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Healing the Wounded Heart

– Dr. Jaime G. Corvalan, MD, FACS

The heart is like an umbilical cord which mediates between the life within us and the life around us. It connects us to the life of the whole, the greater life of the divine ground. The heart is our creative imagination, born of our instinct for relationship with this greater life. The heart generates all our quests, all our hopes and longings and will ultimately reunite us with the source from which we have come. Without the heart, without the instinct to feel, to imagine, to hope and to love, life is meaningless, sterile, dead. When we are in touch with our heart, when we are connected to our deepest feelings, it comes alive, it vibrates, it sings.”

– Anne Baring, Lecture 7: Healing the Heart: An Alchemy of Consciousness, 1993

Some time ago, I attended a lecture by Richard Bandler, the co-creator with John Grinder of NLP, Neurolinguistic Programming. Richard asked a gentleman, a Wall Street banker, to come forward from the crowd and talk with him. “What do you feel?” Richard asked him.

“Nothing,” was his reply. Richard quizzed him further, trying to get to the heart of his disconnection; in fact, the poor man was unable to comprehend the nature of the question. Why? He had lost the connection with his own heart, buried under years of repressed feelings, cultural and familial expectations and a laser-like focus on nothing but the masculine mythology of power, control and domination. From that point forward, I realized the irreplaceable value and need for feelings, for the feminine, and for the need to balance the masculine and feminine energies.

A statue of the Mother Goddess, found in Sardinia, of the Neolithic period.
A statue of the Mother Goddess, found in Sardinia, of the Neolithic period.

For most of the evolutionary history of humanity (up until the rise of tribes and states, about 4,000 years ago), the collective myth that cradled humanity centered around the Great Mother. In this prevailing myth, body and soul, nature and spirit, were aligned in a great web of interconnected and sacred life; the feminine values of compassion, empathy and connection formed the foundation of human societies and relationships, with each other and with nature.

However, this prevailing myth was gradually replaced with a masculine, Authoritarian Father mythology, coinciding with the rise of competitive, aggressive tribal and state systems, and with it the generative values of the heart, of the Great Mother – creativity, gentleness, compassion and love – were repressed, devalued and shunted deep into the unconscious. This devaluation has created in all who are touched by it an indelible wound to the heart, punishing expressions of authentic feeling and / or creativity, while focusing instead upon an insatiable drive to control, to accumulate and exercise power over others, and over the Earth.

A depiction of the Babylonian god Marduk, who killed and split in two the goddess Tiamet, thus forming the heavens and the earth.
A depiction of the Babylonian god Marduk, who killed and split in two the goddess Tiamet, thus forming the heavens and the earth.

Such a shift can be seen in many cultures across time (including our own); gradually, the feminine goddesses receded into the background as the masculine gods ascended. In some cases, the rise of the All-Powerful Father comes concomitantly with the murder of the Great Mother, as in the Babylonian Creation mythology of Enuma Elis, where the masculine god Marduk defeats and splits in two the Goddess Tiamat, using her body to form the earth and sky.

This swing to the masculine has resulted in a loss of the sense of the sacred in life, of the empathetic connection to each other and to nature that is so deep within us as to be instinctive. As the masculine has ascended, the value of nature, of compassion, of the feminine has been degraded, coming to be associated with darkness, chaos and evil (it is Eve in the mythology of the Garden of Eden who tempts Adam and who, as a result, leads to the expulsion of man from paradise).

The values of the heart have been repressed as the primacy of the mind has come to the fore. Yet, that deep instinctual need for connection, creativity and compassion, the values of the Great Mother myth, do not disappear, try as the intellect may to eradicate them. Where the spark of creativity is buried in the unconscious, it will often bubble up uncontrollably and even with awful consequence, for it is a primal energy that cannot be extinguished. As the great psychologist Carl Jung noted, everything we call negative and evil emerges from the wounded heart of a culture.

Where the energies of the feminine are repressed and cloaked in fear and confusion, those creative sparks can become an inferno of barbarism, with the masculine-focused religions and doctrines unable to contain them.

