mythopsychosis: an explanation

I am a student. I make this acknowledgement before attempting to post anything; call it a discrepency, call it honesty. Either way I am attempting not to inform you, but to reflect for myself. The world at large is only as interesting to me as the world within, and I firmly belief that whatever we are to make of the world ultimately derives from a psychological foundation that is revealed in our habits, expressions, imaginations, et cetera.

It seems appropriate that I’ve come to this point: integrating the study of religious texts with some pseudo-scientific field like “psychology”. With the exceptions of James Hillman, David Miller, and other mytho-psychologists, the majority of psychiatrists still believe that theirs is a scientific field. As if “psyche”—that mental instrument used to for scientific discovery—can fall beneath itself. Conventional psychology—developmental, abnormal, child, adult, et cetera—interests me as much as Bill O’Riley’s opinions matter to me.

As for the latter, I take up what my friend told me last week: “Opinions are like buttholes: everyone has one.” My friend stopped short in that, like buttholes, opinions usually wreak of something awful, especially those from Bill O’Riley.

I became interested in religion at a fairly young age, sometime around 16 years old. Well, let me put that this way: I became interested in studying religious texts at that age, whether I was religious or not depends on what one means by “religious”. Studying the Bible—academically and meditatively—has always been a joy for me.

I don’t think I ever truly enjoyed going to church, though. Except for when there was those few instances of the religious experience; I’ve had those at four in the morning while I was only wearing underwear. Church, from what I can recall, always had a taint of the Badlands attached to it.

I don’t study the Bible too much anymore. At least not proficiently. I read the gospels—canonical and non-canonical—daily, but only for meditative purposes. I don’t believe much dogma. I don’t even know really what I believe, other than what I know. This “knowing” is naïve, though I don’t naively know. I know it’s naïve, therefore it’s not naïve for me to choose to know the way I know what I believe. It has been through a mystical lens that I have always read religious texts. Since my spiritual awareness germinated from the dirtiness of Christianity I seem to always think in typical Christian-mystic fashion. It’s completely intuitive; I’m not trying to convince, because I don’t really care if you believe me. I don’t need your belief for my own.

My interest in psychology is a conundrum. My initial exposure came through the writings of Carl Jung, introduced to me by a (now ex-)girlfriend. The affinity of my thought world with depth psychology culminated in Jean-Luc Marion’s book God Without Being. Even to this day it’s difficult for me to pray, because when I go to pray I immediately anthropomorphize the Divine. I do pray; I mean, wait, no, I don’t know what I mean. I feel God…at least, that’s how I phrase it. I don’t really know what it is though. I don’t think I’m supposed to.

Depth-psychology, then, is of interest—great interest—because it is from within that I feel this thing called “god”. What or who this thing or being (or none of the above) is or isn’t (or either) is beyond me; but I know the feelings that I have regarding that stem from within. Hence, I go to the depths of my psyche and from there the world becomes a mystical land that is often more accurately described by the poet than the scientist or positivistic philosopher.

I don’t expect too many to agree with me with that last statement.

Life has brought me here, to this place where I live in a ultra-conservative, Midwest city and fly once a month to the liberal west coast. As if I’m on a teeter-totter of ambivalence; a refusal to be static, a constancy of fluidity. And, let me just put it out here: I don’t find it as mere coincidence that the last of my friends to remain in academia live on the east coast, studying at a seminary (a liberal one at that, but still a seminary). It’s as if my flying back and forth and not living in California is more of an ambivalence of (lacking) confidence for where I truly am in Life and where those who have encouraged me in my academic and spiritual journey are. I’ve been through a marital divorce; that wasn’t nearly as difficult as divorcing myself from those who have made love with me in our spirits.

But deep inside, in that part of me called “the pits of your stomach” (“Even if I descend to hell, O Lord, there I find you”), I know I can’t distinguish my experience of God and an ontological being of God. I can’t decide if I make up God or if God makes up me. And I don’t really care to make such superficial, if not narcissistic, demarcations, because the last time I checked, life didn’t consist of too many strict categorical separations.

So I enter a mythology and depth-psychology program, because that programmed way of thinking has been how I’ve seen the world since I was old enough to start thinking for my self. Only, my self is more thought for, through the Divine which works through me, than it thinks for itself. It’s always been that way, I’ve just been a bit too arrogant at times to admit to this privilege. This thing called “being alive”…whatever that means.