Chaos and Order
A modern individual has an incalculable proclivity, and profound intimidation, to follow the postmodern era’s socio-culture, like a cult, to feel a part of belonging in today’s society. In an effort to belong, everyone wears a persona to act themselves out so that the person feels socially acceptable. So then the persona becomes his real identity to his Ego-Conscious mind. He who erroneously identify oneself with his persona, become of it; a lie. What left of him is irrational views of himself and society.
Note: Before preceding, please forgive me for my poor English, as it is not my first language. I have tried my level best to articulate my thought process as clear as possible.
Also, I must warn the readers, this is a very long article.
I can undoubtedly proclaim myself, I have a fair bit of an experience living in such a society of individuals filled with personas and irrational views. It would be a terrible mistake from my side if I portray myself as an intellect that I am not. I must admit, I did live through the insanity plaguing the society; I identified myself with the persona I wear every day. I would strongly encourage one to withdraw from the practice of wearing the persona, at the very least conscious of it, for I have understood it is the first step forward towards Self-realization. If one stays in this state of mind for a considerable amount of period in his life, it could potentially cause irreversible damage to his psyche. He will find his unconscious mind consistently engaged a conflict with his ego-conscious mind, so he will see a dual personality inside himself. On the one hand, there are tremendous urges to manifest his unconscious instinct, on the other hand, he has to repressed those instincts to protect the persona he wears. This dual personality in his psyche will inescapably cost him dearly. This internal conflict within oneself undoubtedly paves the path to neurotic behaviours and views. As these views of an individual influence every aspect of his life, so it does to his family, tribe, nation and up to his ethnic group.
Spiritual Poverty of Modern Man
I have heard repeatedly, people talk about this one precious little idea, “Life is all about happiness.”. Without giving a considerable amount of thought I did buy into such views, for I was desperate to hang on to some sort of belief. After reading Carl Jung, my inner world completely turned upside down; all the thick walls I built around my ego started to crumble down in the face of their psychological insights of the unconscious mind. Once again I have revisited my previous supposition, which I bought into without enough thought process, that, “Life is all about happiness”. This time though, this very precious little idea strikes me as vague; a false statement for some reason everyone follows blindly. This beg the question, why on earth people believe in such a vague idea? I want to quote Carl Jung’s words here,
“Now religious ideas, as history shows, are charged with an extremely suggestive, emotional power. Among them I naturally reckon all représentations collectives, everything that we learn from the history of religion, and anything that has an “-ism” attached to it. The latter is only a modern variant of the denominational religions. A man may be convinced in all good faith that he has no religious ideas, but no one can fall so far away from humanity that he no longer has any dominating représentation collective. His very materialism, atheism, communism, socialism, liberalism, intellectualism, existentialism, or what not, testifies against his innocence. Somewhere or other, overtly or covertly, he is possessed by a supraordinate idea.”
- Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 9 (Part 1) Aion: Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.
It appears a man cannot go on living without faith in some -ism. It is for the reason that the belief system is built right into his collective unconscious as an archetypal motif, an innate form without representation, a man cannot simply abandon his beliefs, he can only give a representation for that form. When a man speaks of, truth, morality, teach his kids to be kind and respectful, gets emotional against unjust, stood up for the people who cannot stand for themselves, sets his different a sided for the benefit of collective good, trust his friend, vow to the women to stand beside her in sickness and in health, he speaks through the moral guidelines of his society. These moral guidelines are an evolution of a religious belief. These beliefs are not sudden enlightenment of modern man, for these are his inherent tendencies peculiar to the human species. He has only given them a form either through his parental imago or his culture. These guidelines are endless repetitions of experiences throughout the process of human psyche’s evolution; so it earns its place right into the collective unconscious. Repressing or abandoning energies produced by an archetype is an impossible task for a man.
A modern man forsaken his religious faith in pursuit of reasoning, so he does lose the connection to his roots. These beliefs once provided meaning for the suffering of life in chaotic times for our forefathers. We have lost that connection and wandering in the forest like a blind man envying for spiritual enlightenment. This spiritual poverty of a modern man, especially in the west, perhaps, led him to gaze upon the east, the lands of spirituality.
A man has cut out his connection to his roots and became mechanical in this post-modern times, he can only satisfy his ego-conscious mind by seeking happiness outwards by possessing materials and social validation from “likes” he gets for his photograph from fellow man. The fact that these ego satisfactions are ephemeral, for he has outsourced his happiness to an entity which he does not possess any control. For a medium to long term happiness, he needs something profoundly meaningful in his life to transgress the limits of his Ego-Conscious mind. Even when our conscious presuppositions are far more advanced than any other primates, a man is still primitive when it comes to his unconscious instincts. For a primitive man faith and religious practices are inseparable in his world he lives in. A modern man constantly looking for meaning in his life will be disappointed, since he lacks faith and belief, he will only regress back to outsourcing his happiness to the outside entity. The process of finding happiness in life remains unfathomable. As he is not finding happiness in his life, the envy for happiness became the baseline for his life. As this emptiness and envying get stronger every day, it attracts vague ideas like “Life is all about happiness”.
I do not have a high opinion on those who preach others to find happiness in their life, as I have learned life’s baseline is not happiness; and that is not the structure of being. I do truly believe, those who preach such ideas are doing deeply disservice to humanity.
Chaos
Happiness is one emotional state of mind we experience as the life events unfold in accordance with our expectations and plans. If that is so, what about the time something unexpected happened? As we continue to exist in time and space, a life of a man is prone to experience sadness, disappointment, failure, betrayal, malevolence, unjust, death of closest one, and so forth. If Being is not predicated upon happiness, then what is the baseline upon which we can build our life.
