In this article, I suggest that the tendency on the part of men to endow female romantic partners with redemptive force, reflected in Jung’s notion of Anima, derives from a failure of socialization in puberty. Although culturally sanctioned, this misconstrues the potency of erotic relationships to reshape the psyche, substituting the confined ego project of redemption for the more open-ended one of spiritual emancipation; it also undermines erotic polarity and as such is largely self-defeating.
Continue reading “The Archetype of Woman as Redemptress: psychodynamic, literary and patriarchal aspects”
Tag: redemption
Does spiritual growth require hard work?
A recurring theme in pretty well every spiritual tradition is the arduous nature of the practices needing to be undertaken in order to achieve spiritual growth. Indeed, this tendency is so pervasive that it is even often to be encountered in the ranks of those whose fundamental philosophy would seem incompatible with such a hypothesis. On the face of it, it seems, however, a very self-limiting belief. If I believe that only after long and arduous effort will I achieve my goals, then I am blind to grace in the here and now and necessarily consider myself unworthy of what the universe is gifting me. Perhaps I even downright refuse it.
The path of suffering is conceived of as redemptive in many traditions, even when it is inimical to the basic economy of salvation which that tradition puts forward. For those of us familiar with biblical Christianity, it is pretty clear in both the original Jesus tradition (i.e. Q) and in the later layers of the New Testament that salvation is an unmerited grace. This has nevertheless remained as shocking a view in the course of church history as it doubtless was when first expounded; and very many moralists and theologians have shied away from it or reinterpreted it to fit their moral a priori. How can it be that I belong to the community of the elect if there is no lower limit on the infamity of my behavior here on earth?
I do not wish to expound scripture here (not something I am given to doing), or solve the problem of evil, but I should of course point out that the notion that there is, after all, something to be done in order to secure salvation is a very convenient one for ecclesiastical hierarchies, without which their whole raison d’être would at the very least need to be radically reconsidered. The cui bono then is clear, especially when it fundamentally contradicts the supposed sacred texts.
It seems to me that the whole notion that salvation or enlightenment can be earned is patent ontological nonsense and should be mercilessly put to rest. Enlightenment is, or can be, as easy as breathing. But is our reluctance to give up the idea of spiritual practice as necessary to, or at least somehow facilitating, spiritual growth solely due to the fact that we have been brainwashed into following orders? Very largely, but not I think entirely. Spiritual growth does not require work, but it requires choice; and choice is hard. Not because it encounters resistance – true choice does not – but because we are not free to choose. We have limited our ability to choose in so many ways that we need to unlearn, and surely there are spiritual practices that can help us in this unlearning. This, however, does not turn them into prerequisites or even make them efficacious. The contrary belief, it seems to me, is more of an obstacle than anything these practices may be designed to overcome.
I think spiritual growth is super-easy, and the easier we make it the easier it will be. At the same time, that easiness itself may, for many of us, be very difficult. But spiritual growth is a process, it is not an end point. What you need to learn now is easy for you to learn now. Stop repeating the mantra of difficulty and it will stop being difficult.
It is very fortunate for the human race that spiritual growth is easy because, if it were not, few would venture onto the path and fewer still be successful. That tiny elite would never suffice to heal the massive wounds of the planet and cataclysm would be the only possible outcome.
You may object that this very state of the world we now live in gives the lie to what I am saying. But I think the fact of its easiness has to be revealed and has to be accepted. This has to date too rarely been the case. As I said, even spiritual authors whose work I value are often guilty of giving at least passive sustenance to the myth of difficulty. It seems almost inevitable: what else would they write about and how would they earn a living? But I do not criticize them: it may well be that many people need difficulty before they can discover that they do not need it. I do, though, want to emphasize that we need to be alert to this bias in spiritual literature and practices because it is one we are also very attached to in our hearts. Spiritual teacher X may not really be saying that you need to follow the Y-fold path of whatever in order to attain enlightenment, but even if (s)he isn’t, we are very likely to interpret their words in that sense. That is because in fact we do not want enlightenment or at least not too much of it; all we want is comfort. And a true guru knows this. I have absolutely no problem with that if it is your choice; really, it is totally legitimate, there is no blame attached. No-one is saying that you have to release your entire karmic burden in this lifetime. This may not be possible for you. All I am saying is that you can. It is no more difficult than you make it.
