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The Cosmic Meaning of Consciousness

Jul 22, 2021

Photo Credit: Benjamin Davies via Unsplash

In Answer to Job, Jung states, “Whoever knows God has an effect on him.” If, as Jung claims, individual human consciousness affects God, what we are matters monumentally. When we serve our neuroses, the gulf between ego and Self widens. Pursuing individuation not only sets our personality in right order, it permits our personal experiences to enrich the collective unconscious.

When Jung visited the Navajo, they told him they helped the sun, their father, cross the sky each day, a spiritual observance that sustained the world. Jung said, “I had envied the fullness of meaning in that belief and had been looking about without hope for a myth of our own. Now I knew what it was, and knew even more: that man is indispensable for the completion of creation, that in fact, he himself is the second creator of the world….”

Human consciousness weaves meaning into the dance of life. Our psyches companion God crossing the sky each day and so participate in creation. As we confront the mystery of our lives and uncover the unique meaning unfolding in us – we become conscious co-creators.

HERE’S THE DREAM WE ANALYZE:

“I stand up from the couch and move toward the hallway. Three older women have entered the house. They look to be in their 50s or 60s, with long, draping clothes. They look like ordinary women and do not appear threatening, but I immediately feel menacing energy. I ask them who they are and what they are doing in the house. The women brush off my questions and mock me for my concern, suggesting that I am frightening the little boy. They have pushed past the hallway and are now in the kitchen. Their forcefulness tells me that they are here with ill intent, and I fear that they are here to rob the family. I grab the little boy and take him upstairs to hide him in his room while I deal with the old women, but when I am closing the boy’s bedroom door to go back downstairs, the women are already on the second floor of the house, entering all the rooms, opening drawers and cabinets, and taking things. They seem to be everywhere, and yet their movements are not chaotic but very controlled and methodical in a way that is unsettling to me. They seem particularly intent on taking books, paper files, and personal documents. I begin to think about what the family might have that the women want, what value is here that I had not known about. I remember or realize that the father is a famous novelist, and I wonder if maybe the women are trying to steal his work. I try to stop them, but they won’t listen to me, and I wonder how I am going to explain this to the family later. After following them around for a bit, I take the boy back downstairs. I decide to call 9-1-1 and leave the house until help arrives. I am barefoot and carrying the boy on my hip as I walk away from the house. While I wait for the 9-1-1 responder to answer, I realize that I do not know the house’s address. The dream ends before I find out whether help arrives.” 

REFERENCES:

King, Warrior, Magician, Lover. Robert Moore. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062506064/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_CXKXHQKPS6SEBYE32FP0

Memories, Dreams, Reflections. CG Jung. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004X19L3E/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_V5G54VQ93WMH3C31E968

Answer to Job, CG Jung

RESOURCES:

Learn to Analyze your own Dreams:  https://thisjungianlife.com/enroll/

5 Comments

  1. Judy G

    I click on this but it doesn’t play. As I check, I clicked on the previous episode (Archetypes) and that does play for me.

    Reply
    • Joseph Lee

      Hi Judy,
      I reposted the link and it plays now. Not sure what happened. Please let us know if you still have a problem hearing it.
      ~ Joseph

      Reply
  2. Bill

    My two cents worth of intuition:

    The idea of the three women as fates rings true for me, and I might suggest that what the women are searching for is the evidence that the dreamer is fulfilling her fate. The young boy is her potential and she is taking care of him when the fates start to intrude. The boy directs attention to a threshold, the front door and the dreamer is confused, feels threatened and tries to hide the youth, feeling she is protecting him, and as a consequence she secretly hides her potential.
    The dreamer is in the house of a famous writer which is actually her own house of possibility. It is her fate calling her and she does not recognize it and maybe this is because she is afraid of it, for whatever reason, maybe a lack of confidence, but she feels threatened and the women mock her for her concern about their presence, her fate, and telling her she is frightening the little boy, her potential. As the dreamer tries to hide the child upstairs, isolate him in intellect, she is trying to avoid the experience of letting-go which is required for creativity and creation, The women have already begun searching all around her and she is feeling confused about what the fates are searching for.
    The suggestion here is that she is not aware of her own “fate” to be a creative (whole) person or a writer (or human) in her own right, perhaps, or maybe she is actively avoiding it, unconsciously, feeling content as a baby sitter sitting on a couch reading stories to entertain a little boy (her potential) in the house of her possibilities (wholeness), who is distracted enough to notice a disturbance at the threshold and bring attention to the fates at the door. The successful writer or creative personality is one of her possibilities that she is neglecting and maybe the dream also reflects a deeper structural neglect of her own animus striving for maturation.
    By calling 911 the dreamer shifts the focus off of herself and onto the rescuers (and by extension, rescuing herself from self awareness with the action). She calls , but she doesn’t know the address, which may mean she does not know who she is or doesn’t want to know herself at the level in which she experiences the emergency. That she sees it as an emergency reflects her determination to not know herself. For some reason she is afraid but hands that off to the boy or the man or the family, (all constituents of herself) but not herself. She seems trapped in an unconsciously contaminated animus relationship to her own spiritual growth.
    Or is this my own projection. Hmm.

    Reply
  3. Susan

    Thank you for all that you have been contributing through your podcasts. I have been listening with great interest – especially the most recent episode – but I am puzzled about one aspect and would be grateful if you would expand on it – perhaps in another episode? or might you be able to suggest further resources in this area?

    “Is God a neurosis?” neurosis is a call to know God… because neurosis causes suffering… that causes us to brood upon it… the God image presents itself to us as a phobia or as OCD or as anxiety… that’s the God image coming into your life and demanding that you get to know it…

    Reply
  4. Simcha

    Dear Susan,

    Thanks for asking this question which has been in my mind, too. Nor sure if this helps… but I am finding clues in Edward Edinger’s “Ego and Self. The Old Testament Prophets. From Isiah to Malachi” (2000), although he christianises many passages.

    S

    Reply

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