Author: Susan Schulte

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Acceptance 

“Gratitude to God is to accept everything, even my problems, with joy.”

This quotation is by Mother Teresa, a person known to have been someone who gave of herself as an individual and through the charitable organizations she founded to assist people who were experiencing some of the most difficult situations.  She and others in those organizations helped people who were living in poverty, provided care to people dying from terminal illnesses, and in many other ways endeavored to treat people in need with dignity.  And that work continues.

Even though I know from personal experience and from the reading I’ve done that all people are faced with difficulties and challenges from time to time, I often struggle to accept that reality.  At times I feel some shame about this, especially when I think of the dire situations that many people endure in comparison to the difficulties I’ve experienced.  In fact, the women and men whom I admire and respect most—both those who lived in the past whom I’ve learned about through historical accounts as well as people in the present—faced adversity with courage and perseverance.

In her quote, Mother Teresa speaks of gratitude. As I’ve written in other posts, I believe being thankful for and not taking for granted the many positive aspects of our lives is something we should be mindful of.  It’s easy to be thankful for that which our ego wants.  The challenge comes when there are occurrences that our ego doesn’t want—that is when our resistance gets in the way of being thankful.  Mother Teresa not only expresses gratitude, but gratitude even for her problems, and not just acceptance, but acceptance with joy.

Meaningful change usually requires taking steps—one step at a time, as we often hear.  The first step is to endeavor to become more accepting.  The next step is to work toward recognizing that we need to be thankful even for problems when they occur because they are part of our life path and help us to grow and change in positive ways.  After being able to do that, we will be more ready to take the third step of accepting our problems with joy.  It very likely will take time to complete each step, and that’s OK.  We need to be patient with ourselves.  And we need to remember that every step we take matters.

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Making the Effort to Be a More Conscious Person

“The work is not easy, as Jung himself admitted, but it can have great rewards as it helps us to become more peaceful humans, better able to relate effectively to our fellow beings.”

I recently discovered the book Jung: The Key Ideas by Ruth Snowden.  Ms. Snowden is an author and artist who for many years had a private therapy practice.  In this book, she presents Carl Jung’s work and findings related to the individual unconscious, the collective unconscious, dreams, personality types, projection, and his approach to working with clients.  She includes some biographical information about Jung:  the influence of his parents and other people, including Freud; some of Jung’s dreams that he shared and wrote about in his books; and other life experiences, all of which contributed to his psychological theory.

The quotation I chose is from Snowden’s book.  When I read it, it immediately resonated with me.  Jung and many authors of books about Jungian concepts acknowledge that doing psychological work is difficult.  It requires devoting time to recording dreams and writing down thoughts that come to us, noting synchronicities and their possible messages, and trying to find the meaning behind unexpected occurrences.  Doing Jungian psychological work also requires a certain amount of courage as we learn about ourselves through that work.  Some of what we discover are things that can be hard to acknowledge, the darker aspects of our natures.  And yet it is through learning about ourselves that we become more authentic and genuine human beings.  By being shown more about ourselves through dreams, synchronicities, our projections on others, and life experiences, we are better able to make changes and try to become more the persons we were created to be.  And that leads to a more meaningful and purposeful life.

Becoming familiar with Jungian concepts has definitely helped me to relate more effectively to others, as Snowden says.  For example, being aware of extraversion and introversion has helped me to be more accepting of people who are different from me.  I know people who are naturally outgoing, for whom interacting with others is what makes life most enjoyable for them, and who find it difficult to be alone.  I also know people who need a certain amount of quiet and alone time and who find it necessary to limit how much time they spend with groups of people.  As with all human qualities, it’s not totally one way or the other; each of us has a certain degree of extraversion and introversion.  But knowing about these different approaches and how natural they are to each person’s emotional makeup helps us to better understand our differences, to be less judgmental, and to be less likely to try to change someone to be like us.

Snowden’s comment about becoming more peaceful human beings as a result of doing Jungian psychological work fits my experience as well.  It’s a sense of peace that comes from endeavoring to do those things that are part of living a more genuine life.  It’s a peacefulness that is present even during the challenging times which are an essential part of personal growth as well as during the less challenging times.

Working toward becoming a more conscious, grounded, and whole persons requires effort.  And the rewards are definitely worth the efforts we make.

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Saying Thank You in Prayer

“If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.”

This quote is by Meister Eckhart, a German theologian, philosopher, and mystic who lived from 1260 to 1328.

There are many types of prayer.  Often we pray to ask for something we want or something we hope will happen.  Such prayers matter, especially when they are not for egocentric purposes.  But we also need to remember that we have many reasons to say prayers that, rather than asking for something from our Creator, instead say thank you to our Creator for what we already have.