What is required is a reconnection to spirit, to the feminine; we need a rebalancing of the masculine and feminine, within a new mythology, one not based in merely rote belief but in authentic experience.

To heal the wounded heart, we must restore to honor the values of the feminine. We must reconnect the body with the soul, the realm of the transcendent. We must live life out of the highest spiritual values of compassion, loyalty and love. We must participate in the gradual transformation of our level of consciousness, from single-minded pursuit of power to the reconnection of heart and mind, body and soul.

There is, in fact, a new consciousness coming into life or, rather, we are awakening to the transcendent energy consciousness of which we have always been a part though have repressed lo these many millenia. We are all participating in the synthesis of a new mythology, one that reconnects and acknowledges the divinity in all life, in all existence. We are awakening to the fact that we are all a part of the divine, both transcendent and immanent.

This awakening, to a consciousness of the heart and soul, is what will heal and bring us to redemption and reconnection with our transcendent nature.

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The Western Psyche: Prometheus and Job

– Dr. Jaime G. Corvalan, MD, FACS

From nearly the beginning, the Western psyche has been characterized by a polarizing schism – two competing mythologies, engaged in a continuing struggle for supremacy, neither able to take complete control, neither able to relinquish the quest. Each derives from diametrically opposed, philosophical and mythological foundations, one rooted in the Near and Middle East, the other rooted in the ancient Greek civilizations of the Mediterranean Sea.

These opposing traditions can be represented by two great stories: the Greek tradition by “Prometheus Bound,” the Near Eastern tradition by “The Book of Job” in the Old Testament of the Bible.

Prometheus being bound by Vulcan, painted by Dirck van Baburen
Prometheus being bound by Vulcan, painted by Dirck van Baburen

“Prometheus Bound” is attributed to the great Greek tragedian Aeschylus, and it is in the character and integrity of the Titan Prometheus that aspects of the independent, assertive and defiant nature of the Western psyche can said to be traced. In the story, the Titan Prometheus (who had sided with Zeus in his battle against his father, Cronus, and all of the rest of the Titans) draws the bitterness and hostility of Zeus when he opposes his plan to bring an end to humanity, instead giving them the gift of fire.

An enraged Zeus decrees that Prometheus is to be chained for eternity to a mountain in the Caucasus where an eagle would attack him and devour his liver; being immortal, however, his body would heal every night, only to have the gory and painful attack happen every day thereafter in perpetuity.

Various figures, feeling compassion and sorrow for the Titan, visit Prometheus in an effort to comfort and / or persuade him to make amends with Zeus to end his suffering. When a messenger of the gods is sent to Prometheus to offer him mercy if he would only reveal who was plotting against Zeus, Prometheus defiantly exclaims, “Tell Zeus I despise him and will never bow down to him!”

These aspects of Prometheus’ character – elements of which the ancient Greeks prized as of the highest and noblest order – form one pole of the opposing nature of the Western psyche. Pride, brazenness, courage, determination, resoluteness all reflect constituent components of one pole of the Western mind.

Job's tormentors, from William Blake's illustrations for the Book of Job.
Job’s tormentors, from William Blake’s illustrations for the Book of Job.

The other pole of the Western psyche can be represented by the Old Testament figure, Job, a righteous man, blessed with progeny and wealth. Yahweh, as God is referred to in the Old Testament, is meeting with his colleague Satan and, out of pride, asks him, “Have you ever seen a better servant than my servant Job?” Satan considers the question and answers him, “Your servant is loyal to you only because you bless him. Torture and take everything away from him and he will surely curse you.” Yahweh agrees to the bet, allowing Satan to strip him of his wealth, kill all of his children and livestock, visit upon him a plague of boils and make him a cursed outcast among his people.

Finally, Job protests his treatment, showing how he had always been devoted to Yahweh; he demands an answer from God for all the terrors to which he has been exposed. An indignant Yahweh, however, answers out of anger and spite, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth?” Yahweh dismisses Job, angry that he would deign to question him. Job, admitting his knowledge and understanding were insignificant compared to Yahweh, repents his insolence saying, “I am ashamed!” and throws dust and ashes upon himself.

