Jung as a Visionary

Lately, it feels like we scuttle around on an iceberg that we have chosen to name synchronicity; we know it is an iceberg because we believe that the things we touch-see-smell-experience aren't all there is. We acknowledge that there is a part of this iceberg that touches the air: the part we can stomp across, the part we can touch with our hands to feel the cold, the part that makes us squint under the glittering glare of the sun, the part where we might even meet a penguin. But tell us that this is only the top 20% of all there is, and we wouldn't be at all surprised. In fact, we do not feel satisfied by simply accepting the truths that we can measure and quantify, the ones floating here in the airy part of our little world...such measurements don't explain everything satisfactorily. Often they don't explain things at all.

Gradually, I've grown accustomed to experiencing this sense of the 80% below the water line. But now a new thing come to startle me where the other has finally grown familiar. It is this synchronicity: others in the world at large also see what is below the surface; but often they don't even recognize it as a vestige of Truth. They believe they raise things out of the murk of their imaginations, and they do; but there is more to it than imagination alone.

Truth...new designers come along all the time and dress Truth up for different presentations; saying it is Opening Night for this New Show, but the Substance will always shine through the make-up, the costumes, the props, the sets--shine through as itself and no other. To know this is to know a powerful thing, for even a lie must offer up that shred of Truth that serves as its foundation. To understand this is to see Truth everywhere, and it is indeed a gift of freedom. (I've known many who refused to recognize Truth except when He stood buck naked on a bare stage. Only then did they give a safe sigh with their hands pressed to their chests. Truth is gracious and will not deny them.)

But for those who receive this freedom to see Him even in the darkest night it means having the power to come in contact with anyone who discusses that 80% of the iceberg that lies below the surface and not be surprised or shocked or faith-ruffled by what they see; for there are those who see Truth without knowing they see Him, thinking it something they imagined. When you know Him, you can hear their words/songs/stories and not be debilitated by the shock of experiencing something "psychic." Most of us rarely expect to experience a spiritual synchrony with someone else's tales about what the hidden ice is like; but when we give ourselves to the belief that the ice under the water is as solid as the ice in the air, neither will such commonalities surprise us.
One example of this experience of seeing things in common we discovered this very week. This was interestingly a bedtime story, interesting because the parallels we experienced to it occurred in our dreams.

"Originally written as a bedtime story for Night's children, LADY IN THE WATER is an imaginative reading experience that inspires readers to observe the world around them and consider their purpose on earth."

We saw this film on your birthday, the day after its release date.
But I in multiple dreams last winter saw myself associated with water, and being chased by an unusual type of dog, not a real dog at all. And even last fall, the image of protection coming my way on the wings of an eagle--this became an expectation, metaphorically speaking, for me.

And both you and one of my students saw hair color changes that struck you as odd in multiple dreams (although both you and she saw it in negative image to the way the movie portrayed it. You both saw light to dark.) You began dreaming this changing hair thing last fall; and my student saw it as something happening to our son's hair in a dream this past spring. Now we see these things on the big screen as images and ideas that floated around in the mind of this writer/director. A couple of years ago, this would have struck us as very odd. Now we shake our heads at each other and shrug.

Then it hit me again, although not so distinctively and not so specific to us, more globally as I was listening to this song:

Fields of Gold:

So she took her love for to gaze awhile, among the fields of barley. (Did he know why it was good to make it a field of barley, for more reasons than just the rhythm of the line? If he didn't, he will someday.)

In his arms she fell as her hair came down among the fields of gold. (Does he know who he commemorates with these words?...Does he know her hair shamefully loosed thousands of years ago was predestined to have a power beyond the bounds of time? I wonder.)

And though many who "refuse" to read his work would say Mr. King is anything but a spiritual writer, I'd counter that he understands the true essence of the gift of artistry and imagination. It is not that each man has his own little enviable pool of imagery...rather he has been gifted with a valve that opens a spillway and lets water flow...water that is there whether anyone spills it or not.

"What writing is. Telepathy, of course." --Stephen King, On Writing