It can be easy to take for granted various aspects of our lives.  Many of us have good health, a nice place to live, employment, enough food, and people who care about us.  And for many of us, these blessings have been available to us with little or no effort on our parts.  So in a way they’re just expected.  That certainly isn’t the case for many people in the world.  We need to recognize the blessings we’ve been given and be thankful, and to express our gratitude through prayer.

When praying for someone we care about who is going through a difficult time, we should also say a prayer of thanks that that person has been and is in our life and for how knowing him or her has enriched our life.  When praying for help when we are going through a difficult time, we should also say a prayer of thanksgiving for the help we’ve received at other times and also for the more peaceful times we’ve experienced.

Prayers of thanksgiving help us to be humble, serve as reminders of the many gifts we have been given, and help us to grow closer to our Creator.

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“Appropriate” Anger 

As a child I was taught from an early age that being angry is wrong.  I’m sure my parents were taught that as children as were their parents.  I’m also sure my parents believed good Christians didn’t get angry.

It wasn’t until I was a young adult that I started to realize that being angry is a natural human emotion.  That became especially clear when I was attending a support group when I was in my 20s.  A woman who was then in her 50s shared with those of us in the group that when she was a young adult several male clergy used her for sexual gratification.  After hearing about her experience, I found myself feeling anger that those men took advantage of her vulnerability, and then I felt some guilt about being angry.  We talked about our reactions in the group, and the psychotherapist who was facilitating said the anger that I and others were expressing was totally appropriate.

Anger is one of the many emotions that we as human beings feel.  Just as we experience sadness, joy, fear, and contentment, there are also times when we are angry.  A person who doesn’t feel emotions is limited in her or his ability to have empathy for and relate to others and is limited in experiencing life more fully in general.

It isn’t being angry that’s the problem.  It is how we act and react when something happens that causes that emotion in us.  It’s important to take a step back and ask ourselves what is the cause of how we’re feeling.  One reason it’s helpful to know about psychological projection is to ask ourselves when we’re feeling a strong emotion about another person or group, including anger toward them, whether we might be projecting something about ourselves onto them and then exploring that.

There are times, however, when our feelings of anger are not projection.  They are a healthy response to something that should not have happened or be happening, a response to something that is intrinsically wrong.  At those times, anger can be a kind of energy that can be used in a positive way.  The anger that those of us in the support group felt and expressed showed the woman who had shared how she had been treated that we cared about her.  Similarly, anger about any forms of injustice and cruelty can be the impetus for doing our part and living in a way that counteracts injustice and cruelty.

When that happens, our “appropriate anger” is a response of hope.

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Generosity 

 

“Generosity is the most natural outward expression of an inner attitude of compassion and loving-kindness.”

This quote is by the Dalai Lama.  Compassion and loving-kindness are two of the themes about which he often speaks and writes, emphasizing that those qualities are essential for us to have in order to make our world a better place.

There are tangible and intangible forms of generosity, both of which matter very much.  For any decisions we make, we should always try to discern the guidance of our inner voice, including as to the forms of generosity we are called to do.

Some tangible forms of generosity are donating money to help support charitable organizations, the performing arts, and causes we believe in.  We can also donate clothing and household items to organizations that make them available to people in need.  Volunteering our time, energy, and skills is another tangible form of generosity.

Some examples of intangible forms of generosity are being nonjudgmental, having empathy, expressing concern, and treating others with respect.  We are also generous when we listen to others, giving them our full attention.

We can become more generous people in the sense the Dalai Lama refers to by trying to be aware of prejudices we might have and by taking note of the degree of our self-centeredness.  Gaining this awareness is the first step toward making changes.

The more of us who make those changes, the better our world will be.  And this will result in more people being the recipients of compassion and loving-kindness, which is as it should be.

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Experiencing Kindness

“You cannot do a kindness too soon because you never know how soon it will be too late.”

These words by poet, philosopher, and abolitionist Ralph Waldo Emerson are good for all of us to keep in mind.  I recently had an experience where I was the recipient of kindness.

I needed to go to my job as a crisis line counselor and, because some of my hours are overnight, it was about 10:00 p.m. when I was leaving to drive there.  It had been snowing for a few hours and several inches had accumulated.  I had expected that the parking lot of the building where I live and the street leading out from there would have been cleared during the time I slept before going to work because that often had been the case other times.  But it hadn’t been cleared, or at least it hadn’t been cleared recently.  Because of the amount of snow and because there’s an incline for about two blocks before the street levels out, my car got stuck in the middle of the parking lot.  The conditions were such that the tires couldn’t get traction and just spun when I pressed the accelerator.  So I couldn’t even drive my car a few feet to the side of the parking lot so that it would be out of the way when the person came to do snow removal.

