I would like for you to ask yourself the following questions about your life currently, and take a moment to perhaps use your journal to jot down some thoughts, lists, or feelings that come up:
1. What is holding you hostage?
2. What is heavy on your heart, or causing your shoulders to creep into your ears?
3. What makes it difficult to breathe, and what makes it difficult to let go?
4. What will give you rest, a calmed sense of mind, peace of heart, and an awakening of your soul’s greatest desires?
5. To what do you need to surrender to?
Carl Jung coined and defined the term synchronicity as being, “meaningful coincidence.” As a psychotherapist who was profoundly spiritual, he believed in there being something “more,” something that connects us all, something greater than just THIS. I have admired quite a number of his theories, including using mandalas as a method of meditation, the shadow and the golden shadow, and the idea of there being a collective unconscious.
The idea of the shadow is that it holds clues to aspects of ourselves that we do not like. For example, think of someone who irritates you, and take a moment to describe why that person bothers you so much. What does he or she do that really gets under your skin? As the saying goes, as we point the finger at another, there are three fingers pointing back at ourselves, or as Jung said, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” The golden shadow is said to hold the many aspects of our greatest potential, the aspects of ourselves that hold our highest aspirations, capabilities, and perceived best qualities… if only we could live up to the challenge and pressure of achieving this within ourselves. Once again, if you were to think of someone you greatly admire and the reasons why, this will clue you into the parts of yourself that are yearning to be acknowledged and lived up to.
In order to address the idea of the collective unconscious, I would like to begin to touch on the idea of spirituality. For years upon years, I searched for a sense of “real” spirituality, a sense of something that I felt within every fiber of my being, something that brought the satisfaction and sense of peace that I yearned for, but struggled greatly to find. I must admit that I am not a particularly religious person, which I intend to mean as being someone who regularly goes to church or follows a particular religious doctrine. I certainly tried that route at different points in my life, but it didn’t quite bring me that sense of connection that I hoped for. That is not to say that I disagree with those who do, because I don’t; I just simply don’t feel connected to “God,” in that manner. Each person is different, and for many, church is a means of finding community and support from those who also believe the same as oneself. That is completely understandable, because quite frankly, it feels good to be amongst one’s tribe, a group of like-minded individuals that care deeply for the same values and principles. It is grounding, and gives one a sense of being rooted and also safe. For many years, I tried to fill my internal void with things that I thought would make me feel good, but they didn’t, or if so it was only temporarily and I was still hungry for something that money could not buy. What I have found is that for me, church can be in nature, in my own mind when I meditate, in my garden, or in the arms of my loved ones.
I recognize that I might offend some by putting God in quotations, but the reason I do so is because I also don’t feel fully connected to the word in how it is commonly used. I have heard God be used as an excuse to treat others in a deplorable manner, an example being, “God hates fags/niggers/jews/towel heads” etc. My stomach curls in on itself to even read the words, let alone type them here. I have an incredibly difficult time hearing such words of hate connected to something that is said to be so divine and wondrous. I do believe that there is something truly inexplicably beautiful and serene that connects each and everyone of us, and “God,” “Source,” “the Universe,” “Allah,”and “Love” can all be used to describe that. I believe Love goes beyond this moment, and it leaves reverberations behind when someone passes away. I consider myself to be a deeply spiritual individual, and I do pray, I do respect ceremony and ritual, and I do appreciate that each religious faction around the world has different rules and understandings, but
ultimately, we are all ONE.
Thus, the collective unconscious, as defined by Carl Jung is:
. . . No matter how beautiful and perfect [we] may believe [our] reason to be, [we] can always be certain that it is only one of the possible mental functions, and covers only that one side of the phenomenal world which corresponds to it. But the irrational, that which is not agreeable to reason, rings it about on all sides. And the irrational is likewise a psychological function — in a word, it is the collective unconscious.
-C.G. Jung, CW 7, par. 110, from On Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
There are many things in this world that do not seem entirely rational, reasonable, or sensical. However, there are specific archetypes and metaphors of being that somehow link all of us to one another. As an existentialist, I often consider what it is for each one of us to be equalized. Regardless of how rich or poor one might be, he or she still has a date with destiny. We each have a moment in which it does not matter what we own, or what unfinished business we still have… When the moment comes, it is our time to let go. We are all equalized in the end by this simple and entirely unavoidable truth. People construct their lives with the hope that they could in fact be invincible. As children, we are able to believe that we will live forever, and it is a blistering disturbance to our sweet naivety to come to find out that from death, we are not special exceptions. However, death provides the opportunity to LIVE. Death is a catalyst to find purpose and meaning within our lives that will provide the reason for our being.
In order to cope with this inevitability, religion and deeper spiritual purpose give one hope that there is in fact something more. There is a great deal of debate as to whether or not there is something that comes after, whether it be heaven or hell, or no[thingness]. However, there is not a heated debate about what we have right here, right now, because we HAVE it. Our lives are tangible realities. When one discovers the value of his or her presence in this world, what we have to give, and that what we yearn for to fill our emptiness is in fact already a part of of our fabric of being, we become whole, and we become happy.
If you are struggling to find spirituality in your own life, look for those moments of synchronicity, those moments of meaningful coincidence in which the world aligns perfectly in order for you to experience something special with someone or something. I have had several moments of synchronicity that defy explanation, including a moment of having found a letter from my dad on the fourth anniversary of his death. It was entirely a coincidence that I found it on that particular day, and yet…. there was something inexplicably comforting in the fact that it felt like it was HIM, it was my dad, who was there with me, comforting me, and giving the solace that he was not in fact, gone. I believe whole heartedly that my dad has come back to me in incredibly important junctures in my life, and it has been on me to open my heart and my over-rationalizing mind to SEE that there is far more in this world than meets the eye.
Homework: If you would like to begin meditating as Jung did, you can begin to create Mandalas. A mandala is a drawing that is often a geometric composition creating a circle. It is said in Hinduism and Buddhism to be a representation of the Universe. You can either create your own, or download images that you can color in. As you would do for your regular meditation practice, set up the environment to be free from distractions, possibly put some gentle music on in the background, perhaps light a candle (or several), and allow yourself to focus in on an intention that you are intending to cultivate in your life currently. As you breathe this intention in, begin your work of coloring, drawing, and creating.
Eckart Tolle said, “Always say ‘yes’ to the present moment…surrender to what is. Say ‘yes’ to life, and see how life starts suddenly working for you rather than against you.”
All that is light, and love, and peace, and grace within me,
acknowledges, honors, and appreciates,
All that is light, and love, and peace, and grace within each of you.
Namaste.
<3 Nora Ann
