Hi Edward. I've had disappointing news today. From a note by a doctor that I saw one time the premium for long term care insurance I've applied for with John Hancock has been doubled and a home service aspect denied. I saw him after my car accident. He sent me to a physical therapist who said I needed no ongoing therapy. I've never had one pain in my neck all my life but they say he said I have Severe Degenerative Cervical Spine. This may price me out of it. And this has been something that I have felt a responsibility to secure at this time in my life. It would make things so much less worrisome for me and my children should I ever need nursing home care. If anyone should not be in denial of that possibility it is me, and I decided along ago I would get such insurance. Now it looks like a fluke is making it not reasonable or affordable for me. It makes me feel irresponsible though objectively I think I've approached it with responsibility and timeliness. I'm quite bothered by this news. I've contacted the Dr and his nurse says he will review and see if there is any misunderstanding. She said he is out of town for a week. I had already begun the application process when the accident happened. Goes to show timing can sometimes seem in ones favor but other times the opposite. Would I even report the accident if I had it to do over?
As the above strikes me as a synchronicity which seems to have worked against my personal plans I will also share two meaningful things have recently cropped up in my physical environment. These strike me as synchronistic events as Jung described them. Several weeks ago Brent began to creatively build a rough concrete and stone patio in our front garden. I'm aware that when he does such things they are without a direct plan thus creative and open to the Unconscious forces. The larger part of it is a circular mandala. The center contains four bright blue squares and at the epicenter is a fossil, likely millions of years old. He's had the fossil in his possession most of his life. You know from me how important mandala formations have been for 25 years. Jung found them to be cross cultural, cross language and cross religious, appearing throughout recorded time. Many Catholic/Protestant churches, Hebrew Synagogues and Muslim Mosques are adorned by them today. Most would of course say they are pretty and simply the kind of thing people put on a church. We do so much that is unconsciously driven. Mandalas appear in nightly dreams across the world. Even the UFO phenomenon is a kind of mandala expression. Jung took them as the most direct physical expression of the goal the 'collective unconscious' moves toward They are symbols of wholeness, completeness and represent the unity of opposites. Brent and I have no ongoing conversation whatsoever about such things. In those early years when I first experienced mandalas coming from me unconsciously he likely heard me speak of them. For many months after August '85 I daily drew at least one rather intricate mandala. I have none of those in my possession. I passed them on to my therapists I think. But they were my primary therapy before I first talked to Drs. D. or B. which was two years after Aug '85. I was my only therapist and this is what I was led to do each day. I now think it was most appropriate and healing. I was teaching school at the time. My mandalas were not circles but polygons. At first they were hexagons and gradually turned into octagons. Notice this is a move from 6 to 8 that I have mentioned before. My street address this whole time is 608. I now think they were primarily the product of the 'collective unconscious.' I was aware I was doing them but it was coming creatively out of me, not rationally. I'm pretty sure if I saw them again they would not look like anything that came from me. I don't think I could do one of the same intensity if I tried now. There was some kind of inner system that I followed each time. I wish I could see them again.
My take on this mandala coming from Brent , that has great meaning to me, may be an indication that my children carry a need that my life's issues be more vindicated. I don't think they have an issue with me on this but I seem to with myself. I suspect it may in some way rest significantly on their lives. I have written of this concern of mine before and here I see it again. This is an area of responsibility I still feel toward them for reasons that are not rationally explainable. It is not a matter of unresolved guilt. Nor do I sense it as an ego demand I make on life for it to give me or my children more. I've received way more than enough love and good experiences in life. Just as I felt I was being responsible to them, and promised them so, in my months away from home when they were young and in the initially alarming changes of belief I made; I feel I may also have a need beyond my rational capacity, to have what they have suffered from me become more significantly meaningful. Otherwise it seems to me that too large a part of their experience from trusting me then is that they suffered along with and loved a troubled father. That is accomplishment enough to be proud of on their part, and a reason I am so grateful to each of these persons, but I do not believe it is the fully correct truth of what we all went through. It fails to fill out with meaning the full story. I realize I am helpless to vindicate the issues regarding my own life development. And I may in time feel nothing more is needed. My blog I think is an effort to bring some of the loose ends together.
