THOUGHTS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF OUR COLLECTIVE & PERSONAL ICONS. February 1, 2022

    This to me is a rather important and complex matter, Icons. I'll try to give some definition and different ideas about what Icons might mean to us.

    My main understanding of an icon is it's an image, picture, scene or sculpture that has come to have a strong emotional mindul effect on a person. Well developed icons become that to whole cultures and help hold them together as a people. Reflecting on such an Icon gives a person a sense of their highest values about life's meaning and supports them through difficulties and disappointments.. These can be actual ' living symbols' that go beyond being describable in words( mean more to a person than can ever be expressed) and one can sense that their spiritual dimension is moved deeply by such an icon. Icons can represent the basis of one's religious type experiences.

    With that kind of definition I think the two strongest and most important icons in our Western cultures are still Jesus and the Virgin Mary. It is likely that these have become less positively effective on modern Americans than in centuries past and that we now stand in need of new icons coming into existence for us in our times. We are imo significantly without the needed clear symbolic icons in our age. This can mean a culture is dangerously vulnerable to weaknesses within.

   It may be today that movie/sports/music stars or politicians or war heroes  are called icons. And these can surely  have strong inner effects for good or bad on persons  but they don’t rise to be centuries  long-lived effective cultural icons such Jesus and  Mary. They are more temporary hero figures.

Harlan Hill Chicago Bears football star from Florence and singer Pat Boone were such icons for me.  And even my brothers who ‘could do no wrong’ in my eyes. I still carry that childhood emotion for them but am ‘conscious’ that such iconic energy is something primarily ‘ in and from me’ that transcends their actual personal ordinary humanity. So it is with any human we ‘idolize’ or ‘iconize’.  We sort of unconsciously  ‘do something’ to these persons making them be what some image in us ‘needs’ them to be. That can sometimes be problematic and not a very loving thing to do. We may unintentionally be making them be what we want them to be rather than accepting their actual unique personhood.

So our unconscious ‘projections’ onto others  can prevent us from seeing them more for whom they more actually are.   We are ‘projecting’ on to them what images were already unconscious inside of us. This is also what happens with our parents and with whoever we much  ‘fall in love’ with.

These are powerful important ongoing processes that at first seem to us as coming totally from persons  ‘outside us”. We can become to some degree conscious of it and  become more ‘objective’ of what and who we are  inwardly by such experiences while remaining  appreciative of the actual  persons, or even things, our unconscious has sort of locked us onto. This in short is how we learn out of our own unconscosciousness according to the depth psychology of C.G. Jung and others.

  When Icons have arisen from  historical persons like Jesus and Mary the iconic images  have over time become even more adorned and exaggerated than were the actual living human beings where the projection started.  This unconscious process helps form world cultures in a positive way when these icons are noble, compassionate or emotionally uplifting.   But whole cultures can become so adoring of very debasing icons which also began with attractions to humans of much less than noble, and even dangerous, character.  
 For real  persons living ages ago  to have become such living culture and religion making icons  like Jesus  and Mary or political like Hitler they must have been quite extraordinary real life persons for either very  good or bad.

  Both Jesus and Mary are significantly effective as icons for me. They still emotionally represent to me the values of human/divine love, courage, justice, feminine and masculine principles and personal living sacrifice for the good of others. I can appreciate that such noble qualities must be’ in me’  unconsciously  for me to at all  project them on to these historic icons.  

They are a ‘God and Goddess’ type image that have been mostly helpful and healthy and uplifting for our Western culture. But maybe less so now than in the past 2000 years. So there may be a yearning and need for new icons to appear for us  collectively through our unconscious projections for a new culture seeking birth in and from us.

Icons can also be non-human images that come to have strong emotional effect on us for good or bad. Nationally we have many ..the Liberty Bell, our Flag, the Lady Liberty Statue( my favorite), Mt Rushmore, the DC monuments etc. Some natural phenomena have become strong national Icons like the Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountains, Mississippi River and the Oceans and Red Wood Forests. All of these have an iconic strong positive emotional effect on me and many other Americans. So much that we want to seriously preserve them as forever treasures. The list of Icons in these ways is real and limitless. Think of the Bear, Lion, Eagle, the US Constitution, the Bible etc. 

