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#1909 - Thursday, September 2, 2004 - Editor: Jerry
Featured is Part 12 of 13 of the
review/summary of The Sacred Mirror: Nondual Wisdom and
Psychotherapy, edited by John J. Prendergast, Peter
Fenner, and Sheila Krystal. Information about this book is
available at http://tinyurl.com/4nxfq
Also featured is a sampling from Common Ground,
a Western Canadian magazine of spirituality and activism.
And there is another installment of In Nonduality Salon,
highlights of the early Nonduality Salon list before The
Highlights was created.
The Sacred Mirror: Nondual
Wisdom and Psychotherapy
Chapter 12
Jungian Analysis and Nondual Wisdom
by Bryan Wittine
Bryan Wittine, Ph.D. is a Jungian analyst in private practice and
on the faculty at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. He
has been active and influential in other areas of academia,
authored numerous papers, and lectured around the world. His
spiritual training is most notably in Vajrayana Buddhism and
Christian mysticism.
~ ~ ~
"This chapter is about the journey in Jungian analysis of a
spiritual seeker named 'Jenna,' who longed to know God. It is
also about a defensive process I call 'psychospiritual
splitting,' which nearly derailed Jenna's quest. Finally, it is
about our analytical relationship and a nondual understanding of
spirituality; both of which were central to her journey."
Such splitting is described by the author: "In our naivete
we approach spiritual practice longing to attain liberation, but
in doing so we neglect to care for our sacred manifestation, the
conscious and unconscious aspects of our physical bodies and
personal psyches. This leaves us practicing a dualistic
spirituality that perpetuates the split and leaves us feeling
enfeebled and adrift, lacking creative energy, and hiding our
shadow behind inflated spiritual feelings and beliefs."
Healing the split requires the recognition and addressing of the
two modes of development. There is the vertical path of spiritual
awakening and the horizontal path of individuation. The latter
involves transformation of the shadow or wounded elements of
personality and the actualization of the individual's gifts and
talents. The nondual approach encompasses both modes or paths.
Wittine cites specific difficulties associated with
psychospiritual splitting. "First is the tendency to use
images of God to compensate for unmet childhood needs; second is
the potential for ego-inflation if we identify with these
images." These tendencies drive our traumas and wounds
deeper into the unconscious. "Often it is only by suffering
a profound dark night of the ego that we let go of our inflated
self-images, reclaim our wounded parts, and begin to realize our
true identity as the formless Self beyond all images of God. The
formless Self might then use our illumined and individuated
personality as a vessel through which to radiate the love,
wisdom, and power of our true nature out into the world, into all
the activites of our daily life."
The author discusses his understanding of Jung's notion of the
Self. Though Jung spoke in different contexts about the Self, the
author bases his understanding upon that context which is "a
psychological restatement of the ancient Vedantic notion of the
Atman." Atman is our 'true I,', our ground of being, the
divine within, and is identical to the universal ground --
Brahman -- from which all proceeds.
The Self communicates to the ego-consciousness via dreams and
visions. While none of the distributed imagery is the Self, if it
is taken as guidance we could come to surrender to the Self as
formless awareness, which would take our journey beyond the
duality of ego and Self. "There is a seamless continuity
between ego and Self. The paths of transcendence and
individuation come together as we realize the Self in its
formless radiance, prior to and beyond all images, expressed as
and through our sacred individuality, which becomes the lens
through which compassion, wisdom, and power pour forth into our
relationships and the world."
The bulk of this chapter is the author's work with a severely
split client known as Jenna. Her spiritual life and history are
revealed; dreams are analyzed; and the transference relationship
between Wittine and Jenna is extensively analyzed with Jenna's
dream image of the spirit-man serving as the symbolic
cornerstone. "In terms of the development-enhancing
transference then, the spirit-man is an image of grounded, quiet,
holding strength, qualities she needed from me to work through
her feelings of defectiveness and relax into the basic ground of
her own true Self. If I could embody these qualities to some
degree, our relationship might help her realize the spirit-man
within herself, a calm, holding presence that supports the
unfolding of the whole of her individual being as well as her
true nature."
