Jung described his experience of God as “all overpowering emotions.” He went on in his letter to describe God as “things which cross my wilful path violently and recklessly.”
Encounters with the Self or God or the Divine can show up as accidents or upsets that create havoc in our lives.
The Self can also show up in life as, “things which upset … subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of … life.”
The ego likes to plan and tends to assume tomorrow will be like today, that things will stay the same. But the Self has other ideas, and the ego must defer to them.
Edward Edinger, one of Jung’s students, described how the self can show up in our lives.
As numinous dreams or fantasies. When a dream features an inner voice, it is telling the individual of the future and giving specific instructions.
In affects: moods, feeling states, intense emotions. Often these will be compensatory: If we are depressed, dreams can turn up with Wonder Woman or Superman, flying through the sky, as the psyche is trying to remind us that “this also is true.”
The materialism of our culture would have us believe that health problems are purely material in nature, but the Self can show up as psychic or somatic symptoms, dis-ease and disease.
The Self works in our lives that we might become more conscious. One of our tasks, as human beings, is to create more consciousness, and life events serve to help us fulfil this task.
Edinger provides descriptions of how the Self can manifest in our lives:
1 By being given a task, assignment or purpose in life: this shows up in life in the form of desires, talents, interests or attachment to a vocation, a cause or a relationship.
2 By recognizing our individuality: how we are different, separate and unique. Our living in relation to the Self means that we willingly stand out, be different, strike out on our own unique path.
3 By recognizing the ego is not running the show: It must recognize that the Self is the authority, and the ego must subordinate itself to the higher wisdom and direction of the Self.
This shows up as repeated humiliations as long as we remain stubborn and headstrong.
4 By recognizing we have been chosen to be known by God: It was one of Jung’s most challenging realizations that God/the Self needs us to know him/it; in order to become conscious of himself God needs us to create consciousness.
5 By recognizing we have been chosen to be redeemed by God and to redeem him: as we create more consciousness, we bring contents of the collective unconscious up into consciousness, and this, in Jungian parlance, is an act of redemption.
Comments
The Self will assist us in this work, because while we become more conscious we simultaneously help the Divine to become more conscious.
We have important responsibilities as sentient life forms
