Heavy cross
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
Some years ago I realised that in all my life I always seemed to have exactly what I needed. I often thought this was not the case in the moment, but in hindsight it seemed all pretty prefect.
I am not good of knowing what I need, and it seems most people are not. But since I realised my own situation, I began to wonder how this can be. I mean, how can my life seems so perfectly well organised? And how can it be that I so rarely noticed this perfection? And, the most important question, is this so with everybody? It seems impossible that I am the only one whose life has this custom-made quality in every aspect. But if this is the same for everybody, how come that so many people seem to get such horrible lives? I have no answer to these questions, and especially the last question bothers me to no end. But it seems nothing compared to what went on in ht emind of Carl Jung.
I read in Carl Jung´s ”Memories, dreams and recollections” that he felt lonely most of the time. After he had a God experience at the age of 11, he could no longer believe the things that were taught him about God. That separated him from everybody he knew, because they did believe in these things, and they certainly did not believe Jung. Jung felt living with this ”open secret” a heavy cross to bear. This is a dilemma that everybody who ever experiences God directly has to deal with. Nowadays there are more people who talk and write about their God-experience, but good accounts are rare and there are a lot of personal opinions presented as clear insights in the Truth that can be derived from a God-experience. Jung did almost everything all by himself, he never seemed to recognise partners in people from esoteric traditions or from anywhere else. Later in his life he did make a thorough study of the works of mediaeval alchemists, but it took him decades to decode their language and I think that the insights he got from this work added little to nothing to what he already knew.
Everybody is alone in the aspects that make her or him unique: that is what individuality is all about. We all have qualities that others don’t have, and they separate us from the others. I rarely feel lonely, but I the feeling of being alone or apart from the people around me is always there. Sometimes the separations seems complete, sometimes there is a better connection, but there is always a degree of feeling of separation. Except on rare occasions of bliss, where everything shows itself as one and my little self is felt as part of everything. But these occasions are rare and I have stopped waiting for more of them, because that only makes me disappointed and frustrated. I have felt this separation as long as I can remember, and I can pretty well live with it. The fact that it only lasts a lifetime anyway helps, of course.
I got a delight form reading in Jung ”Memories” that his core question was how it can be God allows or even wills evil. This question seems to me the first that needs to be answered before any other issue can be understood. That is why I think our culture is mad: people are trying to solve problems without realising this fundamental question. Politics especially seem to me utterly ridiculous: as if one can repair a television set by pushing buttons on the remote control. Why is there so much evil and stupidity in the world? If there is anything I would love to know, it is this.
Well, this story is a great excuse to share a video with you of my beloved band The Gossip. Jung would have loved the lyrics of this song!