Icons when highly valued can give the sense that one's soul is being fed. It is more than a head or thinking experience. 'Numinous' is a good word for the rich effect a living icon can have on an individual, even transforming one's character for better or worse.

    Other Icons can be past or contemporary persons who one believes have in their living, work and writings given extremely important knowledge and truth to our world cultures, even revelatory type knowledge that can help us find our way through very challenging times. Carl Jung is one of several of this kind of Icon for me. He is contemporary enough to be fully human and flawed. His work has supported my own path of change and development more than any other contemporary. He died when I was a Jr in high school and I knew nothing of him until my mid life.

 The even sided cross has been an iconic symbol since very ancient times and in various religions. Depth Psychogy would  consider it a living symbol of wholeness and completion or the Self or of God presented by the Collective Unconscious.

    Jung rediscovered that circular shapes around a center called 'mandalas' which pop up in nature, on religious edifices and many other places are living(can have a strong spontaneous  emotional effect on persons) symbols of the highest inner meaning for humans and even can be  symbolic of the Ultimate God. They can be Icons to us. I've had mandalas come often in my dreams. So such mandalas are  supporting Icons for me.

    

EXCEPTIONAL TV SHOWS HAVE TRIED TO TEACH GENUINE MORALITY..Jan 1, 2022

I'd feel better if every American watched and felt this episode of Heat of the Night. In this series I suspect Carrol O'Conner gets to act out his actual life values. 

This in contrast to his excellent portrayal of bigoted racist Archie Bunker in the series All In The Family. That character, ahead of its time in TV, was meant to satirically teach Americans the destructive mental health of such a man as Archie. That is why it is in the form of rich Comedy. 

Sadly these decades later we find many Americans admire such a character.  Apparently it was taken as a man who speaks his mind, lives his prejudices and bigotry openly like a 'tough guy.'

Such TV shows in the 60s and 70s did much to bring America's dark side into the open with such episodes as this rape of a school teacher. And we are still trying to come to terms with those same issues in 2022. I'm not content  that  presently heralded emotional TV series have the creativity or will to deal with such ethical issues as these older programs did. 

This episode is surely not out of date. It is done not only creatively but I think with rich psychological and spiritual insight. Reading the plot can be a reminder but watching the presentation( try YouTube) is an experience I wish all adults might have or have again.

'UNION OF OPPOSITES' FOR 2022?...January 15, 2022 January 1, 2022

A ' UNION OF OPPOSITES' FOR 2022? 

A widely known Jungian depth psychologist explains the opinion that 2022 with it's many 2's can have a hopeful meaning for the world....that we've reached a time where many of the harsh  'opposites' we've necessarily lived and suffered with in recent centuries are perhaps finely tuned for a pronounced culture changing  increased 'union of opposites'. This, depth psychology suggests, has long been unconsciously yearned for by humanity. We all likely experience this split or lack of union in our potential wholeness day in and day out. And we see it increasingly clear in our outer world.

These 'opposite pairs' may include:  thinking & feeling, high & low, inner & outer, heaven & earth, conservative & liberal extremes, the masculine & feminine principles, man & woman, intuition & physical reality, strong & weak, sexuality & spirituality, assertiveness & passivity, flesh & spirit, head & soul, peace & war, intellect & heart, good & evil, disease & health, negative & positive, chaos &  order,  giving & receiving, science & 'religion', well being &  suffering, fullness & emptiness, Divine & Human, wealth & poverty, rules & freedom, material & spiritual, conscious & unconscious, Eros & Logos, Apollo & Dionysius, introversion & extroversion, love & control, calm & tension, choice & destiny, rational and irrational, fear & confidence, life & death, trust & doubt, love & power....and many other opposing factor pairs we experience in our daily living reality.

With our still necessarily limited consciousness all of us at times fall victim to one side of some of these opposites. We then strive for, culturally and personally, and often accept only one side while ignoring, denying and even despising and demonsizing the other. This reduces our capacity for balance and wholeness. The appropriate divine/human response has eternally been not to irradicate any side of an opposite pair but to seek and pray for a transcending union to occur.

Should 2022 be a year where many of these opposites  come together in better harmonies than yet known, both in individuals and in world dynamics,  we may be very satisfied and appreciative to have lived in this new year. 

