“My destiny is to create more consciousness. The sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” Carl Jung
Psychological and spiritual work are both necessary for full human realization. They are meant to move both separately and simultaneously as life unfolds. At this time in our human evolution, it is more important than ever to grasp the importance of this process.
Psychological work is a linear chronology leading us from problem to solution, from inadequacy to competence, from dysfunction to high-level functioning.
Spiritual work is a journey from the compelling attachments of the neurotic ego to a Here-and-Now centered Self. This journey has no goal, as in the ego’s effort-oriented work. It is a path that takes us back home to ourselves where a sacred connection of all that has happened before and seemed irreconcilable awaits us. Everything in life then seems to fit. Achieving spiritual connectedness is just what we needed to achieve our destiny of conscious wholeness.
Both ego work and spiritual work combine effort (gain through pain) and effortless shifts (gain through grace). We move ourselves and we are moved onward. The steps we take in ego work shifts us gently and automatically into insight and into healthier ways of being and relating.
In both these strands of our human tapestry, as in evolution, there are synchronous unplanned spurts of quantum growth. We are then receiving the grace (gift) of progress beyond our own effort or control. We begin noticing new sources of power and wisdom both within and around us.
An example of the congruence of psychological and spiritual work is in dealing with the hurts of childhood. Psychologically, we work through the emotions by grieving the past and by self-parenting. Spiritually, we work with the past experiences as present healing images. These images may reveal that what wounded us also sensitized us. We need all the experiences of our life, both positive and negative, to become as emotionally and spiritually rich as we are.
As we learn to honor timing, we may notice that we alternate between psychological and spiritual emphases in life. At one time, our main motive may be to seek out and respond to challenges, to take hold and become deeply involved in projects and relationships. This is functional ego work and takes rightful precedence over letting go. At another time, what will work best for us are choices that lead to fewer encumbrances, to lightening up, and letting go. This is spiritual unfolding and takes priority over ego goals.
Psychological work ultimately leads us to closure and to the goal of change: healthier self-esteem and more productive relationships. Spiritual work leads us to continual transformations of consciousness: an ever-actualizing Self in touch with inner healing powers both for ourselves and others. In this transformed state, we feel a sense of the numinous, and a blissful and loving oneness with all beings and things. We experience a reconciliation of apparent opposites and a realization that, though all of this is known in one simultaneous instant, no word can ever describe it.
Our individuation or mature self-realization as human beings can never occur within a disembodied spirituality that forsakes the ego or the body. Nor can it occur while the neurotic ego, with its fear of spiritual heights, maintains its inflated illusion that there is nothing beyond itself. It is only in an axis of ego and Self that we can access all our powers and display in time what is timelessly within us.
In such a balance, the ego never again holds up or holds on to any transitory reality as permanently reliable. Rather, it enjoys a continual play of grasping and letting go, giving and receiving, working on what yields to change and resting with what does not yield. Our journey is from and through the transitory to the imperishable, from ego attachments through ego strength to the unconditional love that is our spiritual self.
Psychological and spiritual work are both necessary for full human realization. They are meant to move both separately and simultaneously as life unfolds. At this time in our human evolution, it is more important than ever to grasp the importance of this process.
Psychological work is a linear chronology leading us from problem to solution, from inadequacy to competence, from dysfunction to high-level functioning.
Spiritual work is a journey from the compelling attachments of the neurotic ego to a Here-and-Now centered Self. This journey has no goal, as in the ego’s effort-oriented work. It is a path that takes us back home to ourselves where a sacred connection of all that has happened before and seemed irreconcilable awaits us. Everything in life then seems to fit. Achieving spiritual connectedness is just what we needed to achieve our destiny of conscious wholeness.
Both ego work and spiritual work combine effort (gain through pain) and effortless shifts (gain through grace). We move ourselves and we are moved onward. The steps we take in ego work shifts us gently and automatically into insight and into healthier ways of being and relating.
In both these strands of our human tapestry, as in evolution, there are synchronous unplanned spurts of quantum growth. We are then receiving the grace (gift) of progress beyond our own effort or control. We begin noticing new sources of power and wisdom both within and around us.
An example of the congruence of psychological and spiritual work is in dealing with the hurts of childhood. Psychologically, we work through the emotions by grieving the past and by self-parenting. Spiritually, we work with the past experiences as present healing images. These images may reveal that what wounded us also sensitized us. We need all the experiences of our life, both positive and negative, to become as emotionally and spiritually rich as we are.
As we learn to honor timing, we may notice that we alternate between psychological and spiritual emphases in life. At one time, our main motive may be to seek out and respond to challenges, to take hold and become deeply involved in projects and relationships. This is functional ego work and takes rightful precedence over letting go. At another time, what will work best for us are choices that lead to fewer encumbrances, to lightening up, and letting go. This is spiritual unfolding and takes priority over ego goals.
Psychological work ultimately leads us to closure and to the goal of change: healthier self-esteem and more productive relationships. Spiritual work leads us to continual transformations of consciousness: an ever-actualizing Self in touch with inner healing powers both for ourselves and others. In this transformed state, we feel a sense of the numinous, and a blissful and loving oneness with all beings and things. We experience a reconciliation of apparent opposites and a realization that, though all of this is known in one simultaneous instant, no word can ever describe it.
Our individuation or mature self-realization as human beings can never occur within a disembodied spirituality that forsakes the ego or the body. Nor can it occur while the neurotic ego, with its fear of spiritual heights, maintains its inflated illusion that there is nothing beyond itself. It is only in an axis of ego and Self that we can access all our powers and display in time what is timelessly within us.
In such a balance, the ego never again holds up or holds on to any transitory reality as permanently reliable. Rather, it enjoys a continual play of grasping and letting go, giving and receiving, working on what yields to change and resting with what does not yield. Our journey is from and through the transitory to the imperishable, from ego attachments through ego strength to the unconditional love that is our spiritual self.
