Why is that we can have super-colliders exploring alternate universes, magnetically levitating trains, probes mapping every square kilometer of our neighboring planets, earthquake-resistant skyscrapers, animated movies that put millions of individual hairs on monsters, and those can openers that cut around the sides of a can but we can’t get a damn windshield wiper that actually wipes the snow off a windshield without my having to get out of the car three times and bang on it?
Monthly Archive for January, 2008
Massive Attack’s song Protection contains the following lyrics:
I stand in front of you
I’ll take the force of the blow
Protection
Lately, the image that is coming to mind when I hear these lyrics is Jesus on the cross and how he took the force of God’s “blow” and “protected” us.
Then I started thinking about “protection” and how the above seems to me to be a passive kind of protection. Passive with regard to the one being protected, that is. There is no notion of trying to change the one you are protecting. Even Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was made without the precondition that we change. It was made whether we change or not. This, to me, is loving protection.
Active modes of protection would be trying to remove the “force” so there is no “blow” or trying to remove the person so the “blow” doesn’t hit her. Both of these modes attempt to alter the circumstances and are unaccepting of the way things are and so are, in many cases, futile because things are what they are.
Later in the song are these words:
Now I can’t change the way you think
But I can put my arms around you
That’s just part of the deal
That’s the way I feel
I put my arms around you
Here, again is a passive, accepting of the circumstances attitude. I’m not trying to change you, I’m just loving you as you are. Synchronistically, I started writing this post yesterday and read a post on Find and Ye Shall Seek today which talks about Christians not showing passive acceptance towards sinners. It’s a real shame that some who profess Jesus as Lord are so oblivious to how much their actions are so unlike the actions of Jesus.
An excellent post over at the Jesus Creed on the “Sanctity of Life” and I agree with the author of the letter. It seems that the Sanctity of Life only refers to unborn, American babies. Once those babies are born and have life and the danger of abortion is over, there’s no time to worry about the sanctity of that infant’s life — do they have enough to eat, or will they be abused, or will they live in poverty? Likewise, Sanctity certainly does not extend to life in other countries, especially if that country is Muslim or African or has something we want. War is, somehow, not a violation of the Sanctity of Life — someone please explain that one to me. Denying health care or education is not a violation of the Sanctity of Life — uh, what??
I’ve posted on the whole Circle of Life being broken and now the Washington Post (thanks to A Thinking Reed) is talking about the same thing. It’s more than just global warming or just extinction or just melting ice. It’s the feedback loop involving them all and how that loop is “breaking up, it’s breaking up” like Steve Austin’s plane.
I don’t get that many people hitting my site with interesting/funny/bizarre search terms. But one recently was a little surprising. The search term was “devo.” Now, I have a post from March 2007 where I showed a Devo record album cover because that album contained the song “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” which was the title of my post. Now, nothing against Devo (I personally don’t know much of their music) or Devo fans (I personally only know one and he is a bit off — but in that cool, nerdy way. He is actually a Master of Wine and Master Sommelier — very rare) but this visitor actually stayed on my site for 4:10 and looked at 4 pages! Surprising but “thank you” and I hope they return.
This quote from Just Genesis via a comment on Chris Tilling’s blog:
The silence was broken again, this time by a middle-aged man. “I’ll tell you the meaning this story has for me. I’ve decided that I and my family are looking for another church.”
“Why?” I asked in astonishment. “Why?”
“Because when I look at that God, the God of Abraham, I feel I’m near a real God, not the sort of dignified, businesslike, Rotary Club god we chatter about here on Sunday mornings. Abraham’s god could blow a man to bits, give and then take a child, ask for everything from a person and then want more. I want to know that God.”
If you read the rest of the post, you’ll see a classic example of an archetype at work. A Sunday School class views a movie about Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac and the reaction is unexpected, unfounded, and totally un-comprehended — all the tell-tale signs that something from the unconscious is rearing its ugly head.
