I’ve been motivated to look at The Lord’s Prayer in some depth. We never (or rarely) recited this prayer in the church I grew up in and, for the most part, these were just verses that I memorized at one point. There was not a lot of significance attached to them. But, as I approach Christianity anew, after several decades of separation from it, and under the influence of Jungian Depth Psychology, something is drawing me to rethink this model prayer which Jesus has given us.
I want to start with the first two words: “Our Father.”
This signifies a change in the human psyche and how we approach and relate to God. The Old Testament was the story of our infant years where God was a (seemingly) capricious, loving/hating being out there somewhere, up there in the sky somewhere. Starting with Jesus, we now relate to God as child and, sometimes, like a teenager. We have a more conscious relationship with him and he treats us less arbitrarily (at least it seems like that to us).
Consider an infant who is crying because she is hungry and her father is offering a bottle but she really wants her mother’s breast. The infant is confused and hurt that she’s not getting what she wants and her father must seem so cruel. At other times, the father puts her in her mother’s arms and she gets exactly what she wants. There is no rhyme nor reason to this. Why does her father not always give her to her mother when she cries out of hunger? Why does he sometimes (seemingly) punish her by only offering that wretched bottle? The issue is that she has no other way of relating because she does not have enough consciousness.
Now, skip ahead to a 4 or 14 year old. Now, the child can address his father as “Father” and ask for exactly what he wants. The child is capable of understanding, in some cases, why the father gives what he does. With the child’s increased consciousness, the father’s actions seem less arbitrary. And this is where Jesus was taking us. He was showing that we have an increased consciousness and, therefore, can relate to God in a different way.
What this two-word phrase also identifies is our relation to God in an essential way. That is, by calling God “Father” we are acknowledging that we are of the same essence. My daughter has my genes and is made up of the same things that I am. We have matching DNA. Our basic reality or essence is the same. In the Old Testament, or as an infant, we do not recognize this. We cannot grasp the idea that this great, powerful being who gives us what he wants to give and not what we want to receive is of the same stuff as we are. But with increased consciousness comes increased awareness of what we are and what he is. We can recognize the imago Dei, the “in our likeness” that is within us from God. “Our Father” is not only said out of respect or out of love. It is also said out of identification — we are of the same essence as God. We share the same DNA.
A local church has a quote from Hafiz on their sign: “Little by little you will turn into God.” We do turn into our fathers. How many times have I done something or said something or caught a glimpse of myself and thought, “My God! My father does that! I’m turning into my father.” And this is the case with God, our Father. But it’s also the reality that we already are our father. Our DNA tells us that from the moment of conception. What appears to be a “turning into” is really nothing more than a “realizing that we already are.”
Dream as psychopomp
Psychopomp: Psy”cho*pomp\, n. [Gr. ?; psychh` the soul + ? to send: cf. F. psychopompe.] (Myth.) A leader or guide of souls . –J. Fiske. [Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.]
Dourley’s description of the dream resonates with me like nothing I’ve read by Jung. There are moments when Jung waxes poetic as when he describes the dream as “a little hidden door in the innermost and secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends.” [Jung, CW 10, par. 304.] But most of what I’ve read by Jung concerning dreams has been more clinical: “impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche,” [Jung, CW 10, par. 317.] “autonomous psychic complexes which form themselves out of their own material,” [Jung, CW 8, par. 580.] “a highly objective, natural product of the psyche,” [Jung, CW 7, par. 210.] “a psychological adjustment, a compensation absolutely necessary for properly balanced action.” [Jung, CW 8, par. 469.] While these characterizations offer invaluable insight into the mechanisms, causes, and purposes of dreams, Dourley’s one-line commentary provides a palpable connection for me. It undoubtedly has to do with my current life-path coordinates which place me in the domain and under the strong, seemingly autonomous influence of reevaluating my connection with Christianity.
The symbolism of the soul being immersed in the psyche which has the Self (the imago Dei, of which the Christ is a symbol) at the center is a very powerful, personal statement of the role of the dream. It evokes Paul’s words of being “baptized into Christ” with the dream initiating the baptism. In the Greek, “put on” has the meaning of donning clothes but with the idea of “sinking into” the garment. Could there be a better descriptor for our soul, under the influence and following the urging of the dream, falling down into the depths of the psyche to be immersed, clothed, as it were, in the psyche as the Self is? As we are immersed, “baptized into Christ” each night, we “put on Christ” both inwardly, as our soul is enveloped in the unconscious, and outwardly, as we integrate the dream contents – the direct communication of the dream with our consciousness through our soul – into our waking, outer life. The dream, then, is the psychopomp, the conduit between us – the “outer world” us – and the numinous. It brings the soul face to face with the Self, our imago Dei, the Christ, and it then brings to consciousness the words, ideas, concepts, from the Self, from the Christ. In both extremes – deep in the unconscious and in consciousness – the dream allows us to be in the presence of the numinous.