The Quest: Vision in an Age of Crisis. Jungian Psychotherapy

Concentramos en los capítulos 8 y 9 de Recuerdos, Sueños, Pensamientos que cuentan primero, la historia de la construcción de su Torre. El escribe:

Nos precipitamos impetuosamente hacia la novedad, impulsados por una creciente sensación de insuficiencia, insatisfacción e inquietud. Ya no vivimos de lo que tenemos, sino de promesas, ya no a la luz del día presente, sino en la oscuridad del futuro, que, esperamos, finalmente traerá el adecuado amanecer. Nos negamos a reconocer que todo lo mejor se compra al precio de algo peor; que, por ejemplo, la esperanza de una mayor libertad se ve cancelada por una mayor esclavitud al Estado, por no hablar de los terribles peligros a los que nos exponen los descubrimientos más brillantes de la ciencia."

Y luego,  la historia de sus viajes donde él, por un lado, va buscando un significado fuera de sus propias raíces europeas y, por otro, se encuentra fascinado, pero también atemorizado de ser totalmente absorbido por la cultura indígena. Jung buscó en sí mismo el otro lado de la mente europea y osciló entre una severa crítica del punto de vista europeo y la necesidad de mantenerse en estas raíces porque estaba en peligro de ser engullido, tragado por otras culturas. Su inmersión en ellas tuvo sobre él una tremenda atracción magnética y en consecuencia tuvo que resistirla para mantener su sentido de identidad. Fue capaz de experimentar las dimensiones espirituales de culturas completamente distintas e incorporarlas a la Psicología Analítica, además de ofrecerlas a Occidente para su contemplación.

The conflicts and contradictions of the European Union are explained, in particular the manner in which its monetary policy breaks the treaties of the Union. Populists and nationalist reactions in the "north" are explained in this context. The episode ends with a poem by W.B.Yeats The Second Coming:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Part B will follow in the next episode which examines the centripetal and centrifugal  forces acting on the  EU government and the member states. It will examine the idea that contrary to the centralising tendency of the EU government it might be that the abandoning of the Euro (and therefore the currency union) is the only way of saving the European Union.

References:

1.The Bitcoin Standard (2018) by Saifdean Ammous. especially chapters 4-7;

2. The blog of Tuomas Malinen on the www.gnseconomics.com website; also youtube videos;

3. Fredrick Hayek’s classic 1944 book: The Road to Serfdom.

Why do I juxtapose economic and financial theory, policy and practice on the one hand, and spiritual matters on the other. The answer is that it is only in theory and specialisms that such things are separated. In practice the human psyche consists of many parts, but it is a fundamental drive within us to unify them, to make ourselves whole instead of being conflicting parts.

At first glance economic and monetary policy along with poetry and mysticism seem strange bedfellows. But I am suggesting more than this – that the evolving emergencies have at least ten dimensions – and undoubtedly many more. I am suggesting a multi-dimenional crisis. Never with more urgency do we need a spiritual vision of the planet, which unites economics politics, climate, our treatment of all life and so on. On a purely practical note, we need to put spirit and ethical values into the economy and our political system and our relationship to nature. Our philosophies, theories, specialism and knowledge systems have been tremendously creative but unless there is a radical paradigm shift our species will be profoundly self-traumatised and possibly extinguished. Since we bear responsibility for all life on earth and now, we realise, for the planet itself, this is the moment of our truth.

Recuerdos, Sueños, Pensamientos, el más accesible y popular de los escritos de Jung, sirve de introducción inspiradora al turbulento mundo interior que subyace al exterior burgués de un visionario extraordinario.

Aquí, en esta breve charla, seleccioné aquellos detalles que ilustran mi tesis principal: a saber, que Jung luchó intensamente con sus propias tendencias desintegradoras y tuvo que encontrar una solución creativa para ellas, para él y para el colectivo.

“Los años en que perseguía mis imágenes internas fueron los más importantes de mi vida: en ellos se decidió todo lo esencial. Todo comenzó entonces; los detalles posteriores son solo suplementos y aclaraciones del material que brotó del inconsciente y al principio me inundó. Fue la prima materia para el trabajo de toda la vida ... "    Carl Jung.

Este mini-serie sobre Jung es hecho por el equipo del Quest:

el escritor, Alan Mulhern;   la traductora, Maria;   la locutora, Beatriz.

I am a psychotherapist with an interest not only in the individual psyche but also that of the collective. The malaise of civilization has become increasingly my focus in these podcasts; the evolving multidimensional crises of the 21st century is my backdrop; the ten horseman (or crises) of the apocalypse are the drivers of my argument. These are the economic, political, climatic, military, technological, spiritual, clash of ideas, pandemic, financial, and social.

I have suggested a road map of the evolving crises: 1. Approaching storm; 2. Storm hits; 3. Policy response; 4 Economic and financial chaos;  5. Great Global Depression; 6 Civil disturbance, political radicalism, dangers of war; 7 Fallout and emergence in a radically changed world.

