#43. Morning Wisdom: Sophia as Guide

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts:
http://www.sammackintosh.blogspot.com/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This blog entry is the second of four about biblical images of Wisdom/Sophia. The main purpose of these four related posts is to look at western culture's religious tradition in the context of cosmic, biological and cultural evolution, and to do so with the help of the four-fold perspectives on the human mind I've described or mentioned in many previous posts.

As unlikely as it seems, and as unfamiliar as the Bible's wisdom literature is to most of us, these biblical images of Wisdom/Sophia can help us to move beyond the lopsidedness of the static, dualistic and patriarchal worldview of recent centuries and help us move toward a better understanding of ourselves as creative participants in the evolution of the universe.

I've called this post "Morning Wisdom" because it's about that group of wisdom images which relate especially to the East on the Medicine Wheel. "East" includes morning, springtime and the Thinking function of our conscious minds.

I've also included "Sophia as Guide" in the name because this group of wisdom images especially expresses one of the most central aspects of the anthropos-theos relationship: that Divine Wisdom not only fashions us to be who-and-what we are but also guides and directs us in our efforts to become all that we have been fashioned to be.

The primal element connected with the east is air. As wind and breath (pneuma, spiritus, ruah, vayu, chi), it is in us as much as we are in it. The animal associated with the east on the Medicine Wheel is the Golden Eagle of the Dawn, an image of our mind's Thinking function which focuses on the dynamic flow of time. In Native American tradition, the Morning Star, the Rising Sun, is also connected with knowledge and growing self-awareness.

All of these images-- the freshness of the breeze on a springtime morning, the eagle flying high in the sky at dawn, the sharp piercing rays of the rising sun-- evoke new beginnings.

===

Old Russian icons show Sophia as the Guardian Angel of the Universe, the "wisdom from on high who orders all things mightily," as the old Advent hymn says. We have a familiar phase, "the wisdom of the body," expressing the idea that, while we don't understand much that goes on in our anatomy and physiology, the innate wisdom of the body knows what to do; it heals cuts and digests food, for example, without any conscious effort on our part. In the same way, there is a wisdom of the universe: Divine Sophia guiding and directing all things "mightily."

It's easy to forget that "all things" includes you and me. Just as modern science helps us to see that we are the "universe become conscious of itself," so the Bible's wisdom literature helps us to see that as participants in the cosmic process, our personal growth and development is no less "ordered" by the same Divine Wisdom that guides the sun and moon and stars. Our individuation process-- our "ontogenetic development" in the jargon of biogenetic structuralism-- is guided in the same way.

===

All of this is what these "morning" images of Sophia express. The view of God which western culture inherited from the Enlightenment period sees a distant and alien divinity who created the world but then abandoned it, to let it flounder on its own. It's such a culturally pervasive viewpoint that it makes it difficult for us to appreciate the very different perspectives offered by the wisdom images.

In contrast, post-Enlightenment evolutionary science helps us appreciate these 25-century-old wisdom perspectives, to appreciate that Sophia/Wisdom is not a clockwork creator and that we have not been brought into existence out of nothingness and darkness only to be hung out to dry.

We are not alone, we're not on our own, Creative Wisdom does not abandon us. These wisdom images picture the master artisan of the universe as active here and now, not only in our bodies but also in our minds, hearts and psyche.

Another reason why it's so hard for us to appreciate these images of divine Sophia is that for many centuries religious authorities have presented us with a picture of a creator who treats humanity as children and who does not expect us to be able to be in charge of ourselves. (It's really those patriarchal authorities who want to be in charge of us, of course.) So we especially need these "morning" images of a Creative Wisdom which not only respects human initiative but calls us to be nothing less than what we are: the "world become conscious of itself"; to be, in Karl Rahner's words, free and conscious "persons in the world."

===

In the previous post (on Evening Wisdom: Sophia as Architect) I shared many thoughts from the work on Raimon Panikkar about the mood of evening. With modern technology and instant communication-- not just electric lights but especially TV and now iPhones!-- we have lost the earlier sense of what happens within us as the daylight hours draw to a close and darkness comes on. But I don't need to do that with regard to the mood of morning.

Each of us knows by experience that morning means a new start to our lives, just as we know by experience that each springtime marks a new start for the life of the earth. Many non-western cultures still have their new year in spring, and even western culture once did, until Julius Caesar transferred it to the time just after the winter solstice. The New Year used to begin on March 25, which in those days was the date of the spring equinox, when after many months of winter cold and darkness the hours of daylight begin to be greater than the hours of darkness.

We don't need science to explain to us the mood of springtime or morning. Think of that special morning in early spring when we first hear birdsong again and when we first can smell the life oozing up out of the earth. For many of us perhaps the strongest image of springtime newness is sunrise on Easter morning, but all of us still experience every morning's dawn and sunrise as a new start to our lives.

In the morning, we "rise and shine," as people of earlier generations used to say. We get up and go to work. Not just to a nine-to-five job, but to the larger task of making something of ourselves and of making something of our world.

Even though western culture doesn't have the idea-- yet-- that each of us is "the universe become conscious of itself" and that we have, therefore, a participatory, creative task in the cosmic process, the mood of morning and spring is clear enough: we are called to take responsibility for our selves and our lives, our loved-ones, our jobs and our interests. In making a new and better world, we have a lot of work to do.

And what these morning images of Sophia tell us is that, just as we can trust the wisdom of the body, so we can trust the wisdom of the universe to guide us in our work of creative participation in the cosmic evolutionary process.

===

It's this same experience of newness and creativity that Karl Rahner is talking about when he says that one of our primary "existential" experiences of being a person is that we experience ourselves as free. Freedom has to do with "our place in the vast scheme of things."

As I said in post #36 (on Aspects of the Immense Transition), "the experience of freedom means that, although we know ourselves to be limited in so many ways, we also experience ourselves as being able to make choices. Probably the best word we have to describe this existential aspect of our personal experience is self-determination."

