James Hollis, the long-time executive director of Houston's Jungian Educational Center, writes about what he terms our "fundamental ambivalence" which is, put simply, a deep ambivalence that we each harbor about whether to change, grow, and adapt, or stay stuck in entrenched habits and old, comfortable ways of life. That is, we battle between strategies, some of which are largely or partly unconscious, about whether to try to constrain our worlds so that they are small and manageable or, alternatively, to enlarge ourselves through engaging complexities and taking on new challenges.
He states that these tendencies, the "regressive or conservative, and the progressive", "war within us each day." I find this unpleasant truth about what it means to be human helpful to meditate on, for we often find these "shadow qualities" in other people rather than as our own inner demons we all have to face, struggle against, and maybe learn to co-exist with, rather than ultimately overcome.
He elaborates on this by saying "when the desire to 'go home' prevails, we will choose not to choose, rest easy in the saddle, remain amid the familiar and comfortable, even when it is stultifying and soul-denying."
The regressive or conservative is something we have to win over not once and for all, but each day. Hollis puts this into an everyday context: "each morning twin gremlins – fear and lethargy – sit at the foot of our bed and smirk. Fear of further departure, fear of the unknown, fear of the challenge of largeness intimidates us back into our convenient rituals, conventional thinking, and familiar surroundings. To be recurrently intimidated by the task of life is spiritual annihilation. Lethargy seduces us with 'kick back, chill out, numb out, take it easy'."
Because the regressive or conservative are strategies to avoid anxiety, they will never cease to tempt us.
On this Jungian account, "anxiety will be our companion if we risk the next stage of our journey, depression if we don’t. Psychological or spiritual development requires a greater capacity in us for the toleration of anxiety and ambiguity – to accept this troubled state, abide in it, and commit to life is the moral measure of our maturity. Faced with a choice, choose anxiety for it is always developmental, while depression is regressive. Anxiety is an elixir, depression a sedative. The former keeps us on the edge of our life, the latter in the sleep of childhood."
He states that these tendencies, the "regressive or conservative, and the progressive", "war within us each day." I find this unpleasant truth about what it means to be human helpful to meditate on, for we often find these "shadow qualities" in other people rather than as our own inner demons we all have to face, struggle against, and maybe learn to co-exist with, rather than ultimately overcome.
He elaborates on this by saying "when the desire to 'go home' prevails, we will choose not to choose, rest easy in the saddle, remain amid the familiar and comfortable, even when it is stultifying and soul-denying."
The regressive or conservative is something we have to win over not once and for all, but each day. Hollis puts this into an everyday context: "each morning twin gremlins – fear and lethargy – sit at the foot of our bed and smirk. Fear of further departure, fear of the unknown, fear of the challenge of largeness intimidates us back into our convenient rituals, conventional thinking, and familiar surroundings. To be recurrently intimidated by the task of life is spiritual annihilation. Lethargy seduces us with 'kick back, chill out, numb out, take it easy'."
Because the regressive or conservative are strategies to avoid anxiety, they will never cease to tempt us.
On this Jungian account, "anxiety will be our companion if we risk the next stage of our journey, depression if we don’t. Psychological or spiritual development requires a greater capacity in us for the toleration of anxiety and ambiguity – to accept this troubled state, abide in it, and commit to life is the moral measure of our maturity. Faced with a choice, choose anxiety for it is always developmental, while depression is regressive. Anxiety is an elixir, depression a sedative. The former keeps us on the edge of our life, the latter in the sleep of childhood."
Read more about working with the anxiety of such "spiritual enlargement" in Hollis' most successful work, "Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life".