WHAT’S SO GOOD ABOUT TRYING TO BE PERFECT? Not much, according to the highly influential Jungian analyst, Erich Neumann. In 1949, Neumann published Depth Psychology and the New Ethic, arguing that the “old ethic” of perfection was doing so much damage to individual well-being and human survival, that it had to give way to new …
Moving Beyond the Literal Toward Wisdom
MODERNITY HAS HAD A BAD HABIT OF FORGETTING ITS FORERUNNERS. Too often, in our efforts to critique the status quo and pursue progress, we have cut off our cultural roots. Ironically, this problem is most apparent in the conservative Christian insistence on biblical literalism. In their attempt to return to what they imagine were the …
Confronting a Cosmic Revenge Fantasy
IMAGINE WHAT IT MIGHT BE LIKE TO DIE AND DISCOVER YOU’VE BEEN SENT TO HELL. Never mind the fact that in the cosmos, as we now understand it to be, there’s no “below” for hell (and no “above” for heaven). In the Western tradition, hell is believed to be an infernal, fiery place for eternal, …
Mist on a Breeze #10
Grasping Screaming Eagle, Left alone to face illusion: "I AM !!! … b-b-b-but …" I am-not. What’s the confusion? Thank you for reading my blog. If you enjoyed this post or found it insightful, please share it with your friends. And feel free to invite them to follow the blog, too. Oh, and while you're …
Images Come Trailing Clouds of Mystery
THIS YEAR, I’M WORKING TO BRING A GROUP OF ORIGINAL SONGS TO LIFE, recording them with my band, BlueStoneMojo, and sharing the recordings online. Although organizational challenges have tended to dominate the project, it’s still a fundamentally creative process in which mysterious influences can manifest in unexpected ways. Here’s an example of what I mean. …
What Our God-Images Say About Us
IF YOU ASK PEOPLE TO DESCRIBE GOD, THEIR ANSWERS will tell you what they truly value most, what for each of them is their “ultimate concern.” For most of us, our god-images and the values they represent will be the ones generally held in the communities to which we belong. For example, the most traditional …
Soulfully, on the Edge
ON THE WAY HOME FROM A WEEKEND GETAWAY, my wife and I chose to drive one of Colorado’s most scenic mountain highways, one the AAA guidebook warns “should be traveled with caution.” During the weekend trip, we also went to see the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park. The highway and the dwellings both …
Mist on a Breeze #9
Solitude “When one is not alone when one is alone, when one is aware of a goodly presence within oneself, then one has achieved solitude. Our popular culture is a tacit agreement to flee the terror of loneliness, and it therefore circumvents the possibility of solitude. The avoidance of solitude is the flight, ultimately, from …
The Trouble with Following “the Leader”
THE PROBLEM IS PROJECTION — AND THE DARK SHADOWS IT CASTS. For anyone to ascend to the heights of popular power in a society, he (or, rarely, she) must provide an adequate “hook” on which the mass of people can hang their archetypal projections. The primary archetypal image at play here is the Sovereign. Like …
Looking Past “Me-or-You” and “Us-or-Them”
A CORE CHRISTIAN TRADITION ASKS US TO RESOLVE A FUNDAMENTAL TENSION in human life. When you read the biblical texts in which it appears, however, you might not feel the full force of the tension. The core tradition I’m talking about is the so-called second great commandment: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mk. …
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Soul Spirit Wisdom 