The Best Laid Plans

A few months back I decided to start a series of articles on archetypes in literature and the relationship of some of the great themes in literature to the development of religious consciousness. I knew at the time that what I was planning was a big undertaking. It is an area I am very much interested in because I do believe that great literature speaks to us of our humanity and of our psychological journeys, which cannot be apart from religion in its truest sense of the word. I have done quite a bit of reading in the past year on the history of religious ideas in our world. As a literature teacher, I am constantly seeing the connections in literature I teach. And all of it reflects for me the psychological process of individuation in some phase or another. As I tell my students, in real life things aren't separated into different subjects as they are in school. It is all life. So, what I wanted to do was bring together what we in our culture put into different categories and try to show it as it really is - altogether.

But as Robert Burns said in his poem "To a Mouse," "The best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft agley..." I was trying to present my articles in some sort of order related to the rising consciousness of mankind and relating to the way in which literature developed. Back in college when I studied philosophy, I learned there were certain questions around which all philosophy could be organized. I was trying to be organized. Well, right now I am drawn back to the reality that in spite of my best efforts to organize and think my way through what I set out to accomplish, I am stuck. To borrow again from Burns' poem and paraphrase rather loosely, the plow of life has gone right through my plan and scattered it into so many directions that I am having trouble with what I set out to do.

When I sit down and reflect, however, I am not surprised. Life and the process of individuation are exactly like what has just happened with my plans. Neither follows a straight, rational path that we can plan out ahead and stick to easily. In fact, with individuation, if we try to be too rational and get too tied to a certain plan we have reasoned out, we are likely to lose out altogether. Individuation is about getting in touch with the unconscious parts of ourselves and integrating them. Since they are unconscious, we can't know ahead of time what they are and include them into our plans. As I have said on various occasions before, following the path of individuation is like biblical Abraham being called to go to a new land. He didn't know all that he would encounter when he set out. In classical literature Aeneas, one hero of the Trojan War, likewise left his old home and set out for some unknown place that he would make his new home. And of course, there is Jung himself. He was forever exploring the realm of human consciousness with an open mind, following some inner inclination as to what direction to go next.

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