted" for human beings and "paid the price" for the sins of humanity), and lastly, the imminent physical return of Christ. 

Having been distributed in three million copies at a cost of $250,000, The Fundamentals soon came to impact the major Protestant denominations in the United States, with a carry-over to Great Britain as well. The wide-spread dissemination of a work designed to challenge an understanding of the Bible influenced by the academic tools of higher criticism and literary analysis led to an eruption of a mean-spirited conflict which had been building within churches, denominational agencies, and theological schools. Lacking a spirit of civil discourse, a willingness to engage in open debate, and an appreciation for the insights of any disciplines other than the formula of inerrancy for studying scripture, the fundamentalists zealously pushed an agenda to enshrine their five articles of faith as the sole measure of Christian orthodoxy.

To that doctrinaire creed, the leaders of the movement also added some very strict measures for setting themselves apart from the world. Forbidden were the use of alcoholic beverages, playing cards, dancing, smoking, slacks for women, long hair for men, and participation in worldly entertainment such as the theatre. Turning their eye upon civil society, the fundamentalists espoused a notion of the United States as a kind of theocratic state, certainly a "Christian nation" where the Bible would serve as a supreme guide for the conduct of policy.

While more could be said in describing the range of fundamentalist thought and programs, I want to turn now to a psychological understanding of the movement. The first thing to note is the role of its charismatic leaders. In fact, the notion that fundamentalism is a monolithic, unified force is not quite accurate. Throughout its history, fundamentalism looked more like a river fed by many tributaries, each reflecting a particular leader, e.g., Benjamin B. Warfield of Princeton University in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Jerry Falwell of Liberty Baptist Church and Liberty University in the late twentieth century, and Billy Graham of the "evangelistic crusade" in the mid-twentieth century.

These individuals, and other fundamentalist leaders who could be cited, appear in society as what Jung would call "mana-personalities." Jung brought the word, "mana," into the field of psychology from the discipline of anthropology which had studied the manifestation of mana in Melanesia where it was regarded as "a universal magical power about which everything revolves." (Collected Works, Vol. 7, para. 108)  Jung went on to apply the concept of mana as the powerful force which appears in one who has lost rational discernment under the influence of unconscious dynamics. 

Such certainly appears to be the case with fundamentalist leaders who appear to be oblivious to the autonomy of unconscious forces within their psyches. Such religious figures appear as personalities who are possessed by a sense of power, self-righteousness, a divine call to speak for God, and a capacity to cast a spell-binding influence upon would-be followers. Such a person has indeed been possessed by "a dominant from the collective unconscious, the well-known archetype of the mighty man in the form of hero, chief, magician, medicine-man, saint, the ruler of men and spirits, the friend of God." (Collected Works, Vol. 7, para. 377)

Jung goes further: "... it is a question of inflation. The ego has appropriated something that does not belong to it." (Collected Works, Vol. 7, para. 380)  This rings true to my ears as a description for the root cause of fundamentalism. With its militancy, its self-proclaimed authority, its confidence in being ordained by God to speak with ultimate pronouncements, and its harsh judgment of all who fail to live "perfect" lives, fundamentalism conveys the mood or feeling tone of psychological inflation. It comes from what Jung would call a sense of one's "god-almightiness," as he goes on to describe:

               An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of
            nothing but its own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past,
            incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of
            drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself
            and therefore cannot be argued with. ... Paradoxically enough, inflation
            is a regression of consciousness into unconsciousness. This always happens
            when consciousness takes too many unconscious contents upon itself and
            loses the faculty of discrimination, the sine qua non of all consciousness.
            (Collected Works, Vol. 12, para. 563.)

Such a state of inflation compensates one's sense of inferiority. Given the fact that fundamentalism has often appeared to take root under conditions of powerlessness and within groups who fear their sense of powerlessness, we may understand then the rise of a movement which brings a promise of power and vindication to its adherents enthralled by the summons of their inflated leaders whose egos are taken over by the God-image.

But we must add one more element to the prevalence and power of fundamentalism. Not only are its adherents seeking power and a place of recognition and respect in contemporary society, fundamentalism must be accounted for by at least one additional dynamic that propels its ascension within our materialistic, secular society.

Fundamentalism masks our terror of death. So swiftly do the dogma, rituals, and personalities of fundamentalism speed by us, that we do not notice its distracting feature. And the reality from which we are distracted -- from which we want to be distracted -- is the existential anxiety about the inevitable approach of death... whether it be brought on by age, disease, or accident. This looming prospect of our inevitable end is a heavy load to bear. How much easier it is to live our lives if we are distracted from this inevitability of our end with the promise of a heavenly reward if we live by fundamentalism's righteousness, and a hellish judgment if we do not.

Of course, all the major religions of the world provide some narrative about a world beyond this world, a final judgment and a life after this one, etc. And it is a comforting promise of all the religions that this life is too much a Mystery to be accounted for by the brevity of this physical existence. The awe and complexity of life, even from the perspective of scientific theory itself, hints at levels of being that cannot be accounted for in this one brief existence.

But it is the inflated, self-serving ideology fundamentalism -- adrift from reason and powered by the dynamic of fear -- that disturbs us in our core where reason and emotion intersect an in-depth spirituality. Fundamentalism is not only bad science; it is also bad psychology and bad religion. It offers nothing either to affirm the dignity of humanity, or to provide a way of coping with the riddle of death. 

​More on this next time.

In my years of work as a psychotherapist and Jungian analyst, I have observed one theme in particular that proves very difficult to unravel That theme is the self-inflicted abuse of oneself in the name of one's religion and its moralism. How are we to understand this pattern of abuse, the nature of such a cruel moralism, its origin, how came to be embedded in that particular religion, how and why religion is susceptible to fostering a belief system that is punitive and counter to the formation of healthy children and adults, the kind of deity such an abusive religion worships, its toxic infection of all areas of a person's life, including the deepest impulses to realize the human potential for empathy, love, and the quest for meaning. 

What are some examples of this kind of toxic religion and its sadistic/masochistic moralism? Within the wider scope of historical records, we know of the religious crusades in the Middle Ages. And even closer, we know of religion's missionary zeal to evangelize other cultures, to subject other people to a forced worship of a god-image foreign to them and their history. But, closer home and to our present time, we observe a moralistic rejection of people who differ from us in skin color, or ethnicity, or customs, as well as other countries described in tones of inferiority and disgust.

Those images we all know very well. They are common-place in our history books but also our print and other media coverage today. However, this theme of a toxic, punitive religion appears more subtly in our public conversations and in my consulting room.

