“From the Four Corners of the Earth”~ Jung’s words on avoiding our souls
As you may know, I’ve been reading my way through the works of Jung that I can afford or obtain. It’s a slow thing, because I do not wish to rush the experience. I take time over each page, and sometimes I stay with it for quite a long while. Things sometimes leap off the page at me and I make a note or put in a little page marker.
The other night, the following struck me from The Earth Has a Soul (a collection of his writings on Nature, technology and modern life)
“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic texts from the literature of the whole world – all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their souls. Thus the soul has gradually been turned into a Nazareth from which nothing good can come. Therefore let us fetch it from the four corners of the earth- the more far-fetched and bizarre it is the better!” (Carl Gustav Jung Complete Works 12, para 126)
Now all of the things he describes are excellent things, and beneficial disciplines in and of themselves. But used as a means of evading and avoiding the soul-work we are called to do, they’re little different from losing yourself in drugs, drink or a myriad of other activities people indulge in to keep from the moment when they must face their own soul.
I’d like to share one of my own poems as a coda to this section from Jung’s works. I’ve spent a lot of my life on the edges and even the very fringes of all manner of philosophies and faiths and among the seekers of this western world, there is a powerful emphasis on wisdom coming from somewhere other than home. Like Jesus being treated shabbily in his own home town, most prophets and prophecies are seldom honoured initially in their places of origin.
My kind of wisdom
Just because my kind of wisdom
Doesn’t wear buckskin,
Isn’t hung with feathers,
Isn’t decorated with crystals
And isn’t inscribed with runes and sigils,
It doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
Just because my kind of wisdom
Doesn’t require mastering
An arcane language,
Higher mathematics
Or a degree in theology,
It doesn’t mean it isn’t deep.
Just because my kind of wisdom
Doesn’t ask me to stand
On one leg for years,
Beat myself with whips,
And starve myself half to death,
It doesn’t mean it hasn’t cost.
Homespun, home-grown, homemade:
You know, from somewhere far off,
It might look as exotic as yours.
Zen and the Art of Tightrope Walking 