Searching for God # 118

 There is a paradoxical and almost inconceivable aspect to the deep dive into one’s personal unconscious, as a potential path to a more intimate (and profoundly honest) perception of the self and openness to the full truth, love and embrace of God. In fact, that very inconceivability and potential and even perceived impermeability, ephemerality and ethereal quality may be (just may be!) an as-yet unexplored path to a very different ‘apprehension,’ perception, and appreciation for/of God. There is, and always will be, a profound mystery to whatever we might ‘perceive, conceive, apperceive and/or grasp’ of God. That mystery, however, does not either contravene or complicate the many empirical arguments that might be proferred as proof of the non-existence of God. 

For many, the potentially and very often shameful and traumatic moments, images and memories that have been unconsciously being buried over the decades of our lives, together comprising the Shadow, would at first glance be the last ‘features’ of our existence in which God would be interested. We are collectively and universally convinced that God certainly would not ‘approve. Indeed, the cultural embeddedness of that ‘glance’ may indeed have morphed into a cultural excuse, rationalization, and denial of such a ‘psychic’ phenomenon. Fearing God’s disapproval, irrespective of the dastardliness, or the abhorrent or mean or hurtful or vindictive or jealous or betrayal narratives, is a cornerstone of the Christian churches’ promulgation of its theology. Repentance, and by the grace of God, forgiveness, into a state of ‘salvation’ is the promised and exclusive path to that promised eternal life in heaven where the streets are paved in gold and where peace reigns.  

There are some very disturbing, unsettling and even intolerable features of this proposition. First, it makes gynormous assumptions about the nature of God. Rendering God as patriarchal, judgemental and even as a classically conditioning scientist, testing to discover which ones of us will ‘buy’ into what is so blatantly and obviously a ‘test of loyalty’ seems to be an irreconcilable notion for a loving God. The notion too that He created each human in his image, (imago dei) and viewed from the perspective of what many theologians consider ‘the kingdom of God’ as portrayed in the gospels by an emissary, Jesus, seem incompatible with the classical conditioning ‘contract’ at least on the surface.  

The notion of an envisioned ‘kingdom’ yet to be realized in historical, literal and literal/temporal terms, not only continues but reinforces the mysterious ineffable, ephemeral and still-being-defined-and-imagined ‘new life’. It is to the sense of inferiority, our shared and collective neurosis, (in some cases even psychosis), especially when contemplating God, the deity, in our often ‘wizzened imaginations’ that we owe our ‘submission’ and allegiance to the proposition that our ‘evil nature’ is our permanently defining burden.  

The Jesus Seminar, a substantial group of theologians and scholars who have attempted to discern the nature of the Jesus of Nazareth, prior to the epic stories of his crucifixion, death and resurrection, after having peeled away the accretions of dogma, and myths, stories and creeds that emerged centuries after his death, have discerned a rather ‘adulative’ perception of his admirers, followers, disciples and ‘marketers’ and the theological implications of such an attitude that may indeed in some cases, run counter to the man of Nazareth. Seeing Jesus rather as a human sage with significant sayings, proverbs, and especially parables, portending a vision of a new ‘world’ that he was ‘receiving’ as opposed to originating while he announced their details, albeit in general and often in paradoxical terms, especially when regarded beside the contemporary cultural conventions of his time, is a perspective, attitude and even conviction arrived at by consensus, that riles the literalist, fundamentalist reading of scripture, as holy, true and historically accurate reality. 

Even to question the divinity of Jesus, for many whose faith depends on, and even succumbs to the literal teachings of Sunday School for children, is not merely heresy; it is apostasy and must be rejected, as if it were considered to be from an enemy of the faith. And then to inquire deeply into the ‘sources’ of those who allegedly ‘saw’ Jesus following the crucifixion, without coming to any consensus about the resurrection (as one of their members put it, ‘no one has ever provided evidence of the resurrection of a human body after death’) is another of the more ‘challenging’ and perhaps even revolutionary notions to emerge from the Seminar. 