I am referencing here examples such as the following:

• bullying tactics in the boardrooms, cubicles, and conference rooms of our corporations;
• substance abuse in families resulting in physical or emotional abuse hidden from public view;
• the break-up of marriages in which there is no moral center to guide the formations of erotic desire;
• bullying behaviors on the playgrounds of our children by aggressive kids who are themselves bullied;
• an enthrallment with sports in which competition trumps sportsmanship and winning overshadows the under-observed acts of courage and finesse;
• sermons of would-be prominent preachers who are (1) afraid to tell their congregations the truth about the way scientific investigation of religious traditions and sacred documents have brought new light to the origins of their religion's history, or (2) avoiding the dialogical exchange between secular culture and religious tradition, or (3) seduced by the power-obsessed right-wing's ideology and tactics, or (4) infatuated with the glamour of performing for TV, radio, and movies.

Except for this last example, you may wonder why I listed the previous examples as having anything to do with "psychological abuse in the name of religion." The reason is this.  Our daily life is shaped directly or indirectly by our religious vision and experience, whatever that religion may be. And this brings me to the question of how I define religion.

Following the lead of Paul Tillich, one of the most insightful of Protestant theologians in the last 100 years, religion may be defined in two ways, what Tillich referred to as "a larger concept and a narrower one." 

            The larger concept of religion has appeared as the dimension of ultimate
            reality in the different realms of man's encounter with reality. It is, to use  
            a metaphor, the dimension of depth itself. ... Religion is this basic and 
            universal sense I have called "being grasped by an ultimate concern"
            . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
            This definition, however, is also valid for the narrower concept of religion.
            ... I have usually described it as the experience of the holy in a particular
            presence, place, or time, in a particular ritual act, spoken word or
            sacramental object. These direct experiences are found in unity with
            a sacred community, in the Western world usually called a church, a
            monastic group, or a religious movement. This is religion in the narrower,
            the traditional sense.  1

Most of us probably think of religion in this narrower sense. But Tillich reminds us that all
manifestations of religion -- whether in an explicit religious sense, or a secular expression of religion -- arise from the archetypal depths of the human psyche. In these unfathomable depths, a sense of ultimacy rises up to grasp us and offer a glimpse into the Mystery of life itself, or at least, to call us away from the distractions that get in the way of what most deeply calls to us.

However, there is a third definition of religion not included in Tillich's "larger concept" and "narrower concept." This is religion as a state of mind possessed by a punitive god-image that demands unconditional obedience, worship, and tribute. The name for this psychological abuse is fundamentalism. And it is this fundamentalism that has largely captured the minds of our culture, either in positions of commitment or avoidance and, often, angry neglect of the depth dimensions of our souls.

How this occurred will be continued next month.

​
                                                    REFERENCE
1  Paul Tillich (1967). My Search for Absolutes. New York: Simon and Schuster, pp. 130-131.
            

Guernica is a town located in the province of Biscay, within the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, Spain. Today, the town claims a population between sixteen and seventeen thousand residents, symbolized by the Tree, an oak that represents the Basque people and their history. Also, standing with a view toward the Tree is a Monument to Peace, commissioned to commemorate the terrorizing bombing of the town on April 26, 1937, by Hitler's Luftwaffe, when 1,654 civilians were killed and the town was razed. In one of his greatest works, Picasso catches the horror of that massacre of civilians in his painting "Guernica."

In the absence of any visual image, and for the purpose of this blog, I am going to turn to the online PBS verbal narrative of what happened to the people of Guernica on that day in April, 1937, when children, women, and men went excitedly to visit with each other, socializing innocently in the town's market place. 

     It was market day when the church bells of Santa Maria sounded the alarm 
     that afternoon in 1937. People from the surrounding hillside crowded the 
     town square. "Every Monday was a fair in Guernica," says Jose Monastery,
     eyewitness to the bombing. "They attacked when there were a lot of people
     there. And they knew when their bombing would kill the most. When there
     are more people, more people would die."

     For over three hours, twenty-five or more of Germany's best-equipped
     bombers, accompanied by at least twenty more Messerschmitt and Fiat fighters,
     dumped one hundred thousand pounds of high-explosive incendiary bombs on the
     village, slowly and systematically pounding it to rubble.

     We were hiding in the shelters and praying. I only thought of running away. I
     was so scared. I didn't think about my parents, mother, house, nothing.
     Just escape. Because during those three and one-half hours, I thought I was
     going to die." (eyewitness Luis Aurtonetrea)

     Those trying to escape were cut down by the strafing machine guns of fighter
     planes. "They keep going back and forth, sometimes in a long line, sometimes
     in close formation. It was as if they were practicing new moves. They must
     have fired thousands of bullets."  (eyewitness Juan Guezureya)  The fires that
     engulfed the city burned for three days. Seventy percent of the city was 
     destroyed. Sixteen hundred civilians -- one third of the population -- were 
     killed or wounded.

This would not be the last city in WWII when cities were destroyed and civilians were murdered. Dresden comes to mind when between 35,000 and 135,000 people died during the Allied bombing, February 13-14, 1945. Also coming to mind are Hiroshima with the loss of 90,000 to 146,000 and Nagasaki with 39,000 to 80,000 during bombings of August 6 and 9, 1945.

But, to return to Guernica, it was Picasso's painting that brings home to us the continued terrifying images of animals (the bull, the horse and the dove), and people (the devastated woman cradling in her arms a lifeless child, the dismembered soldier) and objects (the horseshoe, the strangely appearing lamp, tongues shaped like knives, and the disturbingly chilling image of an eye or light bulb that looks down on the macabre devastation.)

In addition, there is something further that disturbs us about the slaughtering of people and a village like Guernica. It is this. Guernica had no strategic value as a military target! (See the PBS conclusion on the matter as well.) In other words, innocent people died, animals were brutalized, a town was devastated by military tactics that served only as a practice run to perfect the technique of attacking civilian populations in order to terrorize the world and further the military goals of Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, and others in the war machine of the so-called Axis powers. 

Observe how three forces came together in planning and executing the attack on Guernica. These forces were: (1) A fascination with technology, and in particular the technology that could be applied to warfare; (2) the obsession with power and the danger of being taken over or possessed with a power complex, personal or collective; and (3) how this fascination with technology in the hands of a despotic ruler and nation with no conscious moral center may explode in a frenzy of nationalism, imperialism, militarism, and the hubris of disregard for boundaries and the well-being of neighbors.

Sound familiar? It should. And the most frightening prospect is that this may occur so slowly, so far removed from the basic concerns of our everyday life that the danger is obscured until it is too late to head it off. Like an infection in the body that must be diagnosed at its early onset, so do we need to be attentive to the interpretation given for events in our social and political life. 

For example, are we oblivious to the fact that children may be separated from their parents at our borders? That children may be placed in cages without proper clothes and hygiene for indefinite periods of time? That a father and his daughter risked their lives crossing a river where they drowned seeking hope in a world where hope has long been out of reach for thousands of people?

Considering our political controversies on the topic of immigration, is the problem that we need to erect walls and barriers to prevent people from crossing our borders? Or might it be the case that we are not understanding and addressing the causes that lead people to risk everything, even their lives, to find safety, security, and a possible promising future for themselves and their children? 

