Saturday, February 24, 2024

SIX BIG BROTHERS REVISIT...February 24, 2024

This is quite personal yet I think significant enough to share, maybe about how we are all so much formed through our experiences of others in our original environments, important impressions we may not need to ever outgrow.


As I came near the end of my usual hot-bath time I spontaneously added more hot water with my big toe. (This must have hinted that I was not yet ready to leave. Unconsciously there was more in store.)

Soon, above me, as if, in the air were clear images of the upper torsos and faces of my six older brothers.  It struck me just how strongly their presences have been and remain valued by me. Significantly, it was not any particular words, admonitions, or ideals that mean so much but more something like their auras, their personal unique essences beyond any words. 

Being from twenty to seven years older than me, so of no conscious typical brotherly-competition, I was free to adore each one in their very unique impressions. So in this vision-like moment words would have been very out of place.

As I left home at eighteen years, except for the oldest, my brothers remained in our NW Alabama hometown or nearby. My brothers cast no conscious shadows toward me but each was for me a unique and warm light in life. It was real but also in a sense surreal.

Once I left home, my experience of them may be describable as a strong 'participation mystique'. Their impressions were always close by me in a strong adoring attachment that was significantly unconscious, dream-like and so, in a sense, not of this world.

When I was in much psychological distress in 1985 and unable to move forward, four of them drove to Houston and physically rescued me. Unless that displayed their shadow aspect, which it did to me at the moment, it was in fact a grand unspeakable display of brotherly love.

In this vision-like moment their essences were captured for me as a gift; personally and as a team, each one essential, shoulder-to-shoulder: Rufus, Lester, George, Ike, Gene and Barry. This was not primarily unconscious childhood nostalgia or typical 'participation mystique' but an objective evaluation and appreciation, of how it was, experiencing each of them in my mortal life. 

The two other persons, long passed, who live in me similarly as these six brothers, and who so much, primarily wordlessly, participated in my early human formation and identity, are my mother and father, Rufus and Anne Lester Hibbett, 'mamma'  and 'daddy'.

Saturday, January 20, 2024

HOW CAN SO MANY AMERICANS IDENTIFY WITH CULTURE-DESTROYING VALUES?..January 20, 2024?

My comments are from my and, I think, a Jungian perspective. Deep in our collective human psyche, mostly UNCONSCIOUS to us all, are 'archetypes' which are energized images, stories and patterns of ancient human attitudes and behaviors. These energies have forever historically been able to possess(strongly unconsciously effect human personal and collective attitudes and values) persons and whole groups of persons. This is nothing new and comes with great cultural changes in epochs, say every 2000 years. Such changes can be overall good or extremely bad.

 

Rioters attacked police & the U.S. Capitol Jan 6, 2021; physically threatening the vice president and others. Assembled congress persons hid for their lives.

Neagatively, such disruptive collective posession often involves a hyper egotistic charistmstic personality who claims he alone can make everything better, just trust and follow him. 

Because this process is truly UNCONSCIOUS one is not aware it is happening to oneself and feels she/he is fully in control of their own choices and decisions. 

No one escapes this possibility happening to them. So it's essential persons be intentionally conscious and at least aware that there IS, fully proven by Freud in a somewhat negative way 100 years ago, a REAL and active unconscious dimension working in us all personally and collectively. This is our human condition for good and bad. 

Vigilant awareness is our best protection against possession during such upheavels. We are in such a time Jung believed. During such times we are all likely to negatively project (transfer) our own unconscious 'shadow aspects' onto others, assuring ourself with dogmatic certainty that we know who the real devil is in all this.

So we might should have some empathy for those who appear to have become significantly different than they used to be in a culturally destructive and sometimes over-excited and unwarranted optimistic way. 

Wisdom would say to always remember it 'can happen to me' in various unexpected ways. Our ego's resistance to respect, BELIEVE or TRUST in the reality of the Unconscious assumes we, by our ego self-willing alone, can live purely rational/balanced lives. This misguided belief, with no credit or recognition given to our own irrational behaviors and attitudes, is the greatest present enemy to a healthy sustained American culture. Such a one-sided view sets us up for our own lack of a more genuinely unbiased/objective cultural attitude. 

And we might find ourself lining up with many others who would unintentionally crush the most positive aspects of American ideals with its collective goal of a 'checked and balanced' democratic life for all our neighbors, here and beyond.

Such a personal 'wholesome' psychological/spiritual balance is most needed, desirable, and I think still possible, in these ominous days. 

Best wishes to us all in our transitional troubling times.

