I’ve been a long-time fan of Carl Gustav Jung after reading his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
So basically here I’m just passing along info sources and helping others to see that ‘beliefs’ in general are important to how we think of ourselves and consider our purpose in the world, or even more so in how we plan and conduct our lives; but that “beliefs” as a whole are not necessarily reliant upon religious organizations or to specific religious doctrines.
In fact, many religions can do more harm than good to a child’s primal inner development by demanding that all practitioners adhere to specific claims made by that particular religion. J Krishnamurti would frequently lambast organized religions for that very thing.
This was today’s post from the site Carl Jung:
“Jung had a religious upbringing, both sides of his family made up of pastors and theologians. This Christian background permeated his life’s work and psychotherapeutic approach, inspiring a lifelong phenomenological and hermeneutic interest in the influence of religion, mythology, and spirituality on the psyche of the individual.
While he considered himself a Christian, he felt at odds with Orthodox Christianity which he believed never adequately dealt with the question of evil. He believed that a truly spiritual or religious person was not blindly faithful but found their way independently to God and the experience of God. Thus, he lived not by the Christian myth but by his own personal myth, seeking inward to find his father’s external God.
Jung believed modern society was in a state of spiritual crisis, for the veneration of rationalism, objectivity, and science in place of nature, myth, and ritual (that which was coveted by our ancestors) had dire psychological and societal consequences.
‘We are very far from having finished completely with the Middle Ages, classical antiquity, and primitivity, as our modern psyches pretend… But it is precisely the loss of connection with the past, our uprootedness, which has given rise to the ‘discontents’ of civilization’ (Jung, MDR).
To him, the domination of critical reason made for an impoverished life, which should be counteracted through an exploration of the unconscious, from which the more mystical side of man could be drawn and his life enriched.
‘Small and hidden is the door that leads inward, and the entrance is barred by countless prejudices, mistaken assumptions, and fears. Always one wishes to hear of grand political and economic schemes, the very things that have landed every nation in a morass. Therefore, it sounds grotesque when anyone speaks of hidden doors, dreams, and a world within. What has this vapid idealism got to do with gigantic economic programs, with the so-called problems of reality?
But I speak not to nations, only to the individual few, for whom it goes without saying that cultural values do not drop down like manna from heaven but are created by the hands of individuals. If things go wrong in the world, this is because something is wrong with the individual, because something is wrong with me. Therefore, if I am sensible, I shall put myself right first. For this I need—because outside authority no longer means anything to me—a knowledge of the innermost foundations of my being, in order that I may base myself firmly on the eternal facts of the human psyche.’ (Carl Jung, The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man)
Jung believed that optimal psychological health was not possible if one had consciously rejected his or her intrapsychic connectedness with the regulating religious aspect. He was a phenomenologist of the psyche, examining the healing function of numinous experiences and their role in the development of human consciousness and in the process of individuation. He believed that our spiritual needs – at their core, the desire to find meaning and purpose within our lives – are ‘as real as hunger and the fear of death’ (Jung, 1928, CW para. 403).
He was not interested in God as a transcendent reality beyond the psyche, but as inbuilt and always present within it. To Jung, God exists as a psychic reality, his Zurich house inscribed with the following message ‘Whether summoned or not, God will be present’(‘Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit’).
Art: Peter Birkhauser”
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FINDING YOUR TRUTH 