Are we oblivious to these considerations? I think not. But, returning now to the memory of Guernica, as I mentioned earlier, the three forces that intersected leading to the attack on that village were conditions that are capable of appearing in our time: (1) a fascination with technology and its application for making war; (2) a drive for power with such an obsession that it became a power complex driving the corrupting governments of General Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini, leaders of the Axial powers; and (3) the absence of consciousness of a moral center within those individuals whose leadership made possible the monstrous attack on Guernica.

Whether or not the tragic episode of history repeats itself depends upon our consciousness and our intention to see that Guernica does not occur while we placidly stroll through the market place of our high tech village, fascinated with our iPhone, enjoying a bull market that could become the bull of Picasso's "Guernica." 

In Carl Jung's Red Book, he offered this insight about the place of dreams in our life, and the place of our life in dreams: [1]     

          We all live in our dreams, we do not live only by day. Sometimes we 
          accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams. 

He ventured this statement as a reflection on one of his own puzzling dreams, the killing of Siegfried.

This is the way he told that dream in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections:

            I was with an unknown, brown-skinned man a savage, in a lonely, rocky
          mountain landscape. It was before dawn; the eastern sky was already 
          bright, and the stars fading. Then I heard Siegfried's horn sounding over
          the mountains and I knew that we had to kill him. We were armed with 
          rifles and lay in wait for him on a narrow path over the rocks.
            Then Siegfried appeared high up on the crest of the mountain, in the 
          first ray of the rising sun. On a chariot made of the bones of the dead he
          drove at furious speed down the precipitous slope. When he turned a corner, 
          we shot at him, and he plunged down, struck dead.
             Filled with disgust and remorse for having destroyed something so great
          and beautiful, I turned to flee, impelled by the fear that the murder might
          be discovered. But a tremendous downfall of rain began, and I knew that it
          would wipe out all traces of the dead. I had escaped the danger of discovery; 
          life could go on, but an unbearable feeling of guilt remained.

What is this guilt? And why did he want or need to kill Siegfried?  Think again about his earlier words: "We also live in our dreams, we do not live only by day." And so, I wondered, what was Jung living in this dream? The time of the dream was December 18, 1913, and in his personal life, Jung described the moment as a "confrontation with the unconscious," a "period of inner uncertainty," a "state of disorientation," as if feeling "totally suspended in mid-air."  (MDR, p. 170)

Jung is in turmoil. Why? As I will show, the reason for his inner upheaval is two-fold. The first reason is because of the break in his relationship with Sigmund Freud; and the second reason is because of the creeping catastrophic events in Germany. 

One year earlier, Jung had suffered a traumatic break in the relationship with Freud. The tension between these two pioneers in the young psychoanalytic movement had accelerated for years, marked probably with a dinner together in 1909, when Freud's mistrust of Jung reached a point of leading Freud to believe Jung harbored death-wishes toward him. Then, in ways historians have pondered since that time, neither of the men could or would find a way to resolve their conflicts occurring within what once had appeared to be a positive father-son relationship. Finally, in his letter of January 3, 1913, Freud took the decisive step of proposing that "we abandon our personal relations entirely." Responding in his letter a few days later, Jung completed the closure of their relationship with words borrowed from Hamlet's soliloquy:  "The rest is silence." 

Even now one and one-half centuries later, I find this exchange of letters reeks of death. How could they not have lingered in Jung's memories and dreams? But this is not the reason for his stated guilt at having killed Siegfried. After all, Jung did not kill the relationship with Freud, nor vice-versa. 

And so we turn to the second reason for Jung's inner turmoil. Jung killed Siegfried, not Freud nor the relationship with Freud. This Siegfried was the symbol of Jung's personal attitude and posture of heroism and power. This mythical image of Siegfried had come to symbolize Jung's egotism. His adoption of this attitude was an understandable connection, because Jung had become inflated with his own personal accomplishments, while Siegfried was "the warrior hero of Germanic medieval epics." [2]  In one of the mythological stories, Siegfried kills a dragon and then is himself killed. This is a theme developed by Richard Wagner in the third drama of his Ring cycle. 

But Siegfried also represented the uncontested collective complex that had seized Germany prior to World War I. At the center of that complex was the archetypal drive for power. Under Wilhelm II, the German kaiser, Germany followed the path of imperialism, militarism, and nationalism in alliance with Austria-Hungary and Italy (until 1914). Opposed by what would become known as the Entende alliance of France, the United Kingdom, and Russia, Europe became caught in a death spiral that would culminate in World War I and the cumulative deaths of seven million civilians and ten million military personnel. [3]

It was this dark, foreboding mood possessing Germany that haunted Jung, arising from the power complex, a complex Jung came to see as the obsessional drive of his own ambition. This frightening, repulsive drive was hidden, of course, in the deep, shadowy recesses of his unconscious.

But the truth wants to be made known. Propelled by the more dominant drive toward the realization of health and wholeness, we have to reckon in our dreams with the demonic powers that can possess us. "Health" pushes against "disease;" the "moral perspective" battles with the urge toward chaos, conflict, destruction, domination. We may ignore these inner struggles, and when they appear in our dreams -- as they will -- we may dismiss them as nightmares to be discarded as quickly as possible. 

So it is to Jung's credit that he took note of the dreams and visions that disturbed him so consistently during that period of 1912-mid-1914, when World War I was incubating. Among those frightening images in his psyche were these: [4]           

• "a monstrous flood" with the "floating rubble of civilization," the "drowned bodies of countless thousands," the "sea turned to blood." 
• "rivers of blood"
• "the land turned to ice," "all green things turned to frost," "the entire region deserted by human beings"
• an "active imagination" [5] in which he let himself "drop" into the depths of his unconscious that was experienced as a cave with icy water, a dwarf, a youth with blond hair and a wound in the head, a "gigantic black scarab" and "a red, newborn sun" [6]

Given the bizarre nature of these images, you might wonder if these visions indicated a mental illness. Jung himself questioned if he might be experiencing the onset of schizophrenia, and was relieved of that anxiety only when military hostilities of WWI began in July 28, 1914. 

But another war Jung was experiencing was within himself. Not only was Europe and the world attacked by a Germany fueled by the archetypal power complex of Siegfried; Siegfried also existed within Jung. This is why he was so troubled by his dream and why he had to come to this realization: 

          "Why, this is the problem that is being played out in the world." Siegfried,
          I thought, represents what the Germans want to achieve, heroically to impose
          their will, have their own way: ... I had wanted to do the same. But now that
          was no longer possible. The dream showed me that the attitude embodied by
          Siegfried, the hero, no longer suited me. Therefore it had to be killed. [7]

This act of killing Siegfried in Jung's dream throws light on what he meant when he said, "Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams." In the case of this dream, Jung had the support of the brown-skinned man who represented a force deep in the unconscious. And then there was the rain, a symbol of cleansing power from the "heavens" that renews the earth and offers absolution of his conscience. It was as if Jung's heroic deed of killing Siegfried was being validated by a higher morality in his deep unconscious. That is to say, he was not acting solely from the vantage point of his ego.