I called the on-call supervisor to ask if someone could cover my hours and that I would work that person’s hours another day.  But my supervisor said no one was available and she offered to arrange for a Lyft ride.  Unless the Lyft driver had four-wheel drive, I don’t think that person could have made it through the snow either.  And the idea of walking to where the street levels out and waiting for who knows how long for the Lyft driver in the dark and cold seemed like an unsafe thing to do.  I have friends who would have given me a ride to work in other circumstances, but I didn’t want to ask someone to take the chance of their vehicle getting stuck.

After sitting in my car a couple of minutes trying to decide what to do, a vehicle came into the parking lot.  The young man who was driving it got out and walked to my car and said he would try to help me.  After digging the snow from around my tires and much other effort, he and his fiancé were able to push my car out of the center of the parking lot to the side.  I told them I was on my way to an overnight shift where I work, and they asked me how far it was.  I told them about 10 miles and they offered to drive me there!  Unlike my small car, they drove a vehicle that was higher above the ground and had four-wheel drive.  What a wonderful gift that they were so generous to take the time and make the effort to do this for me, someone they had never met.

In addition to this being a kindness such as Emerson refers to, this experience shows the way that unanticipated help is given to us.  I had no way of knowing that people would drive into the area where my car was stuck, especially in the late evening in the cold and snow, and especially that they would be two people so willing to help me, even to the extent of taking the time to drive me to my job.  When I was trying to think of possibilities before they arrived—and the possibilities were extremely limited—I could not have expected that someone would show up to help me.  And yet they did.

I expressed my gratitude to them and I expressed my gratitude to the Creator.  Over the years, there have been other times when I received unexpected help, and I’ve heard and read other people’s accounts of receiving assistance that they could not have anticipated, assistance that occurred when they very much needed it.  All of us have received such help.  Help from the universe.

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Unexpected Help from The Universe  

“Call it luck or fate if you will, this type of synchronicity has occurred so many times that I now take it as a principle that whatever I need will turn up if I am patient and have the awareness to perceive it.”

This is a quote by Robert A. Johnson, who was a Jungian analyst, author, and speaker.  He wrote several books about inner work, Jungian theory, relationships, and other related topics.  I have been reading his book Balancing Heaven and Earth, subtitled “a memoir of visions, dreams, and realizations.”

The quote above is from that book.  Those words appear after Johnson tells of how, when he was a young man, a friend saw that he was struggling. His friend gently pointed him in the direction that led to Johnson working with a Jungian analyst.  He writes that he didn’t realize how much he needed to do that until after the work began and that the analytical work led to other meaningful experiences.

Throughout the book he tells of other unanticipated occurrences that provided help and direction.  He refers to such synchronicities as the “slender threads” that have guided his life.  The title of one of the chapters says it well:  “Unexpected Friendships; Unexpected Blessings. Slender Threads at Work.”

In his memoir Johnson relates the full picture, never suggesting that things flowed along easily all the time.  Staying on our path and inner change always involve some challenges and adversity.  He shares times when he felt disheartened, without direction, and even depressed. But he had an awareness that something larger than himself was directing his life, and he shares many examples showing how that was the case.

As he says in the quotation above, patience and awareness are needed to perceive when help from the universe is given to us.  It’s essential that we set aside the idea that we’re in control of our destinies.  It simply isn’t true.  Holding on to that idea takes away our ability to be aware of when help is being given to us and thus our ability to embrace that help.  That is a great loss.

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Our Dreams Help Us to Learn about Ourselves 

It often happens that people who appear in our dreams are people we know—friends, parents, or coworkers, for example.  Other times there are people in our dreams we recognize but whom we haven’t met, examples being celebrities, professional athletes, or politicians.  According to Jungian dream theory, as well as to some other approaches to dream work, the people who appear in our dreams represent aspects of ourselves, and that by identifying our associations to those people we can learn more about ourselves which in turn helps us to grow in consciousness.

If, for example, a friend of mine is in my dream, I might have both positive and negative associations.  Let’s say I have the negative association that my friend tends to be set in her ways.  By her being a character in the dream, the dream reminds me that I need to be watchful of my tendency toward rigidity.  Ideally, my having been given this information will help me to be more aware of how being set in my ways affects what I do, choices I make.  Embracing the dream’s message will help me to be more open to new ideas and approaches.

It’s also common to have dreams that include people we do not recognize and therefore about whom we do not have associations.  An example is this dream I recently had:

I’m at work sitting at my desk. There are many more people in the area where I work than there usually are.  All of the work spaces are occupied and some desks have been added in the hallway for additional staff.  I notice there’s a new employee at one of those desks, so I go over to her and introduce myself.  We smile at each other.  I have a habit of saying Spanish words now and then, such as “muy bien” when asked how I am.  I say a couple of words in Spanish and her eyes brighten and she asks if I speak Spanish.  I say “un poco,” that I used to speak quite fluently but haven’t kept in practice over the years.  It turns out her first language is Spanish, and she also speaks English very well.  My impression is she would enjoy speaking Spanish with me more often, and I like that idea too.

