Kindle Notes & Highlights
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April 22 - June 13, 2019
General conditions include: 1) Hubris 2) Ethical Infantilism 3) Unconscious Identity (participation mystique) 4) Lack of Aidos 5) Relinquishment of Will 6) Inadequate Relationship to Paradox 7) Identification with the Self 8) Inferiority of Consciousness The second group of characteristics is concerned more with the cognitive processes and the approaches to religious products (texts and teachings). These attributes can be described as cognitive characteristics, which include: 1) Concretism and naive literalism 2) Historicism and externalism 3) Selective rationality 4) Inconsistency and
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Lack of shame, modesty, humility.
the way one deals with the affective (emotional) quality of the numinosum. These characteristics are classified as affect characteristics, which include: 1) Asymbolism 2) Inadequate Relationship to Paradox 3) One-Sided Orientation of Consciousness 4) Inadequate Regulation of Numinous Energy 5) Externalization of Numinous Energy 6) Dissociative Selectivity 7) Reactivity 8) Fear of Change and Fear of the New
Naturally, there are many irrational or mysterious aspects to life and existence, but if so, we ought to be able to call them such. Calling something an a priori good, or bad for that matter, does not allow for awe, because it is already decided.
Absolute certainty and a sense of righteousness are the very characteristics of theocalypsis.
The inability to think symbolically can turn the otherwise profound meaning into a goal of one’s selfish intentions. The symbol, as a transcendent function, provides a bridge between the ego and the unconscious. It is thus a crucial constituent of psycho-spiritual development. Symbols, as they are the best possible expression of something unknown (not yet conscious) and therefore ever emerging, can be a source of continuous deepening and understanding of all things religious.
Jung asserts that a symbol is an “expression of an intuitive idea that cannot yet be formatted in any other or better way”
If symbols are understood and viewed as truly transcendent phenomena, and not simply as objective and established facts, they serve as tools for enlarging consciousness. A symbol considered on a subjective level provides meaning and opens many doors for
the ongoing constructive process, while the symbol understood literally reduces the living psychic event to a command or a dogma.
A symbol opens one to unknown perspectives and is the source of a deeper sensibility and appreciation of reality;
And yet even when symbol and myth are stripped of their spiritual vitality, they continue to exercise a truly possessive power over their victims in linking faith with collective unconsciousness. For they provide the instant truth and collective identity so appealing to the human lust for saving certitude to counter the authentic agony of doubt and ambiguity hanging over the human situation. Though it appeals to this baser spiritual instinct, fundamentalism is for that very reason likely to continue its present growth
Each and every act aimed at hindering the spring of the numinous energy without its conscious integration risks producing another compartmentalization and dogmatization.
As Matthew Fox states, “There is one underground river—but many wells into that river”. Indeed, there is a Hindu well, a Christian well, a Buddhist well, a shamanistic well, a goddess well, a Jewish well, a Muslim well, and one might say an endless number of wells that all reach deep into the river of the collective unconscious.
If we decide to embrace a particular well and embrace its traditions, we ought not confuse the particular well with the great source, the archetypal underground river of the collective unconscious. Instead, we ought to celebrate the symbolic particularities and traditions of the well we embrace.
Oddly enough, the paradox is one of our most valued spiritual possessions, while uniformity of meaning is a sign of weakness. Hence a religion becomes inwardly impoverished when it loses or cuts down its paradoxes; but their multiplication enriches because only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.
Non-ambiguity and non-contradiction are one-sided, and thus, not suited to express the incomprehensible
We can say that paradox is an expression of reality before consciousness, even though we cannot call anything paradoxical until discrimination by consciousness ensues. Things are just the way they are. A symbol always represents the unity of opposites, because without opposites, there would be no imperative to seek balance or symmetry.
The Image of God is, in virtually all religions, paradoxical: God is simultaneously loving and punitive, a creator and a destroyer, immanent and transcendent.
That is to say that everything appears in conjunction with its opposite and that there is no clear line dividing these opposites. Just as there is no clear dividing-line between the four seasons, consciousness seldom finds precise criteria in making distinctions. The role of cons...
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The collective unconscious is beyond good and evil and the only way for us to come to terms with it is to develop a relationship embracing the inherent paradoxes that arise. What does not work is to try to conform the collective unconscious to our individual likes and preferences.
The process of individuation proceeds via the tension of opposites. What is first a black-or-white perspective becomes black-and-white.