Our dreams are laboratories of life lived and unlived, adventures undertaken and possibilities never attempted. What a paradox! As frightening as dreams may be sometimes, as exhilarating as they appear at other times, and as mundane as they may seem to be most times, they are always images of our world and our deeds. And sometimes, during moments of national unease, they come to us as warnings about our personal as well as collective attitudes, attitudes that may have to be sacrificed in order that life may go on and the world be renewed.


                                               NOTES
1.  Liber Primus fol. IV (V)/V (r)
2.  The American Heritage Dictionary (Fifth Edition)
3.  Later, the United Sates, Japan, and finally Italy would join the Entende alliance.
4.  See Jung's Memories, Dreams, and Visions, pp. 175-194.
5.  "Active imagination" is a term used by Jung to describe the intentional act of allowing
      oneself to descend into an image or vision with no effort to project upon the outcome 
      of what one will experience in this encounter with previously unconscious elements in
      in one's psyche.  See Collected Works, Vol. 14, par. 706.
6.  Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 179.
7.  Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 180.

What I seem to remember most about May is that it brought exam time (ugh!) and then the last, celebratory days of the school year (yay!). In other words, it was sandwiched between April, which I most associated with springtime and flowers, and June, which meant the carefree days of summer with picnics, fishing trips, and idyllic days at the beach!

This really is not fair to May. The word itself derives from maey, an Old English word which connoted "to be able," "to be strong," "to manifest power." That is why it serves very well to represent the time of year when nature pops open with beauty, new growth, and landscapes escaping the cold death of winter. May represent a springtime of life that gives birth to traditional, springtime pagan festivals, a remnant of which remains in our present-day attempts to catch May's revelry with the Maypole display of greenery, ribbons and our school children "dancing" around a pole stuck in the ground, the significance of which our kids have no idea.

Strange then, isn't it, that May also calls our attention to a couple of grim experiences. The first of them is the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago. This violent event thrust the plight of blue-collar workers into a spotlight that shines today upon the labor movement with its own international day honoring workers. 

Unconnected to that event is the second of "grim" experiences that May has come to represent. This is the international distress call -- May Day, May Day, May Day! It was first used in 1923 when a British senior radio officer, Frederick Stanley Meckford, was asked to develop a vocal distress call that could be used by aviators and mariners to signal that they were experiencing an emergency. Mackford worked at the Croydon Airport, London, and most of the emergencies with which he was concerned had to do with sea vessels and aircraft flying between London and Paris. What he proposed was a clever use of the French word m'aider, meaning "help me." The French pronunciation sounds like the English "May Day," and thus was born a verbal international distress call that was made official in 1948, sanctioning the use of "May Day," sounded three times in a brief consecutive round.

Whether we think about "May" linguistically, psychologically, or historically, the word wants to get our attention. And so it was when "May," the month, slipped up on me following a very rainy month of April. Flowers burst out as if cued to announce a happy springtime festival's arrival. However, as the wonderful, old baseball poem, "Casey at the Bat," laments, "There is no joy in Mudville"!  And I am referring not just to the mood at my house but, for the most part, in most houses today.

There is no joy in Mudville, or in our nation's capital, or throughout the land. Everybody seems to be angry with everybody, everybody seems not to trust anybody, everybody seems to be pessimistic about the state of the world -- its looney-tunes politics, its perpetual war games abroad, its approaching-but-not-yet environmental catastrophe, its governmental  practiced howdy-doody show, its sarcastically mean humor, its hysterical love affair with machines, its self-appointed "know-it-all" talking heads, its sordid evangelical fundamentalism, its less-than-entertaining entertainment industry, and its vacuous non-engagement with the mind.

How is it we do not brood about these things and break through our imposed caccoon of dissociative inattentiveness to the inauthentic life we are living. I guess it has to do with our wealth. My God, there is so much money. My wife and I have just returned from the west coast and a visit to celebrate our granddaughter's birthday. We marveled at the opportunity we have to arrange such a visit, and we marveled still more at the wealth, the crowds pouring through the entertainment venues, the uproarious conversations in the restaurants, the preening presentation of exotic dishes, the transportation systems, the grand artifact of civilization imposed on one of the worlds' true natural vistas of beauty. 

And then there were also the fashionable dressing-down of the men, the women's wholly pants which are not so holy, the studied presentation of a casual air that says we do not assume to present a studied style. Not that their "airs" are at all unique to the west coast. For the most part, they are universal and present among all of us -- as is the wealth, the gobs of money, the standard of living that takes us far above the natural persons we are when we are not living in this bubble of detachment from our natural and vulnerable and ever-so temporary habitat. 

This habitat exists on a membrane of ecological sub-systems of water, oxygen, and natural life that may -- we are told by reputable scientists -- have no more than ten-to twelve years remaining for us to reign in the abusing excesses of our expoitative standard of living. We are driving and dancing, dining and drinking, dressing and doping our birthright away.

But before I go any further down the road of despair, I think it is important to mention yet one more association to the word, "May." This association is a linguistic one and is found in the thought of Hinduism and Buddhism, two of the world's great religions. From them we also find the word and the concept of "Maya." This term refers to the illusory appearance of the material world that obscures the undifferentiated spiritual reality from which it originates. You will recognize this as not so different from the idea of Jesus that "the Kingdom of Heaven is within you."  

In other words, there is a profound reality beneath the surface of this material world. And in this "spiritual" world, other forces are at work, forces and powers beyond anything we yet can imagine with our egotistically driven minds. When and how will this spiritual world emerge? Has it already? Or is it waiting for us to sound the distress call -- May Day, May Day, May Day! 

Think about it. We hardly ever laugh anymore except at stories of the exploits of certain public figures. Perhaps it is because many of them cast themselves as laughing jokes. But when we think about it -- which we most often don't -- it is actually very sad that the unconsciousness of some of these characters provide most of the material for our late-night comedians posing as barkers at the big tent of our national horror show.

On the other hand, the late show hosts are doing us a favor. Unlike some societies that turn to revolution, we turn to the would-be comedic exposure of corruption and political cowardice. We let off steam with our laughter rather than physical attacks. Of course, there are also the terrifying scenes in which men, women, and children are shot to death, and these most often are innocent, unarmed, nonviolent people who fall in the line of fire.

And so we ask, what has happened to our world? Have we lost our civility because we lost our sense of humor? Or have we lost our sense of humor because we lost our civility? Perhaps most disturbing in this nightmarish time within which we find ourselves is the fixed attitude we have adopted and the polarization of our beliefs, values, and behaviors.

