One of the things Jung taught was that the human psyche is the mediation point for God. If God wants to speak to us, God usually speaks in words that first feel like our own thoughts. As Rohr asks, “How else could God come to us? We have to be taught how to honor and allow that, how to give it authority, and to recognize that sometimes our thoughts are God’s thoughts. Contemplation helps train such awareness in us. The dualistic or non-contemplative mind cannot imagine how both could be true at the same time. The contemplative mind sees things in wholes and not in divided parts.”
In an account written several years before his death, Jung described his early sense that ‘Nobody could rob me of the conviction that it was enjoined upon me to do what God wanted and not what I wanted. That gave me the strength to go my own way.’
As Rohr reminds us, we all must find an inner authority that we can trust that is bigger than our own. This way, we know it’s not only us thinking these thoughts. When we can trust God directly, it balances out the almost exclusive reliance on external authority (Scripture for Protestants; Tradition for Catholics). Much of what passes as religion is external to the self, top-down religion, operating from the outside in. Carl Jung wanted to teach people to honor religious symbols, but from the inside out. He wanted people to recognize those numinous voices already in our deepest depths. Without deep contact with one’s in-depth, authentic self, Jung believed one could not know God. That’s not just Jungian psychology. “Wisdom of the Women Mystics,” one among our current Christian Education classes meets Monday evenings from 7 to 8 pm. This is a women’s Christian Education class designed to acquaint us with writings from medieval Christian women who were dedicated to serving God by caring for others and by recording their insights and hopes. And they are doing the very kind of discernment Jung encouraged us to do!
The Adult Education Committee has also begun reading Richard Rohr’s Jesus’ Alternative Plan – The Sermon on the Mount. Rohr writes that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is “considered the blueprint for the Christian lifestyle.” Rohr believes that the “secret to understanding the Sermon on the mount is to understand what Jesus intended when he preached it.” Rohr’s goal is to “delve into the language of religion and emerge with a clearer understanding of the Sermon on the Mount, the Nazarene rabbi who preached it, and the Gospel writers, especially Matthew, who passed it on to us.” Rohr is a Franciscan priest and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, and he, too, is engaged in the kind of spiritual discernment Jung encouraged. Similar teachers include Augustine, Thérèse of Lisieux, Lady Julian of Norwich, Meister Eckhart, and Francis of Assisi.
Wherever you are on your spiritual journey I hope you will explore both your own, inner voice, and the community of faith that is Holy Family! Options for doing so are many, and best done with companions on the way. I’ll catch you later down the trail, and I hope to see you in church!
Bill+