In terms of neurological functioning, the main idea is what biogenetic structuralist jargon refers to as the cognitive extension of prehension: because of the structure and function of the human brain, our actions are not controlled totally by our instincts. We can choose, in ways our animal relatives can not. And it's in making these free choices that we "actualize"-- make real and actual-- our individual uniqueness which is our personal contribution to the evolution of the universe. We have a place, indeed, "in the vast scheme of things."

===

In Jungian terms, it is the conscious mind's Thinking function that allows us to see the world as dynamic rather than static. Thinking is a judgment function, based primarily on the activity of the brain's Temporal lobe and concerned with distinctions, differentiation and diversity. It is concerned especially with the flow of time and, just like the Golden Eagle of the Dawn, it flies high and sees vast distances.

Sequence-- the flow of time from past to future-- is the key. The Thinking function's orientation to sequence and flow is what keeps us moving forward. Its energy is always directed toward newness, growth and development. And not just to the evolution of the cosmos and of life on Earth, but especially to our personal evolutionary development -- via what Jung calls "the individuation process" and what biogenetic structuralism calls our "ontogenetic development."

It's important to keep in mind that the main activity of the Thinking function isn't logical reasoning but questioning. As I mentioned in post #30 (on Ways of Being Religious), the Thinking function's orientation to the dynamic flow of time (and thus to cosmic and personal evolutionary development) has been wonderfully described by the artist-psychologist Steven Gallegos. He calls it "the psyche's relentless search for wholeness and the 'not yet'."

It's this "relentless searching" which explains why being religious via the Thinking function has to do with effort ("asceticism" in the classical sense), the discipline we need to become all that we can be. The most fundamental ascetic practice is simply being attentive: paying attention, being aware-- being "mindful," as the Buddhist tradition emphasizes.

And at the heart of the Thinking function's way of being religious is courage: the willingness to courageously follow that inner generative drive for enterprise and exploration which we experience as personal freedom.

That impetus-- that "inner generative drive"-- is a way of describing the work of Divine Wisdom who guides and directs us-- by our genes, our cultural background, our personality and the circumstances of our lives-- to become all that we can be.

And "to become all that we can be" is precisely what Sophia wants of us. Back in post #19 (on Diversity: Our Service to God) I mentioned the work of the 17th-century Catholic saint Louis de Montfort who wrote of Divine Wisdom long before the modern re-discovery of the wisdom perspectives. Montfort was a young and enthusiastic missionary priest when he wrote The Love of Eternal Wisdom and, as I said in that post, the resulting text "is filled with the breezy slang of a youthful but charismatic leader trying to speak in a hip style to an even more youthful audience."

Montfort describes Sophia as almost like a stalker; she is always pursuing us. "Divine Wisdom inspires us to do everything, to go everywhere, to try every new thing, to leave nothing unexplored. That we should become all that we can be. That," says this young visionary saint, "is what the Wisdom of God wants from us!"

===

Montfort also says that Eternal Wisdom "gives us the courage to be creative." He says that Wisdom's "greatest need, from its point of view, and its greatest gift, from our point of view, is our collaboration with it in the on-going creation of the world."

As I mentioned in the second of my two posts on the Immense Transition (#36), an emphasis on creative transformation, especially on having the courage to be an explorer or pioneer, is not something that was stressed in the religious writings of the past. But as we move beyond the limitations of the Thinking function's imprisonment in the patriarchal perspectives of former centuries, we are coming to recognize, as Matthew Fox notes in his book on Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet, that it's precisely our creativity, via our free choices, that defines us.

"Human creativity," says Fox, "is not frosting on the cake" but "integral to our sustainability." Creative newness is our "survival mechanism... it is the essence of who we are."

===

There's one more image of Sophia that goes along with "teacher," "guide" and "counselor." It, too, is unfamiliar, but it's especially important. It's the one that shows up when we are most in need of becoming more aware of ourselves. I mentioned it in one of my very earliest posts (#3, High School 50th Anniversary Report) and also more recently in post #36 (on the second of two posts on Aspects of the Immense Transition): the image of the trickster.

Native American peoples and all the earlier pre-industrial cultures which daily honor the first rays of the sun know about the trickster image. Even Louis de Montfort saw it in 17th-century Catholic France. Montfort says that "although Eternal Wisdom is in charge of the whole world, it works unobtrusively." And "This means," he says, "that often we don’t recognize it, especially in life’s difficulties."

This divine guidance that we "often don't recognize" is described in many religious traditions with animal names such as Coyote, Raven, Brer Rabbit or Anansi the Spider. Although they are often presented in a negative way, these trickster figures don't put obstacles in our path just for the fun of it. They are ways that help us to become more aware of ourselves, to be more conscious of what's needed in our efforts to become all that we can be. And they always promote cooperation rather than competition as the way to our creative transformation.

Trickster images especially help us in one additional way: in recognizing our need to face evil, death and tragedy as aspects of the cosmic flow. In the words of Claude Tresmontant, the author of the book on Hebrew Thought who I quoted back in post #39, transformation "often comes to us via boredom or suffering."

As director of the way the world works and guide to our personal growth and development, Sophia tests us; in her role as trickster-guide in our path to creative newness she helps us to accept our woundedness and vulnerability and to make the right choices in our efforts to become all that we can be. The Book of Ecclesiasticus says explicitly that "She will lead us over rough, narrow and winding ways."

===

Here are some thoughts from Hal Taussig's book, Wisdom's Feast, Sophia in Study and Celebration, that I mentioned in the previous post which are especially interesting and relevant with regard to this morning/guide aspect of Divine Wisdom.

Taussig begins by noting that "because she is at the heart of all things coming into being, Sophia is Wisdom itself." It's not, he says, "an obvious connection for the twentieth century mind."

In chapter 4 of the book of Proverbs the author talks about Sophia this way: "Listen my children, to a father's instruction; pay attention, and learn what clear perception is. Acquire Sophia, acquire perception; never forget her. Do not desert her, she will keep you safe, love her, she will watch over you."

Wisdom will not only watch over us; Sophia is identical with "perception" itself, with being a conscious person. Taussig spells it out: "The relationship a person has to Sophia is virtually the same as their own relationship to the process of understanding."