Jenna's dark night of the ego is described and the change in her
spiritual orientation that arose. "An important benchmark of
this period occurred when she asked me what kind of meditation
practice might suit her now that she had no interest in
visualizations." Wittine informed her of the teachings of
Ramana Maharshi. Jenna acquired a copy of Who Am I? "As she
lay on the couch she sometimes followed his instructions and
posed to herself the question 'Who am I?' The upshot of this was
simple and direct. Jenna became more fully aware of awareness
itself as the pure presence that witnessed whatever arose in her
mind. This left her feeling far more at peace with her child-self
and forgiving of her disapproving mother, abandoning father,
lover, and students. She also found forgiveness for herself for
acting out her shadow-needs with her lover. Finally, Jenna
realized that peace and forgiveness were actually attributes of
her essential Self."
I'll conclude this summary with a portion of the author's
conclusion and summary: "Psychospiritual splitting might be
resolved through an approach to inner work that honors both
transcendence and individuation. When practiced with nondual
understanding, Jungian analysis might contribute to such an
approach. From this perspective, images of the Self may be used
as guides on how to conduct our lives and as symbols of essential
attributes that are ready to manifest in the psyche of the
person."
~ ~ ~
The Sacred Mirror: Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy,
edited by John J. Prendergast, Peter Fenner, and Sheila Krystal.
Information about this book is available at http://tinyurl.com/4nxfq
Common Ground
http://www.commonground.ca/
Common Ground is an independent
publication, 100% Canadian owned. It is Western Canada's biggest
and best-loved monthly magazine dedicated to health, wellness,
ecology and personal growth.
Here are some selections from the recent and past issues as
pertain mainly to spirituality.
~ ~ ~
Dadi Janki, Wisdom Keeper
http://www.commonground.ca/iss/0409158/cg158_Janki.shtml
An extraordinary woman of wisdom
comes to Vancouver on September 23 after an absence of 10 years.
A member of the United Nations’ prestigious Wisdom Keepers,
Dadi Janki is an 88-year-old spiritual lighthouse who travels the
world speaking at international conferences and sharing her
wisdom with world leaders and the community at large.
Born in India in 1916 she survived poverty, war and severe
illnesses. A spiritual leader, Dadi Janki seeks not so much to
change people but to model spirituality. Having risen above the
restrictions of culture, gender and a lack of formal education
she has dedicated the last seven decades to serving humanity.
Dadi Janki will be appearing in Vancouver September 23 at the
Vancouver Playhouse Theatre, Hamilton and Dunsmuir, 7:30 - 9:30
p.m. Special guest performances by Rita Costanzi and Denzal
Sinclaire. Admission is free. Tickets required. Contact the
festival box office at 604-257-0366 or visit
www.festivalboxoffice.
Following are some of Dadi Janki’s words of wisdom excerpted
from three of her books.
Become spiritually attractive
A spiritual path is like a school. Not a regular school where you
learn ordinary skills, but a spiritual school where you learn the
skills of spirit: like how to remove flaws in your character, or
how to remain unaffected by the negative influences around you.
Some people think that if they follow a spiritual path, they
won’t be able to cultivate their individual talents.
However, what kinds of talent do people really need nowadays? To
remove one’s own ego is a great talent; to love others is
another.
If you can deal with your own ego, then your own anger can be
resolved. This goes a long way to resolving external issues too.
With your own ego out of the way you will be able to handle
anything! Otherwise it’s just the same old thing - you
versus me, yours versus mine, etc.
If your friends and relations do not choose to accompany you on
your spiritual path, why should you chase after them trying to
get them to change? They won’t listen anyway, no matter what
you say. A better approach is to focus on your own change
process. A river doesn’t urge people to drink its water.
People are naturally drawn to it, provided its waters are pure,
free-flowing and sweet. In the same way, become so spiritually
attractive, everyone will want to join you, naturally.
~ ~ ~
Breaking down, breaking open
UNIVERSE WITHIN by Gwen Randall-Young
http://www.commonground.ca/iss/0409158/cg158_gwen.shtml
Our ego often has great plans for
us. Like a child playing with a doll or an action figure, ego
creates our identity, and then sends us forth into the world to
live out the vision it has created unlike a movie producer and
director, ego would like to set the stage, write the script and
have all the actors speak their lines as written.
Unfortunately, in life we do not have the same control as the
child over his game, or the director over his movie. The other
“actors” in our lives are simultaneously playing roles
in many other movies, perhaps even trying to direct a few
themselves. There may even be a master director, overseeing all
of the productions. “All the world’s a stage,”
Shakespeare wisely noted. Like a hall of reflecting mirrors, our
lives may consist of stages, within stages, within stages, and at
each level, our stages overlap and interconnect with the stages
of others.
