Memories, Dreams, Reflections: School Years

I’ve been reading Chapter 2 for some time but my work with SoulCollage® has gotten in the way of putting my thoughts to paper until now. In Chapter 2, we find ourselves in C.G.’s school years. All of this is very interesting to me. Under the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, I am an INFJ, the same personality type as Carl Jung. While I have found the description of this type to be uncannily accurate, I had no idea how similar in tone two people with the same personality type could be. We will see if that continues as the book covers his later years.

Jung appeared to be a fairly timid, lonely child, obviously (on hindsight) brilliant, and struggling to find his way to live with his uniqueness. Jung began to recognize different parts within him very early. One was the school boy and one a rather staid adult archetype. He also identified a personality that I would classify as his subconscious intuitive nature. The fact that he could even identify these parts so distinctly at such a young age shows the beginnings of his life work. His imagination was vivid and visual; accordingly, the parts were described and identified clearly within his mind.

Jung’s father was a parson who had an elementary faith-based belief, theology. The boy, C.G., was consumed with thinking about God. Through his internal dialogue and imagery, he viewed God as encompassing both "good and bad." However, he had difficulty with the Christian duality and the idea of the devil. During a trance state, he experienced an event that allowed him to view God in a way that would be blasphemous to his community (actually to me it sounded more like a pre-adolescent boy’s daydream). Through that experience, however, Jung identified grace. At this time he believed that following the will of God would result in things turning out for the best. He knew from experience (for faith was not part of his equation) that grace was given only to those who “fulfilled the will of God without reservation.”

Questions of faith continued to plague C.G. throughout his childhood. He found God in nature more than with man, although he felt that all sentient beings contained a spark of God. At times he felt alone with God. When that occurred he “was outside time; I belonged to the centuries; and He who then gave the answer was He who had always is, was there.” These mystical experiences were significant events in Jung’s life. He struggled with the idea of a personified God, yet “I understood that God was, for me at least, one of the most certain and immediate of experiences.” The "Other" side of him (which I will identify in hypnosis terms as the subconscious) was able to have a personal experience with God. "Here nothing separated man from God; indeed, it was as though the human mind looked down upon Creation simultaneously with God." He often found himself moved beyond the events of his daily life and into the "boundlessness of God's world."

I think Jung would not have felt so much internal struggle with theology if he had the knowledge of other religions (something he was interested in but his parents disallowed). The Hindu Vedantic idea of God as being both the one and the many may have resonated with him at this time. He said, "The stone has no uncertainties, no urge to communicate, and is eternally the same for thousands of years...I was the sum of my emotions, and the "Other” in me was the timeless, imperishable stone."

Not surprisingly, Jung felt a connection to Meister Eckhart who once said: “If you seek the kernel, then you must break the shell. And likewise, if you would know the reality of Nature, you must destroy the appearance, and the farther you go beyond the appearance, the nearer you will be to the essence." Jung's inner world was large and filled with nature images. He especially loved trees and the forest (like me), and he found them both "mysterious" and the "direct embodiments of the incomprehensible meaning of life." This is where he felt close to the deepest meaning. Reading this, I wondered if Jung would have had the same mystical, reverent experience I did before the 1,200 year old tree in the rain forest of Mears Island, British Columbia.

Church, however, was problematic for Jung. And he was disappointed when his communion resulted in no discernible internal change. The relatively orthodox faith he experienced seemed to him a masquerade and he felt like an outsider. “ C.G. found school equally as boring. He had some difficulty with boys bulling. Several times when he was interested in the topic, he wrote papers far above his years and was publicly accused by the teacher of plagiarism. Although untrue, this had an effect on his relationship with his peers. It was also at this time that he decided being best in school was no longer the goal and he strove to not be conspicuous. Being number two was an easier position with his peer group.

As a teenager, his father took Jung to a mountain and allowed him to go alone on a train ride to the top. The view of the expansive vista had a profound impact on Jung. For many years afterward, he would bring into his mind the memory of this place whenever he was overworked or weary (a good bit of self-hypnosis even if he didn't recognize it as such).

More to come in Chapter 3…