Sophia is also imaged as the process of learning in chapter 6 of Wisdom: "Quick to anticipate those who desire her, she makes herself known to them." Sophia means learning!

At the heart of the creative process, Sophia "pervades and permeates all things" (Wisdom 7). She is at the heart of all that one studies.

Wisdom 6 proclaims: "She is readily seen by those who love here and found by those who look for her. In every thought of theirs, she comes to meet them." As participants in the cosmic process, our conscious growth and development results, in Taussig's words, "in a personal encounter with the One at the heart of the creative process."

===

Taussig also notes that most of the texts about Sophia have to do with her relationship to humanity. The first chapter of Proverbs, for example, says of her: "Sophia calls aloud in the streets, she raises her voice in the public squares; she calls out at the street corners, she delivers her message at the city gates."

Wisdom wants to be our teacher! Proverbs 8 says: "Does Sophia not call meanwhile? On the hilltop, on the road, at the crossways, she takes her stand; beside the gates of the city, at the approaches to the gates she cries aloud, 'O people I am calling you; my cry goes out to the children of humanity'."

"Listen, I have serious things to tell you," she adds. "From my lips come honest words. My mouth proclaims the truth. All the words I say are right, nothing twisted in them, nothing false, all straightforward to the one who understands, honest to those who know what knowledge means."

Taussig notes that Sophia gives the impression of being impatient with Earth's children: "Her main complaint is that they will not listen to her."

Taussig also points out that the most interesting thing here is that Sophia never teaches anything specific. What she teaches is herself. Sophia is something and someone to obtain and possess. And the reward is fullness of life. In Proverbs 8 she says, "With me are riches and honor, lasting wealth and justice." And the first chapter of Ecclesiasticus says: "She fills their whole house with their heart's desire, and their storerooms with her produce. The crown of Sophia makes peace and health flourish... [for] those who hold her close."

Sophia and her rewards are identical. Proverbs 4 says, "Acquire Sophia, acquire perception. Hold her close, and she will make you great; embrace her, and she will be your pride." And Wisdom 8 says, "If in this life wealth be a desirable possession, what is more wealthy than Sophia whose work is everywhere?"

Taussig says that as the learning process itself, Sophia "calls us to a life of seeking understanding of the world in which we live. Since she is the One who participates in bringing everything into being, she is the natural teacher and the natural content." He spells it out explicitly: "The learning process is a way that humans share in the creative process." Our personal growth and development, and our growth in awareness of the world, are Divine Wisdom.

In the previous post, I remarked, "Can science and religion converge more explicitly?" Here I would put it in more personal terms: Can our personal growth and development be understood any more explicitly as being convergent with the activity of Divine Sophia "whose work is everywhere"?

===

Chapters 10 and 11 of Wisdom offer not just an dynamic view of our personal transformation but also of human history itself as it is guided by Sophia. There, as Taussig says, "the writer retells the sacred history of the Hebrew people from Sophia's point of view." In the stories of "Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham and Lot, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses," Sophia is seen as the designer and guide/director of human history and cultural development.

Wisdom 11 even describes the Exodus event as the work of Sophia: "She herself was their shelter by day and their starlight through the night. She brought them across the Red Sea, led them through that immensity of water, while she swallowed their enemies in the waves, then spat them out from the depths of the abyss."

Taussig notes that the familiar images of the pillar of cloud and fire (which guided the slaves through the desert in their escape from Egypt) are described here as shelter and starlight. And Sophia not only leads the Hebrews through the sea, she is also described as a kind of sea monster swallowing the Egyptians and spitting them out.

Fascinating stuff!

===

My main point in the previous post (on Evening Wisdom: Sophia as Architect) is that Sophia fashions us to be who-and-what we are; as creative artist, architect, artificer and designer of our identity, the Mystery gives itself to us. My main point in this post on Morning Wisdom is that as counselor, teacher and trickster-guide, Divine Wisdom calls to each of us personally, asking for our free and full cooperation in the work of the creation of the world and of ourselves.

The question once again is, in Karl Rahner's words, "Are we willing to make the effort to be sensitive and responsive?"

sam@macspeno.com

#31. Integrating the Four Functions

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts:
http://www.sammackintosh.blogspot.com/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Western culture is lopsided, and it's that lopsidedness which accounts for the great damage patriarchal attitudes inflict on women, minorities and the natural world. It's also the cause of the antagonism between rationalist science and dualistic religion and of much of our racial and religious conflict.

The main point of this post is that the four-fold "quaternary" perspective on the human mind can help us understand that lopsidedness. It can provide us with the basic tools we need for moving beyond the failures of religious dualism and patriarchal rationalism. Just as all four functions of consciousness are needed for our personal wholeness, so too we need all four ways of being religious for a contemporary healing of the Earth. I mean "religious" in the broadest sense, as I described in the previous post: what matters to us most.

If you haven't read the two most recent posts-- #29 (The Four-fold Mind) and #30 (Ways of Being Religious)-- you might like to read them in conjunction with this one. They go together.

===

We know that our four-fold mind has its origins in the matter of the universe; possibly, as Jung suggested, in the four-fold bonding capacity of the carbon atom, and certainly in the four main structural lobes of the brain. But what's of primary interest here is not the cosmic or neurological origin of the four-fold mind but how it manifests itself at the level of human culture.

We're not used to thinking about cosmic evolution in cultural terms, but it's important to do so now in this time of Immense Transition. As I've said frequently in these postings, one of the great values of Biogenetic Structuralism is that-- in combining biological evolution with neurophysiology and cultural anthropology-- it does precisely that.

Seeing the four-fold mind from the perspectives of humanity's cultural evolution can help us to understand what's involved in the truly immense transition global humanity is experiencing as we move from the static worldview of previous centuries to the dynamic-evolutionary perspectives of modern science.

One thing we can see right away when we look at quaternary consciousness from the perspective of its cultural development is that the static worldview of the past has been characterized by the values and attitudes of patriarchy. Those patriarchal perspectives have dominated western civilization for several thousand years, so it's important for us to have a good idea just what "patriarchy" means.