It is easy to see how infinitely complex the whole thing becomes.
Imagine a circus performer trying to keep multiple tops spinning.
Ego tries to keep its “spin” on every stage on which it
plays a part. Is it any wonder that by the time humans reach mid-
adulthood, stress, anxiety and depression reach near epidemic
proportions? Increasingly there is a growing awareness that we do
not have the control we thought we had.
That awareness may come as a result of the emotional exhaustion
created by trying to stay on top of everything. More often, it
comes in the form of a crisis - a loss or major disappointment.
One of the productions on one of our stages takes a devastating
turn. We may lose one of our lead actors, through death or
dissolution of a relationship. A role we have played for many
years may suddenly be denied us - a job layoff, children leaving
home, even retirement.
One of ego’s roles has been irreversibly altered: one of the
tops stopped spinning.
~ ~ ~
Relationships
by Eckhart Tolle
http://www.commonground.ca/iss/0408157/tolle.shtml
How quick we are to form an
opinion of a person, to come to a conclusion about them. It is
satisfying to the egoic mind to label another human being, to
give them a conceptual identity, to pronounce righteous judgment
upon them.
Every human being has been conditioned to think and behave in
certain ways - conditioned genetically as well as by their
childhood experiences and their cultural environment.
That is not who they are, but that is who they appear to be. When
you pronounce judgment upon someone, you confuse those
conditioned mind patterns with who they are. To do that is in
itself a deeply conditioned and unconscious pattern. You give
them a conceptual identity, and that false identity becomes a
prison not only for the other person but also for yourself.
To let go of judgment does not mean that you don’t see what
they do. It means that you recognize their behavior as a form of
conditioning, and you see it and accept it as that. You
don’t construct an identity out of it for that person.
That liberates you as well as the other person from
identification with conditioning, with form, with mind. The ego
then no longer runs your relationships.
~ ~ ~
Making the mind an ally
by Mark Schneider
http://www.commonground.ca/iss/0405154/mind_an_ally.shtml
This exploration of inner space,
the mystical experience, they wrote, is “biologically,
observably, and scientifically real.” And all that’s
required to step into the vastness
of the human mind is a quiet room, a good guide, and an open
heart.
It would be hard to find a better guide than Sakyong Jamgön
Mipham Rinpoche, a
41-year-old Tibetan meditation master and spiritual director of
Shambhala International.
(Sakyong is a traditional Tibetan title meaning Earth protector.)
On May 7, the Rinpoche
will speak at Vancouver’s Chan Centre about his new book,
Turning the Mind Into an Ally.
He exudes an extraordinary physical presence, which is hard to
describe. Maybe it is the
many years of intense meditation practice. It could also be the
way he moves with a
cougar-like gracefulness that belies his muscular frame. This
lama is a superb athlete, a
serious marathoner, an expert horse rider, and a weight lifter
with a linebacker’s
biceps. Not your average, cave-dwelling yogi. Born in India, he
grew up as the son of
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, one of the first Tibetan lamas to bring
Buddhism to the west,
and the man who created Shambhala International.
It is an enormous enterprise publishing the glossy Shambhala Sun
magazine, operating
Naropa University in Colorado, and coordinating the activities of
150 centres in 20
countries. One of its teachers, Pema Chodron, has become a
world-famous author in her own
right.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche has crystallized all this effort into one
simple question: “We
all agree that training the body through exercise, diet and
relaxation is a good idea,
but why don’t we think about training our mind?”
For Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, training the mind - and the
beginning of the inner journey -
starts with listening to one’s mind-chatter. “You can
be sitting on the bus, worrying
about something and have no idea life doesn’t have to be
this way,” the ruggedly handsome
Rinpoche told me. “Your mind is running you. It’s like
a wild horse. All it’s trying to
do is to be happy. It’s trying to ease its own pain, but it
can’t do that because,” and
here he takes in a big lungful of breath, “it lacks
wisdom.”
And there it is, the “wisdom thing.” The Sakyong, along
with Buddhist teachers for the
last 2,500 years, have all proclaimed the same message: If
we’re embarking on this
journey we’d better have a clear idea of what is real, and
not just rely on the contents
of our thought-filled minds.
In Nonduality Salon
Highlights from the early Nonduality Salon list
~ ~ ~
Gary wrote:
Here's another question: Doesn't one have to be a really
good Dualist before becoming a great Nonduelist?
