Author Archive for Ken

This explains a lot

Published
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Ken
on December 9, 2008
in carl jung and christian fundamentalism
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Typical of neurotic people is their attitude of disharmony towards reality, that is their diminished capacity for adaptation.

– C.G. Jung, The Theory of Psychoanalysis:
Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series, No. 19, p. 102

When I read this, I immediately thought about Fred Phelps. Pat Robertson, George Bush, the Kansas State School Board, &c., &c., &c. That is, everyone who vehemently defends that “old time religion” but doesn’t realize the “old time” for which they are nostalgic was populated by people vehemently defending that “old time religion” but didn’t realize their “old time” was populated by people vehemently defending …

Christian Fundamentalism, fundamentalism in general, is a prolific source of neuroses. Regression is one of the central dynamics in any neurosis. When confronted with an obstacle or conflict, the neurotic reverts to pathways that are old and outdated, hence infantile. These old pathways have nothing to do with the current obstacle and offer no effective means of resolution but the neurotic’s energy gets “backed up” due to the obstacle and spills over into these infantile, regressive pathways or thought processes. That is why they seem so irrational and downright childish — their current ideas, actions, and conclusions are being motivated and rationalized by ideas and thought processes that are irrelevant to the conflict at hand and are outdated. It is impossible for them to adapt to a changing world because they are still living in the past.

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Schrödinger on the value of natural science

Published
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Ken
on December 7, 2008
in science
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You may ask — you are bound to ask me now: What, then, is in your opinion the value of natural science? I answer: Its scope, aim and value is the same as that of any other branch of human knowledge. Nay, none of them alone, only the union of all of them, has any scope or value at all, and that is simpluy enough described: it is to obey the command of the Delphic deity … know yourself.

– Erwin Schrödinger, Nature and the Greeks and Science and Humanism, p. 108

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Faith, consciousness, and quantum physics

Published
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Ken
on December 7, 2008
in faith and the creation of consciousness
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If consciousness is created by embracing the tension of the opposites — paradox — and faith is also the tension of the opposites, what is the connection with the superposition of states in quantum physics? Take the most common example of the electron existing as a particle and a wave. These two states seem mutually exclusive, paradoxical, yet the electron exists as both/and in a superposition. It is only with observation that the electron collapses to one of the two states — that is, “becomes” either a particle or a wave. Faith and creating consciousness can be described as the superposition state where multiple possibilities exist; attachment and identification is then the collapsed state where only one possibility exists.

Perhaps the “real” world is the world of superposition and the “concrete” world is the world of collapsed states as we experience it with our senses. Perhaps the goal is to not be attached to the single, collapsed state but embrace the paradox of the superposition. I’ll have to ponder this more but I think there is something there.

Have you thought about this? Can you help me find what I think is out there waiting to be found?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueler? Bueler?

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Calories Schmalories

Published
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Ken
on December 5, 2008
in holy spirit
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My wife has started to help me count calories. She has a nifty computer program that she has used for a while. Today was the first day following “the plan” and all I can say is, “I’m Starving!”

I did not eat poorly before but I never thought about calories. What I thought was a reasonable day’s food turned out to be 2700 calories! Not an ideal situation for losing the 13 pounds I’m shooting for.

Basically, to lose weight, you need to be hungry All The Time!

This got me thinking about being “filled with the Spirit.” Should we really be filled or is that a final goal to be realized in the future? If we get filled with food, we get lazy and fat and go to sleep. Is it the same with the Spirit?

What do you think?

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Experiencing the experience

Published
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Ken
on December 5, 2008
in bible and vedanta
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In thinking about my recent post on ritual, it occurred to me that my problem with ritual is that I’m intellectualizing it too much. I am trying to force onto the ritual a meaning which, when absent, leaves me empty. Instead, perhaps, I should be just experiencing the ritual experience — as I said in my post: Just for the hell of it.

Intellectual knowledge and experiential knowledge are two very different beasts. Carl Jung, when talking about using amplification in dream analysis (the process of pulling in collective symbols — mythology, religious, &c.) says that it cannot be done by head-knowledge but only by someone with long experience.

When I was a child, I had all the head knowledge about Christianity. I was the best at Bible drills, could memorize scripture, had all the right answers. But, I had no experience — my personal Christian life was in shambles. My intellectual knowledge allowed me to fool everyone but there was nothing really there.

In The Eight Upanishads it says:

Of these, the lower [knowledge] comprises the Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda, Atharva Veda, the science of pronunciation, &c., the code of rituals, grammar, etymology, metre, and astrology. Then there is the higher [knowledge] by which is realized the Immutable.

(What a great word to describe God: The Immutable.)