Although it may sound strange, in its original sense "patriarchy" refers to something good. It describes the ancient male role, dating back to the Paleolithic hunting culture, of being responsible for providing food and protection for the lives of those not able to do it for themselves. It's in this positive sense that the word is used of the Old Testament "patriarchs," Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In terms of the four-fold mind, patriarchy is the White Buffalo (Sensation) function's focus on the immediate details needed for the survival of life; it's the way of service on behalf of all I described in the previous post on Ways of Being Religious.

But "patriarchy" has come to have a totally negative meaning nowadays. In terms of the four functions, "patriarchy" refers to the dominance of the Gold Eagle (Thinking) function, with its concern for distance, separation and ascetical effort, along with the neglect of Green Mouse Feeling and the denial even of the existence of Black Bear Intuition.

It's precisely this lopsidedness of patriarchal culture which accounts for so many of the world's problems, such as the denial of equal rights to women, the oppression of minorities, and the exploitation of the natural world.

It's the lack of Green Mouse Feeling's concern for devotedness to connections and relationships, for example, that allows the captains of industry and the CEOs of the corporate world to remain indifferent to things like the poisoning of the Earth's air and water and the destruction of life in ecosystems which had remained in balance for millions of years. It also accounts for contemporary horrors such as religious groups using children and mentally retarded women as suicide bombers and political leaders proclaiming the legitimacy of human torture.

Clearly, we need to move away from such patriarchal attitudes and to move towards a more integrated consciousness for the healing of the Earth and its peoples. And, as I've said, it's my main point: that an understanding of how the four-fold mind works at the cultural level can help us do that.

===

From the quaternary perspective we can easily see that the patriarchal mentality is essentially a usurpation of the psyche's four-fold activities by just one of them; Thinking has so dominated the western mind that it even equates itself with consciousness.

And with the Gold Eagle function's emphasis on things like "power," "control," "victory and defeat"-- words which the media use interchangeably nowadays in reporting not just political events and athletic contests but also in describing the activities of the business world and the entertainment industry-- the significance of matter, body and personal relationships for the culture as a whole, and indeed, the very meaning of our lives, has been lost.

I feel the need to add a note here for those who are already somewhat attuned to the New Cosmology and feel impatient with the slowness of the Immense Transition taking place in our day. We can easily become frustrated if we don't keep in mind how early it still is in the change-over from the static to the dynamic-evolutionary worldview. It's only a hundred years, for example, since we humans realized that we live on a planet near a star in a galaxy, that our galaxy contains millions of stars and that it is just one among many trillions of galaxies. And it's only a bit longer, maybe a century and a half ago, since we've come to understand that the world itself is many billions of years old.

This recently-acquired in-depth perception of time and space is of tremendous significance. But our growing in-depth perception of the quaternary nature of human consciousness and its role in human culture is even more significant.

It's precisely because of the patriarchal mindset that contemporary leaders in the larger areas of our cultural life are slow to see that significance. Black Bear perceptions and Green Mouse values are missing from all of our communal concerns-- politics, religion, education, the economy and most especially the world of advertising. We await the accumulation of a critical mass-- a tipping point-- in the dawning of the big picture. We know that it's coming, but we need to keep in mind that the only way that it can come is by changes in the hearts and minds of individuals, one by one.

===

Specifically with regard to the convergence of science and religion, we can readily see-- in terms of quaternary consciousness at the cultural level-- that it's the patriarchal dominance of the isolated Thinking function that accounts for our many centuries of religious dualism and scientific rationalism. With their similar emphasis on rules, laws and order, it's clear that both religious dualism and scientific rationalism are simply at different ends of the spectrum of the Thinking function's activity.

And once we become aware of the Thinking function's need for things like distancing and differentiation-- so well imaged by the Medicine Wheel's high-flying Gold Eagle-- we can also see the great value of the Green Mouse Feeling function's focus on connectedness, belonging and leaving out no one. Its concern for including every one is exactly the opposite of the isolation and hierarchical attitudes of Gold Eagle Thinking.

We also can see our need for a recovery of the Black Bear Intuition's way of vision when we look at things from the perspectives of quaternary consciousness. We need not only to hold on to the good things of the past, as Green Mouse does, but also to validate and encourage those creative persons among us who, with their strong Black Bear function, can share their life-dreams and new visions of the world with us. It's clear that we can't have a big picture without acknowledging our need for integrating the four functions.

My discovery of Biogenetic Structuralism was so exciting precisely because the Biogenetic Structuralist perspective is a wonderfully creative attempt to look at that big picture specifically from the science side of things, taking into account the combined data of evolutionary biology, neurophysiology and cultural anthropology. There are also perspectives from the religion side which attempt to take into account that big picture and I hope to describe some of them in future posts; but laying out the science perspectives first seems the right way for me to go.

What I especially want to emphasize here is our need to see that the process of healing wholeness, growth and development, centering, balance-- whatever we call it -- is essentially one of paying attention to the four-fold nature of the human psyche; and that, in attempting to integrate the four functions of the mind, we need all the help we can get.

The most stimulating and thought-provoking source of help along these lines I've come across is the work of the New Mexico artist and psychologist Steven Gallegos. I mentioned him several times in the previous post. In this one I want to share some of his thoughts which I see as especially relevant to our great need for integrating the four functions.

===

His full name is Eligio Steven Gallegos. He offers workshops in North America and Europe on integrating consciousness specifically with the help of animal imagery. I hope you will check out his website. What follows are some insights about the four-fold mind that especially caught my attention in his book Animals of the Four Windows: Integrating Thinking, Sensing, Feeling and Imagery (Moon Bear Press, 1991).

With the book's odd title and its brevity (it's hardly 150 pages), I initially had the impression that it was just another of the many quirky New Age books still going around. But when I saw that it has an introduction by Steven Larsen, an author whose classic work on shamanism (The Shaman's Doorway) I've found to be especially solid, I was convinced that I should take it seriously. I'm very glad I did.

Gallegos calls the functions of consciousness "windows of knowing" and "modes of awareness." One of his main points is that these "windows" operate specifically via archetypal images which show themselves in the form of animals.

