Compassionate Sacred Activism, Mass Violence and Trauma, Part IV
7/14/24
Integrating our Shadow Amid Witnessing
and
Organizing a Response to Mass Violence
Sacred activism also points to another aspect of sacred living that precedes and proceeds any action or response; that of sacred listening and reflection. Truly, as spiritual directors, we hold space for many to reflect, listen, speak, and rehearse engagement with the deep Sacred in our lives. Amid the fast pace, performative, and transactional nature of our world and the weighty expectations loaded upon this condition, a quiet place with a trusted companion is invaluable to accept, metabolize, and integrate new understandings of ourselves in order to engage, respond and receive the world as friends…lovers…truth seekers…and activists..
Carl Jung was a Swiss psychologist who focused his life’s work on the human psyche and its transformation. This transformation was dependent on facing and accepting elements and archetypes from our unconscious, or shadow aspect… essences which we may notice are familiar to awareness of the presence of the Divine in our visions and dreams from the depths of our being. Jung described the psyche’s growth and seeking of wholeness from the lifelong integration of these shadow aspects as individuation. The unconscious speaks to our conscious aspect through emotions and bodily sensations on one level; colors, images and symbols on another; with both aspects being preverbal.
The following is a slide show of images to help us become aware of our own unconscious amid these volatile events we are witnessing. We may begin an inner dialogue, asking what is our invitation to embrace some aspect of ourselves from these deep places in order to skillfully engage and respond to our world with a larger and more expansive self. With each image will be a quote from Jung on encountering the shadow. Notice what arises within you as you engage the images and the intent of Jung’s words here. What emotions or feelings arise? What images, colors, or symbols arise as you experience both image and words? What may the invitation toward your own wholeness that arises here and its impact on your presence with seekers, activists, and deep suffering?
List of Jung Quotes in the Slideshow
“Nothing has a stronger influence on their children than the unlived lives of their parents.”
Carl Jung in Boston Magazine, June 1978
“If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.”
‘Vom Werden der Persönlichkeit,’ 1932
“So-called leaders are the inevitable symptoms of a mass movement. The true leaders ... are always those who are capable of self-reflection, and who relieve the dead weight of the masses at least of their own weight, consciously holding aloof from the blind momentum of the mass in movement.”
Jung (1933) Collected Works, Vol. 10, p. 326.
“The healthy person does not torture others—generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.”
Jung in the magazine Du, May 1941
“If I wish to effect a cure for my patients I am forced to acknowledge the deep significance of their egoism…This must be left to the person, for it is their strongest and healthiest power; it is, as I have said, a true will of God, which sometimes drives a person into complete isolation. However wretched this state may be, it also stands them in good stead, for in this way alone can they take [their] own measure and learn what an invaluable treasure is the love of... fellow-beings. It is, moreover, only in the state of complete abandonment and loneliness that we experience the helpful powers of our own natures.”
Jung Modern Man in Search of a Soul, p. 243
“What I do unto the least... that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very enemy [itself]—that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the aims of my own kindness—that I myself am the enemy who must be loved—what then?”
Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, pp. 240-241
“Anybody whose calling it is to guide souls should have [their] own soul guided first, so that [they] know what it means to deal with the human soul. Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people.”
Letter to Kendig B. Cully, 25 September 1931; Letters vol. 1, 1973
“But your vision will become clear when you can look into your own heart. Without (it) everything seems discordant; only within does it coalesce into unity. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes”
Letter to Fanny Bowditch, October 22 1916 https://carljungdepthpsychologysite.blog/2022/04/08/heart-5/
“We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. I am the oppressor of the person I condemn, not his friend and fellow-sufferer. I do not in the least mean to say that we must never pass judgement in the cases of persons whom we desire to help and improve. But if the doctor wishes to help a human being they must be able to accept the other as they are. And the healer can do this in reality only when they have already seen and accepted [themselves] as they are.”
Jung, (adapted) Modern Man in Search of a Soul, p. 240
“Perhaps this sounds very simple, but simple things are always the most difficult. In actual life it requires the greatest discipline to be simple, and the acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook upon life.”
Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, p. 240
“It is as though, at the culmination of the illness, the destructive powers were converted into healing forces. This is brought about by the fact that the archetypes come to independent life and serve as spiritual guides for the personality, thus supplanting the inadequate ego with its futile willing and striving. As the religious-minded person would say: guidance has come from God.”
Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, pp. 247-248
“The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me. Or, conversely, I myself am a question which is addressed to the world, and I must communicate my answer, for otherwise I am dependent upon the world’s answer.”
Jung, “On Life after Death” in Memories, Dreams, Reflections
“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”
Memories, Dreams, Reflections
“When one has several times seen this development take place one can no longer deny that what was evil has turned to good, and that what seemed good has kept alive the forces of evil. The archdemon of egoism leads us along the royal road to that ingathering which religious experience demands. What we observe here is a fundamental law of life—enantiodromia—the reversal into the opposite; and this it is that makes possible the reunion of the warring halves of the personality and thereby brings the civil war to an end.”
Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, pp. 243-244
“The symbols of divinity coincide with those of the self: what, on the one side, appears as a psychological experience signifying psychic wholeness, expresses on the other side the idea of God.”
Jung (1959) Collected Works Vol. 10, p. 644