Jerry
the greatest nondualists ARE really good dualists. where
do you think we learned this stuff, from some nondual guy
working in silence? Whatever we learned from the silent
one, we can't speak. So we learn from the dualistic one,
or become one ourselves. We're playing. Who deals? Why?
J (grabbing chips with his left hand)
~ ~ ~
Jerry
Those awakening are sitting on the edge of the bed, looking back
at the sleeping one,
looking up toward the face of the awakened one.
What is done day to day, moment to moment, out of deep relaxation
in the present moment,
is authentic, right, and sound.
~ ~ ~
Jan Barendrecht
Before becoming conscious of K., I had a recognition of
"something" that never could be
cloaked by even the most impressive manifestations and siddhis of
K. , so "loosing track"
was impossible. Disappointed in relations by the mere fact of
observation, the "sexual
component" of K. was interpreted as just a sign of
"work in progress" and never have I
been aware of the "feminine" aspects of K. , many
relate to. Because at that time I was
an atheist, ignorant of meditation and K., one might say my
perception wasn't influenced
by knowledge.
Purohit Swami comments that one can conquer tamas with rajas and
rajas with sattva. Once
sattva has been attained, sattva has to be conquered by ever more
refined sattva until
the gunas are dissolved into their source which is liberation.
So the name of the game with K. is called purity and I found this
to be true. There are
so many books on K. that a search-engine or a search at Amazon
will flood you with
information. I doubt that the summary of worthwhile books would
differ from: "purity,
purity, purity".
tamas: principle of inertia (including fear, confusion,
despondency, grief, etc.)
rajas: principle of action (including passion, greed, violence,
lust etc.) sattva:
beingness, principle of sheer existence. As a guna
("strand" or "quality"), it has a
binding effect, to joy and knowledge.
~ ~ ~
... at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it
fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement
from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point,
the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the
dance.
T. S. Eliot
Maurice
. Except for the point,
the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the
dance.
And except for the duality there would be no awareness of the
dance...
which brings me to the question of:
"but they bear on our suffering as a
civilization and relate to speculation on what a nondual
community wouldbe like.
It is food for reflection,"
That is, can we ever know what a nondual communicty would be
like? As soon as
you "know" it, it has become dual. It may be that the
only food "here" is dual.
You got to eat that stuff just in order to communicate.
Consequently there can
be no such thing as a nondual communicty. However, there can be a
community of
Homo novus (those who have mutated out of the sapiens shell of
duality-fixation,
and into the new-birth-consciousness of
non-duality-infant-on-the-way-to-integration-being). [At least
that is the
dual-theory of the non-dual posibility. Of course we who have
been there Know,
at the timeless time there is no such evolution since What is It
that is
evolving? Yet It seems to want to play the game of form, So here
We-we are, in
some form pretending to be who we are not in a
"spiritual" hide and go-seekee.
We Know of course there is nothing to seek, nowhere to go, and no
evolution,
even of consciousness. But what a vapid world without duality.
Let the games
begin, and lo...there was light and dark, male and female...and
so let's all
suffer the exqusite pain of duality, of forgetting who we are and
remembering...for there is no game without duality and suffering,
without the
exquiste and divine tortures of the soul and body, in the
"World." ]
You don't really want a nondual communicty do you? Is that a
seeking like a
science that always only approximates the "truth" and
never arrives? If so, then
of course this is to be desired, as it guarentes the continuance
of the game.
The purpose of the game is never to arrive, at least in any
permante sense,
otherwise the game is over.
But as someone has suggested here, a group of nondual beings may
not be much
different. (I separate these into Homo sapiens and Homo novus
types). The games
seem often to be more subtle (I am using that in both ways
<g>) but games they
are. And that's fine. I am perhaps here just to see what a few
Homo novus type
games may here be played rather than the more common sapiens
variety...and of
course the hybred.
Love,
Maurice
~ ~ ~
Jan Barendrecht
There is ambiguity over the meaning of a nondualist; my proposal
is to call a
practitioner of the nondual path a nondualist and one
"arrived" at the singularity a
"singularist" or a "singularian". As it is a
new word, no misunderstanding is possible.
Samuel
Hi jan,
I think you have just coined a mighty fine word...
"singularian".
Meanwhile... back at the nonduality saloon:
Nondualists... trudge along the old 'trail',
seeking 'reality'... behind 'the veil'.
Singularian... is already here!
So barkeep... please, another round of beer.
samuel