According to Jungian dream theory, each person who appears in our dreams, whether we are familiar with them from outer reality or not, is a part of our psyche.  I believe this dream shows that I have inner support, symbolized by the woman’s enthusiasm at meeting me and her desire to continue to interact with me.  She symbolizes a positive feminine aspect of myself and is a reassuring presence.

I wonder too if speaking Spanish in the dream might be the dream’s way of saying the woman and I speak a similar language, the language of inner work that leads to becoming more conscious.  There’s no way to prove this is the case; it’s based on thoughts that came to me as I was writing the dream.  It’s an intuitive response.  If so, perhaps the dream is also telling me I need to become more proficient in that language by putting more effort into doing inner work.

Dreams always have a purpose.  Sometimes we have dreams that help us to get back on our paths.  Other times, dreams give us the sense that we’re doing OK in general.  Other times they help us to solve a problem.  And other times, they remind us of the inner assistance we have as we travel our individual journeys.  This was one of those dreams, and I’m thankful that I received it.

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Fulfilling Our Destiny According to God’s Will

 

“For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God’s will, to be what God wants us to be.”

This quote is by Thomas Merton, who was a monk, writer, poet, mystic, and social activist.  These words are from his book of essays entitled No Man Is an Island.  They remind us of what matters most:  Each of us trying to discern the Creator’s will for ourselves and then endeavoring to live as our Creator wants us to live.

The idea of living a purposeful and meaningful life is emphasized in religious terms, as Merton has done, in Jungian psychological theory, as I’ve written about in other posts, and in many works of literature.  Some Jungian psychotherapists write about how religious and Jungian psychological ideas overlap.  It seems to me, as well as to many authors whose books I have read, that believing each of us has an inner voice that wants to guide us in our daily living corresponds to embracing the Jungian concept of the Self that helps to guide us toward individuation.  Choosing to approach life through a Jungian psychological lens or through a religious/spiritual lens, or through both, will lead us in the right direction.

Endeavoring to listen for and follow inner wisdom refers to every aspect of our lives.  It affects how we experience our relationships with others, our ability to love genuinely, the way we approach the work we do, how we spend our time when we’re not working, and every choice we make.  What matters is that we try.  All of us will make mistakes along the way, for we are human.  No person is perfect.  Some of what we learn as we travel our earthly journey is learned from making mistakes and then trying again.

We learn in many other ways, as well:  By paying attention to our dreams, noticing when projection might have occurred, trying to find the possible meanings of synchronicities, and acknowledging and being thankful when unexpected help from the universe is given to us.  In these and other ways, we take the steps needed toward fulfilling our destiny.  Our destiny according to God’s will.

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Treating Each Other with Respect 

“Every human being, of whatever origin, of whatever station, deserves respect. We must each respect others even as we respect ourselves.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

I recently attended a meeting of employees of the agency where I work as a crisis line counselor.  The crisis line service is one of several programs of the agency.  The meeting had been scheduled because a few employees felt that some administrative staff hadn’t addressed certain matters as those employees thought they should have.  The goals of the meeting were to make it possible for all staff to hear each other’s points of view, to clarify misunderstandings, and to talk about possible procedural changes if it was determined such changes were needed.

Although the majority of employees who spoke at the meeting did so in a respectful way and showed empathy for those who were being criticized, I was surprised and disheartened by the way some employees expressed themselves.  It was as if their goal was to verbally attack the administrative staff rather than to gain a better understanding of the perspectives of each person involved.  Their overly critical and demeaning approach made me think about how assertiveness and aggressiveness are not the same.  Assertiveness involves presenting one’s point of view in a respectful way.  Aggressiveness involves trying to control others, putting one’s needs first, and not caring about the feelings and needs of others.

As I listened to the verbal attacks, I thought about how that way of acting is encouraged and applauded by certain websites, news outlets, politicians, and celebrities.  Not all, thankfully, but some.  And some is too many.

The behavior I observed at the meeting reflected what sometimes happens in other interactions, be they between two people in a relationship or between leaders of nations.  But just as the majority of those employees who spoke at the meeting did so with integrity and empathy and with the intention of improving the agency, such a respectful approach is often true in many other situations where people discuss problems or concerns.  That is hopeful.  Because verbal attacks only cause harm.  Nothing positive results from them.

Treating others with respect includes recognizing the basic dignity of every person, as is reflected in the quotation above by philosopher, abolitionist, and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson.