This question was posed by a Facebook friend about
expressions that are sometimes heard in efforts to console a
person's moment of great human tragedy or loss:
"God is in control..."Or "God is still in
control".....Or "Everything happens for a reason"...
What do these even mean, in any practical way for our times?
Here is my effort to respond: *The Western ego(what most
consider 'me'), including the typical Christianized ego, does not
know, believe let alone trust there is any true reality beyond what
it apprehends with its physical senses. So to say to most anyone in
midst of seeming tragedy any of these statements, which have become
clichés to most persons, would be cruel and even correctly resented.
I suspect it is not typically till after mid life in our
materialistic culture that a human becomes very capable of
consciously experiencing there is something 'other' that is part of
themselves beyond the 'ego me'. This is what the instinctual
religious function in us humans is about as it seeks to
'open our eyes' to what is more than only ego perception. And
it is where the stories of revelation, hearing 'a voice of God' and
the statements you quote had their legitimately experienced
origin. Until the entrance of depth psychology , the past 100 years,
there had been no way to grasp, to have an Archimedean
leverage point, an awareness of the 'other' within
us through personal ego consciousness alone. Or to
have anything close to an 'explanation' of such an experience
of the 'other'. So such reports in past
millennia usually degenerated to now being 'only
superstitions' that many still cling to without significant
or convincing inner experience of it.
But ancient
or now, when such experience happens a person can find themselves
legitimately living with a conscious awareness of both the
ego perceived world(all there is with ego consciousness
alone) and a reality that is beyond our ego and of which
the ego can normally have barely a conscious and
often fleeting comprehension of. Yet a person
significantly aware of this 'more than the ego' part of
themselves still feels the pain of all human suffering but from
a view just outside and broader than the limited ego.
This state of awareness cannot come from being 'told' to
believe it. It must be experienced to be real. Moving toward
this increased range of consciousness is a central goal of
the processes of depth psychology, initiated
in modern times by Freud's scientific
discovery of the personal unconscious and much expanded by
C.G. Jung as Analytical Psychological.
The expressions
you quote have in times past and present been
found to be experienced in the struggles of some
more 'individuated' personalities. This happening is never
anything to boast of for it is simply a matter of
psychological/spiritual development. This development, though
including what can only be described as what people imagine
as 'miracle and ecstasy' is also clearly
natural and not supernatural. This means it is a possible state of
consciousness that can come to any human being in his/her
development. And hopefully it is becoming the experience
of many more persons than ever before. It does
likely require quiet and meditative type outer and
inner spaces to nurture such a process of development,
something that the Western materialistic ego is often
not turned toward in interest or that people find easily
available. The outer environment's noise, both
physical and in thoughts and image, that we
seem to prefer crowds out what seeks to be noticed from within.
Here we can learn from the East without trying to copy
it.
Why this happens to only some and when will it be more
typical are probably questions unanswerable but must be related to
the evolution of our species' collective consciousness. Surely
the word GOD found in all cultures is made most
relevant by such a mind development but, to be warned, it's
being experienced is also most likely something quite
different than any present collective notion of the idea
of GOD. (It would not be expected to be a total discontinuity from present collective religious views but a further development of them. For it all comes from the same Collective Unconscious source.) God is probably best now thought of as
enfolded within us , and all of nature, collectively and individually, not as 'some
thing or being' out there somewhere separate from our own natural,
but barely becoming understood, natural mind or psyche.
This more immanent view of the 'God mind' , the
imperfect and incomprehensible, guide of universal Evolution,
being enfolded into all creation coupled with
humanity's growing awareness of our being more than
only our initial ego impressions has encouraging
implications: That in our present age, far more than ever
before, God and human are in a cooperative dependent
relationship with each other. Amazingly implied is that God 'needs'
this newly developing human consciousness for God's
own development as much as the human needs the guiding function
of the ever evolving and supporting 'Mind
of God.' It is encouraging to know that
persons from many quarters now, far more than in the past,
are becoming conscious of a movement within
themselves that is in harmony with the 'other' or 'God
mind' toward a higher valuing and respect of
all humans and all other elements of creation. (One astonishing
example is how the equality of female and male, so contrary to past
millennia and American culture, is now grasped and claimed by a
majority of Western persons. This in the space of only a few decades
and unimaginable even to the founders of America. That
phenomenon I suggest is not the result of any human conscious
political conspiracy but a matter of evolution and
a strong leap in human collective consciousness. A cooperation
between human consciousness and the 'mind of evolution' or what can
still be called God. There are many other just as amazing
and 'used to be unconscious' developments
happening.)
This positive hope for the future of humanity
and the planet still faces resistance of the strong
instincts of our past survival traumas which created
our tendency toward tribalism and looking after
one's self and one's own rather than seeing the now more obvious
need of striving for the good and health of the whole. This
while also preserving the necessity and uniqueness
of each contributing part of creation. I think we are seeing ,
especially in politics and religion, very strong last
minute convulsive like seizures to, at all costs,
stave off this destined evolutionary movement toward a
much improved and healthier humanity and planet.
*As I write
this I am aware that, in addition to Depth Psychiatrist Carl
Jung, I am influenced by the hopeful and empowering
'visions' of Jesuit priest and world renowned evolutionary
paleontologist(how is that for a combination?) Pierre Teilhard
de Chardin along with some of the implications of Scientific
Physics Quantum Theory. And God only knows what or who else.
Mr. Trump should be pleased to learn, contrary to his insistence that it is crooked, that America's system of electing a president was not rigged after all. It seems to have been kept pure and not corrupt. 
