I appreciate your concern over how I might be taking this conversation. I want to reassure you that no hard feelings are building and, actually, not even frustration. Perhaps, I should apologize for not somehow meeting you halfway. I suspect that there is some maniacal trickster God to which I have sold my soul in that I dance around changing my hat like Edshu for whom "spreading strife is my greatest joy". Not that I am intentionally trying to be difficult.
I have been feeling very conflicted about "pushing" you on these things. I had a dream relating to it last night that I only partially remember. I am writing it up now and will post it soon. I wish I could say that I have been frustration-free, too, but alas. Still, I'm glad to hear you say this. It makes me feel less anxious.
I suspect that the way in which I relate to others is to argue and debate ideas. Not to determine agreement or whatnot but to get a sense of someone by finding out what ideas they stick to and which one's they might reconsider given an additional argument or piece of information. I look at my own allegiance to ideas as context driven given how I feel in a given context.
You could be describing me here as well
. I understand and respect this.
For instance, I have been defending the ego as if I practically worship it, but I am now realizing that if I were I in a room full of hedonists or people whose logical philosophy made no room for the unconscious, I would be all about showing up the ego's limitations and the need to reflect as if the ego was not the center of the universe. At some point I usually just toss up my hands and say, "I believe in both". But I will tend to argue in a one sided way given the context I am in. I guess you could say I am a professional devil's advocate. That is probably more true of my interactions with men than with women.
Devil's advocacy is an ancient and honorable tradition
. I'm used to playing that role, so perhaps my confusion and concern is a matter of both of us mirroring back the other?
I have felt that in your argument on behalf of the ego that you seemed a bit "Demonic", that you were really pushing a perspective that I didn't think you were as much a "true believer" in as you were acting. I have been confused about why you would do this. If it is merely a matter of my proposed undervaluation of the ego, then that's more comforting to me. My position (and the Jungian position in general) is quite challengeable on the whole "down with the ego, up with the Self" attitude. In fact, the Jungians have received their fair share of criticism from others on this very point. I have generally felt this criticism was well-deserved, even if not always well-constructed in itself.
A good topic to discuss this would be one that examines what effects "Self-worship" has on the development and functionality of the ego. Maybe one of the problems is that the Hero archetype is not the best venue for an examination of the ego/Self relationship. The hero (or heroic ego) represents an ideal attitude of the ego toward the Self . . . but it's an attitude that is not always attainable or maintainable. We egos are not heroes. We can put our money on the hero or we can bet it elsewhere. But the hero is in the ring while we are always in the stands. In reality, we fail to be heroic more often than we succeed. And sometimes forgiving ourselves for our lapses, failures, and stumbles is the most difficult part of backing the heroic ego. At least, that's the hardest part for me.
My ultimate position is not meant to throw the ego on the dung heap. Just as you were accentuating your pro-ego stance, I was accentuated my anti-ego stance. My genuine opinion on the ego is that it is (despite its limitations) the key to living. The Self knows this, and that's why it is "so concerned" with the way the ego thinks and behaves (why in the Old Testament, God is always so annoyed at and involved with his creation). My core feeling is that the ego doesn't need to stand against the Self or the unconscious . . . that there is no "healthiness" or functionality in that. Yet it is impossible not to stand against the Self some of the time, because (especially in the modern) our culture, the main source of ego-determination, stands against the individual Self much of the time, trying to conform individuals to collective standards. But in coordination with instinct, the ego can rise to a "heroic" status in the psyche . . . and it deserves the respect it gets. Initiation is a "ceremony" (today, more often a psychic event) that eventually gives ego its due (with the award of spirit animal and True Name and a seat at the personality negotiating table). But if that respect gets to its head too much . . . back down it goes into the mud. And the Self pushes against it again.
I see "consciousness" (as process and way of being) as a constant motion like this. We, as egos, do what we think or believe is best, and sometimes we get the nod from the Self, and sometimes we don't. When we don't, we wrestle with our "better angel" until some new perspective (Logos) is created. But in my opinion, this is always a negotiation between "powers". There is no dictation on either side. Sometimes the Self seems to be asking us to do something that we know would just wipe us out, something we couldn't recover from. And so we bargain for a compromise. The Self is not very compromising, but it is not entirely unreasonable. These negotiations are the way to live consciously. There is no "attainment" reached in which we are genuinely "righteous" and always know the answer off the top of our heads. We earn ourselves a seat at the negotiation table, and then we do the best we can to come to a "living solution".
So the funny thing is that whenever you say you feel my position might be limiting me I am always thinking, "but I believe both sides, how can my position be limiting" until I realize that I have been making a one-sided argument. This is something that I am coming into an awareness of even as I type. This may be the first time I have called myself on this.
