This meditation includes material from Carl Jung's essay,
The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man,
In which he says,
It must be clearly understood that the mere fact of living in the present does not make a man modern,
For in that case everyone at present alive would be so.
He alone is modern who is fully conscious of the present.
Let us think on that for ourselves.
What makes myself present?
Is it awareness?
Is it attentiveness?
Is it the willingness and readiness to take on what is here and now?
Clearly,
Living from the past and for what was past is not to be a modern individual.
But I think to have come present from a past,
Knowing what you know and in a way becoming more trusting of life and its present spirit than ever before,
Helps each of us be more fully present and life ready.
What does it mean to be a fully present person?
Can you,
If only for this moment,
Allow yourself to be a fully present person?
This is not to be ignorant of the past but informed by it.
It is not to be ignorant of the future but informed by it.
George Jung says,
Today has meaning only if it stands between yesterday and tomorrow.
Jung points out that the modern individual is different than the individual of the past.
How totally different did the world appear to medieval man.
For him,
The earth was eternally fixed and at rest in the center of the universe,
Circled by a sun that solicitously bestowed its warmth.
Men were all children of God under the loving care of the Most High,
Who prepared them for eternal blessedness and all knew exactly what they should do and how they should conduct themselves in order to rise from a corruptible world to an incorruptible and joyous existence.
Such a life no longer seems real to us,
Even in our dreams.
Science has long ago torn this lovely veil to shreds.
Modern man has lost all metaphysical certainties of his medieval brother and set up in their place the ideals of material security,
General welfare and humanitarianism.
It begs the question,
What is at the center of your universe?
Is there a trace of an eternal blessedness in your days and nights?
Have you or do you know how to rise from a corruptible world and into a joyful existence?
Perhaps our medieval brothers and sisters had the how wrong but not the why.
And in our modern world,
Perhaps we know more and more about the how,
But in that have either forgotten the why or become so skeptical of it we've rejected it altogether.
For Jung,
We cannot look outside ourselves for answers but must delve within the unconscious to the wisdom within our own psyche.
It is there that we can listen and learn about our why and it is there that we may even discover greater and greater hows.
Jung shares,
What is significant in psychic life always lies below the horizon of consciousness,
And when we speak of the spiritual problem of modern man,
We are speaking of things that are barely visible,
Of the most intimate and fragile things,
Of flowers that open only in the night.
In daylight everything is clear and tangible,
But the night lasts as long as the day,
And we live in the night time also.
Can you visualize within yourself a flower in the dusk of the evening,
Lit by the light of stars,
Lit by the inward light of outer space?
Can you see this flower blossoming,
Blooming with why,
Blossoming with purpose,
Blooming with meaning?
As you resonate with this image,
You may not be able to put its meaning into words,
But you can feel it.
Jung shares,
For many people the day's life is such a bad dream that they long for the night when the spirit awakes.
Let the feeling that comes from this blossoming flower of the night carry through into your day.
Discover a greater individuality finding your place as the center between past and future,
Day and night,
Conscious and unconscious.
Some final words from Jung.
If we can reconcile ourselves to the mysterious truth that the spirit is the life of the body seen from within,
And the body the outward manifestation of the life of the spirit,
The two being really one,
Then we can understand why the striving to transcend the present level of consciousness through acceptance of the unconscious must give the body its due,
And why recognition of the body cannot tolerate a philosophy that denies it in the name of the spirit.
Letting the flowers of our external world and the flowers of our internal psychic world blossom in the spring of greater awareness and attentiveness,
We allow them to blossom all the areas of our lives.