Which, if you will pardon this abrupt shift in mood, reminds me of a joke. It goes like this:

            Two men are making breakfast. As one is buttering the toast, he says,
            "Did you ever notice that if you drop a piece of toast, it always lands
             butter side down?" The second guy says "No, I bet it just seems that 
            way because it's so unpleasant to clean up the mess when it lands
            butter side down. I bet it lands butter side up just as often."  The
            first guy says, "Oh yeah? Watch this." He drops the toast to the floor
            where it lands butter side up. The second guy says, "See, I told you."
            The first guy says, "Oh, I see what happened. I buttered the wrong
            side!"                (Cathcart and Klein, p. 34)

You get the point, I am sure, and recognize this pattern of holding to a pre-conceived belief regardless of any evidence to the contrary! This fallacy in logic describes our age perfectly with plenty of rationalizations as to why evidence should not be accepted. It is "fake news," "bad science," "main-stream media," etc.  It does not matter how solid the evidence may be, if one's mind is made up, and if there is a deeply set political, ideological, or religious opposition to the evidence, then the evidence will not be accepted. And, in some cases, the evidence and those who present it may be attacked and banished from the opposing group.

Where does this opposition to evidence-based decision arise? As I said, we see evidence of it in the many "isms" of our day: nationalism, racism, creationism, sexism, anti-Semitism, ageism, authoritarianism, conservatism, liberalism, etc. If you Google any one of the"isms," you will likely be led into a labyrinth of history, social conflicts, economic developments, geographical conquests, and racial divides. Quite often, however, you will trace these developments to a single individual who understood the currents of his/her age and exploited those currents in forming a mass movement -- sometimes for the betterment of followers and the world, but also sometimes for cruel ends and destruction.

And, if I may, I will illustrate this with another joke:

                A man tries on a made-to-order suit and says to the tailor, "I need 
            the sleeve taken in. It's two inches too long!"
                The tailor says, "No, just bend your elbow like this. See, it pulls
            up the sleeve."
                The man says, "Well, okay, but look at the collar! When I bend my
            elbow, the collar goes halfway up the back of my head."
                The tailor says, "So? Raise your head up and back. Perfect."
                The man says, "But now the left shoulder is three inches lower than
            the right one!"
                The tailor says, "No problem. Bend the waist way over to the left 
            and it evens out."
                The man leaves the store wearing the suit, his right elbow crooked 
            and sticking out, his head up and back, all the while leaning to the 
            left. The only way he can walk is with a herky-jerky, spastic gait.
                Just then, two passers-by notice him.
                Says the first: "Look at that poor crippled guy. My heart goes out
            to him."
                Says the second: "Yeah, but the tailor must be a genius! That suit
            fits him perfectly!"             (Cathcart and Klein, p. 70)

That tailor may not be a genius. But he is a master manipulator, a kind of a salesman who does not care for others but for himself, a cunning magician of sorts who distorts perceptions and weaves a spell of deluding perfection for his customers. If we take the tailor in this joke as a symbol for a politician, priest, or salesperson who is intoxicated with his/her power, then we see what Carl Jung called the "mana"personality.

"Mana" is a Melanesian word referring to supernatural power of individuals connected to the spirit world. Psychologically, we would say these persons are mediators of the world of archetypes. If their ego is healthy so that they can accept the fact that they are themselves not the power, but only the messenger of the power, then they may do good for others. But if they are not conscious of that reality, that is, if they are possessed by the archetypal power, then they may wreak destruction upon individuals and societies as a whole. In this case, the individual, and/or group, becomes a victim in the hands of a person whose ego is inflated with a demonic power.

This ill-fitting suit in the joke seems to symbolize the fashion of our present age. We appear to have been deluded into wearing a suit that does not become us. We know this because the laughter has left us, and with it a healthy sense of who we are as well as what our destiny really is. For as Shopenhauer boldly declared, "A sense of humor is that truly 'divine' attribute of man which alone befits him to maintain his soul in freedom."  
(See Jung, CW 7, para. 240)


For references, see the following:
Cathcart,T. and D.Klein. (2007). Plato and Platypus Walk into a Bar. New York: Abrams Image.
Jung, C. (1966). Collected Works, Vol. 7, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. (R.F.C. Hull, Trans.).  Princeton: University Press.

In my last blog, I described the suffering of our precious, nineteen-year-old cat, Sheba, who died of a melanoma that attacked her viciously in her mouth. I also described the excruciating suffering my wife and I endured as we treated Sheba's cancer, as we held her at the end when our vet euthanized her at home. Even as I write this, some four weeks later, I cannot hold back the tears -- thinking of her death, how noble and present she was to us until her last breath.

So there we were, intimately facing what is inevitable for each of us, death. And suffering -- the suffering of birth, aging, disease, the loss of all things and persons we hold dear, and then death. In my last blog, I described how Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha, found unbearable this cycle of birth and death, and how he discovered an "end" to suffering through a realization of "The Four Noble Truths" and "The Eightfold Path." This is Buddhism's understanding of the human potential to experience "an end to suffering." 

And what do the Christians propose? Or, more particularly, what did Jesus say? I was mulling over that question soon after Sheba's death when a friend told me about his loss of a pet. My friend told me how he greatly empathized with us because he had been through that experience himself and could not believe the depth of the pain. In fact, he said, "I believe I have grieved more deeply over my pet's death than the death of my mother and father"!  A number of people have told me something of the same thing -- how they find it hard to admit that the grief over losing a precious pet aches so deeply. As my friend and I pondered that experience, he paused and said very thoughtfully, "Actually, that love my cat showed me might have been the closest I have ever come to experiencing unconditional love." 

His statement surprised me. My friend is not a person who appears to be in touch with his feelings in general. He does not appear to be curious about his inner world, or if so, he is either reticent to talk about it or does not have the words to express what he may think and feel deeply. But there it came out -- with his cat he experienced unconditional love, a bond between them that seemed not to be limited by conditions. 

"Unconditional love," I pondered. That probably does capture the bond my wife and I shared with Sheba. Even when I could sometimes feel irritated with her and speak more sharply than usual, she would return in a forgiving manner to curl up comforting me. Sure, I thought, this is all about her thinking about her next meal; this is all about eating and sleeping and doing it all again the next day! But I knew better.

Yes, we can anthropomorphize; we can project our human cognitions, motives, and emotions upon our pets. But to reduce our understanding of the bond between human beings and pets as a relationship of co-dependent survival behaviors is to rob the attachment bond of a transcendent meaning that enriches our existence. And now we can take a step even further, thanks to the increasing research in animals' behavior and brains. Now we can define and describe empathy in many species; now we can trace the human compassionate instinct through an evolutionary process that moves "from the bottom up," informing our consciousness of an instinct we may call compassion or empathy that is not only within a species but also between species. 

