Crossing Nebraska

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 str...

I hope you’ve had the opportunity over the course of what might have been a busy week to reflect upon the view from atop the summit of the previous post – A Gestalt View of No-Self . It was quite an excursion, especially for those who might have been unfamiliar with the terrain. Such views as that revealed by “what is called the self is everything that is not the self” might leave one wondering whether their eyes are to be believed! After all, things are generally defined by that which they are , not that which they are not . And to say that something is both that which it is and that which it is not simply defies the logic that usually pertains to the way we think about “things”. Well, sometimes the meaning of a great truth only becomes apparent over time – upon reflection, meditation, or prayer perhaps. If truth were otherwise then I suppose we could simply read ourselves toward the wisdom of the sages! These next four excursions won’t be quite so challenging as the last – especia...