There is likely imo no more realistic or supportable optimistic view of our present situation and problems than this one or something similar...ie expecting a significant increase in the 'union of opposites' resulting in broader consciousness in us and in our one world.

The equal sided cross has been at intervals, from most ancinet times, a spiritually living symbol of the 'union of opposites' the world  has always evolutionarily been moving toward. It indicates a greater completion, harmony, balance and  wholeness naturally longing to be expressed uniquely in persons and in our only world home

A blessed 2022 for all persons worldwide !!

CULTURAL CRISIS...December 13, 2021

 

Consider first reading the attached brief statement of C.G. Jung on the meaning of  'enantiodromia.'

 I hesitate to express publicly what to many would sound like 'crazy' thoughts. But are imo very relevant for our critical social times. Unusual times call up what may seem to be unusual resources. Mine is one concerned person's view of the present dangers our culture faces. I realize each item I present calls for more discussion and thought by persons far brighter than I. But I share what I have the best I can. These are imo very extreme times with demanding problems like cultures have not faced for many centuries.

I think we are seeing what Jung describes happening in our American culture in our  extreme yet evolutionarily necessary times. A large percent of the collective mind, probably at least thirty percent, has given up trying to be rational regarding what they take to heart is social and political 'truth.' They understandably have lost confidence in the status quo of one or more of our institutions: political, government, science, education and religion. And in discouragement have given way to some dangerous, seductive and enticing irrational beliefs.

Please hear me out. The answer is not to think we need to be more fiercely rational, to somehow destroy our essentially  natural human irrationality. As tempting an approach as that is it's neither possible or desirable.

None of us escapes the possibility of being led into some irrational, meaning non-sensical and illogical, view of what is 'true'. This after all is perfectly and dangerously consistent with our ever present and partly irrational human nature. We deny this fact to our own peril in these present times, ie that we are each and all partly irrational (without reasoned material support) in some of our strongest most emotional assumptions and beliefs. We can without realization, ie unconsciously, drift too far toward the abyss of irrationality and cult-like unfounded authoritarian-based trust.

 This dynamic imo is the best explanation of the tragedy of ordinary well educated people in Nazi Germany in early 1940's. They plunged into an irrational mindset and belived lies with which  they were inundated. No one in times like this, no matter how clear thinking we believe we are, is exempt from our minds being pulled in by such an irrational and unconscious( truly not knowing) vortex.

As Jung says here the only prevention to falling into accepting the irrational as total truth regarding some matter is to first honestly accept that a limited, or balanced, amount of irrational belief is necessary for human spiritual/psychological personal and cultural health. This strong need for the irrational denied in our materialistic culture has led us to a very precarious imbalance in this newly forming epoch and can spell disaster if not detected, made conscious, to our rational processes.

 Until recent times our religions, and to some extent the arts and literature, have been a successful outlet for our need of the irrational. (Believing that there is an all knowing/ all powerful God who sits outside of us in a heaven and occasionally intervenes in human life is an example an irrational idea our Western culture has generally believed for many centuries.) And our rational side rightfully led many of us in the recent century to doubt such irrational assumptions however important they once were for needed balance. Many have not lost belief in the Sacred but have necessarily and honestly rejected this traditional now inappropriate and failing 'image of God.' Times are now seeking to birth a truer more alive 'image or symbol of God' than the once effective fading one.

These changes of recent centuries then over time circled us back to the opposite of the irrational; ie believing we can rely on rational reasoning alone for discerning all important 'truth' and values. And that our physical rational senses are the 'only' avenue of real and needed truth or information.

 Unfortunately we can't as humans defer to that simplistic notion of our actual complicated inner nature. For our psyche/soul aspect cannot healthily live extendedly in such a stressed imbalance of rational vs irrational, of consciousness vs unconsciousness. We are both of these and they ever naturally seek an effective balance within us however painful the process becomes in life.

So this historic development left our 'modern' culture with a strong imbalance in our rational vs irrational nature. We have become over the centuries too extreme in the certainty of our rationality and reasoning, of our amazing intellect and its exploding technology and information. But our lack of openly acknowledging and considering the reality of the irrational has opened the floodgates for much of our culture to have a monstrous need (and excuse) to dangerously believe and totally trust certain irrational beliefs without question. This is especially so regarding social, political, ethical and religious matters. Note these are strongly held emotional areas of the human psyche which more easily succumb to our irrational nature. I suspect the more a person claims to be totally rational about such things the more likely they are to be believing destructive untruths.

