conscious rational life then becomes a resource for sanity and happiness.
The ego becomes dysfunctional/neurotic when it distracts us from our goals or sabotages them. Behind every neurosis is a fear or desire that has never been addressed or resolved. Neurotic means being caught in useless repetition of archaic ways of protecting ourselves against what no longer truly threatens us. We also repeat old habits of craving that do not lead to satisfaction. This is why Jung defines neurosis as “a defeat by the unreal.” We know we are integrating ourselves effectively and are on a valid spiritual path when we become more and more functional in daily life.
The Self is the center and circumference of the entire psyche that includes the ego. The Self is a spiritual source as the healthy ego can be a psychological resource. This is why Jung called the Self “the God archetype” within. The three qualities of the Self, unconditional love, wisdom, and healing power, as outlined above, are the ones that reflect the attributes of divinity in world religions. We speak of God as love, a Holy Spirit of wisdom, who has miraculous healing powers. To be made in that image is to trust the presence of these gifts in us. Our work is to release them, and thus the destiny of the Self is fulfilled through us. That destiny is the same in all beings, but each person contributes in her own individual way. Spiritual practices such as loving-kindness are meant to assist us in acting out in our lifetime the three eternal potentials. The ego longs to enter the service of the Self in just those ways, if only it were not so afraid to lose its autonomy in the process. This is why letting go of fear is a spiritual practice.
The Self is a field of inner gravity that is sometimes unconscious and sometimes conscious. Jung theorized that our unconscious is both personal—containing the family album of our own memories—and cosmic—containing the mythic memories of mankind. This collective unconscious, he said, “Contains the whole spiritual heritage of humanity’s evolution, born anew in the brain structure of every individual.”
Our ego is in us; we are in the Self. Ego is visible in our personality and bears our name. The Self is unlimited by individual personality and has no name. It is the same threefold reality in everyone: unconditional love, eternal wisdom, and the power to heal ourselves and others. The Self is mediated in the world by our body/ego. We might say that the ego is our capacity for light and the Self is the light. Once our capacity is activated, the ego becomes an incarnation of the light of the Self.
Wisdom is not a body of truth. It is a state of being in which truth becomes accessible within us and active through us. The big mind beyond ego looks more and more like light. As we access our powers, our body becomes less a mule to carry us or a pedestal for our ego or brain to rest on. Our body and all things are composed of condensed light, continually moving, beating musically, always already united by undying, unborn/reborn love. “Things are losing their hardness. Even my body now lets the light through,” says Virginia Woolf.
Our human enterprise, individuation, is to form or find an equilibrium, an axis, between ego and Self. Both the ego—our conscious life of choices—and the Self—our potential for wholeness—want to join in this axis of wholeness. All that stands in the way is the fear our ego has that it might lose its control and its identity, exactly what keeps it afraid and separate. The ego/Self axis is the greatest of all coincidences because by it we unleash the powers of the Self from the stranglehold of our frightened, limiting ego and let them flow into the world. This is fulfillment of our human purpose. We were born with more potential than actuality. Our task is to activate our potentials, to make them conscious, that is, articulated in our lifetime. There is a synchronicity in this task because just
The ego becomes dysfunctional/neurotic when it distracts us from our goals or sabotages them. Behind every neurosis is a fear or desire that has never been addressed or resolved. Neurotic means being caught in useless repetition of archaic ways of protecting ourselves against what no longer truly threatens us. We also repeat old habits of craving that do not lead to satisfaction. This is why Jung defines neurosis as “a defeat by the unreal.” We know we are integrating ourselves effectively and are on a valid spiritual path when we become more and more functional in daily life.
The Self is the center and circumference of the entire psyche that includes the ego. The Self is a spiritual source as the healthy ego can be a psychological resource. This is why Jung called the Self “the God archetype” within. The three qualities of the Self, unconditional love, wisdom, and healing power, as outlined above, are the ones that reflect the attributes of divinity in world religions. We speak of God as love, a Holy Spirit of wisdom, who has miraculous healing powers. To be made in that image is to trust the presence of these gifts in us. Our work is to release them, and thus the destiny of the Self is fulfilled through us. That destiny is the same in all beings, but each person contributes in her own individual way. Spiritual practices such as loving-kindness are meant to assist us in acting out in our lifetime the three eternal potentials. The ego longs to enter the service of the Self in just those ways, if only it were not so afraid to lose its autonomy in the process. This is why letting go of fear is a spiritual practice.
The Self is a field of inner gravity that is sometimes unconscious and sometimes conscious. Jung theorized that our unconscious is both personal—containing the family album of our own memories—and cosmic—containing the mythic memories of mankind. This collective unconscious, he said, “Contains the whole spiritual heritage of humanity’s evolution, born anew in the brain structure of every individual.”
Our ego is in us; we are in the Self. Ego is visible in our personality and bears our name. The Self is unlimited by individual personality and has no name. It is the same threefold reality in everyone: unconditional love, eternal wisdom, and the power to heal ourselves and others. The Self is mediated in the world by our body/ego. We might say that the ego is our capacity for light and the Self is the light. Once our capacity is activated, the ego becomes an incarnation of the light of the Self.
Wisdom is not a body of truth. It is a state of being in which truth becomes accessible within us and active through us. The big mind beyond ego looks more and more like light. As we access our powers, our body becomes less a mule to carry us or a pedestal for our ego or brain to rest on. Our body and all things are composed of condensed light, continually moving, beating musically, always already united by undying, unborn/reborn love. “Things are losing their hardness. Even my body now lets the light through,” says Virginia Woolf.
Our human enterprise, individuation, is to form or find an equilibrium, an axis, between ego and Self. Both the ego—our conscious life of choices—and the Self—our potential for wholeness—want to join in this axis of wholeness. All that stands in the way is the fear our ego has that it might lose its control and its identity, exactly what keeps it afraid and separate. The ego/Self axis is the greatest of all coincidences because by it we unleash the powers of the Self from the stranglehold of our frightened, limiting ego and let them flow into the world. This is fulfillment of our human purpose. We were born with more potential than actuality. Our task is to activate our potentials, to make them conscious, that is, articulated in our lifetime. There is a synchronicity in this task because just
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