It sounds awkward at first, precisely because in our culture we are not used to seeing things via the Black Bear (Intuition) function, but his point is clear enough: the language or vocabulary of the psyche is, to a great extent, animal imagery. The Native American medicine wheel is a wonderful example of his point. Gallegos emphasizes, however, that if we look for it, each of us will find that we have our own animal imagery.

While there are many scholars and workers in the field of Depth Psychology dealing with various aspects of Jung's understanding of the un-conscious psyche, I don't know of anyone except Steven Gallegos who has done such interesting work in enhancing Jung's ideas about the functions of the conscious mind.

Gallegos' work is itself an excellent example of the value of the four-fold perspective. Because he is an artist as well as psychologist, with his strong Black Bear function he is able to talk about the big picture precisely from that artistic-Intuitive point of view which is so lacking in contemporary culture. Gallegos offers us an integrated and wholistic view of our need for an integrated and wholistic view!

In what follows I offer my understanding of some of his ideas focusing on the Thinking and Intuition functions, the functions which seem to me most specifically concerned with the healing of the gap between science and religion. I hope that my comments will spark you to read his books yourself.

Besides the idea that the four functions show themselves in the form of animal imagery, one of Gallegos' most basic and powerful insights is that the relationships which appear among the animal images makes clear their healing quality. In their relationship with one another the animals images connected with the four modes of awareness indicate that movement toward healing and wholeness is fundamental to the psyche. The conscious mind wants to be whole.

In the context of the New Cosmology, this movement toward wholeness which these "animals of the four windows" exhibit can be seen as nothing less than the dynamis of cosmic evolution, the same energy "that moves the sun and stars" (as Dante put it), operating within us at the most intimately personal level. That it operates by way of animal imagery is not a common understanding even among those familiar with the Jungian consciousness functions, and for that reason I see it as especially important in the work of what Thomas Berry calls "reinventing the human." I'm emphasizing these ideas because I haven't seen them spelled out elsewhere in the perspectives of the New Cosmology.

===

Specifically with regard to the Black Bear (Intuition) function, Gallegos suggests that it might be better to call it "Imagery." He suggests that we reserve the term "Intuition" for the wholeness of the conscious psyche, which he describes as the "synergistic activity" of the four functions working together. He gives a good analogy: it's something like 3-D vision, which results when vision from separate eyes comes together "synergistically" to make something greater than its components-- in the case of conscious awareness, an in-depth perception of reality.

Gallegos says that Jung didn't distinguish between the Imagery function and the wholeness of the psyche simply because Jung was so good at Imagery and because Jung's Intuition (in Gallegos' sense) expressed itself primarily via imagery.

This sounds confusing, to be sure, especially for people who are familiar with the Jungian terminology. But I think it's important to mention since Gallegos not only frequently uses the term "Imagery" for the Black Bear (i.e., Jungian "Intuition") function; he also has some very important things to say about it.

This is yet another example of the struggle we have with words during the Immense Transition we're in. Personally, I've found it helpful to use the word "Imagination" for Gallegos' term "Imagery." It may also help to keep in mind that in more religion-oriented settings, the synergistic wholeness which Gallegos means by the term "Intuition" is often referred to "unitive-awareness" or "totality-consciousness." (This seems to me a real breakthrough in our understanding of mystical-unitive experience in contemporary-- and appropriately evolutionary-- language. Maybe the first, in the western religious tradition, since Meister Eckhart. But that's something for a future post.)

In any case, Gallegos' main point as I understand it is that, whatever we call this "window" which on the Medicine Wheel is imaged by the Black Bear, it is "the foundation of our consciousness of all and of everything." It "connects us to all and gives the All its presence and persistence." Gallegos notes that it does so precisely as Jung said, by "transmitting images" and that these images are nothing less than our "perceptions of the relations between things."

===

We need to keep in mind that the Black Bear function is a way of seeing in the broadest, widest and most comprehensive sense, and that it is the realm not only of artists, musicians and poets but of all creative individuals. (And, in the perspectives of the New Universe Story, that includes you and me.)

Our Black Bear Imagination function-- in its desire to explore possibilities for the future and its seeking to have an authentic ("wholistic") perception of reality, truth, and the meaning of life beyond the conventional-- is the very opposite of the attitudes of the institutional churches and governmental and educational organizations which seek to censor and silence creative expressions which depart from the well-established conventional norms.

And censoring-- saying "no" to something good, putting a stop to a creative enterprise-- is the death of creativity and cosmic dynamism. An especially relevant understanding of how such censoring prevents healing can be found in a book by the well-known art therapist Shaun McNiff, The Arts and Psychotherapy (Charles C. Thomas Publishers, 1981). (That's another topic for a future post.)

In contrast to patriarchal censoring, Imagery consciousness puts us in touch with the cosmic process in terms of our own personal healing, growth and development. And it also empowers us to creative participation in the life of the earth and of human society in terms of ecological awareness and concerns for equality, peace and justice-- precisely what the New Cosmology is all about.

Knowing that we have a four-fold mind not only roots us in the Earth and allows us to see that our personal creative participation in the Earth's cultural development is nothing less than the on-going activity of the cosmic evolutionary process. It also helps us to see that Imagery is the fuel (or energy) for the dynamic cosmic process taking place within us. And thus it allows us to recognize the importance of symbol, myth and ritual in our personal and communal development.

I find it fascinating that the "Anthropology Plus" of Biogenetic Structuralism, the comments of Thomas Merton in his essay on William Faulkner and religion's roots in the imagination which I quoted in #26 (Help from Uncle Louie), and the insights of artist-therapist Steven Gallegos I'm describing here, all point us in the same direction: the great importance of symbol and ritual in our lives.

Despite how complicated these ideas at first may seem, it's worth taking time to think about them seriously. In terms of the convergence of science and religion, they helps us to understand why-- with its need for hierarchal power and superiority, and its fear of connectedness and relationships-- the patriarchal mind ignores the very existence of the Black Bear function which transmits our awareness of relationships to our consciousness and is the source of our empowerment to participate in the evolution of the universe.