Forgetting political angles for a moment, two outstanding dangerous examples of irrationality taking root are that receiving vaccines as medically prescribed to combat a real virus pandemic is a wrong, weak, unhealthy or unethical thing to do. Another is that the thoroughly investigated presidential election of 2020 was' rigged and stolen ' from one candidate and given wrongly to another. Such needed illusory beliefs originate from deeper levels of our psyche than only surface politics but they can certainly be emotionally manipulated by unethical authority figures.

Then a question becomes what dynamics must happen to bring order and some protection from this collective threat of our culture splitting and collapsing due to overly irrational beliefs and fears? When a fall into irrationality, as we now see, happens to a large part of the culture there is then serious danger of a full collapse into destructive irredeemable chaos. This would be a kind of new dark age where we lose the intellectual, cultural and psychological gains made over many centuries.( We are no more protected from such an end than ancient cultures were.)

So what is needed for our redemption? First, the collective irrational beliefs must be rationally recognized and resisted by as many persons as possible without giving in to violence. And secondly it also raises the essential and urgent need for some kind of outer/inner event which clearly embraces both the rational and irrational nature of our human minds/souls in some new unexpected way. Such a phenomenon can shake us and bring us toward a newly balanced more healthy culture.

But the sticky thing is we humans can't will or orchestrate by science/medicine/military/academics or politics, such a psychological/spiritual phenomenon. Our advanced technology has no such capacity nor does our best and strongest rational reasoning or institutional religions. Yes, you may guess, it is from the imaginative irrational realm where such phenomena have in ancient times risen to redeem such occasions as ours now and also much of the world. Such a happening can result in a culture rising to new levels of collective consciousness.

One example of this spiritual/psychological dynamic in history was the surprising symbolic phenomenon of the 'birth of God as a human' emerging among lowly people in the near East some two thousand years ago. Times are right it seems for as powerful but likely different symbol, effective for these new times, to emerge from the irrational realm of our collective psyche.

The need seems to me this strong and urgent now. So then we seem called by fate to now keep our personal rational aspect strong and active while also acknowledging we must better trust and anticipate that irrational factors beyond our rational grasp must be autonomously activated and the results witnessed and absorbed. Such cooperating rational and irrational factors could pull us back safely from the abyss that threatens now to swallow us all.

May we be very alert and may that which is God be merciful.

Jim Hibbett

SO CALLED 'MODERATION' CAN BE AVOIDING RESPONSIBLITY...October 2, 2021

I hear in pastor Jim Rigby's statement below an important clarification about a common wrong application of the word 'moderate'. A meaning which seeks to escape personal responsibility. I suspect one can't be responsibly 'moderate' about most matters of 'truth and justice." 

 It's no accident that a 3rd branch of our democratic government is overseen by 'judges'...to attempt to discover what is 'true and just', nothing else. Truth and justice social issues call each human involved to a 'yes or no' answer, not to a perceived evasive moderation. For a democratic government to survive there has to be a good majority of citizens who see that we have no ethical alternative but to always desire the courage to say a clear 'yes or no' to each matter of 'truth and justice' that faces our nation. 

I think only by some self deception can any person justify being 'moderate ' in such matters. This does not mean we have the power to always make public matters 'true and just' but we can always throw our weight and voice to give our clear 'yes or no' to them and to search for them. And to not claim 'moderation' about such core issues of public fairness. Personally I can't imagine an alternative path toward an American 'more perfect union.' 

 Seeking 'truth and justice' is I think always something that is happening or not at our inner level and can't be accurately judged always by outward behavior. I'm rather confident that Jesus, in the gospels, is continuously shown as trying to focus attention on our inner world where truth and justice seek to be acknowledged with a 'yes or no'. The gospel author has Jesus say, "Let your yes be yes and your no be no." It's speaking of a realm where moderation is no honest choice. It's an invitation to explore our heart more than our vote. And the two are probably consistent. 

