A guru, a village, or a group?
From the moment we open our eyes, we are meaning-seeking creatures, looking for what matters though we carry what matters deep within us.
Mark Nepo
Some say that, to find out who I truly am and why I am here, I need to find a wise person and follow their advice. On the other hand, it is often said that what each of us needs most is a village, to be part of a village. Or a group of like-minded seekers.
A community of people in search of what’s real, rather than a dream of some future life, can be a huge support. That’s true even when there are no Elders, and none of us knows enough to lead, because each of us has something to offer. The conscious presencing of each other can awaken a place in us that lives beyond the ego.
You may ask, why would we need a guru or a village or a group in order
to search for understanding? Perhaps a few old souls don’t. But no matter how honest we wish to be, most of us have a tendency to avoid efforts when nobody’s watching. So a guide who is more advanced could help a lot—perhaps less by what or he or she says than by who he or she is, or radiates. Each of us sends vibes into the world that can help or hinder those around us.
Problem is, when we wake up to how little we know and how much help we need, we can be attracted by false gurus, communities based on dubious values, and self-promoting group leaders who prey on people who need help. Then we could ask ourselves, “Does this person know what I need to know?”
The guru or group or therapist may offer support when it is most necessary, but in each of us there is an inner Guide—open to a larger energy than our usual level of being. So at a certain point we need to say goodbye to those others with great thanks for their generosity, and listen to our own deep inner voice. Otherwise, we can be locked in lifelong dependency on others, their opinions, their theories, their often-judgmental attitudes. Once free from that dependency, we can remain connected to the village or the group, but no longer so needfully. Alert to guidance from our own inner conscience, we become more useful to others.
Perhaps Robert Browning said it best in his Tuesday Poem (an extract from Paracelsus):
There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fullness…and,
to know,
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may
escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.
Nevertheless, the path to freedom from dependency is often harsh. One can feel quite alone when no longer signing up for the beliefs of others, as psychiatrist Carl Jung points out in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. In the chapter “Late Thoughts,” written at the end of his life, he speaks of “‘the untrodden, untreadable regions,’ where there are no charted ways and no shelter spreads a protecting roof over (our) head.”1
Making a new start
Enter these enchanted woods, ye who dare!
George Meredith
The problem as Jung sees it is that, on the one hand, we think of everything in terms of ourselves in a childlike way, assuming we know who we are deep inside. But on the other, we are “fatally” handicapped by the weakness of (our) consciousness, and the corresponding fear of the unconscious. Therefore (we are) utterly unable to separate what (we have) carefully reasoned out from what has spontaneously flowed to (us) from another source.” It will only be by great efforts that we will be able to “finally succeed in conquering and holding for (ourselves) an area of relative freedom.”2
He sees groups, communities, and secret societies as “an intermediary stage on the way to individuation.” So if we rely on a person or an organization to guide us, it’s because we have “not yet recognized that it is really the individual’s task to differentiate himself from all the others and stand on his own feet. All collective identities…interfere with the fulfillment of this task.”3
Nevertheless, many people find it hard to bear the feeling of isolation that it can bring. So how to give up the influences of what Jung calls the “collective,” when this support is no longer necessary? He admits it can be a very painful task, but when the individual has found “an authentic inner secret in his life which cannot be discussed,” the court of public opinion is replaced by an inner guide, and the psyche becomes “not only the seat of his well-known and socially defined ego; it is also the instrument for measuring what it is worth in and for its self.”4
Inevitably those who take Jung’s advice experience an inner shattering of an overly dependent part of themselves. For some it can be caused by an unbearable situation like the death of a dear one, or a terrible act carried out unconsciously and deeply regretted. For others, by suddenly becoming aware of how blind they have been to reality.
A deep feeling of inadequacy may then set in. In my case, I discovered that I was driven by three basic needs: to succeed, to be liked, and to be right. These automatic reactions were often at war with each other and the world around me. I awakened to the fact that there was much more going on in me than I thought, and a lot of it I didn’t like! The automatic assumptions of what I should be doing or feeling no longer made sense.
Truth is that most of us, in front of a person or situation we’re not sure we can handle, automatically react either by attacking, retreating, or subsiding into passivity. This tendency to be either victims, attackers, or avoiders is largely due to upbringing and experiences from our earlier life.
In Jung’s time such violent or avoidant reactions could be seen everywhere, with Hitler and Mussolini at the forefront. And the attacking, retreating, or inability to move on a worldwide scale is equally frightening today. As Jung points out, the effect of even one person on the world around him or her can be helpful or devastating. And on a larger scale it radiates throughout the society we live in.
The need for a transcending force
Rise up nimbly and go on your strange journey!
Rumi
But there is an alternative, a new and difficult path. As Jung affirms, no argument between yes and no, positive and negative, right and wrong, affirmation and denial, will ever solve our problems: “The ego keeps its integrity only if it does not identify with one of the opposites, and if it understands how to hold the balance between them. This is possible only if it remains conscious of both at once… Even if it were a question of some great truth, identification with it would still be a catastrophe, as it arrests all further spiritual development.”5 He advises us to learn how to hold the tension of the opposites consciously, so that a third, transcendent force can enter to resolve the situation.
G. I. Gurdjieff speaks of a similar avenue toward freedom. He calls on
us to seek a reconciling force, beyond active and passive. “Everything in the world obeys the Law of Three,” he says; “everything existing came into being in accordance with this law. Combinations of positive and negative principles can produce new results, different from the first and the second, only if a third force comes in.”6
Change is necessary, and both men agree that it can only come about through a change in attitude, with self- examination as the master key. Visualize a corporate leader meeting staff around a conference table to deal with an intractable problem. The first question would surely be, “What is unavoidable here and what can be changed?” And the second, “What outcomes could be resolved if we looked at them with a different attitude?”
I could ask the same questions within my psycho-physical life. What in my reactivity or receptivity to any situation depends on my attitude, and what habitual reactions rise automatically from past experiences? Do I need someone else to tell me what to do or how to be? Or do I need to accept to bear the shattering of my former attitudes, in order to better see what is real?
One very useful path to change is the conscious practice of re-formulating our exchanges with others. Rather than state firmly, “it’s not true that such and such,” why not shift the approach to, “it seems to me…” or even ask it as a question, like, “I wonder if it’s true that such and such?” In other words, rather than start an argument, I could move from negative affirmations that give off a vibe of self- assurance that I’m right, to a habitual self-questioning that brings in more information. At the very least it would open the doors of the mind, rather than closing them.
While that may seem like a small first step, it can be the beginning of a new life because, happily, as we work toward freedom from dependency, the shattering of old attitudes transforms itself into the door to a different inner world. As Jungian analyst Clarissa Pinkola Estés said in Women Who Run with the Wolves, “The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.”7
So if we can figure out how to open a few of those doors, perhaps both
our personal situation and the state of violence and suffering worldwide could move, inch by inch, toward healing. ◆
- Jung, C. G., Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Re- corded and Edited by Aniela Jaffe, Vintage Books Edition 1989, p. 344. ↩︎
- Ibid. p. 341. ↩︎
- Ibid. p. 342. ↩︎
- Ibid. p. 345. ↩︎
- Jung, C. G., On the Nature of the Psyche, CW 8, par. 425. ↩︎
- Gurdjieff, G. I., Views from the Real World, Pen- guin, 1991, p.195. ↩︎
- Pinkola Estes, Clarissa, Women Who Run with the Wolves, Ballantine, 1996. ↩︎