I had read book called 12 Rules for Life, also I have been watching. Among all, one particular statement caught my attention and struck me to the core. “Life is suffering, what you going to do about it?”. When I heard that statement, I did not perceive it as a brand new idea, instead, it felt like someone slapped my back head in order to remind me of a forgotten doctrine. There is a truth to that sentence. The reason it is true is that all the religions, of east and west, begin with the idea of suffering. In order to grasp the underlying conception of the religious scripts, we must leave our religious prejudice at the bay. I am obligated here to announce that I am not a theologian, I am merely trying my level best, within my limited knowledge, to provide the readers with my thought process. I would want to quote these paragraphs from the Bible,
3:15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
3:16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
3:17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
3:18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
3:19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
Genesis — The King James Bible.
When God banished Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, he cursed them to suffer to multiply and eat until the day they die. These words mark the beginning and set the stage for the origin of Being itself, which is why it took place in Genesis. The entire western culture is predicated on this concept to a great degree. This same reflects on the eastern religions as well, Life is suffering(dukkha: suffering, pain, unsatisfactoriness or stress), is the first of the Four Noble Truths by which Buddhism is predicated on. It is by no means a superstitious idea.
Note: I would not want people to perceive the above theologically, instead try to understand the meta-truth.
As this suffering prolong it causes internal disturbance to the framework in which we perceive the events of the world as it manifest. It demands an update to the framework he built around his Ego-Conscious mind. The process of updating the framework so far as I know contains two different tasks,
1. Regress back to the life experiences that formed all the perceptions; analyze the experiences once again and recalibrate the perceptions, with the help of the present state of conscious mind i.e. the subjective-knowledge acquired in the process of maturity.
2. Expand your conscious mind, incrementally, by voluntarily facing the events that are causing the internal disturbance.
The former is an internal work which, in my experience, one can work by himself. However, the latter requires dealing with an external entity, either a person who provoke fear, a betrayal, a hostile situation, a place that provokes anxiety, dealing with lies, uncertain times that stake your security, disturbance to the ordinary occurrence, helplessness, when you run out of options; when your words are ignored; when truth is denied; when you are exposed to malevolence, tragedy, difficulty, death, trauma, and so forth. I hope the few examples from the last sentence are sufficient to understand the motif of what I am trying to convey. These motifs are inescapable situations for a man in his lifetime. Events of such forces a man to expanding his conscious mind. In this process, a man has to deal with the unexplored part of life which he had ignored to deal with or never found an opportunity to deal with. This process of learning with the unknown in order to update his framework while he is sinking into the dynamics of internal disturbance is called Chaos. This is the time, as a modern man says, “People hit rock bottom”.
As a man acquainted with the new chaotic situation, he realizes the boundary of his conscious mind. If only he had prior experiences of such a situation, he would have portended it and would have done something to avoid it. These times ARE, without a doubt, tremendously painful, but he has to bear it. How long does he have to bear this suffering and chaos? As long as it takes to find a way to set things in order. This is the very reason why life is NOT happiness; life is not supposed to be happy. It is his destiny to find Order to all his chaos.
When a man fell into the darkest valley of chaos and spend significant time there, he learns how deep he fell down. It is the time he realizes how little he knew about the world around him; it is the time he realizes all his perceptions and presuppositions are incorrect; it is the time he realizes the incalculable suffering he had to endure in order to embark the journey toward Order, for he has to kill his own ego’s identification willfully; it is the time he realizes he is paying his dues for the lies and the ignorance he has been telling himself. it is the time he realizes how much he relied on others; it is the time he realizes the cowardly act of people around you; it is the time he realizes his inadequacy. It is not a fun ride to Disney Land.
Order
This realization of his shortcomings and limitations is the first step towards psychological transformation, for he has to learn what he is fighting against. After all these realizations, thenceforth, he begins the journey toward Order. Forgive me for a man of pessimistic here, this journey of transformation is, undeniably, as painful and laborious as it can be, for I have experienced walking down that path.
The more he learns the unknown side of himself, the more he gains control over his personality. The more he deals with the fearful, the more he gains control over the situation/object that provokes the fear. There is no other way around, he has to voluntarily participate in the process of mastering unknown and fear. It is through this process, a man reincarnates as a mature man by transcending his prior consciousness, so does he obtain control over his environment and himself; this very state is called Order. It is the time he realizes he is finally made peace with his own guilt; it is the time all his archetypes functions in accordances to his motivation; it is the time he realizes HE is the only man he can go for a trusted advisory; it is the time he realizes the state of oneness in his mind.
Structure of Being
A man has to confront chaos multiple occasions in his life, for he cannot expand his conscious without it. It is for that matter chaos is perceived as a potential; an opportunity for growth; an unknown land seeking for an occupant; a book of knowledge seeking its reader. Chaos, undoubtedly, has the tendency to morph a man to degenerate. Perseverance of morality is vital in order to reprehend the degeneration. As a man exposed to chaos and learn to bring order, he matures psychologically, so every confrontation of chaos should be perceived as a recurring knowledge awaited for a student to learn from it. This routine of Chaos-to-Order and Order-to-Chaos is a never-ending cycle in life, thorough which his whole Being is architected upon. This is the Structure of Being. Understanding this structure along gives one a clear hypothesis to deal with difficult situations in life.
End
I would be deeply humbled if even a single person finds this article helpful, to put his life together. I would strongly encourage people to read the following books,
- Aion I: Archetypes of Collective Unconscious — by Carl Jung
- Aion II: Research into the phenomenology of Self — by Carl Jung
- Two Essays on Analytical Psychology — by Carl Jung
Most of my thought processes are influenced by Carl Jung. My morality would obliterate if I have failed to mention him here. I am forever grateful to him for his insightful work on the human psyche.
Thank you for reading.
