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The "kingdom" — the heart and essence of
Jesus' teaching…
When I was young, I spent my holidays with my grandparents who lived
in the town of Stanthorpe, nestled atop Queensland's Granite Belt. Their
house backed on to Mt Marley, a medium sized granite nob that dominated
the town. Every morning before breakfast and every evening after supper,
I would scale the rocky outcrops to stand upon its summit and dream dreams,
imagine the future, and ponder the mysteries of life. So often did I climb
that mountain that a deep path was worn among the trees along its north-western
aspect.
Decades have passed. My grandparents have gone to their reward. And I
have not climbed the mountain in many years. The once well-defined track
up its north-western side is now grown over, travelled only by roo and
fox.
The human psyche, or "soul" if you prefer, is like that mountain.
Those who regularly attend to their inner life, populated with dreams,
imaginings, and the great questions of life, have a well-worn track that
leads them to encounter the "real self". Those who fail to ever
venture further than the foothills of ego-consciousness, who never scale
the mountain of their unconscious, never find that "kingdom"
where reigns the true castellan of our hearts.
Locating the Kingdom…
Thomas Merton (1962)
wrote, "Nothing could be more alien to contemplatives
than the cogito ergo sum of Descartes, 'I think therefore I am'.
This is the declaration of an alienated being, in exile from his [or her]
own depths, compelled to seek comfort from some proof of his [or her]
own existence based on observation of what he [or she] thinks…. For
the contemplative there is no cogito ('I think') and no ergo
('therefore') but only SUM, I Am" (8-9).
This is a timely message for us today, especially for those of us who
claim to be devotees of Jesus and members of his community of faith. When
the members of Christ's body are not encouraged to scale the heights of
our inner terrains, the Church is bereft of vision and passion.
The members of the body are detached from the heart and mind of the body,
and the path to wholeness is lost. There is here an important psychological
truth, as well a spiritual one - if, indeed, we could separate the two.
Carl Jung (1958)
wrote, "Psychology is neither biology nor physiology,
nor any other science than just this knowledge of the psyche"
(63). The psyche refers to the totality of
the personality and, thus, it is synonymous with our concept of the soul
as "the spaceless space, [the] inner cosmos
which incorporates all psychic processes, both conscious and unconscious"
(Welch, 1982: 66). In John
Welch's insightful phrase the psyche is unknown to us and must
be "uncovered and recovered", which is a life's wok (ibid.).
This is what Jung called the process of "Individuation".
In this process the ego represents the centre of consciousness and the
gatekeeper to the conscious mind. Yet it only represents one small portion
of the whole psyche, the vast bulk of which lies "beneath" conscious
awareness and "within" the unconscious.
Each of us develops our individual ego by opting for two predominant
personality "functions"
or characteristics (intuiting, sensing, thinking, or feeling) and one
basic "attitude"
(introversion or extraversion) - which will be familiar to devotees of
the MBTI (Myers
Briggs Type Indicator). I'll use my self as an example. I am
an INTJ, which means that I am an
Introvert (I) whose primary function is thinking
(T) and, therefore, focused on processing or "judging"
information (J), while my secondary function is intuiting
(N) and, therefore, focused on gathering information.
It is important to note that the distinction between
introversion and extroversion has little to do with the way we use those
terms colloquially. They have more to do with where we draw our strength
and inspiration from than they do with the way we act. An introvert
can be very garrulous and sociable, just so long as he or she gets time
alone to recharge the batteries. Similarly, the extrovert can spend time
on quiet retreats and in long periods of deep reflective thought, just
so long as those periods of quiet are interspersed with social get-togethers
from which the extrovert draws his or her inspiration and empowerment.
Nevertheless, as we get older, both introverts and extroverts, "redeem"
the less developed functions — or, at least, we should! As one grows
older and wiser, one learns to use those functions that one has neglected
in one's early years. This is what Jung called the process of "Individuation".
In Jungian terms, these unredeemed or cut-off aspects of our psyche constitute
our "shadow".
It is in redeeming our shadow
via the process of "Individuation"
that we must surrender, or even sacrifice,
our ego, which can only limit
our quest to "recover and develop"
our whole psyche. The death
of ego is a necessary first step on the "Hero's Journey" to
rediscover our original wholeness — or our soul or our spiritual
dimension, where the divine dwells within. The
irony is that one must develop a strong ego to even embark upon this journey
of self-discovery, only to leave it behind in order to advance further
down that road towards "redemption".
This is what Thomas Merton means
when suggests that we can never know our own reality via thinking our
way towards it. Ego-consciousness is not the realm of "our real self"
(1972: 7). The only path to the "real
self" is through the "holocaust which takes place in this steady
burning to ashes of old worn out words, clichés, slogans, rationalisation…[and]
even holy conceptions" (13).
Jesus called this process "metanoia",
which literally means "change of mind".
Hence, there is here a remarkable coincidence. Both Jesus
and Jung saw redemption as prefaced
and facilitated by a radical transformation of our personality. It
is through such a radical change of mind
that we can begin the journey inwards to find our place in the kingdom
within.