This story reflects aspects of the Western psyche that include obedience, subordination, modesty, humility and even fear.

Significant differences, unsurprisingly, exist between these two mythologies.

For one, the Gods of Olympus, in the Greek tradition, did not create humanity; rather, they exhibited all of the emotional complexity of humankind, lusted after women and essentially acted as older siblings. The Greeks, while respecting the Gods, did not consider them to have some inscrutable divinity beyond the reach of humanity; thus identifying with the defiance of Prometheus.

Humanity, in the Old Testament, is said to have been created by God to be his servants. An impenetrable gulf existed between the Divine and lowly mankind, with the wisdom of Yahweh being beyond his understanding.

In one, humanity is to be a citizen; in the other, a servant.

Another difference lays in the origins of the mythologies. The ancient Greek traditions grew in the Mediterranean Sea and were part of the intellectual origins of the European continent. The Old Testament traditions can be sourced to the near and middle East, and were often brought to vast tracts of the continent at the tip of a sword, as the Roman Empire expanded.

In the end, one can look upon the schism within the Western psyche as did the great mythologist, Joseph Campbell:

The problem of most Western minds today is this: having been deprived of the sense of divinity in themselves by the church, they now have been deprived of the sense of the claim of the church by science—and so we have what is called alienation . . .

In Europe we have faith in the human being. Consider for instance the main position of the Levant. When we have two terms, God and man, there comes a final question as to your ultimate loyalty— is it going to be God, or is it going to be the man? Is it going to be to the mystery of God, or to the ideas and ideals of man?

Now for the Oriental [sic], this conflict, look at that: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday we are with Prometheus. And Sunday, for a couple of minutes with Job, and the next Monday on the psychiatrist’s couch wondering what is the matter?

These are two absolutely irreconcilable, absolutely contrary points of view that we pretend to have brought together—and we haven’t resolved this. The European races, with their individualism and humanism—Greek, Roman, Celt and German—had this system brought in upon them.”

– Joseph Campbell, “Lecture I.1.4 – New Horizons,” November 21, 1961/1974, The Cooper Union, NY, NY, Archive Number: L46, L535

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Dr. Jung’s First Sermon to the Dead

– Dr. Jaime G. Corvalan, MD, FACS

The following is an extended excerpt of the First Sermon to the Dead by Dr. Carl Jung.

The First Sermon

The dead came back from Jerusalem, where they did not find what they were seeking. They asked admittance to me and demanded to be taught by me, and thus I taught them:

Hear Ye: I begin with nothing. Nothing is the same as fullness. In the endless state fullness is the same as emptiness. The Nothing is both empty and full. One may just as well state some other thing about the Nothing, namely that it is white or that it is black or that it exists or that it exists not. That which is endless and eternal has no qualities, because it has all qualities.

The Nothing, or fullness, is called by us the PLEROMA. In it thinking and being cease, because the eternal is without qualities. In it there is no one, for if anyone were, he would be differentiated from the Pleroma and would possess qualities which would distinguish him from the Pleroma.

In the Pleroma there is nothing and everything: it is not profitable to think about the Pleroma, for to do that would mean one’s dissolution.

The CREATED WORLD is not in the Pleroma, but in itself. The Pleroma is the beginning and end of the created world.

The Pleroma penetrates the created world as the sunlight penetrates the air everywhere. Although the Pleroma penetrates it completely, the created world has no part of it, just as an utterly transparent body does not become either dark or light in color as the result of the passage of light through it. We ourselves, however, are the Pleroma, so it is that the Pleroma is present within us. Even in the smallest point the Pleroma is present without any bounds, eternally and completely, for small and great are the qualities which are alien to the Pleroma.