The ability to live with paradox corresponds to the process of individuation. Another way of saying this is that the process of individuation suffers the conflicts consciously and leads to the unification of opposites. If the tension is too great and the ego is unable to withstand that tension, then the opposites may be constellated even more powerfully, with the result that the conflict will continue expressing itself in regressive ways, such as splitting, projection and acting-out.
De-externalization of the conflict, that is, the withdrawal of projections combined with understanding the reason the conflict exists, returns us to the original source of conflict—the inherent nature of opposites that exist at the collective unconscious level.
Her anger was displaced in part because of the one-sided idealization of the Imago Dei: the light side of the Self. With the recovery of her negative (dark side) projections, her relationship with her sister and brother-in-law was healed.
Making God an entity that is infinitely remote and absolutely different from humankind does not help with the development of a relationship with oneself and the God-within. When divinity is conceived of as wholly extrinsic to the human psyche, the need to submit one’s wills to an external, divine authority increases. For Jung, such theology represents contempt for the human soul.
It is typical for a theocalypsis to follow a theology where the God Image corresponds to a remote external authority. In this case God is simply an ordering imperative and not a living experience.
Such a view is radically one-sided, limited,
Jung spent a great portion of his life showing that, indeed, God manifests himself in his creation and through man’s psyche. A God within makes immanent sense psychologically!
For God to be able to individually touch humans and effect transformation and change, it would be an indispensable condition, sine qua non, that there be an ontological unity between the two.
Individuation is not only a process of adaptation, it is also a deeply spiritual flowering of a person: It brings God closer to one and one closer to the divine.
Symbols and rituals that have been the cornerstones of religious systems throughout the ages, are not superficial synthetic, man-made images, but deep organs of the soul on which psychological functioning fundamentally depends.
Everything that does not fit the definition of a good God inevitably becomes split-off. This process of splitting adds to the development of one’s shadow, resulting in the accumulation of excessive, split-off energy. Over time, this excessive energy will eventually be unleashed unconsciously in one destructive form or another.
Wittgenstein (1953/2001) defined faith as compassionate adherence to the frame of reference.
The ability to regulate his experience of the fascinans of the Self remained poor. Without the capacity to hold these energies, he fell into direct identification with them.
Nonetheless, his religion remained fundamentalist, lacking a symbolic
dimension,
when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves
What is hubris? When one acts without aidos (reverence), toward the archetypal forces, he or she experiences hubris.
the word connotes a sense of retributive justice.
It originally meant something between fear, awe, shame, guilt, blame, but later it was applied to the concept of divine retribution
Aidos is usually translated ‘Shame’ or ‘Sense of Honour’, and Nemesis, by an awkward though correct phrase, ‘Righteous Indignation.’
Adam and Eve wanted to be like God and as a result, they become sinful and are made conscious of their humanity. This narrative must not be interpreted only as an historical event; it can be understood as an ever-repeating principle of divine justice—a justice that is always happening here and now.
Originally, the word nemesis meant the distribution of fortune, no matter it if was good or bad. Nemesis literally meant “the one who distributes, or deals out.”
The mystery of evil and human suffering can never be fully understood, yet we know that much of it is a result of selfish cravings and desires stemming from the ignorance of the laws of reality. This ignorance is called avidya. An avidya results in human’s moving away from the self (atman), which obscures his knowledge of the truth. Avidya, from a psychological perspective, is the state of unconsciousness, an unreflected life.
Job demonstrates naïveté and does not accept the fact that God would listen to Satan and bring suffering upon him.
There is sufficient reason to conclude that an individual is the author of the consequences of his or her choices
Naturally, we cannot ever grasp all the potential players involved in the laws of karma; whether that includes some ultimate deity or not, it is only a matter of faith that distinguishes between the causes of nature as such and the cause of God as a supreme intelligence.
From a psychological perspective, nemesis represents the consequences for the ego when it is not mindful of the unconscious and its dynamics.
He considered compensation a natural process of “inner striving to overcome inferiority,” meaning it was a functional balancing mechanism to compensate feelings of inferiority.
Because individuals possessed by the Self are not in full communication with their bodies and they tend to live (one-sided out of) partially out of concretizing mythical reality, they easily overlook the properties of consensual reality.
If, therefore, the ego falls for any length of time under the control of an unconscious factor (the Self, authors), its adaptation is disturbed and the way opened for all sorts of possible accidents