As one whose reading of scripture and all forms of reality from a metaphoric, imaginative and intuitive perspective, I am not troubled to reflect deeply on the image of a ‘profound and metaphoric transformation’ as an example and model of the metanoia that can and does come from an unexpected encounter with one’s own ‘dark side’. Such an encounter, whether seemingly accidental and impulsive, or as a part of a sequence of conscious reflection, contemplation and/or prayer, will only ‘awaken’ new ways of ‘seeing’ past memories and events. Whether it is years later, or not, the perception of the full set of circumstances, as opposed to the bare-bones of shame, guilt and fear that initiated the perception of what happened and our part in it, will be significantly enhanced, not as a way of excusing ourselves, exonerating all shame and guilt, but perhaps more as a ‘stepped-back’ way of accepting, tolerating and more fully understanding why we acted in the manner we did. James Hillman helps with this process by offering the option of inviting an imaginative and reflective review of the situation as if there were some Greek god or goddesses or myth being reenacted in our life. 

It may be that new information has come to light; or that a more persistent and consistent revisiting of the dark moment (Hillman calls them “in extremis” moments), has begun to thaw that original ‘freeze’ of shame, guilt, and fear and self-effacement. The process from ‘none’ to even a partial new awareness of the complexity of the situation can and will often blunt (heal?) some of our most personal hurting and woundedness and consequently also diminish or lessen our perceived need for and dependency on our tendency to hurt others. It may sound highly trite and reductionistic to write such a proposition. The actual development of the new ‘reveals,’ however, is anything but either trite or reductionistic. 

And one of the backstories that offer proof is that we are all deeply (and often unconsciously) embedded in the process of presenting a persona, a mask, that offers protection, and even obscurity of our shame, guilt and fear from the world. So long as we can ‘produce’ and ‘perform’ in a manner consistent with the particular rigours of being a husband, a co-worker, a professional (of whatever discipline) and we continue to attain the plaudits of approval, support and even love for what is said to be ‘who’ we are, (in effect it is our performing ‘ego’) we can literally, psychically and emotionally slide in and around the moguls on the hills of our darkness, without having to confront them.  

Those moguls have not evaporated as if in a Spring thaw! They continue to offer the complexity of traversing new and unexplored terrain as our ‘skiing’ skills are enhanced. 

Paradoxically, however, the enhancement of those skills and the public applause their performance generates is precisely the trap of self-induced blindness, almost a state of numbness, as we ‘picture’ ourselves as the public image we have fashioned with years of hard work. 

The psychic, physical and emotional stress that such a predicament brings can be witnessed in the cardiac wards, the cancer clinics, the obesity trials, and the psychic ‘therapies’ that have proliferated over the last several decades. Sadly, many of those latter therapies are designed to help the individual see him or herself as a ‘victim’ of forces over which s/he had no control. It is to the extrinsic, find the enemy, find the cause outside of ourselves, to which our society has become addicted. That is not to say that others have not hurt us; indeed they have. What it is to say, however, is that, no matter what happened, or who seemed to be responsible (other than ourselves) is simply not the whole story. 

It is the process of re-visioning those ‘in extremis moments’ when our lives were challenged at the deep and profound levels to discern the new truth of a different ‘who’ we really are, aside from our public performance. And the secrets of such a ‘who’ are, like the artefacts of an archeological dig, buried in the ‘time warp’ of our physical, mental, spiritual and psychic biographies. 

The new ‘vision’ of our psychic and emotional life is not, like a botox treatment that ‘irons’ out the wrinkles. It is an evolving, and developing and  challenging new ‘pilgrimmage’ into our own private psychic, spiritual and emotional life....to which God is inviting each of us. 

And, just perhaps, if we are interested in exploring our own ‘in extremis’ moments, whether as part of our theology and/or our theology, it might then be feasible to begin to consider a similar motive as we begin to explore the collective unconscious of the organizations, families and tons cities, and churches to which we owe so much allegiance. And that pilgrimmage, too, will be offensive to many and symphonically musical to others. And a challenge will continue to be how to bridge the emotional, psychic, spiritual and even intellectual ‘chasm’ that divides those two groups!