I would see it as limiting to the degree that you were living by the ideas you were arguing for. One of the reasons I've been pushing you on this is that I didn't think you really wanted to live by those ideas (alone). I.e., I didn't believe you were stating these things in Good Faith or were fighting for a position that you really wanted to live through (as your position seemed more extreme than anything you had declared before). In other words, I felt a change in your attitude and behavior . . . but one that seemed more one-sided than the "old you". I was trying to apply pressure on the other side that seemed to be neglected (just as you were resisting my one-sided valuation
).
If it can make any sense that I have a high comfort level with two oppositional perspectives both being true at the same time then I say, "I whole-heartedly half agree with you and half disagree with you."
That is the position from which I feel I argue about all this stuff and anything philosophical.
That's completely fine with me. I understand and relate to that. I think the tricky thing is that my style of argument may seem to be identical to this on the surface (and I have often said very similar things to what you are saying) . . . but I have "ulterior motives". Namely, it is some kind of feeling-level engagement that I am looking for. Not a "my ideas vs. your ideas" . . . but a "how are you and I alike and on what ground or in what language can we build a bridge between us?" With that bridge we would be able to say, "we know how we think and feel and how these feelings and thoughts relate to and reflect off of one another." It's a process of self-definition (in relation to the Other). Because only when we understand our true similarities and true differences can we genuinely relate to one another (i.e., relate without projections and so forth).
It's just like the engagement of knights in the medieval romances. Originally two wills "meet in the woods" and stand in one another's ways. Battle ensues, but in that battle, the true nature, strength, and honor of the individuals is revealed. The battle ends when each party has come to understand who the opponent really is and what s/he is made of. Therefore, ritually, the "true name" is shared with the other . . . and the two are bonded together in fraternal love and camaraderie.
I have been worrying though, that you would "fight to the death" rather than to the point of recognition of and respect for the Other. But we may have a "mirror within a mirror" reaction going on here.
So the hero figure who starts off aggressively (separative) finds he or she must give up, on some level, an egoic stubbornness of attitude as other, unaccounted for aspects of the psyche assert themselves under the direction of the Self as archetype of the whole psyche until the ego lets go of those limiting assumptions. The hero figure who starts off passively (connective bias) is cajoled into a more assertive stance and finds him or herself more empowered after the adventure than before because it realizes that in its connection to the Self it is an empowered center with influence reaching from inner horizon to inner horizon.
I would generally agree that the input from the Self is compensatory. But we are complex creatures. We are many things at once, and many of these things are contradictory with one another. So the Self may encourage certain kinds of heroism in an ego that doesn't recognize its own aptitude for such heroism. But this same ego may believe it is "heroic" in other ways, and the Self may stand against that. Both happen simultaneously, and that is confusing.
This has been, at least, my personal experience. But inflation is very devilish. That is, those times when we believe in our own heroism even against the compensatory Will of the Self. It's hard to recognize when this is and hard to let go even after we recognize it.
I have a differing view of the ego-Self as two sides of the same coin rather than ego as an organ of the Self. The ego, in its objective, universal characteristics, realized as such, will probably be encountered as a powerful or omniscient Other while the ego in its subjective, particular characteristics will probably be seen as small and ignorant Me when seen against the diverse, complex and adaptive wonder that is the greater psyche. One analogy might be the valuation of the Earth and the human race which is, to the extent that we are the greatest, most adaptive expression of the Universe central and powerful and to the extent that we can affect the vastness of the space in which we live, we are tiny, inconsequential and largely unnoticed.
Yes. And taking this analogy, I would be the kind of person who says, "We live in the universe" . . . not "we live on the Earth". Also, "Even though we think we are living as the masters of the Earth, we are actually living within the vast universe, making our sense of mastery an illusion." I think we become better beings, more ethical, more connected, when we recognize that we live in the universe and not on our throne, the Earth. Even illusory power corrupts.
I would also make the analogy (although it is, I think partially a scientific fact, too) that the ego is to the psyche as short-term or working memory is to long-term memory. We get the feeling that when we think, we are creating, constructing, controlling . . . but really, most of what we "think" just comes into consciousness (step back for a second and observe your thought process if you disagree). We call for memories to come and they come (sometimes, not all the time). We do not go down to get them and we do not recreate them in consciousness. I see the ego as like looking at a slide under a microscope. It is a point of focus, our consciousness. But we do not prepare the slides or switch them around or file the stored contents away on a shelf, or create the "specimens" we are studying, etc. We, as egos, just see through the microscope. What goes on beyond the view of that microscope is only intuited. It is "context" to consciousness . . . and we have no control over that context.
The Self as prefigured or developed in process is co-important in that a Self with an undeveloped ego is not much more than an ego unrelated to the Self.