But the man’s reaction I quote above is particularly interesting to me. This man essentially is longing for a return to the monster-God of the O.T. If he characterized any human with the same words, that human would be a merciless tyrant. But that’s what this man expects from a God. Why would someone long for the kind of God who “tests” people the way the Christian God “tested” Job? Or Abraham? Why regress so far into the past when we have the God of the N.T.? Is it because it is easier to follow the O.T. concept of God in the same way that it is easier for a toddler to obey his parents? The toddler, you see, has no relationship with his parents because there is not enough consciousness for a relationship. There is simply a list of rules to follow and a list of consequences if the rules are not followed, a.k.a. The Law. (Having just written that statement, I’m instantly reminded of The Island of Doctor Moreau where the “beasts” are reciting The Law.) There is less freedom and so we don’t have to be conscious in order to please that kind of God. Of course, we also don’t have much of a relationship with that kind of God — what relationship there is is simply awe and fear and trembling and worry that our sacrifices are not good enough. We’ve come so far in our relationship with God but that means it’s harder work and so some would rather go back to the way it was.
Unfortunately, I’m having some problems with the server hosting my blog and it can’t send out emails. So, all notifications for new posts and comments are not working. The RSS feeds are working, so please use those to keep up to date on my blog. I apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for reading.
Ken
Jung states the new myth more succinctly in Psychology and Religion: West and East where he says:
Existence is only real when it is conscious to somebody. That is why the Creator needs conscious man even though, from sheer unconsciousness, he would like to prevent him from becoming conscious.
and
Whoever knows God has an effect on him.
Edinger states the basic idea as “the purpose of human life is the creation of consciousness” and then acknowledges that talking about consciousness is a difficult task. In the next chapter, Edinger clarifies that his approach to consciousness (and the inevitable tie-in with epistemology) is “not philosophical but psychological-empirical” and this should be kept in mind throughout.
Edinger calls consciousness a “psychic material” and this must be understood in light of Jung’s conception of the psyche. As Jacobi explains in An Introduction to the Psychology of C.G. Jung, the psyche is something “not less real than the body” and “[t]hough it cannot be touched, it can be directly and fully experienced and observed. It is a world of its own, governed by laws, structured, and endowed with its own means of expression.”
So, our purpose is to create consciousness and this creation is the process of individuation — the process whereby psychic contents (complexes and archetypal images) “become actualized and substantial” … “when they enter an individual’s conscious awareness and become an accepted item of that individual’s personal responsibility.” This process involves the “encounter of opposites” such as subject and object or myself and the “other.”
The encounter of opposites is a big part of Jung’s psychology and he points to a long history of mythical ideas and to alchemy (which was not really about turning literal lead into literal gold just as Moby Dick was not really about a literal whale and its literal pursuer) as evidence of how pervasive this idea is in human history. Psychologically, the creation of consciousness — the process of individuation — involves being confronted by the unconscious with the contrary when the ego identifies with one of a pair of opposites. This confrontation happens over and over and over again and we find ourselves tossed “back and forth between opposing moods and attitudes.” But, the one who deliberately seeks out these encounters — who deliberately tries to resolve inner and outer conflict by coming to terms with the opposite and experience both, opposing, viewpoints simultaneously — is creating a new increment of consciousness.
The key, as the alchemical myth tells us, is the union of opposites, the coniunctio.
Contrary to the implications of the erotic imagery, the coniunctio of opposites is not generally a pleasant process. More often it is felt as a crucification. The cross represents the union of horizontal and vertical, two contrary directional movements. To be nailed to such a conflict can be a scarcely endurable agony.
Since I don’t have much to say myself (I’m trying to get the next Creation of Consciousness post done but …) I’ll point you all to other bloggers who do:
Chris Tilling has apparently appointed himself as Jesus’ muse and leaks a few titles currently being penned by ol’ J.C.
Cat Chapin-Bishop talks about code-switching and restates very consiscely a point I’ve tried to make on this blog several times — human language just doesn’t cut it when talking about the unknowable.
Henry Neufeld wonders (as I have done on this blog, as well) why myth gets such a bad rap.
Mystical Seeker has a couple (one and two) good posts on John Hick’s God Has Many Names.
Definitely check out http://www.electoralcompass.com/. You answer about 36 questions on “issues” and then you get a comparison with the presidential candidates. There’s a way cool graph showing your political “position” on the social-economic coordinate axes. You get an item-by-item comparison with each candidate and you can select a subset of issues for plotting the position.
As I said, “Way Cool!”
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