Psychology, Spirituality

Shadow and Light Integration: From Unconscious to Superconscious

lotus flower shadow and light

Over 120 years since “The Father of American Psychology,” William James, wrote Varieties of Religious Experience, mysticism remains on the periphery, as psychology recovers from an imbalance toward pathology. Mainstream theory and therapies have done incredibly well at mapping the shadow. Much less attention is paid to the light, the potent force known as the superconscious.

There’s an understandable tentativeness when psychology enters so-called spiritual territory. The stumbling block with integrating the superconscious is its metaphysical associations. Mysticism, the idea that union with the divine is an experiential possibility, contradicts the dominant ideology of materialism.

Mental Health, Spirituality

The Yoga of Mental Illness and Self-Realisation

yoga and mental illness

I’m fascinated by how self-realisation relates to mental illness. Common ailments, such as depression, can’t be exempt from liberation traditions because they’re psychological constructs. Pathways that contextualise these ailments in structures ripe with potential for enlightenment, or nirvana, are of particular interest. Yoga is the choice for this exploration, because it’s grounded in self-realisation, mystical union, and the cessation of suffering, not… happiness.

That’s a direct challenge to dominating ideologies such as materialism and scientism. It challenges the notion of ailments as permanent or fixed. It turns our ambition of what’s possible upside down, suggesting that suffering is a pathway to awakening. Mental illness absorbed by this understanding is something to take incredibly seriously, because it suggests common recovery goals significantly downplay human potential.

Philosophy, Spirituality

Liberty, Liberation, and the Paradox of Freedom

freedom

Freedom is a spiritual quality. Like love, or peace, or stillness, it is essential, and only truly cultivated within. Equally, freedom, like love, or peace, or stillness, is experienced in the world, or more accurately, through the world. While worldly freedom can be attained, spiritual freedom is unconditional. This freedom is not the absence of difficulty, but freedom despite difficulty.

Ego, Mental Health

Self-Awareness and Its Shadow

self awareness shadow

Self-awareness is mostly considered a positive trait. More awareness equals more emotional intelligence, more clarity on life’s goals and values, more insight into behaviors or traits that limit potential, more understanding of how words and actions affect others.

But can you have too much self-awareness? Is it ever optimal to be less self-aware?

Synchronicity

Cosmic Wink from a Headless Buddha

Fate unfolds in infinite ways; chance meetings, serendipity, sliding doors, chain-of-events arranged in meaningful order, as if an intelligent design operates behind life’s exterior. People you were destined to meet. Places and times planned to perfection. An intelligent whole able to, against all probability, provide meaning to each individual part. 

If the universe conspires, do atoms, too? Does quantum probability make fate possible?