A truth is there is a large number of Americans who do not want everyone to have equal rights under the law. Though fundamental to democracy these are afraid that would diminish themselves too much in  some unstated way. The evidence is these are not a majority. But they are ones who will choose to say 'no' to our pressing issues of 'justice and truth.'  Sooner or later, our nation becomes what the inner hearts of it's people are..

I think there is a wide swath of Americans including many in leadership who do not do the inner work of ethical discernment. This means to discover inwardly what is 'truthful and just' in life and to then act on that with honesty as best one can. Lincoln and others standout historically as ones who wrestled in their souls( This process is a spiritual as well as an intellectual matter.). For people desiring a democratic type government to pass off the hard and sincere task of inner ethical 'yes or no' decisions by saying they are being 'moderate' is no way to expect a democracy to hold together.

  https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=6180260065382082&id=100001944497845&m_entstream_source=timeline#

RELATING TO OUR PORTION OF SUFFERING...July 17, 2021

 

But our inclination, due to our inherited cultural attitudes, encourages us to try to ignore, make light of, outdo and deny our actual portion of real human suffering. This is not healthy or healing. Suffering comes in many ways: physical/material/relationship losses, health decline, family stresses, poverty or threat of it ....to name a few. It can be felt in body and mind as physical, emotional and/or psychological pain. 

To deny our own suffering is to deny caring for ourself. It separates us from our self. It's a failing effort to escape our personal humanity.  

It must be no accident that the gospel  refers to Jesus not only as one "following his discovered joy' but at the same time a 'person of many sorrows'. These opposing realities must paradoxically go together and mark us, perhaps more than anything else, as a maturing human adult; not pretending life to be what it is not or denying our own incarnate real personal  experience. 

Often denying our personal suffering runs along with denying the suffering of others and of the world. So denying the reality that we do personally suffer as human beings is not a winning attitude toward this mystery of human life and our individually unique suffering consciousness.

THE USA HAS SUFFERED A STAGGERING MASS DECEPTION.. July 16, 2021

In most common language what the quote below describes is really this awful and simple. 

A significant part of our nation has got caught up in a mass psychological deception.( I'm of the uncertain opinion that Trump actually believes  his own deception, that he won the election. That is not hard to psychologically explain given his demonstrated extreme truth 

-avoiding temperament. But we should avoid the temptation to think Trump or any individual can cause such a phenomenon. It is much more deeply anchored than that.)

Before any of us say this means others are crazy while we are sain, we should know such a fully believed deception, given just the right balance of inner needs and fears and outer enticements, can happen to ANY of us. Because such invasions into our overly trusted conscious minds have their origins in the deep more powerful, creative and destructive, levels of our common Collective Unconscious. It is from this deep, real yet unconscious to us all, level that our more delicate human ego consciousness (which we generally feel  can keep us safely anchored in reality) has only recently evolved. A diverse nation finding intellectual/emotional balance has at times very narrow dangerous passages.

NO ONE is so strong of mind that she is above being deceived by such a dark collective psychological storm. It has surely happened numerous times before to otherwise smart persons such as in advanced Germany only eighty years ago. Then six million persons were murdered at the consent of  a majority of 'respected' citizens.

CG Jung, founder of analytical psychology, in Switzerland  took great pains in the first half of the 1900's to learn and to explain how mass deception happens in world history.  He also indicated  it was likely to happen in the amazing and youthful America. And he understood no one can know, including himself,  just how destructive such a phenomenon  once begun will turn out to be in the world. 

But, for whatever reasons, those who are not swept up this time by it must do their all to not deny what is happening, to resist its growth and call it what it is, a mass public deception involving  complicated psychological/political/religious factors combining.  And it can undo any nation if enough clearer eyed  persons are not present and in fact do strongly, calmly and openly resist it. 

https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2021%2F04%2F07%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Fjohn-boehner-trump-capitol-riot.html%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR3YjHJAjH-m8r0Nzloh7crHsepNYcdm7OlnDXBFwp3kPdUw_hW94jtVbBc&h=AT3I_Iy0WI53RRUO0JkR2TGmSe9ET07vt7N0eQgg5mM0RqHl_CJK-T3qIGquP9bkArDmbgGWo5oEZTsk25taP4TY71b8Q1x67msdWHrvmbZcOdq_BnitHCKsMolFo-qBY7k