The
River
“Have
you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such
thing as time? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the
source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the
current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the
present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the the
shadow of the future.”
Hermann
Hesse (Siddhartha)
We were naming our
symbols for the Self at the Jung After Work group last night. Some
people spoke of light, some of various types of spirals, circles and
mandalas, some of trees. For me, the symbol is a river. When I found
the quote above from Hesse, that image was strengthened—the river
is everywhere all the time. Because I was born and grew up in river
towns in the mountains of North Carolina, they are home to me. As a
child, I rode the currents on inner-tubes, and swam in them even
through they were freezing cold. But until now, I had never thought
of this aspect of a river—that it is continuous and in all places
at the same time. It is no less a river at its source than it is
at its outlet into the sea. It flows, wider and deeper in some
places, rougher in others, it pools and eddies and its currents are
ever moving. On the surface, a river can be calm or chaotic, in the
middle, it moves along at a steady, unstoppable pace, and at the
bottom it can be murky and dark—it mirrors our journey through
life. A river can be dammed, but it will overflow it's containment
and flood the land if provisions are not made—locks and levees for
raising and lowering its level. Entire towns have been submerged
beneath dammed rivers. A river is indestructible, it carves stone valleys
and gorges, and over time, creates new land forms and reshapes
existing ones. A river, whether inner or outer, is a force of nature.
Our symbol for the
Self—the inner Source that is connected to all that is us in this
lifetime and beyond, our soul, our spirit—represents our capacity
for wholeness. The Self holds ancient accumulated wisdom passed to us
through genetics. We can add to it by integrating into consciousness
new information about ourselves and our world. For instance, when I
learn more about my shadow (my dark side), that new understanding
goes into the repository of the Self. Over a lifetime, all our
disparate parts are, hopefully, consciously incorporated into our
personality, resulting in wholeness. We become more fully human and
more fully spiritual—like a river, everywhere at the same time. And
truly, what the world needs most is conscious human beings—whole people.
Rainer Maria Rilke put it this way:
“May
what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.”
In the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment