Secular Deities

The Psychology of Individuation has nothing to do with politics at all because it deals with the ultimate values. Yet it has shattering political implications. We must demand psychological illumination otherwise; we get people and nations sparring with their own shadows. (Like Nazi Germany in WWII.) Jung often said to me, ‘The human being who starts by withdrawing his own shadow from his neighbor, is doing work of immense immediate political and social importance.—Sir Laurens Van der Post

            From a Jungian perspective most of us give our attention away almost continuously to secular deities. In the world today the two predominate secular deities are economics and politics. We hear our daily sermons from the “expert” economists and politicians who say they have answers. Although we are constantly reassured that these deities serve us well we only have to look back to 2008 to see how vulnerable the world economy is. The political scene is also in dire straights. As I write this President Obama is preparing for a meeting with Israel’s’ Prime Minister Netanyahu on how to deal with Iran’s nuclear weapons threat. As for our political commentators there seems to be no limit to the absurdity. Rush Limbaugh’s comments this past week are the latest case in point.

The Internet provides all of us with outrageous access to all parts of the world. I suggest it may be a road around the programming of fear that is the primary message of those who preach the gospel of the secular deities.   These political and economic institutions have served most of us well. Yet, that they are crumbling is obvious. So what is one to do?

Let’s go back to Van der Post’s plea for “illumination.” Each of us can take charge of their own powers of attention and direct them to the deeper, sacred aspects of the world. This begins by taking back the rejected aspects of ourselves that Jung termed “the shadow.” This is something we can all start doing right now regardless of our situation. Even short periods of contemplation yield potent forces of change. Although this process takes considerable moral fortitude the fruits of the quest, the development of soul and spiritual capacities, may provide us a way out of the current wasteland. The great scholar and mythologist Joseph Campbell gave the most compelling definition of the wasteland to us. “The wasteland is a world where people live not out of their own initiative but by doing what they think they are supposed to do.” In the wasteland everyone is leading a false, inauthentic life. The task of soul-spiritual development is to revivify the wasteland.

Consuming a steady stream of words and images from the priests of the secular deities is, to borrow a phrase from the Brother’s Grimm, like eating stale bread baked from ashes. Hasn’t this habit of consuming the dusty sermons run its course? Jung was very pessimistic at the end of his life and seemed to be captured by a dark apocalyptic vision of the future of humankind. This quote seems to capture part of the essence of his message. “Not nature, but the “genius of mankind” has knotted the hangman’s noose with which it can execute itself at any moment.” None of us can know if this is yet another example of Jung’s precognitive capacity. Yet, his call is for us to all begin this process of individuation immediately. As Van der Post emphasized, the work has “shattering political implications.”

To all of you out there the time for the cultivation of soul spiritual capacities is now. Please share your ideas on appropriate actions.