A simple seeker was overwhelmed with what she was reading on a website she had connected to via a Twitter tweet. She could not pull herself away, to wind down.
“So, now you’ve discovered depth psychology?”
“You know that I studied that many years ago. But this goes far beyond a simple review.”
“Jung as a spiritual teacher was not part of your formal studies?”
“As far as I can remember, spirituality and thinking were not even considered …”
“Compatible?”
“Something like that.”
“What’s your take on this new ethics?”
It isn’t new in that it would replace the old.”
“Then, how can it be considered as new?”
“You’re setting me up, again.”
“Yes.”
“Then please explain how the two can merge, and why they must, now?”
“They’ve never been separate.”
“As in the letter and the spirit of the law?”
“Yes.”
“Then the old and new ethics of spiritual depth psychology refers to developing an inner awareness of the purpose of outer forms of ethical conduct and social expectations, and why these serve us well?”
“Yes and more.”
“What more?”
“The process of increasing awareness requires and stimulates intellectual development.”
“And emotional development?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“When we each start to develop an inner perspective of how and why to express compassion toward ourselves and others, then our emotional development will be the stimulus to intellectual awareness.”
“They develop separately?”
“Yes and no.”
“How is that possible?”
“We each are usually more mature in either thought or emotion, but each is continually, if very slowly, developing and influencing the other.”
“Then emotion and thought are as yin and yang?”
“Yes.”
……..
A simple seeker’s note to herself
“Emotion and thought as contained within spirituality?”
“As yin and yang within the Tao.”
“Wow!”
“Why does this surprise you?”
“It brings yin and yang into so many other seeming dualities within our so-called Western culture.””
“Yes.”
“As within – so without.”
“Again, from the East.”
“Yes, but we’ve brought the concept into everyday life.”
“How so?”
“Via psychology and logic.”
“Yes. Correspondences exist in all possible fields of thought.”
“What about emotion?”
“What about it?”
“Do correspondences exist within emotions?”
“No.”
“Why within thought and not within emotion?”
“One is form and the other is force, or moving energy.”
“Emotions are potentially too variable to support correspondences?”
“Yes.”
……….
Simple Seekers 