Friday, January 19, 2024

THE MANDALA AS AN EXPRESSION OF THE DIVINE...January 19, 2024

My art efforts are like a second grader; I'm no artist. But during a difficult life transition I drew many mandalas*, sometimes using colored pencils. I often started with a circle and maybe some spokes to the center. Later I learned to draw a hexagon and then an octagon to begin. After getting that foundation I just let my hand continue -as if on automatic pilot, not by any ego designed plan- to fill in detail as it emerged. No rush, just being there with it. 

I became aware the ego tries to take over the drawing process and make the design. So I resisted that by relaxing and releasing any expectations of the outcome.  Jung believed this was a channel through which the Unconscious expressed itself. Sometimes I was unsure if the product was the ego's doing or something larger and unconscious to me? For what it's worth, I came more and more to trust it was what Jung calls the all-embracing Self representing its state through me. Neither dreams nor creative  mandalas seem like something my conscious ego would have ever thought or planned.

**

I found it a therapeutic and settling activity and often it changed my conscious attitude. It can be a welcomed centering experience. I may have spent an hour at times, as it began generating more detail, repeating a design throughout the containing edges. There are often many repeating motions and I try to always be consciously aware of the outer boundary and the center. It feels, in the end, like something 'whole' or 'complete' has been created. 

Best wishes if you try drawing your own mandalas. It's safer, as in life, to not take oneself too seriously. It can be a nice distraction and some fun. I do think it should be a very private activity.

*The word mandala means 'circle'. The mandala pattern is used across most religious traditions. It represents wholeness, holiness and all things encompassed by the Divine. It seems mandalas occur very frequently throughout nature and find themselves adorning many famous temples, mosques, cathedrals and ordinary churches.

**This sketch was initiated by a nightly dream. The image was about 'walking in Philadelphia for the first time.' The message was about 'love in the world.' Philadelphia is called the city of 'brotherly love' and is named by one of the Greek words for love -'Phileo' meaning mutual/honest friendship.




Saturday, December 30, 2023

AUTHENTIC RELIGION IS CREATIVE, NOT COPYING HISTORY..December 30, 2023

The kind of spiritual insight Jung describes below is what I hear in the United Church of Christ's statement that 'God is still speaking. Don't place a period where God has placed a comma' it says.

The Jesus story, as other authentic spirit stories,  is not about returning to any history but to a non-historical (Not done like this before.)'new creation'. This is the living authentic meaning of spiritual hope in the human heart, of genuine en'courage'ment in despair, of enthusiasm( God breathed) about the nature of life and of living it. 

Sadly the same mistake is usually made with the Jesus story as in other authentic religious movements. It is willfully squeezed into artificially imitating or copying some version  of the symbolic historical story. 

Creatively living the Jesus story is never about redoing any history but about living courageously, humbly and lovingly one's unique life as Jesus is pictured in the gospels' stories living his. 

'New Creation' living, we might call it, is about anyone who hears the inner Divine voice and call, wrestles with it and decides to follow it's meaning -day by day and hour by hour. 

There are many examples of this immemorial 'religious' type attitude recorded and observed. Those become history's symbolic stories. And to practice them afresh and uniquely always brings some new and needed thing into this ever evolving world.



 





Monday, December 25, 2023

BEWARE NATIONAL LEADER SAYING, "ONLY I CAN FIX IT'." Dec 25, 2023

Oh the danger of expecting a proclaimed  charismatic leader to take over our own personal and unique responsibilities which destiny assigns to each individual. 

Surely only this approach and insight  can guide one to his/her truthful duty to others and to what is always called God. Any group allegiance to an accommodating proclaimed leader tears down that process of improving, making more compassionate and just, any human group or whole culture.

Sunday, December 24, 2023

DREAM: HUMAN COMMON CARE...December 24, 2023

Dreams are often too personal to share. Partly because the shadow aspect, instead of being repected for its honesty, will often be negatively judged.  No developing person needs that.

Dreams are likely our most handy and direct honest connection to our unconscious spiritual roots. But aren't usually appropriate for community 'testifying'. The community is often not ready for such personal intensity.  Our richest internal experiences should be discerningly and sparingly shared Imo.

With that reservation I share my most recent dream. I think it reflects a best spirit of the modern Christmas idea and one of the best symbols of the historical Christian church tradition.  So why not share?:

DREAM: I was in a poor community. I was like a community organizer to help bring needed life resources. Today I was participating in their ritual of 'food sharing' , whatever they had. I was in charge of a large pile of bagged groceries for a group. The idea was for me to bring in extra food for the pile. But I had found none that was in addition to what my group already had contributed. Another group added some bags seeing the situation. I was disappointed that I had added nothing.  

And time came for the group to open the bags. They did it orderly and gave to each other according to needs. No one was left out. There were genuine smiles on their faces and I inwardly cried with honor for their rich humanity. They were pleased I was there and not resentful of my failed efforts. End.