If you have a practice, let it be something that gives you joy.
Love and blessings,
Calvaire
Returning from my trip to Burgundy, I have been struck by the omnipresence, at the summit of perfectly pleasant hills, of crosses, incorporating or otherwise the crucified representation of the first century Jewish reformer whose cult went on, by a series of disparate embellishments, to become the major religion of the Western world. Indeed, these depictions are so ubiquitous that I was unsure whether “le calvaire” had not become, in French, whether by semantic extension or more innocent semantic regression, simply a term for the unwooded top of a hill (apparently that is not so).
When I was a kid, taken to Catholic services, I always – probably like any other kid – experienced a vivid distaste for this representation. I guess I could buy into the notion of self-sacrifice, the cruelty of the fate imposed to a good man, and even, admittedly in my wildest imagination, the ancient Near Eastern cosmic mythology of the dying and rising god, but it was never evident to me (though it is now) why this lifeless figure impaled on a cross needed to be paraded eternally before my nose.
Certain theological acrobatics endeavor to portray this scene as a moment of victory. Indeed, the success of this exegesis invited its later, equally successful emulation by Napoleon III, in search of a secular messiah in the person of the defeated and ultimately executed Gaulish chieftain Vercingetorix, who conveniently (but, it later transpired, inaccurately) declared, according to the account in Caesar’s Gallic Wars, that “La Gaule unie, formant une seule nation, animée d’un même esprit, peut défier l’Univers.”
Whilst Vercingetorix at least, in Viollet-Le-Duc’s representation, appears proud and almost as a victor, Jesus, on the other hand, appears broken and lifeless, anything but an inspirational figure. This aspect of its postulated deity has presumably been a major weakness in uniting Christendom against the much better organized Muslim conquerors, and indeed one wonders whether Caesar would have triumphed over Vercingetorix if he had been laden down with such a handicap.
The emphasis on suffering and redemption so characteristic of Christianity both historically and culturally appears as surprisingly singular, though Shiism seems to have preserved some similar ideas from its related Zoroastrian substrate, and Judaism has applied the notion to the people in both the Deuteronomic and Zionist traditions, but not to its deity.
That suffering has a redemptive character appears almost axiomatic to many Westerners, even those who would portray themselves as emancipated from the intellectual heritage of Christianity. But we worship our suffering because we have been taught, by the most unnatural of ruses, to do so. To bear suffering without protest, convinced one is thereby serving some higher goal, is, obviously, a desirable attribute, but from one standpoint only: that of those who benefit from our quiescence.
That there is plenty of suffering in the world I do not doubt, but many cultures endure it without losing, and certainly not forever, an underlying gaiety and celebration of life. Christianity is presented to us as a solution to the problem of the existence of suffering (and even more metaphysically of evil) in the world. Yet this “problem” is entirely of its own making. That suffering is a fact does not make it a problem – unless you have devised an abstraction of God as both creator and redeemer in the first place. Our natural instinct is to flee suffering where possible and to heal it through mourning and empathy where not. To dwell on it deliberately, to find it where it does not exist, to elevate it to ubiquitous supremacy, seems a biological aberration.
And yet it is to this counterintuitive quest that the calvaires incite us: to be in the midst of the vibrant, teeming beauty of life and yet not only to find unsuspected morosity in its midst, but to prefer this morosity to celebration. Even the best in Catholic spirituality is rarely more than a lyrical accommodation to this underlying tragic conception of the world. Never does it burst free.
During all of human history and most of its present extent, the natural rhythm of life has been and is satisfactorily mirrored in rituals and cultures which have not needed any such artifice. To crown innocent hilltops with such disfigurations is, I would argue, not to honor any spirit of sacrifice: it is to stand in Pilate’s shoes, not those of his victim, institutionalizing and thereby perpetuating the cycle of persecution.