Turning To Our Belief Systems
Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, believed that the majority of people's psychological issues would only be resolved by a spiritual response. Post the madness about shootings which have come into the news over the past year and other events the situation we tend to all find ourselves in is growing more and more difficult for us to bear. After a certain shooting, I entered a full-on crisis of faith, and I realised I was not alone.
Although I clearly have a religious bent, I actually have more in common with atheists than with religious people who have unwavering faith in an omnipresent, omnibenevolent God. However, the latter can seem to be the only issue which may probably resolve my perpetual problem of wanting to believe the fundamental goodness of people and pricelessness of life, but at the same time being besieged daily by news of appalling atrocities around the world.
Facing Perpetual Hardships
Can the devoted among us really feel a Benevolent Presence in the thick of a world gone mad and out of control? A world where hurricanes drown innocents and disparage homes, a maniac shoots twenty children in a school, 60,000 are dead in Syria, and unspeakable violence is just a given part of our collective human existence?
I still hold my plan of a love-based reality where children—and us—are completely and utterly safe from unhealthy individuals, dangerous accidents, unhealthy diseases, unhealthy anything. However, our experience is strictly contrary to it. Human existence is increasingly fraught with peril.
Ways To Relieve The Pain
Someone once said, "You can be safe, or you can be alive." To opt simply for safety once, as Helen Keller put it, "Life is either a daring journey or nothing," is to downsize your life experience more and more until you never leave the house. However, are we becoming too numb to the atrocities that happen in life?
People meditate, pray, and do infinite different rituals and practices to prompt themselves of such an inner place of refuge, one that is larger than all possible circumstances, for that seems to be the only resolution of this mess, and yes, as Carl Gustav Jung suggested, it is a spiritual answer. It requires being hyper-vigilant, awake and aware in whatever moment you are presently living—this very breath, knowing that this can be the first breath of the rest of your life, and, at some point, your last.