We are now passing from stage 3 to 4. Immense money creation and government intervention can postpone the crisis but only intensify it later. 

Yet visionary responses are possible. These begin with a reorientation of consciousness outside the ego. The poem The Sower and the Seed  is presented as an example. Its subject is the formulation of a creation mythology which is always the foundation of a radical paradigm change, in this case from a materialist to a spiritual cosmic view, which is the essence of the pilgrim's quest. 

For the next group of episodes, there will be a mini-series providing an overview of the driver of our global civilization – the capitalist system. What distinguishes this presentation from the many other authors on this topic  is its focus on the changes in consciousness that capitalism has brought about - the changes to the evolving human being that has been and is being created by this process.

By way of contrast, each episode will also continue the poems and commentaries of the Quest that illustrate an archetypal template of the spiritual and psychological journey of healing and spiritual illumination. No matter what the movement of the collective in its technological and materialist developments there is always the option of personal, emotional, and spiritual development regardless of the age one lives in – for this is the eternal quest of humanity.

There will also be an update on the evolving series of crises of our times.

La tesis central de esta serie es que el mundo en el siglo XXI enfrenta una crisis multidimensional: política, económica, financiera, militar, climática, tecnológica, espiritual, de salud, social, ideológica. Los llamo los 10 jinetes del apocalipsis por razones que serán con cada episodio más claras. Estos solo pueden entenderse de manera sistémica, es decir, como un sistema de interacción. Por lo tanto, no se puede hablar sobre la situación de pandemia de salud sin referirse a la crisis económica y financiera. Mi intención es explorar todas estas dimensiones y mostrarlas como una crisis interactiva.

Su propósito es cambiar completamente la visión del mundo. Puede sacarnos de nuestras preocupaciones subjetivas. También nos ayudará a entender el mundo interior, nuestra propia psique y ayudarnos a encontrar una respuesta visionaria a los problemas de nuestro tiempo y a nuestras crisis personales. En los episodios por venir exploramos respuestas visionarias a estas crisis incluidas las de Carl Gustav Jung, quien desde lo más profundo de su propia psique proporcionó una respuesta a la crisis spiritual de nuestro tiempo.

My wake-up call in March 2020 was that this unfolding series of crises, long in the making, had already passed its tipping point. The house of cards was already falling. What has happened since then is that most major economies have covered up and disguised the economic and financial crisis by creating vast debt and money creation and pretending this is fine, pretending they are in charge. But they are merely postponing the crisis while it becomes larger.

Accordingly, I have said clearly that a Great Global Depression has already begun and that the financial crisis is unfolding in front of us. I have given a road-map in episodes 27 and 30 which outlined the stages of the crisis – the sequence and timing could be different but all stages will be experienced. 

I described in episodes 27 and 30 the great fault lines in the world system in the decade leading up to 2010 and have called the different parts of the multidimensional crises the 10 horseman of the Apocalypse because they will take humanity to the brink of extinction and constitute a great unveiling or revelation. So beyond the economic, health and financial we have a number of dimensions that stretch all the way to the conflict of ideas of our times and the spiritual crises, besides the ones that are glaringly more obvious such as the climatic and the military. Less obvious is the crisis of our subservience to technology especially as human nature itself is becoming profoundly altered by this force, one might say this is the god that we worship. We simply are incapable of resisting it, questioning it, or putting any ethical dimension around it. It is shaping us. We are not in control of it.

This episode continues with the poetry readings from the last part of The Sower and the Seed (2015) which via the metaphors of the pilgrimage and  mountain ascent tell the archetypal story (the myth) of spiritual transformation. No matter what the crisis this is always available to us. Illumination and gnosis are triggered by suffering and an inherent, built-in impulse of the psyche.

Ten interacting crises are described; long term economic problems of American society outlined; apocalypse means the revealing, the unveiling in ancient Greek. Thus, in these times, as the crises intensify, the fissures of societies and civilisations (race, religion, class, gender) come to the surface and reveal themselves as open wounds. Spiritual growth is required.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world ….

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

W.B.Yeats. The Second Coming

Este podcast propone un modelo simplificado, una suerte de mapa de ruta por la evolución de la crisis económica y financiera mundial.

Las etapas de esta crisis son los siguientes:

1 El acercamiento de la tormenta

2 La tormenta llega

3 La respuesta política

4 Depresión económica y caos financiero

5 Gran depresión global

6 Disturbios civiles. Radicalismo político. Peligros de guerra

7 Un mundo radicalmente cambiado

Actualmente en mayo de 2020 estamos en la etapa 3. Es decir, la respuesta política

Hoy examinaremos la etapa inicial de este modelo: EL ACERCAMIENTO DE LA TORMENTA.

“El cisma en el cuerpo social, que hemos estado examinando, es una experiencia colectiva y, por lo tanto, superficial. Su importancia radica en que es el signo externo y visible de una grieta interna y espiritual. Encontraremos un cisma en las almas de los seres humanos que subyace a cualquier cisma que ocurra en la superficie de la sociedad " Arnold Toynbee. A Study of History