===

I hope I've said enough to make my main point, but I've got one more thing to share. Perhaps of greatest interest with regard to the lopsidedness of patriarchal culture is that Gallegos found to his surprise that it's neither Black Bear Imagination nor Green Mouse Feeling that's most severely damaged; it's the Thinking function itself.

Thinking awareness, he says, has been "misused, injured, chained, trapped" by patriarchal rationalism, precisely in its having had external authority imposed on it, rather than having been allowed to function properly from within.

Its natural mode isn't only concerned with distance, distinctions and differentiation, Gallegos says, but with movement. With its focus on the sequential flow of time, as I described in the previous post, our Gold Eagle Thinking function moves us naturally toward wholeness and communion and the completion of the "not yet." It "relentlessly searches for wholeness," as Gallegos says, and its "natural mode of operation is questioning."

And questioning, needless to say, is in the greatest contrast to the imposition of beliefs by external authority, whether parental, political or religious.

Jim Wallis, well-known founder of the Sojourners movement, says in his new book The Great Awakening (HarperOne, 2008) that "the two great hungers in our world today are the hunger for spirituality and the hunger for social justice." People don't want to go left or right," he says, "they want to go deeper."

Integrating the four functions can help. We've had enough of being lopsided.

sam@macspeno.com

#30. Ways of Being Religious

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts: 

http://www.sammackintosh.blogspot.com/

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The convergence of science and religion is especially clear when we look at studies done by the human sciences which deal with humanity's religious practices. The data come primarily from cultural anthropology and sociology. It's probably not surprising that four basic patterns are evidenced in global religious experience across all the denominations and religious traditions of the Earth; it makes sense in terms of our "quaternary consciousness," the Four-fold Mind I described in the previous post.

What may be surprising, however, is that there is no readily agreed-on definition of "religion" to use when we're looking at the various ways people are religious. ("Religion" is like the word "God." We all know what it means-- or think we do.) There are dozens of definitions of "religion" floating around.

But if we take the word in its broadest sense-- to mean "whatever is most deeply important to a person"-- then even the large number of modern people who don't want anything to do with traditional or institutionalized forms of religion do, in fact, exhibit the same four basic patterns of behavior and experience with regard to what matters most to them.

If you haven't read the previous post (#29) where I spelled out what I call the "ABCs of the four-fold mind," you might like to read it in connection with this one; they go together. In this present post and the one that follows I hope to share some thoughts about the significance for the healing of the Earth of the fact that our four-fold mind results in four ways of being religious.

===

Since even the most basic aspects of our physical existence --time, space and matter-- are usually understood in terms of fours (the four seasons, the four times of day, the four directions, for example), it really isn't surprising, as I've said, that because consciousness operates in four distinct ways, there are also four essentially different ways of being religious-- or as many prefer today, of being "spiritual."

But it's also important to understand the more traditional ways of being religious. If we can see the best of the past, we can better judge what's appropriate for our present transitional situation.

This post's title comes from a book I used when I taught college courses on the nature of religious experience back in the 1980s. It was Ways of Being Religious by Frederick J. Streng, then of Southern Methodist University. I had come across the book years earlier in a college book store, and when I saw it I knew instantly that it was important. I said to myself, "If I ever have a chance to teach a course about the nature of religion, this is the book I'd use." And that's what happened.

I don't think Frederick Streng ever mentioned that the four main ways of being religious as he described them are related to Jung's four functions of consciousness, but that they are clicked with me instantly, and I've been accumulating examples ever since.

Our four-fold mind seems to want to understand not just time and space and matter but everything in terms of fours. We're just not yet especially conscious of that fact. Or maybe we are, and we don't think it's especially important. I think it is.

As we move beyond scientific rationalism and religious dualism into the new Universe Story which contemporary science presents to us, the significance of the quaternary nature of the mind will become more obvious: it seems to be intrinsic to the perspectives of the New Cosmology. I hope to talk about those ideas in detail in future postings; this one offers some introductory ideas about the four traditional ways of being religious.

===

Being Religious via the SENSATION FUNCTION

Sensation is one of the mind's two perception activities; by it we see not the forest but the trees and it's primarily concerned with details in the here and now. The question Sensation asks about anything is "What's it for? How can we make use of it?" The energies of the Sensation function are especially oriented to those details which need attention in order to sustain life: with providing food, shelter, protection, whatever is needed so that life can continue. And its focus is not just details in a vague sense, but attention to all the details: not overlooking anything which might be important, not leaving out anything or anybody.

It makes good sense that on the Medicine Wheel the Sensation function is imaged by the Buffalo, the animal which provided food, shelter and tools for the Plains Indians, and that it is placed in the North and connected with the cold of winter and dark of midnight-- those harsh conditions where overlooking details even for a short time can quickly result in disaster.

Because of its focus on responsibility, people with a strong Sensation function are good in emergencies and are attracted to those kinds of jobs and tasks that involve immediate and close attention to details. Engineers and emergency room personnel are good examples.

The brain locus of the Sensation function is the Frontal lobe, which is concerned not only with focusing attention and concentration but also with muscle activity, so people with a strong Sensation function can also become good musicians and good athletes: they find it easy to keep in physical motion for long periods of time and don't quickly get bored with repetitive practice.

---

Frederick Streng called being religious by the Sensation function "the way of cosmic harmony." It's a way of service to others, taking care of people in need, "helping out" simply because that's the right thing to do. Drug rehabs, food banks, houses of hospitality and soup kitchens are staffed by people for whom such social action is their way of being in harmony with the way things are meant to be. Volunteers of all kinds express what's important to them in this way, and perhaps the most common expression of "doing what should be done" is the effort made by parents to take good care of their children.

Even though many would not often describe their motivation in this way, people who are religious primarily by the Sensation function tend to see God "in every hand and face." Martin Luther said, "Ever, ever, goes the Christ in stranger's guise." Mother Teresa describes a leper dying in the streets as "Jesus in a distressing form." As a way of being religious, Sensation takes literally the gospel's words, "A cup of cold water given in my name is given to me." People who are religious-spiritual in this way see life as a work of service for the common good "on behalf of all and for all," in the words of the Byzantine liturgy.

