Photo by H. Cartier-Bresson from the cover of "Memories, Dreams Reflections"
I’ve been reading Carl Jung again. June Singer’s “Boundaries of the Soul: The Practice of Jung’s Psychology” is an excellent Jung primer (originally published in 1972; Singer died in 2004 when she was well into her eighties). It is an in-depth exploration of Jung’s work that is full of insight from the point of view of a practicing Jungian analyst. I’ve read Jung’s memoir “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” many times over, but reading almost any of his technical work can be a daunting task, to say the least and sadly there are very few books that take the reader through the full spectrum of Jung’s fundamental contributions to the field of psychology. I’m enjoying it as much as any of the very good fiction I’ve read in the last year or so.
What is it about Jung’s work that is so captivating? I’ve always felt something fundamentally true about Jung’s concept of “individuation,” a term coined by Jung to describe the process by which we become psychologically “whole.” It allows for the unease I’ve long felt with myself, the self-doubt and suspicion that I’m not living in the fullest, truest expression of myself; that there is work still to be done, insight yet to be gained. Jungian psychology posits that obstacles can be recognized and worked through by analyzing not only the conscious memories of significant events that have helped to shape your personality, but also the symbols of psychic processes revealed in your dreams.
At this particular point in my life my attraction to Jung is largely informed by my Yoga practice and my next few posts here will explore some of Jung’s work as it relates to the work of a personal Yoga practice. The discipline of Yoga as described by one of my favorite teachers, is a “journey toward understanding the self.” The Yogic journey, like the path toward individuation, is lifelong work, and involves mastery of the body and stilling the fluctuations – the “busyness” – of the mind. And I love that quote because it speaks so plainly of what I’ve always felt is what a Yoga practice truly reveals and gives to the practitioner: a way to know who you really are. And it does this by teaching you to look outside yourself and to acknowledge and develop the witnessing mind, detached and purely observant, without judgment. But is the true goal of Yoga — Samadhi or liberation from the constraints of the ego — compatible with that journey? Is it enough to gain that understanding of the self without ultimately losing the self?
It is this tension I want to explore by examining Jung’s writing about Yoga, and Kundalini Yoga in particular. I’d like to find a way toward answering the question, “in what practical ways can our Yoga practice (or any meditative practice) contribute the process of individuation?”