By: Lionel Corbett

Many of us are no longer committed to any historical religious tradition, yet we still have a personal sense of connection to the sacred dimension. This situation is not surprising; the traditional images of God no longer work for us, and we often cannot relate to the doctrine and dogma of the traditions, such as their attitude to women and to sexuality. However, human beings have an innate spirituality which makes us want to connect to the sacred. Our ancestors have been on the earth for over 100,000 years, and we have archaeological evidence that human spiritual practices go back to these earliest beginnings, suggesting that spirituality is an intrinsic part of human nature. In contrast to this long period, the Judeo-Christian tradition is only about two thousand years old. This tradition has tried to force our innate spirituality into its particular containers, as if their way is the only way to connect to the sacred. When there is no good fit between traditional teachings and our own beliefs, we feel we have nowhere to go, no way to express our deep need for connection to the transpersonal dimension. Our problem then becomes how to make this connection in a personal way that fits with our own personality and with our contemporary level of consciousness. One common approach is to develop our own blend of many spiritual traditions, taking from all of them practices and ideas which are helpful.

Another approach is to use Jung’s depth psychological model. Jung believes that human consciousness is continuous with a transpersonal or spiritual level of consciousness. This level is an intrinsic part of us; we are born with what Jung calls the Self, which is an image of the divine within the personality. The Self acts as a kind of blueprint for the development of our sense of self, or the person we eventually become, so that the spiritual dimension is actually an integral part of our psyche. We can become more and more conscious of the Self by paying attention to our dreams and to synchronistic events, which are events in the outer world which correspond to our inner world. The transpersonal level of the psyche, which Jung calls the archetypal level, is also part of our complexes, or our emotional difficulties and personality make-up. The spiritual dimension can also be experienced through the body, in relationships, and in the natural world, so there are plenty of opportunities to relate to that level if we are aware of the ways in which it appears to us.