Jung - Community and Solitude

"For community is the depth, while solitude is the height.
The true order in community purifies and preserves.
The true order in solitude purifies and  increases.
Community gives us warmth, while solitude gives us light."

Sermon 5

The Path of Meaning

“It is a timeless story.  ’Now thou hast touched him’ is a very beautiful expression.  When the god has touched a mortal, he has to go a way he does not know.  The immediacy of being touched by fate, by destiny, is very impressive, showing the reality of being caught by something inner and greater, which forms our life.”

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“So he has a restless heart, is not someone who can sit still and be content with all that he has…for he has a restless heart.  ‘Thou hast touched him,’ and he must go on this far journey – to face a battle he does not know, to travel a road he does not know – which is a classical expression for going the inner way which one does not know.  One only knows one has to go it.  The Chinese word Tao means ‘the way’ as well as ‘meaning’ or ‘goal.’  It is an equilibrium of the opposites.  We do not know the meaning except by going the way, step by step.  We do not know the goal ahead.  We only know we want to come closer to the Self, to become more ourselves.  But we cannot know what it is unless we go every step, not knowing where it leads us.  Naturally, without that attitude, which needs courage as well as humbleness one does not know.”

The archetypal significance of Gilgamesh

Rivkah Scharf Kluger

Tao Te Ching - Verse 10

A wise man
     is subtle, profound, intuitive, penetrating -
So far from the ordinary,
     that he defies understanding.
But he can be described:

Careful -
     like a man crossing a winter stream
Alert -
     as if surrounded by danger
Polite -
     as a guest in someone else's house
Self-effacing -
     as melting ice
Genuine -
     like rough hewn wood
Open -
     as a valley
Inscrutable -
     as muddy water

Amidst confusion,
     in stillness he finds clarity.
From stillness,
     he is moved to action.

He who follows the Way
     works within natural limits
So, though constantly in use,
     his strength is renewed.

Jung - Septem Sermones ad mortuos, Sermon One

One of the reasons I picked up "The Gnostic Jung" was that it contained his Septem Sermones ad Mortuos.  This Neo Gnostic document has some interesting nuggets in it.  From Sermon One -

"We ask the question: how did creation originate?  Creatures indeed originated but not the created world itself, for the created world is a quality of the Pleroma."

Interesting in light of D&C 93:33. 

 "Differentiation is the essence of the created world....That is why man himself is a divider, inasmuch as his essence is also differentiation....the undifferentiated principle and lack of discrimination are all a great danger to created beings.  For this reason we must be able to distinguish the qualities of the Pleroma.  Its qualities are the PAIRS OF OPPOSITES, such as

     the effective and the ineffective
     fullness and emptiness
     the living and the dead
     difference and sameness
     light and dark
     hot and cold
     energy and matter
     time and space
     good and evil
     the beautiful and the ugly
     the one and the many
     and so forth"

The Pleroma is a borrowed Latin word meaning "fullness."  Its use in this sermon evokes shades of a phrase from Second Nephi chapter two ("all things...a compound in one" v. 11), and like Lehi, Jung juxtaposes this undifferentiated oneness as an antithetical condition to the possibility of the creation.  For Jung, if we were (hypothetically) to "submerge into the Pleroma itself" we "cease to be created beings.  Thus we become subject to dissolution and nothingness."

Being Meant - 2

"I remember the case of a young woman[....]The first dream which made sense to her in her analysis brought about a big change.  She suddenly realized that if she had such a dream where there is an inner somebody, a mysterious inner somebody who means her, who is concerned about her, then she counts.  That brought about a big change.  It gave her a religious feeling of being meant, of being chosen, if you want, of being singled out.  In a way, individuation is [...] a kind of chosenness, namely to be meant, to have fate, to have destiny."

Rivkah Scharf Kluger
The Archetypal Significance of Gilgamesh

Jungian individuation proceeds by way of a religious relationship to a "a power greater than our own."  As with Alcoholics Anonymous it seems to matter little how you define this higher power, the relationship to it begins to generate power when it gets "personal."

Being Meant

"He [Enkidu] hears the hierodule telling him 'you know there is a king Gilgamesh in Uruk, and he had a couple of dreams, and they were about you!  And you will be a strong and trustworthy friend to him.'  Now if you were to have such an experience, being told that someone has dreamt that you would enter that person's life (things which happen by the way), how would you feel about it?  What does it give to Enkidu to hear this?

          REMARKS: Self-confidence.  Worth.

Yes but also....I would think of something very specific-if this is so cast by the gods.

         REMARK: Destiny.

Yes, it gives the quality of destiny.  The other comments were not wrong, but they belong in the larger connection of destiny.  That is the important experience at the bottom of many starts of the way of individuation - a feeling of destiny."

Rivkah Scharf Kluger
The Archetypal Significance of Gilgamesh

Hesiod 2a

Was there but one kind of strife upon the earth?
No, there are two.  A man who came to know the first
would applaud; the second he would blame.  They are
two souls.  One fosters evil war and ceaseless fights;
Her no mortal loves, but under force and through
will of deathless gods, men honor heavy strife.
But indeed, the other one dark Night birthed first.
Heaven dwelling Zeus, who sits on high, placed her
in the roots of earth.  Much better to man is she:
rousing work in all alike - the lazy too -
for a man craves work when he sees another rich -
of a truth it urges him to plow for crops,
building well his home; neighbor with neighbor strives
goading on to wealth.  This strife is good for men.
Potter to potter, carpenter with carpenter
grudges, beggar envies beggar, and poets too resent.

Qui observat ventum

From the Vulgate OT:

Qui observat ventum, non seminat,
et qui considerat nubes, numquam metet.
                                       Ecclesiastes 11:4

Who watches the wind, doesn't sow;
and he who examines the clouds will never reap.

Just a personal reminder to myself that if you wait for the time to be "perfectly right," you often end up waiting for ever.