Beyond Disillusionment

Life, it seems to me, is the great academy of spirituality. The most distinguished teachers of whom are the diminishment of aging, and death. This, I hope, is not taken as a morbid sentiment. These things are the great teachers because they give us the opportunity to let go of the things in our life that are not real, essential, and eternal.“From the middle of life onward,” the analyst and spiritual thinker, Carl Jung observed, “only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life. For in the secret hour of life’s midday the parabola is reversed, death is born…”

A man whom I shall call Paul keenly felt the “birth of death” late in his 45th year – and he, like most of us, greeted it with dread. Paul was seized with an anxiety that could not associate with any particular event or worry. Mild range physical symptoms were amplified by a sudden awareness of his own aging. A fear of loss of vitality precipitated an actual decrease in energy. Again in Jung’s words, “the second half of life does not signify ascent, unfolding, increase, exuberance but death, since the end is its goal”. During that time of anxiety, Paul’s parents visited his home for the last time before his father’s death. His dad was dying slowly from and insidious malignancy that usurped the blood making process in his bone marrow. Paul’s parents stayed overnight so that the next morning Paul and his dad could go to a conference about the illness. It was strange, Paul recalled, to steer his dad’s steel blue Olds up the New Jersey Turnpike with him in the passenger seat; up until then his dad had always been the driver. Paul was self conscious.

Meanwhile, back at home his mom stayed with his wife and daughters. She had always been petite woman until recently. Her inactivity and eating for comfort increased her girth. She seemed, to Paul, too big for his small house. It angered him in ways he could not explain, and he felt guilty, even as he kept the anger to himself. “How dare she get old and change and what will this demand of me?”, he selfishly pondered. Paul was glad to escape with his father to go to conference. Looking back on this while in therapy several years later he realized that he was not angry at his mom. The demands her aging put on him were small. Paul was angry at aging and diminishment and the life it stole.

Paul was mad because he was afraid. Her aging and infirmity, his father’s dying, his shift to the driver’s seat penetrated his defenses against his awareness of his own aging and inevitable death. On top of everything else, he was disillusioned. He thought that as he grew and matured his faith would grow stronger and he would be wiser. He had hoped he would easily return to his parents the love they had given to him when he had been small and as vulnerable as they were becoming.

So for Paul, the “birth of death” of which Jung speaks was not a pretty thing, nor did Paul experience this event with mature resignation. He simply panicked. “Since the end is its goal…” Jung continues, “the negation of life’s fulfillment is synonymous with the refusal to accept its ending. Both mean not wanting to live…”But Paul does want to live. Whether or not Paul has the courage to really live is another question. To really live, Jung suggests, takes courage to accept life’s ending and thereby embrace life’s fulfillment. “Not wanting to live”, Jung reminds us, “is identical with not wanting to die” because the two are inextricably linked.

Jung draws upon metaphors of the natural world, particularly the heavens, which gave our primitive ancestors their understanding or the cycle of life and, from that, their early impressions of the Holy. Jung believes our unconscious contains a rich store of imprints from these ancient experiences. We contain within us a sort of collective buried memory of millions of rising and setting suns, of waxing and waning moons, and, metaphorically, millions of births and deaths. That is - life and death, living and dying are one. For, Jung explains, “waxing and waning make one curve”.

In confronting the diminishment and deaths of those whom we love, and entering mid-life oneself, one would have to become increasingly defensive not to confront one’s own mortality. To be open, on the other hand, despite one’s fears, is to listen attentively to the great teachers. In listening to them as opposed to defending against them one gets the opportunity to deepen one’s faith. If we are humble and attentive students we cannot help but grow beyond disillusionment to learn what diminishment and death have to teach us about the nature of things.

-The Carl Jung quote is taken from "The Soul and Death", pp. 405-408, from Volume 8 of the Collected Works of C.G. Jung: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche-

Perry Hazeltine,Ph.D.
Samaritan Counseling Center, Lancaster, PA 17601 www.scclanc.org