A Map of the Terrain…
To find our way afresh to the dizzying heights of our unconscious we
need a map of the terrain. The Gospels provide such a map. The story of
Jesus is told as a journey narrative — they are like travel diaries
that describe the "hero's journey" of Jesus through the fairy-tale
like world of ancient Galilee and Judea. Like the scrolling title of the
Star Wars movies, Jesus' journey to death and new life appears as one
from a "galaxy far, far away" — it is sacred space and
sacred time, where our stories and Jesus' story coalesce.
In the story of Jesus' trials, battles, passion and death we find mirrored
our struggles to detach ourselves from our egos. In the story of his resurrection,
we see hope of a new, resurrected and fuller life beyond the death of
our ego. In the story of his ascension and exaltation, we can envision
our own destiny as being consumed with the presence of the "I Am"
who already dwells in our inmost hearts. But, as they say on the K-Tell
advertisements on late night TV, "there's more".
John A. Sanford, in his little book
entitled The Kingdom Within
(1970), argues that the Gospels testify that
Jesus seemed to have been comfortable and proficient in exercising all
four functions of the human psyche. In the Gospels, Jesus emerges as
the template for the fully realised, or in Jung's terms "fully individuated"
human being. Jesus had no shadow; which is probably
a Jungian way of saying that Jesus was fully human and fully divine.
St Paul saw Jesus as the "new
Adam" whose death and resurrection empowers us to live
a full life, supported and enabled to develop patience and perseverance,
to be inspired by hope and trust, and to become "new creations"
(e.g., Rom 5:12-7:25). By sacrificing the ego
and embarking on the "hero's journey" we find our way to the
kingdom.
 "The
kingdom of God is a present reality, experiencible in this life, and,
as we have seen, a psychological experience requiring of the individual
a new moral consciousness, a commitment to the inner way, self-confrontation,
and a giving of priority to inner values versus outer values. The kingdom
brings to the individual his or her own wholeness, meaning, and creativity,
so that the rewards of the kingdom are felt in this life. But there is
always a transcendent aspect to the kingdom… Or, in psychological
terms, one who seeks to establish wholeness in his or her life comes to
belong to Life. Having come to serve the purposes of life in this earthly
lifetime, he or she continues to serve a spiritual life in a world to
come". (Sanford, 1970:41)
A Final Personal Note…
It may be many years since I climbed Mt Marley in Stanthorpe; but I continue
to scale the mountains of my inner terrain, which has borne significant
fruit. I have done the MBTI at several
stages in my life and, as I age, I find it increasing difficult to tie
down my type. I was originally typed as an INTJ, but in my more recent
forays into the MBTI the scores on the "test" are becoming less
distinct. My scores for feeling and sensing are far greater than they
were when I did my first MBTI back in my late teens, when I was a clear
INTJ. Even my basic "introverted" persuasion seems to have drifted
a bit, and I now find myself more comfortable with allowing people into
my private world of thought.
Of course, personality typing is far from an exact science. Indeed, many
psychologists today reject the whole notion of fixed personalities. But
then the MBTI does not suggest that
personalities are fixed. Both recognise that the human personality is
dynamic and constantly evolving. Thus, they continue to provide excellent
tools to trace the contours of our process towards individuation and redemption.
Accordingly, I have always found the expression "death
of the ego" an excellent way to picture that aspect of
the spiritual journey that demands that radical metanoia,
or "change of mind", which
will allow us entry into the kingdom within.
 Bibliography
and Further Reading:
T. Merton (1972), New seeds of contemplation (New York: New Directions).
R. Reinhold (1997-2006) Personality pathways URL: www.personalitypathways.com
J. A. Sanford (1987), The Kingdom within: the inner meanings of Jesus'
sayings, rev. ed. (San Francisco: Harper).
The Myers & Briggs Foundation (2007) URL: www.myersbriggs.org
J. Welch (1982), Spiritual pilgrims (New York: Paulist Press).
C. Jung (1958), Collected works, Vol XI (New York: Pantheon Books).
Photo Credits:
"MBTI Grid" - the sixteen personality types with short descriptions.
Bill Pere (2007)
URL: www.billpere.com/WorkshopFolder/Workshop_images/MBTI_Grid.gif
"MBTI Wheel" - showing a more detailed schematic of the relationship
between the sixteen different types. Conflict Lab/Elysia (2007). URL:
www.conflictlab.com/elysia/images/mbtiNew.jpg
"The Four Basic Personality Types" The Far Side ©Gary
Larsen. Dolphin Cove
URL: www.infj.org/graphics/4basictypes.gif
|
 Ian
Elmer is a lecturer in New Testament at ACU National (formally
Australian Catholic University). He is also a member of the Centre
for Early Christian Studies, and was recently admitted into ACBA
(Australian Catholic Biblical Association). His research specialities
are Paul and First-Century Christianity. He is the author of published
articles in the Australian Ejournal of Theology and in Prayer and
Spirituality in the Early Church (a publication of the Centre for
Early Christian Studies). He has been advised recently that his
doctoral thesis, entitled Paul, Jerusalem and the Judaisers:
The Galatian Crisis in its Broader Historical Context has been
accepted and he is now awaiting the formal conferring of his doctorate.
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Ian Elmer
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