Bearing witness, in the sense of taking a stand against a hostile and indifferent world, is also part of this way of being religious. Today, we can see much better than in the past that such work includes service not only to human beings who are in need, but also to animals and plants and to the Earth itself. In our day, ecological concerns take their place right next to work for social justice, peace and equality. Thanks to the Sensation function, we're coming to see in the modern evolutionary context that concern for the Earth and concern for the Earth's peoples are one.

===

Being Religious via the THINKING FUNCTION

The Thinking function is not a perception activity but an evaluative action: it is the conscious mind judging whether what we believe to be true conforms to the facts as we know them (or think we know them). The Thinking function looks at everything with a certain objectivity and from a distance; it's always dividing, separating, making logical distinctions, always seeking clarity and asking "Is it true?"

On the Medicine Wheel the place of the Thinking function is the East, where it is connected with the rising sun, the spring of the year, and imaged as the Gold Eagle flying high in the sky at dawn. Its element is wind and air.

In many cultures, the same word is used for wind, air and our life-breath. The cross-cultural list is impressive: akasa in Sanskrit, chi in Chinese, prana in Hindi, vayu in ancient Persian, woniya in Lakota, ruah in Hebrew, pneuma in Greek, spiritus in Latin. All of these words have the same basic meaning: the dynamic and life-giving energy of the universe which is around us and within us, permeating, creating and nurturing the growth and development of every human individual and of all things.

Not surprisingly, Thinking is associated with the Temporal lobe of the brain, the area connected with language, math and conceptual thinking. Because its time-focus is neither past nor present nor future but the sequential flow of time, the Thinking function is especially concerned with differentiation and uniqueness. Persons with a strong Thinking function are commonly oriented to the inner venture of finding the true Self-- with that process which depth psychology calls individuation and which, as I've spelled out in several previous blog entries, Biogenetic Structuralism names ontogenesis.

Because of its focus on time's movement and flow, the Thinking function readily embraces the evolutionary world view of modern science. It's also because of this emphasis on sequence and flow that we often identify the Thinking function with logic, but obviously the Thinking includes a lot more than logic's sequential reasoning. The Thinking function has been wonderfully described by the artist-psychologist Steven Gallegos as the psyche "searching relentlessly for wholeness and the 'not yet'."

---

It's that "relentless searching" which explains why being religious via the Thinking function is a question of effort: the discipline needed to become all that we are called to be.

The classical term for this effort is asceticism. In Greek, an ascetic is a trainer or someone in training with a trainer. Today's gyms are filled with modern secular ascetics; they also jog daily through our streets.

A key religious trait here is doing what's difficult: practices like fasting, being celibate, going without comfortable clothing, living without comfortable companions, following unconventional dietary laws. Such practices are known in almost every religious tradition. In a dualistic context, ascetic abuses abound and I've no doubt every reader can give examples from their own background of such abusive practices being imposed on them.

But the most fundamental ascetic practice isn't something negative; it is simply being attentive. Every religious tradition (and that's "religion" in the broadest sense: "what's important to us") has exhortations such as "Be aware." "Pay attention." "Be sober and watchful." "Stay awake!" "Keep vigil." "Let us attend." "Be mindful." "Wake up and smell the coffee."

The heart of the Thinking function's way of being religious is the willingness to courageously follow that inner generative drive for enterprise and exploration which such persons experience.

In this context, "God" tends to be understood as transcendent-only (distance and apart, just like the Thinking function itself), but in whatever forms a religious tradition expresses its sense of the divine, that ultimate cosmic spiritus is also recognized as having a major guiding aspect. It guides us-- to become who-and-what we feel called to be-- by our genes, cultural background, personality type and the circumstances of our lives.

This divine guidance is also recognized in many traditions as having a trickster component, where it's understood that the generative guidance of the universe often comes to us via boredom or suffering. Most religious traditions recognize our need to face evil, death and tragedy as aspects of the cosmic flow, and that learning to accept one's vulnerability is in fact an aspect of being "befriended" by the divine trickster-guide.

It's for this reason that courage is usually a strong value for the Thinking function, the courage to be creative, to do everything, to go everywhere, to try every new thing, to leave nothing unexplored: to becoming all that we can be in response to "the will of God" for us. It's also for this reason that being religious by the Thinking function obviously has major significance for the New Universe Story provided by contemporary science and the New Cosmology.

===

Being Religious via the FEELING FUNCTION

Like the Thinking function, Feeling is a judgment activity, but the energy of Feeling is in total contrast to that of Thinking. The Feeling function's emphasis is not on distancing but on relating: not on separateness but togetherness, not on isolation but belonging. Its primary orientation is to the warmth of participation, the experience of closeness, the simple delight in being part of it all.

The evaluation which Feeling makes is not concerned with whether a perception is accurate but whether what we think we are perceiving is valuable. Does it help or hinder life? Feeling's question is not "Is it true?" but "Is it friend or foe?" (And, if it's not dangerous, "Do I like it?")

On the Medicine Wheel, Feeling is located in the South where its Native American animal is the Green Mouse. Its element is fire, its season summer, and its time of day noon-- all images of warmth and connectedness. Its time-focus is the past.

Like a mouse that has to jump to see the distant mountains, Feeling is very close to the earth. And like all rodents, it's a pack-rat: the Feeling function tries to save everything. It doesn't want to part with anything, and for that reason persons with a strong Feeling function have a tough time letting go of things.

Because the Feeling function's focus on the past is the literal opposite of the Thinking function's concern for the flow of time, people with a strong Feeling function also tend to be conservatives, whether religiously or politically or both. The biblical prophets are a good example of the political-religious combination; their main historical role wasn't predicting the future, as is sometimes thought, but reminding the people of the past: " You have betrayed the past. You have gone against the agreement (covenant) with the Lord. Return to the right path!"