This "attachment bond" may carry many names. Among human beings we call it love. And within the Christian community, the name of that love is agape. It is almost common knowledge today to refer to our Greek heritage that has helped us distinguish between the different forms of love including: philautia (self-love), pragma (a practical bond of attachment that may describe some long marriages), storge (tenderness and affection such as parents feel toward children), philia (a bond between friends), eros (a drive toward union with that which is desired), and agape (unconditional love that "wills the good of another," as described by Thomas Aquinas). Furthermore, C.S.Lewis offered us the keen insight in his book, The Four Loves, that "the highest good does not stand without the lowest." I take this to mean that agape does not assume some sanctimonious perch separate from the other forms of love but rather enfolds them in an embrace of a wholistic consciousness. This is what compels agape toward an unconditional regard for all sentient beings.

And this is the compelling theme in the New Testament. God is defined as agape (1 John 4:8 and 4:16). Also, drawing upon his Hebraic heritage as described in Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19, Jesus describes the Great Commandment in this way: "Love (agape) the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. And the second is like it: Love (agape) your neighbor as yourself."  Then, just before his death, Jesus gave his disciples what he called "a new commandment" -- "that you love (agape) one another. Just as I have loved (agape) you, you also are to love (agape) one another." 

This is the essence of Christianity. Its gift to the world is a witness to the meaning of love that is unconditional, whose name is agape, whose motivating force nudges humanity on toward what Teilhard de Chardin calls the Omega Point, an evolutionary destiny of life in which the conscious and unconscious meet to provide humankind with a deep morality that guides us beyond the Freudian super-ego toward the laws of life itself and the God within. (C.G.Jung, Collected Works, Vol. 9ii, paragraph 190ff). 

Of course, Christianity's demonstration of agape down through the centuries has been compromised by humanity's failure to protect the little ones, by a wretched abuse of power that has destroyed habitats, by a tendency to side with dictators who use power to dominate others, by a prejudice against women who are equated with the source of so-called "original sin" based upon a misinterpretation of Eve's role in the creation myth, and by an anthropomorphic hubris that demeans other creatures in our beloved animal kingdom. Yes, all of that is true, and all of that -- and more -- debases the principle of agape. It is enough to drive each of us who have been baptized within that tradition to hang our heads in shame. 

How ironical it is then that we see in the eyes of our pets a forgiving unconditional love. True, it may not be what we fully mean by agape. Our pets, our dogs, cats, birds, and other creatures do not have the same brain structure we have. And we must not be naive in overlooking their instincts for survival, instincts of territoriality and mating, hunger and hunting, aggression and fear of aggression. These are our instincts as well, although played out in what we may rationalize as a more civilized manner. Still the force of unconditional love in these creatures drives us toward an introspection by which we are made more deeply human.

Here at this point in my writing, two synchronicities occurred which I would like to share with you. The first synchronicity is the irritating peck on the wooden structure of my house by the downy woodpecker looking for a suitable home. Typically, the downy woodpecker establishes a nest in trees of which we have plenty around our house, so many we have not provided a substitute nest -- yet. 

And so, when the woodpecker comes along, checking out my house, I find I also have to contend with another uninvited guest -- my most Elmer Fudd-like self who marches outside to do battle with the petite downy woodpecker. The bird seems to find this charade of competition over a choice of homes to be amusing. I rush outside, it flies up in a tree and patiently waits for me to go back inside so that we can repeat this maneuver several times, amidst threats and pecks and slamming doors and flapping wings. I know -- we are planning to buy a house -- for the woodpecker -- this next week.

Now, the second synchronicity. Taking a break from my writing, over breakfast this morning and my weekly read of The New York Times' Book Review, I was surprised to see on the front page a review of Dr. Frans De Wall's latest book, Mama's Last Hug. Dr. De Wall is a Dutch-born primatologist whose research and writing have opened doors in my mind to the reality of emotions in animals. The reviewer, Sy Montgomery, describes one passage in de Wall's book when two old friends met after some time had passed: 

               The two old friends hadn't seen each other lately. Now one of them 
               was on her deathbed, crippled with arthritis, refusing food and 
               drink, dying of old age. Her friend had come to say goodbye. At first
               she didn't seem to notice him. But when she realized he was there, 
               her reaction was unmistakable: Her face broke into an ecstatic grin.
               She cried out in delight. She reached for her visitor's hand and stroked
               his hair. As he caressed her face, she draped her arm around his neck
               and pulled him closer.

In this moving real-life scene, the "friend" who is visiting is the Dutch biologist, Dr. Jan Van Hooff, and he is visiting his old friend, Mama, a chimpanzee. 

I think the last moments with Sheba were much the same. And these shared moments are happening now all around the globe. It may not be agape but it is a bond of love that crosses the bridge of our separateness, a bond in which our suffering, regardless of our religion or politics, is eclipsed by a greater reality.

We have just had to euthanize our petite, black and white, tuxedo cat. A faithful, dutiful companion for going-on nineteen years, Sheba was strong, loyal, and courageous to the end. We had battled a melanoma on her lower-left lip for three years. The melanoma won, but not until after we had thrown everything at it we possibly could: immunotherapy, radiation, chemotherapy, and herbal medicines along with pain-killers, etc. We kept her alive so long because she seemed herself to be choosing life: eating, bathing, going for walks in our yard until the last three days when she finally refused medicines and food. So, we held her and tearfully uttered our good-byes while she was mercifully attended by a most-compassionate vet who specializes in hospice and euthanasia in the home.

Sheba's suffering and death parallel some pages in a manuscript I am attempting to complete. The focus on this manuscript does not arise out of the blue. The theme of suffering nestles within my twin vocations of Pastoral Counseling and Jungian Analysis. How could the experience of suffering not occupy some central place within the work of all practitioners of healing? Suffering is life; life is suffering, although not the only thing.

But just because suffering holds center stage in each developmental phase of life, precisely because of its prominence in human existence, we desperately attempt to not-see the ravages of suffering. We try to drag it behind the curtain of life's drama. We distract ourselves with diversions of anything we can buy, beg, borrow, or burglarize -- anything that will take our minds off the real truth of our finite existence.

That truth is this: All that rises falls away. Siddhartha Gautama (563-483 BCE), a young nobleman living in a border area between what is now India and Nepal woke up to the reality of life's suffering in his observations of birth, aging, disease, death, and the experience of the loss of loved ones and things. This realization of life's impermanence and suffering was too much for Gautama. If this is all life is about, he appears to have reasoned, then how can we live with such awareness? Maybe more importantly, why continue on with life if we cannot escape or end the suffering?

And so, on the night of his 29th birthday, Gautama abandoned his life of luxury and privilege to become a wandering ascetic in search of an end to suffering. After six years, following an in-depth encounter with Mara, the tempter who traffics in distractions, diversions, and delusions of life, Gautama realized the enlightenment of his "Buddha-nature." 