The Self is dependent on the ego to get libido into and out of the environment, in order to live. I see the ego's relationship to the Self (as the alchemists did, too) as akin to the redemption of God by the son (or daughter). The abstract parent god can't live in the world. The child/hero (the heroic ego) seeks to bring the god into the world, sacrificing his or her dependence on the providence of that parent god. In other words, God is lost and maybe dying. If we don't harness consciousness to the task of saving and redeeming God, then God will die. This is essentially what the alchemists believed, as well.
So the importance of the ego (perhaps not really a "co-importance") is not a matter of its ability to "be God", but its ability to redeem or heal God (by bringing God into the world . . . not
pretending to be God in the world). The key difference is between facilitating and pretending to be God. Facilitation requires great sacrifice and humility ("he who would be first must be last", etc.) This is what the
Gnostic Christian story is all about. Not righteousness, but honor.
I also don't hold the adaptation to the inner world as a higher one than the adaptation to the outer world as I believe the two worlds are two sides of the same coin as well. The Self is the indispensible guide and support for the development of the ego, it is the God-like potential whereas the ego is the matter-like realization. My hats off to both which, as I believe, are really One.
I completely agree. I read this into the alchemical opus or opera. The first/Lunar/White opus is about adapting the ego to the Self and defining/differentiating ego and Self through the construction of a Logos (the filius philosophorum). The second/Solar/Red opus is about learning how to facilitate the Self's adaptation to the world, to the outer environment (by continuing to develop an outwardly directed Logos and allowing the filius philosophorum to grow to adulthood). The problem is that we can't pursue the second opus in Good Faith until we have completed the first. They are sequential. If we think we are doing "second opus Work" when we haven't completed the first opus, we will become inflated and live in Bad Faith, in delusion and self-aggrandizement. We cannot do second-opus Work in Good Faith until we have functionally differentiated ego from Self. Until we accomplish that, we really don't know who is calling the shots. We can't tell God from "the Me". And this is precisely how (in my opinion) our ideas of God so often get invested with egoic and anthropic characteristics.
I guess what I do is take any given view, try to imagine a mirror image of it and keep both in mind for looking at potentially archetypal content. Where I feel the danger lies mostly is in pairing polarities together (masculine-feminine to separative-connective) and thereby not considering a potential counter alignment. However, noticing these polarities and their mutual potential alignments is indispensible to the Work.
Jung's thinking on this kind of thing (as I expect you know) was that, in order to be/become conscious, we have to take a position on something. Then, we can come to recognize the antithesis of that position and how these Opposites relate to one another. Then we can work to make a synthesis of the Opposites. But even in synthesis, there is a position to maintain. The idea that we can or should maintain "positionlessness" is what the Jungians would consider a "puer notion". That is, it remains nebulous, undefined, but only because it anchors itself to some kind of parental ground that enables this attitude or provides a safe space for it. We can't really deal with others or with the world, though, when we opt for puer positionlessness. We might imagine we are "relating" and that we "float in the Unus Mundus" or are one with the
anima mundi, but really we are only umbilically tied to the maternal unconscious, which is our all-provident lifeline. If we go out "into the world" or engage with a genuine Other, we must either take up a position of be blown away. Puer positionlessness is maladaptive, in other words. It cannot relate, because it cannot endure Otherness.
There can't be a heroic attitude without moral differentiation: this is what I stand against, and this is what I stand for. We can't sacrifice this kind of attitude and still be ethical or connected to others. So we need to have some way of bringing justice or fairness into our judgments and positions . . . which is what I think "honor" is for. Honor is a code for or a way of valuating and relating to the Other, of seeing oneself in the Other . . . but also knowing the differences. Honor tempers judgment. But the perpetuation of Opposites never ends . . . the honorable, after all, opposes the dishonorable. There is never any positionlessness in consciousness. We can keep synthesizing and synthesizing, but this still leads us to a thesis. And for every thesis there is an antithesis. Maybe not a credible or "sane" antithesis . . . but much of life seems to be a matter of dealing with incredible and insane people.
I certainly don't think of you as one of those. But I did feel like your proposed antithesis (or the thesis I opposed with my antithesis
) was not entirely "sane" . . . as in livable, a livable philosophy. For some reason it didn't occur to me that you would be accentuating your position in reflection of my own. I mean I sensed a "defense" (as I said in the post above) . . . but I didn't fully consider a reflection, a mutual reflection, that is.
I'm sorry about that. Always the "analyst", I worried that what I sensed as "defense" was complex-driven (thinking of the situation in terms of your more recent dreams with shadow figures in them). I worried that I was driving you into the grip of the Demon when I really wanted to say, "Watch out! There's the Demon! Back away slowly."
Well, I'm still pretty confused . . . but glad to hear what you wrote in this post, as it makes a lot more sense to me. Still . . . Watch out for the Demon! The Deeeeemonnnn!!
Yours,
Matt
