An Explanation of Carl Jung

In my ministry I was introduced to the work of Carl Jung when I trained in the Supervised Pastoral Education program in Canada in the late 1970’s. Following my scant reading I was directed to  the books of Morton Kelsey and John Sandford, two simple but notable scholars of his work. It all made sense to me. Over the years I further read  books on Jung and came to become more committed to his concepts. This was expanded when I ventured into other schools and rounded it out with reading on the Myers Briggs Personality Indicator, based on Jung's thinking. It was a comprehensive description of all types of categories people fit into. It was an approach to life that made practical sense of Jung’s theory of personality. Some 45 years later as I look back over my ministry and from reading numerous accounts of his work, I have determined that it speaks to me clearly about my own orientation.  During this time, I began buying copies of his extended works. I am a Jungian.

Jung’s theory fits well with the mystical orientation of life. This mystical approach I attach to myself, because I am draw to Meditation and Contemplation and I am bewitched by the whole concept of the Jung paradigm as a theory of life. This description crosses a wide range of experiences including the mediative and contemplative. In that experience some people ‘soar like eagles while others swoop like swallows.’ I am drawn like the latter, the swallow.  But when it comes to the ideology, I comprehend the system and find my whole way of thinking fits into its concept.

I want to illustrate this model by referring to two axes of the person, the ego-divine axis and the divine community axis. These two axes embrace the whole of life experience. In simple terms they represents the cross, the two cross pieces. It replicates the teaching of one of the I AM sayings of Jesus in the gospel of John. I am the true vine, which speaks of the two messages of Christ, the Christ for the ego divine axis and the entire vineyard for the divine and the communal. This is the archetype of humanity. This is the complete identity of all people.  The all-inclusive nature of this illustration depicts the contemplative mind set. It is centred on the divine but embraces the individual person and the all-inclusive nature of humanity.