I made this wall hanging yesterday. It is the native lumber board with the home address '608' tacked to it. It was part of a sixty-year-old fence I tore down two years ago. The number '608' took on strong symbolic meaning to me some thirty years ago. It now feels foundational to my life experience.
For three decades my forty-seven-year '608' E. Lincoln St. address has been symbolic of my personal development, or in Jung's term, of my on-going individuation process.
'Six' to me is a number indicating change. I relate it to my first adult need/readiness for complex changes in outlook of myself, others and of the world. Rather early on I found by 'accident' some writings of C.G. Jung applicable to my needs and the IChing, the ancient Chinese Book of Changes, based on symbolic common archetypal configurations of the number six.
Reflecting, I consider myself at thirty-eight years old(1982) as having been, still mostly unconscious, a very ripe 'six' in this developmental process. It's as if I'd been psychologically/spiritually prepared for significant personality/values changes by experiencing my personal limits of some highest and lowest realities from the common-to-all Collective Unconscious.
'Zero' I take as the time of initial, and reocurring, experience of humbling. Inutially some archetypal energies of the Collective Unconscious all but overwhelmed my ego, my 'I' or 'me'. The building-up of experienced outer/inner life tensions threatened me with the potential loss of mind and of a sound ego awareness. I experienced my greatest battle.
I was compelled in time to know that my ego awareness, as important and essential as it is, is so very small compared to the powers and contents of the Unconscious. The Collective Unconscious might be thought of as, 'All that is, has been or ever can be'. In practical terms the Unconscious introduced my ego to inner images of the 'other', the Divine/Sacred, often called God throughout the ages.
In the 'zero' state I learned that the Unconscious makes itself known to the smaller but eager ego consciousness, in Jungian terms, as the Self. The Self is the only all-encompassing mind factor that I conscientiously can and morally must, to keep claiming my full humanity, bow to and give my highest allegiance.(I learned also that the Self does not ask for blind obedience but invites one to an encounter where human honesty, trust, doubt, courage, questioning and dialogue are some highest values.)
'Eight' being 'two times four' is a strong psychological/spiritual symbol of the embedded human aspiration to consciously reach for the 'wholeness, completeness and uniqueness' of adult personhood. This I believe is a primary goal for which our souls break into this earthly/bodily human life.
This kind of life journey and development toward unique completion is never for any kind of moral or religious perfection which often actually interferes with it. This kind od quest is, in my view, the highest and lowest reaches life places before each of us. It is a value we can take as our own and choose doing what we can to support others in their Self-finding journey to wholeness.
In ways beyond my capacity to articulate or well grasp intellectually, the 'eight' state of mind teaches that the most important experiences one can have are effectively being loved by another and of effectively, creatively and uniquely loving another.
Love is not yet humanly well-defined ir described except as it is experienced directly through one's whole being: mind, body and soul.
For three decades it has been helpful to me to adapt three ancient Greek words for love, taken together, as a baseline for the present-day ego and heart to work with. These are:
1. Agape- An unconditional, unrelenting high regard for the other person.
2. Phileo- The experience of honest/trusting, relaxed and heart-warming friendship.
And of far higher value than the Western world has consistently given it, but instead has generally denigrated its spiritual/psychological importance to our human evolutionary path is:
3. Eros- The spiritual/psychological experience that makes a human feel most alive and joyfully ecstatic. It can be felt toward various realities including devotion to strongly felt personal vocations(soul callings) of many kinds.
Of a most importance, in my best judgment, never should the fulness of Eros respectfully attracting prepared intimate human partners be underestimated. It can be, in my opinion, a primary channel for the highest development of persons. And capable even of generating compassionate cultures never yet created and being always central to the world's survival and thriving.
What the Unconscious helps happen in state 'eight' is Eros is shown to be elevated to a union of Spirit and Matter, of Venus and Apollo, of masculine and feminine, of reason and irrationality. Sexuality and spirituality, of psychological necessity for our evolving times, seek to become one.
Eros, supported by the other love expressions, must surely be a redeeming "Divine/Human power" (A Paul Tillich quote)still in and among us.
We can rightfully aspire to be open to a full measure of unfathomable love. And no conscientious person need be discouraged or embarrassed if such love has not yet become very consciously experienced. Love has its own autonomous timing. our ego is not its master. No matter our personal present state of love, every human can be grateful that such love lives in couples across the Earth and to trust that the numbers now grow. All mature loves benefit all persons and the creation.
Many persons have historically insisted that their transforming experiences of love have been clearly best described as personal gifts received, as Divine grace unexpectedly extended.
Note:
These three 'states' of development are only generally sequential in me. They overlap and none of them ceases to operate. Nothing is left behind. All is returned to in reflection to better secure the expanding foundation the Self has added to a humbled ego consciousness. There is what Jung called a 'circumambulating' movement of themes around some central image for the Self.