Emerging from his six years of an ascetic quest, a life-and-death encounter with Mara, the demon of unconsciousness, and finally a heroic affirmation of an enlightened conquest of suffering, the Buddha preached his first sermon at Deer Park in Sarnath, India. It was here Siddhartha Gautama, now speaking as the Buddha, announced an end to suffering, or at least, the way by which an individual might experience an end to suffering. As the very foundation of what would become Buddhism, the fourth largest of the major religions today, Buddha taught his small group of listeners the "Four Noble Truths" and the "Noble Eightfold Path." These, he said, reveal the path to end suffering for all who honor these truths. In a brief summary, they may be described like this:

                                 The Noble Four Truths
1.  The truth of suffering. Human existence is marked by the nature of impermanence, which we experience in birth, aging, disease, death, and the loss of all things and persons we hold dear.
2.  The truth of the cause of suffering. The cause comes from the manifold feelings, thoughts, and sensations of anxiety that arise from our recognition of and attempt to avoid suffering, our drives to attach to things and persons we want to possess, and our pursuit of the countless distractions that divert our attention from suffering.
3.  The truth of the cessation of suffering.  It is not inevitable that we suffer, says the Buddha. In fact, there is a cessation to this suffering.
4.  The truth of the Eightfold Path. The cessation of suffering may be experienced through the intentionality of following the Eightfold path as described below.

                                 The Noble Eightfold Path
1.  Right understanding.  The word "right" as used here is not to be understood  moralistically. "Right" refers to that which is appropriate to the situation. Thus, "right" understanding means that the Eightfold Path begins with a conscious acknowledgement of the reality of suffering interwoven within the essence of existence.
2.  Right intention. The right intention is to undertake the Eightfold Path on one's own choosing with a resolve to see it through, recognizing the Path will likely lead us into new discoveries of our old "self' while opening up unexplored, new ways of being in the world.
3.  Right speech.  Our words arise from our thoughts; indeed, they are our thoughts. "As  persons think in their hearts, so they will be." What comes out is what is within, yes? But the reverse is also true: What we say takes lodging within us. Our speech arises from our character while at the same time our words continue to mold our character. How hard it is in some families to say to one another, "I love you." However, once spoken the ice begins to melt, and a new relationship is born.
4.  Right action.  The same that was said about our speech applies as well to our actions. When people come into my consulting room, wanting to deal with a conflict in personal relationships or difficulties in the work place, they will sometimes say, "But this is just the way I am"! To which I gently remind them, "No, this is the way you have learned to be." If you change your behavior, you create a new life, and from your new life, you change the world.
5.  Right vocation.  I am not talking about your job as such;  I am referring to your "calling" to be in the world -- which may be expressed in many different "jobs."
6.   Right effort.  The Buddha spoke of "effort" in four steps: (a) awareness of the negative pattern of thinking; (b) a resolve to turn loose that old pattern, (c) awareness of a new way of thinking; (d) commitment to put that new way of thinking into practice. This "new way" is that which leads to health and the alleviation of suffering.
7.  Right mindfulness.  We are likely to associate this with meditation, "mindfulness meditation." In that meditation, we watch our thoughts, feelings, and sensations arise, pass by, and then go on over the horizon of our consciousness. But right mindfulness does not end with our meditation, nor is it intended to. We learn in our meditation to practice in our active life the process of being mindful of feelings, thoughts, sensations. Our anger, our fear, our moods arise as we encounter stressful situations and people. But we learn we have choices: we do not have to attach to any of those feelings, thoughts, or sensations. We may need to take action, even strong action in some cases, but we do our best in mindfulness training to learn how to respond consciously. We have the feelings or thoughts; they do not have us.
8.  Right concentration.  This one is hard because it refers to that which is wordless. Consider its etymology, centrum from Latin, meaning "center." And look at the definitions Webster gives us: 
      1.  to bring or direct toward a common center;
      2.  to render less diffuse, less dilute;
      3.  to express the essence of;
      4.  to bring all one's powers, faculties, or activities to bear;
      5.  to direct the attentions of the mental faculties toward a single object [the "one  
           point"].

This brings us to a deeper state of meditation. It is in the state of concentration that bliss may arise. It is in this culmination of the Eightfold Path that Buddha would say we realize our true humanity as a connection to the universe and to all others who, like us, suffer, but now with a sense of meaningfulness -- perhaps. This is the "end" of all the major religions, as it is the "end" of suffering.

And before I go, I want to add something further from the perspective of Christianity and Jungian psychology. But that will have to wait, when I will also say something further about Sheba.

You may recognize the title of this blog as a line from Abba's "Happy New Year." But in case you have forgotten, or never heard the song, here are the lyrics form the first verse: 

       No more champagne
       And the fireworks are through
       Here we are, me and you
       Feeling lost and feeling blue
       It's the end of the party
       And the morning seems so gray
       So unlike yesterday 
       Now's the time for us to say ... 

Abba, the Swedish pop music group that originated in Stockholm in the 1970's, released this hit song in 1980 as part of an album. Against the backdrop of the 1970's, the lyrics above assume an even greater poignancy. With the war in Vietnam, the Iranian Revolution, the conflicts in the Middle East, the rise of terrorism, and the energy/oil crisis, the "party' did seem to be over in many respects.

Apart from the cultural and societal turmoil, Abba itself would suspend its work, and the two couples in the group would each divorce in the late 70's and early 80's. But this blog is not intended as a psychological analysis of the 70's or of Abba's psyche, collectively or individually. They appear to have gotten on with life very well. 

So it is the poignancy of the lyrics in themselves that draws my attention at the moment. Also, there is one additional factor at play for me personally. This comes from a holiday visit with our daughter and her family on the west coast, a visit that gave opportunities for singing and making music with our piano, cello, guitar, tambourines, and voices! This is part of our family tradition. On most occasions when we get together, there will be songs, impromptu performances, laughter, and the challenge of trying new songs to add to our repertoire.

It was at such a moment when we were congratulating ourselves on how well we sounded (to ourselves!) when the suggestion arose that we should do Abba's "Happy New Year." Sober reflections prevailed, however, and we gently let that prospect for our ourve fade away -- at least for the moment and perhaps for all time. 

Why?  

Well the first and obvious answer is that we could not reach the pinnacle Abba achieves in their arrangement. But there is something else going on in our reflections on the lyrics of that song. I have referred to the poignancy of the lyrics, but "poignancy" does not contain the deep emotion of the images evoked in those words to the second and third verses:

       Sometimes I see
       How the brave new world arrives
       And I see how it thrives
       In the ashes of our lives
       Oh yes, man is a fool
       And he thinks he'll be okay
       Dragging on, feet of clay
       Never knowing he's astray
       Keeps on going anyway

       Seems to me now
       That the dreams we had before
       Are all dead, nothing now
       Than confetti on the floor
       It's the end of a decade
       In another ten years time
       Who can say what we'll find
       What lies waiting down the line
       In the end of [twenty-nine]

The words are written as if for today. Here we are, you and I, facing a political process in crisis, unending wars of brutalization of armed soldiers and civilians, an opioid crisis whose real cause has not been named because of what it would reveal about the spiritual vacuousness of our society, an upswing in suicide rates for our children and young people, the creeping ecological changes, the destruction of habitats for wildlife and humans who migrate to our neighborhoods and shores, and the engines that drive our production and marketing of distractions which anesthetize our consciences.