The Pleroma is the nothingness which is everywhere complete and without end. It is because of this that I speak of the created world as a portion of the Pleroma, but only in an allegorical sense; for the Pleroma is not divided into portions, for it is nothingness. We, also, are the total Pleroma; for figuratively the Pleroma is an exceedingly small, hypothetical, even non-existent point within us, and also it is the limitless firmament of the cosmos about us. Why, however, do we discourse about the Pleroma, if it is the all, and also nothing?

I speak of it in order to begin somewhere, and also to remove from you the delusion that somewhere within or without there is something absolutely firm and definite. All things which are called definite and solid are but relative, for only that which is subject to change appears definite and solid.

The created world is subject to change. It is the only thing that is solid and definite, since it has qualities. In fact, the created world is itself but a quality.

We ask the question:

How did creation originate? Creatures indeed originated but not the created world itself, for the created world is a quality of the Pleroma, in the same way as the uncreated; eternal death is also a quality of the Pleroma. Creation is always and everywhere, and death is always and everywhere. The Pleroma possesses all: differentiation and non-differentiation.

Differentiation is creation.

The created world is indeed differentiated. Differentiation is the essence of the created world and for this reason the created also causes further differentiation. That is why man himself is a divider, inasmuch as his essence is also differentiation. That is why he distinguishes the qualities of the Pleroma, yea, those qualities which do not exist.

You say to me: What good is it then to talk about this, since it has been said that it is useless to think about the Pleroma?

I say these things to you in order to free you from the illusion that it is possible to think about the Pleroma. When you speak about the divisions of the Pleroma, we are speaking from the position of our own divisions, and we speak about our own differentiated state; but while we do this, we have in reality said nothing about the Pleroma.
However, it is necessary to talk about our own differentiation, for this enables us to discriminate sufficiently.
Our essence is differentiation. For this reason we must distinguish individual qualities.

You say: What harm does it not do to discriminate, for then we reach beyond the limits of our own being; we extend ourselves beyond the created world, and we fall into the undifferentiated state which is another quality of the Pleroma. We submerge into the Pleroma itself, and we cease to be created beings. This we become subject to dissolution and nothingness.

Such is the very death of the created being. We die to the extent that we fail to discriminate. For this reason the natural impulse of the created being is directed toward differentiation and toward the struggle against the ancient, pernicious state of sameness.
The natural tendency is called Principium Individuationis (Principle of Individuation).
This principle is indeed the essence of every created being.
From these things you may readily recognize why the undifferentiated principle and lack of discrimination are all a great danger to created beings.
For this reason we must be able to distinguish the qualities of the Pleroma.
Its qualities are the PAIRS OF OPPOSITES, such as:

the effective and the ineffective
fullness and emptiness
the living and the dead
light and dark
hot and cold
energy and matter
time and space
good and evil
the beautiful and the ugly
the one and the many
and so forth.

The pairs of opposites are the qualities of the Pleroma: they are also in reality non-existent because they cancel each other out.

Since we ourselves are the Pleroma, we also have these qualities present within us; inasmuch as the foundation of our being is differentiation, we possess these qualities in the name and under the sign of differentiation, which means:

First—that the qualities are in us differentiated from each other, and they are separated from each other, and thus they do not cancel each other out, rather they are in action. It is thus that we are the victims of the pairs of opposites. For in us the Pleroma is rent in two.

Second—the qualities belong to the Pleroma, and we can and should partake of them only in the name and under the sign of differentiation. We must separate ourselves from these qualities. In the Pleroma they cancel each other out; in us they do not. But if we know how to know ourselves as being apart from the pairs of opposites, then we have attained to salvation.

When we strive for the good and the beautiful, we thereby forget about our essential being, which is differentiation, and we are victimized by the qualities of the Pleroma which are the pairs of opposites. We strive to attain to the good and beautiful, but at the same time we also to the evil and the ugly, because in the Pleroma these are identical with the good and the beautiful. However, if we remain faithful to our nature, which is differentiation, we then differentiate ourselves from the good and the beautiful, and thus we have immediately differentiated ourselves from the evil and the ugly. It is only thus that we do not merge into the Pleroma, that is, into nothingness and dissolution.