With the Bible as with the Upanishads, the real, higher meaning is not learnt from reading, studying the texts, memorizing, &c. The real meaning is learnt by practice, by experiencing God and not by reading about God. The intellectual part is all too simple and all too public and allows us to deceive others all too easily.

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Knowing God

Published
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Ken
on December 5, 2008
in vedanta
. 1 Comment

God made sense turn outward, man therefore looks outward, not into himself. Now and again a daring soul, desiring immortality, has looked back and found himself.

– The Ten Principal Upanishads, p. 33

According to Vedanta, self knowledge comes not from looking at external things nor even from delving into our minds. Self knowledge comes from finding that which is aware of the mind; becoming aware of the knower.

A very recent post on You Are Dreaming talks about this very thing — finding the “I” that is your true self, the “I” that

remains unchanged throughout the day. What remains unchanged as the thoughts and feelings come and go like the clouds? What remains unchanged as the body moves around, typing, clicking the mouse, shifting in the chair? What is the factor or principle that is steady and unshaken as the appearances of hands and thoughts wiggle around?

Knowing your true self, your unchanging “I”, the knower is not becoming aware of an object because there would always be another knower of that object which would have to be perceived. So, if the knower is not an object, then what is it? What is aware of your mind, never changes, and is not an object that can be perceived? Sounds a little bit like God, to me!

Furthermore, to know the knower is to realize that you are the knower. Jesus says as much in John 10:30 –“I and the Father are one.” It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

But wait … if the knower is God and you are the knower, then, are you God? Well, Jesus says so in John 17

… that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us … And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given to them; that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and didst love them, even as Thou didst love Me.

There certainly are a lot of parallels between Jesus and “them.” They are in God and Jesus, they are one just as God and Jesus are one, Jesus is in them and God is in Jesus, God loves them just as God loves Jesus.

God is not something “out there,” totally separate from us. If he were, he would be an object that we can perceive and know and, therefore, not God. God is in us, God is that part of us that is unchanging, God is our “I,” our knower, our true self. And the way to know God is to look within. To look for what in us does not change; what in us says “I.”

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Consciousness IS the goal

Published
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Ken
on December 4, 2008
in carl jung, ram dass and the creation of consciousness
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Some day I’ll get back to my series on Edinger’s The Creation of Consciousness, but until then I’ll just leave you with this thought:

Ram Dass agrees with Jung and Edinger that the creation of consciousness is our goal (or should be, at least). From The Only Dance There Is:

Consciousness does not mean attachment to polarity, at any level. It means freedom from attachment. And once you see that the highest mother is the most conscious mother, the highest student, the highest therapist, the highest lover, the highest anything is the most conscious one, you begin to see that the way you serve another human being is by freeing him from the particular attachment he’s stuck in that turn him off to life.

Non-attachment to polarity is Jung’s “tension of the opposites.” Dealing with polarity, paradox, incongruency and not flip-flopping from one side to the other is the process of creating consciousness. “Freedom from attachment” is the middle way that leads to conscious living and an increase in the sum total of consciousness in the universe.

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The meaning of ritual

Published
by
Ken
on December 4, 2008
in prayer, ram dass and the only dance there is
. 1 Comment

I’m not big on ritual. I like the idea of ritual but my idea has always been based on the ritual meaning something. A bit vague, I realize, but …

Growing up, once a month or so we would “celebrate” the Lord’s Supper, a.k.a. take communion. We would drink our grape juice and eat our cracker niblets while sitting in our pew. (Yes, the good ol’ Protestant version of the Eucharist sans kneeling, walking, Latin, &c.) This could have been ritual — should have been a ritual what with the “do this in remembrance of me” and all — but it wasn’t because I was always stuck on the part that came before. I was stuck on the “do not partake unworthily” which, to me, meant “have no unconfessed sin in your life” so I spent the whole time sitting there confessing every sin I could think of. So, this mother (or father) of all rituals was not really a ritual; it was a time to focus on saving my ass from the unpardonable sin (I was a bit naive back then).

We always prayed before most meals but that, too, was a chore to say the “right” words and never “came from the heart.” It was just something we did that embarrassed me when we were out in public. I remember our assistant pastor would do the “long” Sunday morning prayer and mention all the prayer requests: the sick, the missionaries, &c. I would often time his prayers and always giggled to myself when he used the word “unction,” which he did quite frequently. So prayer was never a ritual for me.

Lately, I’ve tried other rituals: journaling in the morning, keeping a paper checkbook, writing my poems and blog posts on paper instead of on the computer. But none of them lasted very long. It was always “easier” to go back to the old habits.

I think my problem has been that I’ve always expected the ritual to mean something and none of these things did. They were meaningless things that I tried to do just for the sake of doing them. But, now I’m starting to think that that’s exactly what a ritual is — a meaningless thing we do just for the hell of it (more or less).

