Prejudice cripples and injures the full phenomenon of psychic life—Carl Jung, Memories Dreams, Reflections.

How do I clear the path that has been laid out for me? It is a path whereby I am being asked to live in between two worlds: that of spirit, and this, the material plane. I have spent the summer mostly engaged in the spiritual realm, neglecting the material. I now see how people get lose in the spiritual, unable to ground themselves in the earthly realm and, therefore, find themselves unable to fully exist. Everything goes to hell: job, family, finances, and—more than likely—health. You can’t neglect one for the other.

Embracing, balancing, and living betwixt both worlds is the ultimate mode. It is the way of the shaman, the artist, the visionary, and the healer. Those who get trapped in the spiritual are known as psychotics, schizophrenics, the mentally ill. Those are just names we use to understand why people are “crazy.” They aren’t crazy; they just can’t maneuver in-between the worlds. They are, in a sense, inadequate drivers of these crafts that are very difficult to drive.

I, too, have been an inadequate driver, and that is probably the way it is for many starting out on this path. One source of understanding this journey has been Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist. He wrote about how he spent two years in that “other world.” He had left his teaching position at the university in Zurich, Switzerland, devoting his time to his psychiatry practice and his “inner work.” He says:

The unconscious contents could have driven me out of my wits. But my family, and the knowledge—these were actualities which made demands upon me and proved to me again and again that I really existed, that I was not a blank page whirling about in the winds of the spirit, like Nietzsche…he was uprooted and hovered above the earth, and, therefore, he succumbed to exaggeration and irreality. No matter how deeply absorbed or how blown about I was, I always knew that everything I was experiencing was ultimately directed at this real life of mine. (189)

It is in that realm that each of us can get lost. I have found myself on the verge of falling too deeply into the unconscious realms this summer, and I wouldn’t say I’m in a space of firmly being grounded, although I’m getting there. Each day is a new learning experience.

This path, though, is designed to embrace both worlds: at least the path I am on. I think, though, that we’re each called to be able to balance between the spiritual and material realms. Wasn’t this the way of Jesus? This is as much a part of the ascension process as anything else. The indigenous cultures know this, and this way of life is part of their everyday existence. Rites of passage into adulthood are designed to give group members initiation into the spirit world, and give them the tools to live in a balanced way.

The spirits demand our attention, and if we don’t pay attention to our true destiny, our calling, we circumvent the spirits and find ourselves trapped in the material. That is hell in the Biblical sense. The Western culture has ignored this other reality of the ancestors and spirit. This “inner” world is imagination, make-believe: dreams and visions don’t relate to how we deal with “this” world, which includes Little League, traffic jams, mortgages, Sunday School, and meetings with the boss.

Once we step outside of that mindset, we begin to encounter the possibilities opened via the world of Spirit, the ancestors, the archetypes. Then we begin to experience the questions that are calling us forward, that are giving us a path in life. Questions make up that path, you know!

So as I continue on this journey, trying to balance the worlds, I imagine myself becoming more conscious about how I create this reality. I see how my thoughts and attitudes and intentions are the substance—the ingredients—creating this daily experience I call my life.

The dreams and visions and experiences in the Spirit realm are supposed to be integrated in such a way that a new reality is created here on Earth. I cannot continue to leave them behind, ignore them as though they were bits and pieces from a Hollywood movie. I know much more is being asked and required of me. As Jung wrote, “for there are higher things than the ego’s will, and to these one must bow.”

I humbly bow, and seek the proper questions to which the answers have already been given.