You will object and say to me: Thou hast said that differentiation and sameness are also qualities of the Pleroma. How is it then that we strive for differentiation? Are we not then true to our natures and must we then also eventually be in the state of sameness, while we strive for differentiation?

What you should never forget is that the Pleroma has no qualities.

We are the ones who create these qualities through our thinking.

When you strive after differentiation or sameness or after other qualities, you strive after thoughts which flow to you from the Pleroma, namely thoughts about the non-existent qualities of the Pleroma.
While you run after these thoughts, you fall again into the Pleroma and arrive at differentiation and sameness at the same time. Not your thinking but your being is differentiation.
That is why you should not strive after differentiation and discrimination as you know these, but strive after your true nature.

If you would thus truly strive, you would not need to know anything about the Pleroma and its qualities, and still you would arrive at the true goal because of your nature.

However, because thinking alienates us from our true nature, therefore I must teach knowledge to you, with which you can keep your thinking under control.

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Dr. Jung’s Seven Sermons to the Dead

– Dr. Jaime G. Corvalan, MD, FACS

A page from Dr. Carl Jung's private printing of the Seven Sermons to the Dead
A page from Dr. Carl Jung’s private printing of the Seven Sermons to the Dead

The “Seven Sermons to the Dead,” by the renowned psychologist Dr. Carl Jung, are a collection of mystical, Gnostic texts self-published by the doctor during his lifetime (1916) and distributed only to a select few individuals. The Seven Sermons were initially published as an appendix to his biographical work, “Memories, Dreams and Reflections” in 1962, but have since become identified as a summary of his master work, The Red Book, published only recently in 2009.

The Seven Sermons to the Dead refer, essentially, to the spiritually dead, those who lack the self-knowledge of Gnosis. As such, this collection serves as an excellent primer into Jungian psychology and Gnosticism. In essence, the Seven Sermons to the Dead may be summarized as follows:

  • The “dead” are the spiritually dead, those who have stopped growing into their authentic, higher selves.
  • The spiritually dead no longer question their illusory existence as egos, the facades they project for everyone to see, but instead remain bereft of their true, transcendent identities
  • As the spiritually dead no longer pursue the true calling of their souls, they have become, for all intents and purposes, the living dead

The Seven Sermons to the Dead serve as a reminder of the great truths and maxims one will miss if one continues to plod blindly along in this life, avoiding the inner journey we must take if we wish to connect with our transcendent selves.

Because thinking alienates us from our true nature, therefore I must teach knowledge to you, with which you can keep your thinking under control.

  • That which is endless and eternal has no qualities, because it has all qualities.
  • What you should never forget is that the Pleroma has no qualities.
  • We are the ones who create these qualities through our thinking.
  • The pairs of opposites are the qualities of the Pleroma: they are also in reality non-existent because they cancel each other out.

– Unknown

We will undertake an exploration of each of the Sermons hereafter.

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The Great Questions: Life After Death?

Life is eternal; and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.”

— Rossiter Worthington Raymond

– Dr. Jaime G. Corvalan, MD, FACS

Do you identify with the light bulb or the light?
Do you identify with the light bulb or the light?

The questions of what happens when you die, or is there life after death, are really misleading because, frankly, we simply don’t and can’t definitively know. Upon death, the capacity to “know” stops, for knowing requires direct participation in this sensory world of time and space. In fact, these are simply the wrong questions to ask, for they proceed from a flawed assumption, that being that consciousness is a product of the body, generally thought to be located in the brain and central nervous system; and when the body fails, consciousness therefore ends.

You must think of consciousness, however, in different terms. When the great mythologist, Joseph Campbell, was attempting to teach Buddhism to a classroom of students, he posed a simple question: What are we referring to when we say, “Let’s turn off the lights?” Are we referring to the light bulbs, which are mechanical items that have a discreet lifespan and will eventually fail? Or are we referring to the energy that is channeled through the light bulbs, bringing light into the room?