But Abba's song does not end in despair, and neither must we resign ourselves to the distressing way of things we are experiencing as 2018 becomes 2019. We are free to envision another world, a kinder and more hopeful world. Here is the way Abba ends their lyrics: 

       Happy new year
       Happy new year
       May we all have a vision now and then
       Of a world where every neighbor is a friend
       Happy new year
       Happy new year
       May we all have our hopes, our will to try
       If we don't we may as well lay down and die
       You and I

For 2019, I am choosing to believe the party is not over, that all of our dreams are not like confetti on the floor, and that we do not have to stand on feet of clay, because our feet are made for dancing!

I invite you to join me in the dance, as I wish you a happy new year!

(Happy New Year lyrics by Benny Andersson and Bjorn K. Ulvaeus, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group)

            They who speak do not know;
            They who know do not speak.

I adapted those lines above from the fifty-sixth chapter of Tao Te Ching. Written by Lao-tzu in the late fifth century B.C.E., just before he went up into the fog of an unknown where-about, he had left his post as historian with responsibility for official records in Loyang, a Chinese imperial capital. 

Legend describes Lao-tzu's unhappiness with the political intrigue of the Chinese Chou (Zhou) regime. Abandoning the political turmoil, Lao-tzu was passing through the Hanku pass of Loyang and stopped for the night at an inn. He obviously impressed the innkeeper, perhaps with tales of adventures in the capital, as well as commentaries drawing from his down-to-earth philosophy of life. Somehow in their exchange, the innkeeper persuaded Lao-tzu to write down his observations of life. The result was a book of sayings that came to be called the Tao Te Ching, "The Book of the Way and its Virtue." And it is from the events around this legend that the Chinese school of Taoism came into being. 

Now I return to my opening lines,

            They who speak do not know;
            They who know do not speak.

In Lao-tzu's case, he no doubt was pointing to the bizarre political developments in China that led to what historians call "the Warring States period" (475-221 B.C.E.). The cacophony of voices formed a backdrop of military confrontations, bureaucratic wrangling, ever-changing power plays, and a decline in civility and meaning in which "bad" people speak in bellicose voices while the "good" people say nothing.

That brief introduction serves as a backdrop to our present moment. Have you noticed how the most outlandish actions and words increasingly seem to pass by us as if unobserved? Where is the outrage when mothers and children are gassed on our southern border? When there will be more and more caravans of displaced people arriving at our borders as more and more homes are destroyed by the catastrophes of fires, hurricanes, floods, destruction of fertile lands, and unspeakable disruption to the natural habitat of our wildlife? When the gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" continues to widen while the advertising machinery of our merchandising industry floods us with images of the "beautiful things" many people can never hope to obtain? When our infrastructure crumbles while profits of our conglomerates escalate? When wars in foreign neighborhoods continue on as a kind of accepted business-as-usual news blurb while we busy ourselves with the mundane affairs of the markets? When one of our political parties remains basically silent in the face of monstrous acts of inhumanity, separating children from mothers and embedding those children in prison-like barracks for indefinite periods of time, making impossible the psychological reunion of parent and child even should they be physically reunited? And again, I call attention to our absence of outrage, the shrugging off of what I believe in times past would have been recognized as moral failures and criminal offenses in many cases.

Yes, people who do not know speak, while the people who do know say nothing. But events may have arrived at what could be a tipping point. For example, consider some stories in the news of our past two weeks.

First is the report that life expectancy in the United States declined again in 2017, a statistic not seen in the U.S. since 1915 through 1918, (see The Washington Post, November 29). In this annual report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we learn that "life expectancy is improving in many places in the world and wonder why it should be declining in the United States." 

Then, in another report we learn the ongoing growth of deaths from suicide has "climbed steadily since 1999 and grown worse since 2006." Most disturbing to me regarding the increase in suicides is the fact that suicide is the leading cause of death among young people between ages ten and twenty-four. Consider that number and add the 5.7% increase of self-inflicted, near-fatal injuries among young adults and children, some as young as age five, and we see a deeper concern emerging as to the health of our society.

The deeper concern is for our soul. I understand "soul" to mean the "spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal," having to do with a human being's moral or emotional nature and sense of identity (Oxford Dictionary of English). What happens to us when we lose a basic sense of safety, when sanity and civility are drowned out by words and events of violence and/or deadening triviality? And what happens when education is underfunded, when public spaces are filled with commercial developments, when religious institutions preoccupy themselves with their own growth and marketing of self-serving dogmatism, and governing is seen as a never-ending game of charades with preening politicians? 

Largely, these are questions people bring to my consulting room. Anxious about our drift toward authoritarianism, depressed about the seeming inability of good people to bring about change, the absence of moral leadership to speak in behalf of our children and our planet, our society's fascination with technology's parade of new gadgets, and the deceptive experience of a pseudo-connectivity with one another made possible by the wide web of social media, we appear to be immersed in a fog of soul-less unconsciousness.

How do we escape this numbing unconsciousness? As powerful as these forces of death-dealing unconsciousness may be, a much greater power is the striving of the human soul. And the human soul wants to be free. Entangled in the bind of collective forces, whether the binds be those of family, work, government, or social group, the soul yearns for a felt sense of safety to be free. 

So... how do we arrive at a state of mind in which the soul experiences a felt sense of freedom? I am not talking here about a social program to bring about such a state of mind. Nor am I speaking of turning our backs on the injustices I have described and the disturbing silence of those who might be able to make a difference. Apparently we have arrived at a moment in time when we have to establish an internal base of safety to be free, sane, and clear.

And that is the promise of what I am calling "Zen." Arriving in Japan from China in the twelfth century, Zen had been formed in a cradle of Lao-tzu's Taoism. Zen is a sect of Mahayana Buddhism that aims at enlightenment made possible through meditation, a form of meditation that draws upon each human being's innate intuitive sense. But Zen is also a state of mind, a state of calm attention in which one's focus is guided toward a deeper consciousness by which we find our true self, our deep being not conditioned by the world, making possible a life of service to others while living from an "oasis" within ourselves.

Zen reminds us of Christianity's Kingdom of Heaven which, Jesus says, is within each of us. It also reminds us of Carl Jung's description of individuation, a term he applies to the experience of "becoming whole." Psychologically, this happens when our minds become clear of our complexes, where we attend to the messages of our dreams, when with art, music, journaling, and creative play, we integrate conscious and unconscious, when we come home to ourselves.

We may call this "home-coming" by many names. It is a return to the deep nature of our soul, where it experiences safety to become oneself. However we name it, soul is recovered. And at this moment, I call it Zen, a call to step beyond the commonplace into a world where the moon rests peacefully upon the calm water.