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July 24, 2021,
Individuation does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to oneself. (Jung, 1969, p. 226 para 432)
 

One morning on my daily walk, I saw this coyote about five hundred feet in front of me. It was sniffing the ground as it made its way along the trees. I had my camera with me and wondered if I could get a photo of it. I walked closer until I was across the road from it. I took a few images but then moved my camera away from my face and looked at it directly. We both stared at each other.
In that moment, I sensed a life-to-life connection. I wondered what its experience of me was. I felt as though I witness to true natural beauty. I was stunned, speechless, and caught in an eternal moment of the encounter. I raised my camera once more to make the photograph above. It stood still, I clicked the camera and it turned it head forward and continued its journey.
The shared moment is captured digitally, but it is also embedded in me. I can still feel the look of the coyote, a tender, quiet natural moment.
When some aspect of objective or outer reality intrigues us, engages us beyond a fleeting cognitive scan, then it is likely that it is a projection of our Soul and our portal to the collective consciousness, to the Brahman awareness, to the womb of the flow of the Universe. It must then be considered a synchronistic event, a messenger from our Soul and the Universe, alerting us to the numinous in the normal, to the sacred in the mundane, to the ocean in a drop.
Here are some […]

July 11, 2021,

Experience shows us that the sense of the “I”—the ego-consciousness—grows out of unconscious life.

As I watch the kite festival, I think of dynamic interaction of the wind and the kite. It feels parallel to the relationship to the soul and the ego. I think of the wind as the energy flow of the soul as it animates the ego. When conditions are right, the kite and wind let me see how valuable the invisible wind is for the kite to fly. When conditions are right, my soul shows my ego its higher purpose. My ego, like the kite, needs to be constructed of the right material to fly. My ego needs contact with my soul to engage the life I am here to live out.

Each one of us lives out of two realities: the Outer Ego reality and the Inner Soul reality. The center of our outer reality is the Ego or Aham in Sanskrit. The center of our inner, outer, total, past, present, future and timeless reality is our Soul or Atman. The task of our lifetime is to gain access to this deeper, transcendent, timeless, celestial consciousness. Every philosophical, religious, spiritual and psychological system offers a framework to cross that bridge from Ego to the Soul. Each system is like the blind men trying to describe the elephant. Each has a valuable perspective on the totality of his transcendent reality: they run into trouble when they claim to describe the totality, which is beyond comprehension for any mortal, any framework. Together, they give us a better but not a complete picture. Modern, personal spirituality uses these different systems as pieces of an infinite jigsaw puzzle. The process of accessing your […]

March 14th, 2021
It is therefore of the utmost importance in practical treatment to keep the integrity of the personality constantly in mind. For, if the collective psyche is taken to be the personal possession of the individual, it will result in a distortion or an overloading of the personality which is very difficult to deal with. Hence it is imperative to make a clear distinction between personal contents and those of the collective psyche. (Jung, 1953, p. 154 para 241)

This image helps me see how many world views a person can take and how many different views of us are possible as any given moment. The important factor is having perspective objectively and subjectively.

In midst of the pandemic and global racial fairness movement among other contemporary challenges that face us, we are all in our individual bubble of safety and viewpoints. We tend to look at ourselves, others, world and the future from inside our bubble. However, our bubble is still part of the collective. While it is our personal responsibility to establish a safe and secure bubble for ourselves and our families, we must never forget that we are part of the whole. Our destiny is intertwined with the rest of humanity. If we forget that continuity with the collective, we are merely rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. We swim or sink together. That the spiritual message of the pandemic and the other global crises. It reminds us of our interdependence, attachments and importance of neighborliness. Most importantly, to attend to the least fortunate amongst us. As Christ succinctly put it,

Matthew 25:40- King James Version (KJV)

“And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, […]

Honey – The Elixir and a Poison
In the Eye of the Storm
An individual response to the Global Crisis
ISSN 1939-3407
 
April 5, 2020
Ashok Bedi, M.D., Jungian Psychoanalyst
www.pathtotheosoul.com
www.tulawellnessllc.com
Robert BJ Jakala PH.D., Jungian Psychotherapist
In a storm, the safest place is in the eye of the storm. My colleague BJ and I will share our daily reflections on this centering process from an Analytical perspective, sharing from the repertoire of our personal and professional experience. BJ is a psychologist and a photographer and will pick and image of the day that catches him in this collective crisis. I will amplify it from a Jungian Analytical perspective. We hope that this may offer you a baby step on the path to your own unique response to this chaos.

With the honey the pleasure of the senses and the joy of life went into the mixture, as well as the secret fear of the “poison,” the deadly danger of worldly entanglements.(Jung, 1970, p. 493)

The drop of honey is about to return to the jar, but in this moment, it is noticeably separate. The unusual design of the spoon is functional for just such an occasion. It is used like a regular spoon to scoop things our of a jar, but then rests in a way that facilitates conservation. The spoon is placed in position so there is little or no waste of honey.
The image reminds me how important the right tool at the right moment is in life. We have been asked to follow medical guidelines, based on research, to protect our health. One of those guidelines is to wear a mask to help prevent the spray of droplets during conversation. We are not used to seeing people wearing masks in public. […]