Consciousness Transcends Time and Space
Consciousness Transcends Time and Space

This is the question we must ask with respect to the notion of life after death: do you identify with the light bulb or the light? Light, the energy that we see, is everywhere, is unending; it precedes the existence of the light bulb, and will continue in perpetuity. Transcendent energy consciousness shares the characteristics of light – it is everywhere and nowhere, it transcends time and space yet is immanent throughout it.

Consciousness, it could said, is the essence of the soul; it precedes the body and continues after the vessel – the light bulb – ends. So, again, you must ask yourself the question: Do You Identify with the Light Bulb or the Light? We are all aspects of transcendent energy consciousness, here to have an experience of living and then to share the consciousness we unfold with the transcendent upon the end of the body. Have no fear! Fear is of the body, of time and space; your true life transcends everything that we can know and imagine.

Let me share with you some wonderful passages from the incredible author Anne Baring’s website in an article entitled, “The Survival of the Soul.”

Death is the side of life averted from us, unshone upon by us: we must try to achieve the greatest consciousness of our existence which is at home in both unbounded realms, inexhaustibly nourished from both…The true figure of life extends through both: there is neither a here nor a beyond, but the great unity in which the beings that surpass us, the ‘angels’, are at home…We of the here and now are not for a moment hedged in the time-world, nor confined within it…we are incessantly flowing over and over to those who preceded us.”

– Rainer Maria Wilke, poet

And this passage, considering the difficulty we in the West have discussing death:

I know that for many people in their later years like myself, the inevitability of death weighs like a stone on their heart yet they cannot share their grief and apprehension with their children or friends because there is a reluctance to talk about an experience that awaits each one of us yet is deeply threatening to us. Moreover, in a culture which believes that consciousness originates in the brain and that the death of the brain must inevitably bring about the extinction of consciousness, the subject of our survival beyond the death of the body rarely comes up for discussion and so the deeper concerns of the heart are unable to find a channel of expression.”

– Anne Baring

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Protecting the Vulnerable – True Spirituality

A King may move a man, a father may claim a son, but remember that even when those who move you be Kings, or men of power, your soul is in your keeping alone. When you stand before God, you cannot say, “But I was told by others to do thus.” Or that, “Virtue was not convenient at the time.” This will not suffice. Remember that.”

– King Baldwin IV, from the movie “Kingdom of Heaven,” 2005

Parzival and Condviramur from the illuminated manuscript of "Parzival" by Wolfram von Eschenbach
Parzival and Condviramur from the illuminated manuscript of “Parzival” by Wolfram von Eschenbach

– Dr. Jaime G. Corvalan, MD, FACS

For those who are awake and aware, for those who would operate at a level of consciousness in which loyalty, compassion and love are the uppermost spiritual values, protection and care of those most vulnerable among us is of critical importance . . . And those most vulnerable are not only our fellow human beings but all life, great and small – Nature, our very mother.

We must always strive to be our best – and our best selves are those in which we work to achieve alignment between our souls and our facades, the ego images we project out into this world. When we operate from our souls, we instinctively seek to serve something far greater than ourselves; we strive to protect and nurture those most fragile within our midst, whatever they may be. This is true, honest spirituality.

We must also strive to recognize and be aware of those who would appropriate religions or ideologies of any denomination in order to further their own unquenchable desire for power, control and domination. Fanatics of every stripe who claim to know the will of god, or who claim some illusory group superiority, know only their shallow yet unending desire to exercise dominion over those who would fall prey to their words.

True holiness, true spirituality, is in knowing deep within your soul what is right and in having the courage to act upon it. What the divine desires is right here in you, in your heart and soul; it cannot be found in the empty words of charlatans and zealots. Every choice YOU make determines whether you live from the highest spiritual values or merely from the basest desires of man.

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Helen Luke on Shakespeare’s Master Work, “The Tempest”

The shipwreck in The Tempest
The shipwreck in The Tempest

– Dr. Jaime G. Corvalan, MD, FACS

The venerable author Helen Luke, in her powerful book “Old Age,” touches on a wide variety of issues including aging, consciousness and letting go, through her deeply insightful analysis of some of the greatest works in literature. Her analysis of perhaps Shakespeare’s penultimate work, “The Tempest,” is thoughtful and brilliant.

