Utter Meaninglessness
It is dangerous to engage in
mystical practice before having attained adequate ego strength to safely do so.
This is an important idea that I attribute to C.G. Jung, although I can’t offer
any more detailed attribution at the present time. If we scratch just below the
surface of such a statement, it appears to contain a contradiction: Since
mystical practice involves dismantling or casting aside our egoic constructs
and defenses, it would seem that not having fully formed ego strength would
just put us that much further along! Is that dangerous, or is it advantageous? Digging
further, however, we can see that, since mystical practice can involve the
dismantling of everything the practitioner might have assumed about the world
and him or herself, there is the distinct danger of a precipitous descent into
nihilism – the darkness of utter meaninglessness. Thus, I must begin this post with
a warning: If you are young and without a solid sense of how you fit into this
world, if you are st…