Feeling is associated with the brain's Parietal lobe, which has to do not with time but with space and the body's orientation in space. Again, we can see that what the Feeling function is all about is how we are related and connected with whatever is not our self, with what in previous posts I've called "the Other Half of Person."

---

The Feeling Function's primary way of being religious is devotional activity. "Devotion" just means doing whatever connects us with what's important to us. It's a familiar idea: if we're devoted to Monday night football, we watch "the game" every Monday night-- "religiously." The fact that devotional activities are also "symbols" in the literal sense is a less familiar idea, but "symbols" are simply things which connect us with what's important to us.

The Feeling function almost always pictures what's important to us in personal terms: God is frequently imaged as a protective Father or a caring Mother, for example, but also as Lover, Spouse, Sibling, Friend. Streng's name for this way of being religious was "The way of the Holy Presence."

Because the key idea here is relatedness, for the Feeling function, the divine is not transcendent but immediately present: "God with us." And being religious by the Feeling function is always social and down to earth: it's always about connecting with others and relating to things, whether in terms of sexual love, friendship, or cosmic love for All. It's always about, as Native Americans say often in prayers and speeches, "All my relations!"

A common devotional action in many traditions is placing flowers in front of a sacred image-- of Mary or Buddha, for example-- just as we place flowers on our mother's grave. But anything done out of love, anything done to express a strong and positive relationship, would fit this category, such as saying long prayers or doing little acts of kindness. Examples are innumerable. Russian peasants used to do summersaults in front of their holy icons. Therese of Lesieux talks about picking up a piece of thread from a rug as an act of love for God. A woman in one of my classes once offered a delightful example of a devotional activity when she told us about how, simply out of love for him, she enjoyed ironing her husband's jockey shorts.

Steven Gallegos, the artist-psychologist I mentioned earlier, describes the awareness of the Feeling function as a consciousness of movement: a sense of "what's happening." And many modern thinkers talk about the "Immense Transition" we're currently experiencing as a turn toward episteme, by which they mean the western world's slowing dawning awareness that participation and connectedness are essential aspects of the human condition. Obviously the Feeling function's consciousness of our relatedness with all things is also a major component of the New Story of modern science.

===

Being Religious via the INTUITION FUNCTION

Intuition is the perception function by which we see the forest rather than trees. As the opposite of Sensation, it allows us to see not the bits and pieces of anything but the big picture. It allows us to envision the whole of any situation, even of all reality. People with a strong Intuition function are not uncomfortable with words like "awe," "wonder" and "reverence" to describe their experience of the wholeness and sacredness of life.

On the Medicine Wheel, Intuition is located in the West where it is associated with the autumn season and with the fluidity of its element, water. It is especially well-imaged by the diffuse vision we have of our surroundings during the evening twilight. Because its time-orientation is the future, it is especially concerned with healing and wholeness, for what we can become at our very best. It's for this reason that Intuition is imaged by the Black Bear, the "medicine animal" who, with its unique claws, is able to dig up the healing roots and herbs offered by the Earth.

In contrast to Sensation, which asks what something can be used for, Intuition asks "What does it mean?" While its focus is the meaning and significance of everything, its intention is just as practical as that of the Sensation function: it wants to know about the why of things. It is concerned with ultimate causes and the ultimate values. Needless to say, the rationalist mind of Western culture has an especially difficult time understanding this way of being religious.

---

The primary emphasis in being religious via the Intuition function is myth and ritual. Here, archetypal symbols and sacred stories are recognized as the language by which we enter into the deepest meaning of our existence, the tools by which we can become all that we can be.

So far, I've mentioned ritual in probably half of all my postings, and I focused on it in #26 (Help From Uncle Louie), where I described important ideas about ritual presented by Thomas Merton in a major essay written a few years before his death in the 1960s.

Merton was on the growing edge of contemporary religion and he looked at the religious elements in world literature in exactly the same way that anthropologists look at rites and ceremonies in world cultures. He describes, for example, the creative power of myth and ritual this way: it can bring us into "living participation with an experience of basic and universal human values." And with regard to their therapeutic effects, he notes that myth and ritual can enable us to "a more real evaluation of ourselves, a change of heart," and that thus it can bring us to "an awareness of our place in the scheme of things."

It was my own life-long interest in ritual which originally lead me to discover the "Anthropology Plus" of Biogenetic Structuralism. I'm especially interested in how ritual works-- specifically with regard to those transformational aspects that Merton describes-- in two senses: in terms of the workings of the brain and also with regard to what needs to be done in practical terms to insure that our rituals work well. I hope to spell out some of those thoughts in future posts.

C. G. Jung says Intuition is a direct pipeline to the unconscious. He describes it as the capacity to be in touch with the good energies of the earth-- especially in the form of animal powers and spirit ancestors, who are, as Native Americans say, "out there, wanting to help us." It also includes the shamanic power to “call in” those spirit-powers and archetypal energies of the universe, to make them available to all for our health, healing and wholeness. In surviving pre-patriarchal cultures, this way of being religious is so basic to human life that most of those cultural groups don't even have a name for it.

In western culture, for the last thousand years the classical form of this way of being religious has, to a great extent, been confined to monastic cloisters. In contrast, in Asian cultures the age-old meditative practices of this way of being religious are available to all.

In recent centuries, this way of being religious has also come to be known as "mystical" and the word has taken on strong negative connotations of magic and irrationality. But "mystical" just means "hard to put into words." Religious experience via the Intuition function is like tasting food and hearing music: it's not irrational or less real because it's non-verbal.

===

I realize that there are too many ideas here to be mentally digested easily. But I think they are worth all the time and energy we can give them.

Jung called Intuition "the religious function." He recognized it as the beginning and the end of all spirituality: religion's alpha and omega. But while it's obvious that being religious via the Intuitive function is the most neglected and least understood form of religious experience in contemporary society, it's also important to keep in mind that just as all four functions of consciousness are needed for our personal wholeness, as I stressed in the previous post, so too all four ways of being religious are needed for a contemporary healing of the Earth.

If we are going to move beyond the failures of religious dualism and patriarchal rationalism, these are the basic tools that will help us do it.

sam@macspeno.com