Edges Magazine Issue 21: The Mystery Of Life

EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 25

April 2001

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE

Neil Malley is a member of the Edges Magazine team.

The tapestry of the mind is infinite and individually unique. It has, throughout my own life, withheld its many colours and extensive artistry as I have only been aware of minute parts, visible under the laser light of the ego consciousness. I believed the ego was the whole body of the mind, not the gateway of worlds I now know it to be. I feel exited and revitalised by the wonder of my own, and each human beings, colossal depth of existence.

The apparent non-existence of the unconscious mind had wrought horror and pain for me in my internal life. The realisation that the mind is indeed layered gives meaning to once unfathomable movements of the psyche. I now think of the ego as a boat on the sea, sometimes battered by wounded beasts, sometimes steadied by the hands of gentle and beautiful mermaids who live in the ocean of the unconscious. The horror stemmed from the blindfolded encounter with these beasts and the pain from the many falls I took while fleeing in the darkness of ignorance. To know oneself in a more wholesome way, to heal the wounded beasts within, each of these 'characters' must be invited aboard the ego, to be listened to and shown empathy, to interact to integrate not only the wilder parts of oneself but also the gentle and beautiful pearls of potential that are gifts we all behold. This is a principle of the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung.

Jung carried the torch of psychic exploration lit by Freud deeper into the mind. He developed a psychology that transcended Freud's atheistic, sexually saturated approach and strove to expand the psychological discipline to incorporate metaphysics, religion and myth. This ensured a severance between the once close colleagues as Freud viewed the unconscious mind as merely personal, full of repressed and suppressed material, while Jung saw beyond the personal to a 'collective unconscious' of human kind laden with primordial life forces, a playground of the Gods.

This type of psychology, that is inclusive rather than exclusive and dismissive, appeals very much to me. I have, as do all human beings to some degree, began an exploration of my own psyche. Although only of tender years this pursuit for wholeness of self has been accelerated by three years of inner suffering and turmoil, a condition that never made the slightest bit of sense to me until I came across the psychology of Freud and the utterances of certain mystics such as Saint John of the Cross. There comes a point when the forces in the shadows demand attention, just as a spoilt child screams, cries and prods its mother for an acknowledging reaction.

It is a dangerous occupation to delve into the extreme riches of one's being. But, I feel, it is necessary when the gravity of the inner personality is at work, it is in a way unavoidable. A person who is called to deep should realise and take some comfort from the knowledge that the ocean of the psyche, that is in and of the spirit, is swimmable.

Often we tend to forget that modern man is a colossus bind of history, that he holds all that ever has been intimated by humankind.

Jung stated that the nature of the psyche is fundamentally religious, that the mind is always journeying towards the numen. I believe the search for self knowledge and the light cast by the inward looking eye is religious. It is an attempt to re-link (the base meaning of the word religion: to re-link) the images of the extremes of being, the being here and now that is our totality.

The vast expanse of our world holds many cultures of peoples, but religion is a thread that holds all these cultures on the eternal circle of being. There is an attempt throughout the lands, throughout history to constantly gravitate to the Source, the Source that is clothed by the cloak of our sense of mystery.

Even those of atheist persuasion are turning the cogs of the religious psyche. Their drive against the world-held images of the Creator is paradoxically a religious work, as to deny is in turn to give a life to the denied. That is not to say that the atheist is wrong to be repelled by the images of the Creator, an image is just that and without experience of the Divine, without being recognised as merely pointing the finger towards the Creator, images are in themselves and of themselves useless in the pursuit of the Source. Jung somewhat sarcastically stated, "It is alright to talk about the Holy Spirit but it is not something to be experienced!"