I believe I have developed "SAD," or seasonal adjustment disorder. This I first noticed shortly after we moved to Wisconsin. I am not sure if it has to do more with age than the state of weather here, but as I stare out at the cold, cloudy day, I'd put my money on Wisconsin for the blame. Here, from late October to mid March, the wind blows furiously over the dead, plowed fields under leaden gray skies that can kill the most hearty of spirits. Thank god for snowmobiles and skiing! But what if these clouds lasted forever?
Continuing with Thomas Merton's "New Seeds of Contemplation," we find an interesting take on the Freudian model of the human mind. Because of Freud, most of us view the unconscious as a subterranean realm of cloudy obscurity, with fears and sexual desires striking at the poor, surface ego who has been restrained and blinded by cultural norms. But Merton challenges that picture. For him, the unconscious is not just below us, but all around us, our conscious egos only a pinprick in a sea of unknown potential and activity. Yes, there is the underground realm, but also the higher realm which also acts upon us from its unseen height. This he calls the superconscious, that which links our minds to the realms of the sacred.
Consider plants. Most important to the majority of them is their life underground, but we would never know it if we never dug down to see. There we find that the upper part of trees are only energy gatherers for the real heart of trees in the roots. How could we know this if we did not dig? Similarly, if the skies were to remain forever cloudy, and we did not develop flight, we would know nothing of the stars, nor have in our imaginations the idea of the miracle of infinity above us. And so it is for the subconscious and the superconscious. Our science has delved into the sub, but until recently the super has been the exclusive concern of magic and religion. For many, once the spiritual sciences are cast off, the "stars" of our superconscious disappear as if they didn't exist. We are then cast into the realm of SAD, without being the wiser.
He moves on to explain the old Greek idea of the anima, the animus, and the pneuma - that is, emotion and desire, reason, and spirit, where the pneuma takes in both the former (also seen as male and female) to make the complete person - the realm in Christian theology of the Christ. From here we can see the connections with everything else - from the meaning of sex, to nature, to spirit, all working together in an astonishing whole.
But Merton adds something else, something new to this writer, by answering the question: why is this higher realm hidden to us? We might ask the same of the subconscious, but I will stick with this: The higher realm is not of the same nature as the lower realms; rather, it supersedes them. As we draw closer to its uniting truth, we are drawn away from the lower realms of separation. The two concepts cannot be fully experienced at once, and so one vision must decline for the other to rise. Thus, as we "ascend", the world that we have known darkens. It is this, in part, what St Paul meant when he said he was "looking through a glass darkly." At first, the greater realm appears obscured - but as it comes into our lives, so our normal life darkens. At one point, we might find the Dark Night of the Soul, where neither the higher or lower realms yet dominate and we are left alone, adrift, in that temporary hell. And so, as the upper realm comes within us, we are often left in the darkness, the ashes of what we once knew - before the new consciousness becomes fully known.
I see now that the clouds outside have lifted, and if I were new born, I would now witness the sun and the blue sky for the first time. Later, I might shrink in horror as the sun dropped and I was left in obscurity - until the mystery of the stars appeared at full darkness. And so it seems to be for the higher truth - that we must lose the clouds for the sun, and the sun for the stars, each a loss in its way, and each an increase in our total realm of reality. But we know that reason or emotion alone can't bring us to the pneuma, just as they can't take away the clouds or the sun. That answer, that help is found only in the Way, which we can only find if we have faith in the process - a faith that there is a sun beyond the clouds and a universe beyond the sun. As I understand it, the process is inevitable, just as the passing of weather and day and night are. We must have faith, then, to find the truth in this life, where we find ourselves so attached to the clouds or the sun. To lose either, if that is all we have known, is terrifying; but we are told that behind them is something far greater. That, the faith in that, is where the rubber begins to meet the road. FK
Continuing with Thomas Merton's "New Seeds of Contemplation," we find an interesting take on the Freudian model of the human mind. Because of Freud, most of us view the unconscious as a subterranean realm of cloudy obscurity, with fears and sexual desires striking at the poor, surface ego who has been restrained and blinded by cultural norms. But Merton challenges that picture. For him, the unconscious is not just below us, but all around us, our conscious egos only a pinprick in a sea of unknown potential and activity. Yes, there is the underground realm, but also the higher realm which also acts upon us from its unseen height. This he calls the superconscious, that which links our minds to the realms of the sacred.
Consider plants. Most important to the majority of them is their life underground, but we would never know it if we never dug down to see. There we find that the upper part of trees are only energy gatherers for the real heart of trees in the roots. How could we know this if we did not dig? Similarly, if the skies were to remain forever cloudy, and we did not develop flight, we would know nothing of the stars, nor have in our imaginations the idea of the miracle of infinity above us. And so it is for the subconscious and the superconscious. Our science has delved into the sub, but until recently the super has been the exclusive concern of magic and religion. For many, once the spiritual sciences are cast off, the "stars" of our superconscious disappear as if they didn't exist. We are then cast into the realm of SAD, without being the wiser.
He moves on to explain the old Greek idea of the anima, the animus, and the pneuma - that is, emotion and desire, reason, and spirit, where the pneuma takes in both the former (also seen as male and female) to make the complete person - the realm in Christian theology of the Christ. From here we can see the connections with everything else - from the meaning of sex, to nature, to spirit, all working together in an astonishing whole.
But Merton adds something else, something new to this writer, by answering the question: why is this higher realm hidden to us? We might ask the same of the subconscious, but I will stick with this: The higher realm is not of the same nature as the lower realms; rather, it supersedes them. As we draw closer to its uniting truth, we are drawn away from the lower realms of separation. The two concepts cannot be fully experienced at once, and so one vision must decline for the other to rise. Thus, as we "ascend", the world that we have known darkens. It is this, in part, what St Paul meant when he said he was "looking through a glass darkly." At first, the greater realm appears obscured - but as it comes into our lives, so our normal life darkens. At one point, we might find the Dark Night of the Soul, where neither the higher or lower realms yet dominate and we are left alone, adrift, in that temporary hell. And so, as the upper realm comes within us, we are often left in the darkness, the ashes of what we once knew - before the new consciousness becomes fully known.
I see now that the clouds outside have lifted, and if I were new born, I would now witness the sun and the blue sky for the first time. Later, I might shrink in horror as the sun dropped and I was left in obscurity - until the mystery of the stars appeared at full darkness. And so it seems to be for the higher truth - that we must lose the clouds for the sun, and the sun for the stars, each a loss in its way, and each an increase in our total realm of reality. But we know that reason or emotion alone can't bring us to the pneuma, just as they can't take away the clouds or the sun. That answer, that help is found only in the Way, which we can only find if we have faith in the process - a faith that there is a sun beyond the clouds and a universe beyond the sun. As I understand it, the process is inevitable, just as the passing of weather and day and night are. We must have faith, then, to find the truth in this life, where we find ourselves so attached to the clouds or the sun. To lose either, if that is all we have known, is terrifying; but we are told that behind them is something far greater. That, the faith in that, is where the rubber begins to meet the road. FK
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