When Things Become Set in Stone

Ah-ha moments are wonderful, exciting, energizing but they come infrequently. And for all the elation of the moment in which one is experienced, somehow it cannot be held on to in the exact form and emotion of the experience itself. It is like the sentiment expressed by Robert Frost's little poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" where he says, "Nature's first green is gold/ the hardest hue to hold..." Perhaps it is something about the opposites in our human nature that makes us want to formalize the experience of that numinous moment in order to try to hold on to it. What we do, however, can easily become a concretization or ritual that over time loses all connection with the spontaneity of the original experience and therefore loses any meaning.

For individuals, the concretization and hanging on to some custom from the past beyond a period of time when it is meaningful can mean we're bogged down and in a rut. Sometimes we recognize the fact and make ourselves do something differently. Or perhaps we just yearn for something.

On another level, the same thing that can happen with individuals can also happen with culture. Perhaps nowhere does it happen with more impact than in the area of religion. In Mysterium Coniuntionis in the context of his explorations of alchemy as symbolic of the individuation process, Jung addresses this issue. Christian symbolism was used in medieval alchemy, and Jung is dealing with Christ as a symbol. He says at one point that "'Religion' on the primitive level means the psychic regulatory system that is coordinated with the dynamism of instinct. On a higher level this primary interdependence is sometimes lost, and then religion can easily become an antidote to instinct, whereupon the originally compensatory relationship degenerates into conflict, religion petrifies into formalism, and instinct is vitiated..." (Jung, 418)

Spirit and instinct are opposites of which we need to be aware as we seek to grow in consciousness. To become too concretized in either extreme or for the two ends of the spectrum to be so split that we lose awareness of either can have repercussions. An awareness of the opposites provides a tension that can lead to the development of more consciousness. When we become too one-sided and out of touch with either of the opposites, the psyche seeks to compensate in ways of which we may not be aware.

In our contemporary culture right now with the Easter holiday coming and much-ado being made about the latest Hollywood production of the crucifixion of Christ, we might stop and ask what the attention to the film, indeed what the unseen psychic drive behind the making of the film, is. With war and terrorism taking lives around the world daily, do we need to be shown a violent act of two millennia ago? It can recall for us the ultimate perhaps in a long series of dying and rising god stories. But as I reflect and try to understand what Jung is saying, I find myself wondering if, when we give so much attention to the physical concrete story and try to shock ourselves into some numinous moment with it, we aren't missing the point. What is the meaning of the dying and rising god story, whether it be Christian or earlier versions?

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