Carl Jung wrote that every psychic event is an image and an imagining. He further believed that the psyche creates reality daily and he called this activity of the soul fantasy.
Reviewing Jung's writings, it seems that transformative work within the soul has three important attributes: transcendence, objectivity, and numinosity.
Transcendence is the ability to move beyond warring opposites and embrace paradox.
Objectivity is the realization that there are first principles, or archai, which he referrred to as the archetypes (images), that are the organs of perception of the soul.
Numinosity, from the latin word meaning light, implies that soul events are otherworldly, true epiphanies.
These attributes make it clear that the soul's way of being is other than human, even if the human is visible in all our experiences.
Images are the soul's self-generating activity, most immediately expressed in our dreams, where we become one of the many images, and it is not until we are awake that we realize that we were in the dream and not the other way around.
It requires work for the image to be made intelligible.
Because images appear in art and culture, in religion and science, work with the image is made possible by turning towards these places where image and fantasy create reality.
Because the soul has a special relationship to death and to the Gods, work with images allows us to speak of these Necessities as well.
Spirit
Many traditions suggest that the soul is that aspect of spririt that is closest to the body, so that the soul animates, gives life to, and provides the subjective container for the body-spirit tandem. Whenever we speak of soul, we must assume that spirit is never far away. While soul seems to always be my soul, Spirit brings a sense of objective otherness.
One is seized by the spirit, spirit descends and ascends, and spirit brings epiphanies. St. Paul, he of the New Testament, is knocked off his ass, and his old order is called into question.Just as the soul expresses itself in multiple ways, there have always been a multitude of spirits. Do we speak of one spirit, monotheism, or many spirits, polytheism? This is a very old discussion.
One myth that may express the soul/spirit marriage is the story of Cupid and Psyche, the image of which has been known for over two thousand years in the Western tradition.
Self
James Hillman has noted that the only other word that is still capitalized in common usage, other than God, is the noun, I.
The notion of self is psychological, and postmodern Western society is a psychological culture.
The idea of the self is self-referential, and asserts individualness, the totality of personhood, consciousness, and uniqueness: me, myself, and I. The gift of having, or identifying, as a self is choice, which proceeds from awareness. Choice is necessary, to engage in soul-making for instance. While the potential for the broadest range of the human and nonhuman experience is present, the self must engage in 'doing' in order for the latent to become actual.
A Note on Body
Living at the boundary between soul, spirit and self is not possible without the having of a body.In the framework being offerred here, the body is the one true transcendent value that reaches across all domains.
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