What is the point of being afraid? What in this modern day could we possibly have to fear? Looking past the superficial fears, the phobias, and digging deeper into the psyche of what it is we truly fear can be beneficial. We can learn a lot of ourselves and the world and we can grow from that potential.
Coming to terms with your own mortality can be seen as overcoming fear of death. Death being seen as a reasonable and natural driver of fear. What happens though, when we no longer fear death? What are the more existential fears? What is worse than death?
Well, how about the isolation and loneliness of still being alive, but no longer being able to communicate with others?
“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.” – Carl Jung.
Jung was to me, a lonely man and his greatest fear was that of his reality, or God, in his sense. Not in death, but in life.
“I should hate the thought that I had touched on the sphere where the paint is made that colours the world, where the light is created that makes shine the splendour of the dawn, the lines and shapes of all form, the sound that fills the orbit, the thought that illuminates the darkness of the void“. – Carl Jung.
We all have experiences in our lives, that at some point seem ineffable and find ourselves isolated, although we may be surrounded by people willing to understand. The idea that we are misunderstood is often a misconception. However, the idea that we may become cast out and forgotten in life, is real.
“nothing more exists, nothing more matters, for whom saw the darkness in the gap between the things”. – Jorge de Sena.
These moments are crucial in their potential for growth. I don’t need to dive into this as it’s been done already. What I want to get at is the story behind the scene. I want to show you “the sphere where the paint is made that colours the world”.
“The soul is not a circle in the sense of the geometric figure but in that it at once contains the Primal Nature as centre and is contained by it as circumference [… We] hold through our own centre to the centre of all the centres, just as the centres of the great circles of a sphere coincide with that of the sphere to which all belong. Thus we are secure.” – Plotinus
“God is a sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” – George Swinnock
“Thus we are secure.”. To me, they are all talking about the same thing. So what does it matter? What does it mean?
Well, to me, it is important to not only know the definition in which a word belongs, but to know and understand its meaning. To “read between the lines” so it is said. The quote of Jorge de Sena above tells of a visceral truth that once you go there it seems as if not possible to come back.
But we have to. The rite to the meaning of life is to explain our twisted tongues with our rightful minds. We have to “go there” and we have to come back with all the ineffable experiences and feelings that is entailed with this journey. To grow, to strengthen not only oneself but the tribe.
While the truth of our fears can shed light upon our own misery, our fears left alone will cast darkness upon our reality.
A loss of communication is akin to the loss of life, death itself.
I say, find your own centre. When you can find your own centre, you can reach out to the sphere around you. When you are able to do that, you have an anchor and a place to come back to after your journeys. To fear the dark, the spaces in between, or the journey is to fear life. To simply pretend these do not exist, is to fear death.
“God is reality itself.” – Carl Jung.
