Self/self Sustenance in an Era of Trump: From MAGA to Manna

This article is from: The Jungian Center for the Spiritual Sciences (see link below)

“Transitions between the aeons always seem to have been melancholy and despairing times, as for instance the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt between Taurus and Aries, or the melancholy of the Augustinian age between Aries and Pisces. And now we are moving into Aquarius…. And we are only at the beginning of this apocalyptic development!”

“There is only one certainty–nothing can put out the light within.” Carl Jung

            Many of us in our Jungian Center community took a double hit recently: shock coupled with dashed hopes. After seeing so many women become heads of their governments, we were hoping we would have the same; instead, we now face the prospect of years likely to be worse than what we endured in 2016-2020.

Several people have asked me “How can I cope?” A more energizing question might be “How to thrive–how to turn what now seems like a doleful time into an interval of growth, insight, learning and personal enrichment?

This essay addresses this second question, beginning with an overview of what’s really going on, beneath all the hubbub of the election bluster and prognostications, to provide some perspective on current reality. Then some tips on coping follow–getting through the mundane features of daily life–and after that, a deeper discussion follows on how we can turn frustration into fulfillment.

What’s Really Going On?

One of the reasons for the rise of Trump and the MAGA movement (beyond the obvious political causes, like the Democrats’ desertion of their working-class base to indulge the greed of global capitalists) is the simultaneity of multiple transitions occurring now. Jung was aware of the nature of our time and how these transitions, subtle though they may be, can profoundly color our lives. Some examples illustrate this.

The quotation at the beginning of this essay is from Jung’s letter to his friend Adolf Keller, alerting him to the nature of our time–how we as global citizens are living in the shift from the old Piscean aeon, with its glyph of two fishes, one streaming upstream (symbolizing the first half of the aeon, ruled by Christ, with a vertical orientation) and the other fish swimming downstream (symbolizing the second half, ruled by the Anti-Christ, aka “Satan,” the devil, with its horizontal focus on the things and sins of this  world).

Around the year 1000 CE, the orientation changed, and history reflected this in the Investiture Controversy, which was the first time secular authority (the Emperor) challenged the prerogatives of the Church. The next 900+ years saw many more similar challenges: the Protestant Reformation, wars galore,fiendish technological developments (none more so than the invention of nuclear weapons), and the widespread plundering of the Earth, to the point now where many areas of the planet are becoming uninhabitable. Satan stalks the globe indeed!

Meanwhile, the coming aeon of Aquarius has been emerging, the beginning of  which we might date to 1776, when a clear enunciation of independence was articulated, leading to the creation of the United States. We might think of the USA as a product of Aquarian energy, given our originality, inventiveness, technological developments and ostensible interest in equality. But the aeon is not limited to America: it has a global influence, and for some 250 years its spirit has been pervading and melding with that of Pisces.

Jung knew what this meant: melancholy. A dying aeon colors the unconsciousness of humanity, while the slow emergence of the new begins to suggest changes–changes which are often hard to describe or articulate–hence an anxiety which grows more common and widespread over generations. Ten generations on, we are living in an “age of anxiety,” made more pronounced because of another transition which Jung recognized: the shift from Age of the Son to the Age of the Holy Spirit, in what is called the “Holy Ghost movement.”

For the complete article go to: https://jungiancenter.org/self-self-sustenance-in-an-era-of-trump-from-maga-to-manna/