My life, motivations, actions and changes will either be vindicated by the natural meaning inherent in life(which is called God) or it will not. In the sort of parallel case of the Hebrew and Christian religions, neither was actually vindicated(in their anticipation of God acting in history)but they had inspired minds among them who were able to reinterpret their story in such ways that managed to move them past their original need of Jesus' immediate return(for Christians) and allow them to build on a new foundation. That foundation, after much suffering, was primarily that they became the formal religion of Rome and took on its secular and religious power and authority. The Jews somehow also managed to reinterpret the reason God had not so acted in their behalf (primarily by blaming themselves and forebears for weak faith) after the destruction of Jerusalem. Except for a relatively brief time during Solomon's reign, they really have never enjoyed much greater status in the world than when nomads in the desert. They have never known the kind of 'success' that Christianity found for itself through its very worldly power. But, to their deserved pride, by sheer determination and faith they have kept themselves alive as a people. I say all this to remind myself if I , and especially my children, are in need of a vindication of my life it may appear in a very natural and totally different than expected fashion. Sometimes a person or group simply has to 'grow out' of their religious/spiritual , which is what I am describing about myself, expectation and anticipations.
My life, motivations, actions and changes will either be vindicated by the natural meaning inherent in life(which is called God) or it will not. In the sort of parallel case of the Hebrew and Christian religions, neither was actually vindicated(in their anticipation of God acting in history)but they had inspired minds among them who were able to reinterpret their story in such ways that managed to move them past their original need of Jesus' immediate return(for Christians) and allow them to build on a new foundation. That foundation, after much suffering, was primarily that they became the formal religion of Rome and took on its secular and religious power and authority. The Jews somehow also managed to reinterpret the reason God had not so acted in their behalf (primarily by blaming themselves and forebears for weak faith) after the destruction of Jerusalem. Except for a relatively brief time during Solomon's reign, they really have never enjoyed much greater status in the world than when nomads in the desert. They have never known the kind of 'success' that Christianity found for itself through its very worldly power. But, to their deserved pride, by sheer determination and faith they have kept themselves alive as a people. I say all this to remind myself if I , and especially my children, are in need of a vindication of my life it may appear in a very natural and totally different than expected fashion. Sometimes a person or group simply has to 'grow out' of their religious/spiritual , which is what I am describing about myself, expectation and anticipations.
The other external symbol that has appeared in my environment is something that my back neighbor is building in his yard. It's in full view out my back window. It is likely a large playhouse for his girls? I've amazed as he has continued to build and enlarge it. It is now nearly a perfect cube of two floors. It has a door and four windows in the front giving it a face-like animation. Along with the mandala, the square(even more a cube) is another widely demonstrated symbol of wholeness and completeness produced timelessly by an archetype of the collective unconscious. Also, the circle of the Mandala has long been understood a symbol of 'heaven' and the Square a symbol of the 'earth.' So out my doors these two opposites are depicted as 'coming together' or 'uniting.' Such union of opposites is the goal of human development in Jungian terms and also the kind of inner activity needed today by humans facing the psychological/spiritual needs and conditions of our era.
These two appearing symbols, no doing of mine but with such personal meaning, along with recent dreams, seem to build the case that a time of completion and wholeness is at hand for me( or maybe for the many.) This is a good omen for the potential meaning of my life. Such a conclusion, when I allow myself to take it seriously, reduces the fear and negative emotions that other externals naturally arouse including the extreme polarizations that have reached dangerous levels in the nation's and the world's religious and political systems. If consistent inner and outer manifestations of the 'collective unconscious' are saying that my life is very accurately on course then what is there to fear? Yet I wrestle with being a consistent believer as I think every honest person does. The opposites of 'faith and doubt' are part of the necessary tension from which all life is lived. Without such opposites there would be no life. This is even the very foundation of the Trinity idea. These present symbols(in my front and back yard) activated, I believe, by the collective unconscious and many similar ones in orthodox religious story are speaking of a hope- that these and other opposites be more experienced as an essential unity, not one overpowering or excluding the other. Blessings, Jim Hibbett
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