Ram Dass, in The Only Dance There Is, says the ritual, itself, is an offering. The act is an offering. It has nothing to do with my getting something out of it just like an offering is not about receiving but about giving. The ritual is something we give to God. But, he continues, once we realize that I, as the one performing the ritual, and the offering itself and the one to whom the offering is made are all part if “it all,” that it’s like

“[I am] pouring energy into energy for a matter of energy in honoring energy. So big deal, so nothing’s happened. Certainly knocks a hole in orality to start to see the universe that way. What are we doing? Nothing. How could you ever do anything, it’s all here?”

So, I think I need to rethink ritual and try a few new ones on for size — with a new attitude about them.

How about you? What rituals do you regularly do and why?

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Faith V

Published
by
Ken
on November 26, 2008
in carl jung, edward edinger, faith and the creation of consciousness
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There is still something, nevertheless, that strikes me as very odd about these statements by Jesus and that is the purely gratuitous nature of the exemplary acts he cites as the result of having faith. Of what conceivable purpose could moving a mountain into the sea be? And what kind of God tempts man with such power when the meek are to inherit the earth? These statements are diametrically opposed to Jesus’ main message of humility and servitude and they make me wonder why he made them at all. Would it not be just as powerful yet more in agreement with Jesus’ teachings and life to give examples of faith like bringing rain during a drought or causing crops to grow in infertile soil?

But, Jesus used the words he used. There is no profit in second guessing his motives; only in understanding him do we gain anything. The simplest way to understand is to take him literally and then qualify his statements to make them comfortable. To this end, some will, as The Ryrie Study Bible does and with what seems to be not a little unease in attributing such power to mere mortals, put limits on the conditions under which Jesus’ statements are valid. Others will take Jesus’ words just as literally but then proceed to point out the obvious absence of literal mountain-moving men and consign Jesus’ statements to the dung heap along with all notions of a faith worth more than a single mustard seed.

Indeed, we have no record of Jesus, his disciples, nor the apostles moving either mountains or trees into the sea and there is no other evidence that he was speaking literally. So what would it mean to take his words metaphorically or symbolically? A mountain and the sea can be viewed as opposites on several different levels. Aside from the physical opposites of solid/liquid and high/low, mountains symbolize constancy, stillness, firmness while the waters of the sea are chaotic, continually in flux. Mountains represent the state of full consciousness, full differentiation, the place of renunciation and highest aspirations; water symbolizes the undifferentiated, our material existence. Casting a mountain into the sea can then be viewed as merging contrary or contradictory viewpoints and no longer seeing them as separate entities; it is to transcend dualistic thinking by not seeing a mountain here and a separate sea over there but both, together. It is to not apprehend either/or but both/and.

But, of what use is the ability to transcend dualism? How does it help me in my everyday life? Lisa Alther, American author and novelist, writes: “I happen to feel that the degree of a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic.” This goes right to the heart of the matter. Dualism says, “This is good and that is evil or that is good and this evil.” But when you cast the mountain into the sea, this ceases to be either good or evil and becomes both good and evil. It is seeing both sides of the coin at the same time, it is the middle way, it is embracing paradox. We think of opposites as mutually exclusive. A thing cannot possibly have two opposite characteristics at the same time; it is either right or wrong, good or evil, left or right, black or white. But the world of paradox is not a world of white or black but a world of grayscale.

Holding all sides of an argument in the mind instead of identifying with one to the exclusion of all the others inevitably produces a tension—the tension of the opposites, as Carl Jung phrased it. Edward F. Edinger discusses this tension of the opposites and describes its effect as consciousness-creating:

[I]n the process of creating consciousness we shall at first be thrown back and forth between opposing moods and attitudes. Each time the ego identifies with one side of a pair of opposites the unconscious will confront one with its contrary. Gradually, the individual becomes able to experience opposite viewpoints simultaneously. With this capacity, alchemically speaking, the Philosophers’ Stone is born, i.e., consciousness is created.

This description of the initial stages of dealing with paradox cannot but bring to mind a similar passage in Ephesians 4:13-15:

[U]ntil we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects unto Him, who is the head, even Christ …

Paul describes the mature person as one who is not tossed and carried about by ideas and opinions, first clinging to one thing then another to the exclusion of all others. Notice that he places no value judgement on the “waves” and “doctrine” as he does on the latter two; it is not only untrue or false ideas that cause us to keep the mountain and sea separate. The goal of “the unity of the faith” and “grow[ing] up in all aspects” as described by Paul is reiterated by Edinger who describes the mature individual as one “able to experience opposite viewpoints simultaneously.”

[ Parts I, II, III, IV ]

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Names I would not choose for myself

Published
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Ken
on November 20, 2008
in Uncategorized
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Nigel Suckling: author of “Faeries of the Celtic Lands”