Prospero, a magician (with an understanding of the “Occult”), the main character and once Duke of Milan, is removed from power by his scheming brother, Antonio (with the help of Alonso, the King of Naples) and set out onto a leaky boat with his three year old daughter, Miranda, presumably to sink and die. However, his friend Gonzalo (and Alonso’s counselor) fills the boat with supplies and Prospero’s books, to sustain them as they were set adrift. Prospero and Miranda survive and land on an enchanted island where, given his extraordinary powers of conjuring and magic, he frees a powerful spirit, Ariel, who was cruelly imprisoned within a tree by the presently dead witch Sycorax; Ariel is made to serve him with the promise of eventual release from his servitude. Prospero conjures up a great storm (the aforementioned tempest) to bring his scheming brother and the King of Naples to the island.

Helen Luke, herself an accomplished analyst, takes a Jungian approach to her study of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and gleans powerful insights into the work. The Tempest, she notes, is about Forgiveness, the Folly of Arrogance and Power, Redemption and the Necessity of Devotion to Something Greater Than Oneself.

Prospero, when he first arrives on the island, is full of his own pride and frees the spirit Ariel only to use her for his own selfish purposes. His arrogance kept him blind to what was truly necessary to redeem Miranda and himself – compassion. His arrogance and desire for power created resentment and anger, and is emblematic of someone who is unconscious of his own behavior.

Helen Luke notes that the necessity to forgive is a key to letting go of the hubris that hinders one’s development into wholeness. She notes also that despite Prospero’s arrogance, there was a greater redeeming quality to him that eventually allowed him to see his folly and to be saved: Devotion – in this case, Devotion to his daughter, Miranda.

By acting upon his love to serve something greater than himself, Prospero is redeemed and can now consciously approach his own mortality and enter into the last part of his life in wholeness. Devotion is to bring the sacred into one’s life, and is key to deflating the hubris of the Ego while simultaneously elevating the value of one’s soul.

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What Made the Ancient Greeks So Conscious?

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them. His personal endowments, his wide opportunities for experience at a great period of civilization, his inheritance of an intellectual tradition not yet stiffened by excessive systematization, have made his writing an inexhaustible mine of suggestion.” — Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 39 [Free Press, 1979]

The Greek Parthenon, a temple located on the Acropolis in Athens, in Athena's honor
The Greek Parthenon, a temple located on the Acropolis in Athens, in Athena’s honor

– Dr. Jaime G. Corvalan, MD, FACS

Western history and philosophical thought indeed owe an impossible debt not only to its founding thinker, Plato, but to all of the ideas, systems, literature and achievements of the Ancient Greeks.

It wasn’t merely the academic and philosophical foundations laid by our Greek predecessors that were significant; rather, it was the incredible flowering of consciousness, this magnificent awakening whose contributions and implications still reverberate through us today. Plato, and the Ancient Greek teachers, didn’t lecture in the modern sense of the word; through Symposiums and Academies, they shared stories, posed questions, interacted with and debated the Great Questions which we are still facing today.

What was it, then, that made the Greeks so conscious? It was the moment, in the early 5th Century BCE, when the Athenians decided to no longer be subjects of tyrants but, instead, to be fully participating citizens of the first form of direct democracy devised by humanity. This action changed the course of humanity forever, and initiated a true flowering of consciousness and awareness.

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Helen M. Luke – A Sense of the Sacred

Wisdom consists in doing the next thing that you have to do, doing it with your whole heart and finding delight in doing it. From the delight is a sense of the sacred.” – Helen M. Luke

– Dr. Jaime G. Corvalan, MD, FACS

Helen Luke was a brilliant writer and Jungian psychologist, with a deep understanding of literature, mythology and the power of the symbolic to shape and guide our lives. It can be said of Helen that she was far more than an academic, she lived what she wrote.

Helen M. Luke - A Sense of the SacredAfter conducting a well respected analytical practice with the equally engaging Robert Johnson, she retired and, in 1962, founded the Apple Farm Community in rural Michigan whose mission was to be “a center for people seeking to discover and appropriate the transforming power of symbols in their lives.”

Helen was a story teller in the most transformative sense, urging us to live with a final vision of what is divine. She understood – and lived – the notion that to have a true death we must be certain to live a true life; we must live with a sense of the sacred. It has been said of Helen that “She was endowed with a deep grasp of archetypal forces and the ability to evoke them with luminous prose.”

In one of her most endearing works – “Old Age: Journey into Simplicity” – Helen employs her gift of story-telling and her deep understanding of the symbolic in some of the greatest literary works in history to show us that growing old is a conscious journey into simplicity. One can approach old age and the end of one’s life with honor and dignity, and an understanding that one is called now to let go of everything our Ego’s once deemed critically important; or one can fall or disintegrate into the aging process – we must make the choice.

In her memoir, “Such Stuff as Dreams are Made on,” she writes with the heart and soul of a poet, bringing together the symbolic from her own inner dream life with personal and historic experiences that provide us with the clues and direction for living an authentic and fulfilling life. Helen encourages us to live in the moment with high awareness and consciousness, to live our personal truths and to “know and accept and live the next thing with devotion.” This compendium is truly her master work and a great contribution to the unfolding of consciousness and love.

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How Does Humanity Structure Consciousness?

– Dr. Jaime G. Corvalan, MD, FACS

Having addressed what Consciousness Is and Humanity’s Function in Manifesting Consciousness in other articles, this post asks the question, “How Do We Manifest or Structure Consciousness?”

It is useful in addressing this question to consider the “Principle of Opposition,” as articulated by the great psychologist, Dr. Carl Jung. Everything, he notes, within the world we know appears to us in pairs of opposites: up and down, light and dark, hot and cold, male and female, time and space, conscious and unconscious (these ideas can be traced back to Hegel and Kant). We live within this realm of duality.

We discover early on, however, that in order for us to grow and to become fully formed individuals, we must engage in a process of bringing together these opposites, in order to become whole. Dr. Jung called this the Process of Individuation, the emergence of a whole, integrated Self from undifferentiated unconsciousness.

Essentially, this is the battle, played out in the human ego and psyche, between “I” and “Not I,” the resolution of which manifests and structures new consciousness. It is this process of becoming aware of one’s true self, wholeness within and beyond the realm of duality, that structures consciousness and brings purpose and meaning to human existence – it’s why we’re here.

The Yin Yang symbol in Chinese philosophy describes how apparently contradictory opposites are actually complementary and interconnected in wholeness.
The Yin Yang symbol in Chinese philosophy describes how apparently contradictory opposites are actually complementary and interconnected in wholeness.

It is in the synthesis of the opposites, taking place within the crucible of the human ego, that consciousness is structured, is uncovered and shared (with all life and with the transcendent). In essence, the synthesis of the opposites (in this process of Individuation) connects the Ego with the Soul – that which transcends the Ego.

This forms the essence of what Dr. Jung identified as the New Myth for Humanity. “God,” or the Transcendent, in this new myth, is unaware of creation but wishes to know it, thus occupying one end of an opposition. Humanity, on the other hand, is conscious of creation but is unaware of its divinity, forming the other end of this pair of opposites (Divine and Man).

Human consciousness endows the Transcendent’s creation with objective existence by the observation of and participation in it, bringing into awareness that which was merely potential within a world of non-being.

So, humanity is indispensable to the Transcendent for the completion and perfection of creation – humanity is, in essence, the second creator of the world by observing and interacting with it. Man’s conscious knowing and God’s unconscious being form two poles in opposition to each other that, when synthesized and resolved, unfolds and manifests consciousness.

As such, for “God” to become aware of creation, all opposites must be united within the human psyche. As we bring union to the opposites, we actualize that which was only in potential; by making conscious what is unconscious, we arrive at wholeness, allowing the Soul and Ego to exist in beautiful alignment, while serving a purpose far greater than any individual Ego could imagine.