Reading about Jung’s Sophia Stage, the culmination of the individuation process, a phrase stood out—the loss of the ability to idealize, a true loss.
I have never been able to accurately put into words how I am in the world, how recognizing what this is, what I and you are, changes the lived experience indelibly. I thought I would never be able to convey this peace and magic, but here it was, formed as a loss, wrapped in what’s not here, what’s not this, or in the language of Sanskrit found in the Upanishads, neti neti (not this, not this).
I am certain there will always be a more accurate description to be chronicled. What feels completely accurate today will likely be seen as lacking tomorrow, but this is a valiant beginning, one I thought I‘d never find words to start.
Idealize: regarded or represented as perfect or better than in reality
That’s what 99.9% of humanity is searching for, the perfected moment, the life we know we can have if only, the mate finally realizing his or her full and true potential, humanity stepping into their sacred inheritance, a return to the good ol’ days, an environment cleared of pollution—clear blue skies and waters and singing birds (think Disney movie), a guaranteed, genuinely realized ticket through the pearly gates, or perhaps better yet, living to see heaven on earth.
It sounds wonderful. Can you hear the music swell?
Laughing, not at you, but with you. If you’ve been on the spiritual path more than a day or two, you already know how this turns out. The path is more than a bit of bait and switch. We get pulled in because we want release from the pain, or to feel special, and then once the door behind us slams shut, we see the true asking price.
The human’s natural ability to idealize, to galvanize pots of preferences, skedaddles. And that’s the reason so many who have seen through the ruse say, with all sincerity and the greatest compassion, that you really don’t want this. The world doesn’t change, but the willingness and drive to fix and repair it disappears.
To some, that is experienced as peace and freedom.
That mirage shimmering just out of reach, the hope that makes life worth living, the ability to look to the future for a better world, where do you think all that excitement goes when idealization falls away?
And what’s left after the normal world view collapses?
Just this. Life as it is. No hope for a better now; no vision of how magical it will be when whatever it is that isn’t perfect shifts or changes; no holding out for that perfect look, that ideal answer to your prayers.
Just this.
Loved ones diagnosed with cancer. A sunrise that drops you to your knees. Bills that used to be manageable that are naught but memories of the past. Warm hugs from a beloved. Wars within and without.
Just this.
Everyday life in a world of duality.
Without. The. Need. To. Fix. Or. Hang. On. To. It.
Change though, the only constant, is full of surprises, positive and otherwise, but even ideas of positive and negative drop into the cauldron of idealization and melt like the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz.
Gone.
Need of a better now, a more perfect union of stardust and ether, slips beneath the waves of something wholly unexpected. Trust (not exactly the right word, but none are.), trust without ownership rises from the depths, revealing itself. It was always present, just unnoticed. Unvarnished trust in the unfolding now, in the experiences we are given, in the preciousness of life as it is, organically attunes the vessel of experiencing.
This moment is more than enough. It is permeated with enough potential to last ten thousand lifetimes. Drenched in unlimited possibilities, an invitation to lifetimes of discovery, each breath is a mystery appearing for absolutely no reason at all.
Who would ever believe that purposeless, meaningless, enoughness is what we’ve always wanted. We never truly desired what we craved. Locked inside ideas of limitation, our ideals were merely the best we could come up with at the time.
It’s not that I choose not to idealize. There simply is no need for it anymore. It’s kind of fascinating though, because compassion remains for those who are experiencing lives of pain and harm, misery and suffering, loss and fear. Compassion, the natural outpouring of understanding and love, doesn’t fade and temper itself. It doesn’t fall away like eons of conditioning do. It doesn’t switch off like the autopilot of rightness. It doesn’t simply disappear like the insatiable need to judge that dwindles into nothingness.
In a miraculous twist, the heart magically opens to include whatever arises, whatever there is to be felt, whatever experience appears.
Some days tears fall, the heart breaks, and words are written that sound like judgment, that appear to be preferences, that seem to be a treatise of right and wrong. Looking through the lens of a material world view, of separation and individuation, of judgment and righteousness, that is all that can be seen. One cannot see what one has no reference points for.
From the standpoint of no stance, the inability to idealize, life continues continuing. The character in the play of life plays her role. If writing is how life expresses through that particular character, writing appears to take place.
From the outside looking in it’s a freaking paradox. The mechanisms that used to function in what most of the world would call normal, no longer function at all, and yet, the appearance of someone doing something in time and space, a being with opinions and preferences, arises.
If anything, compassion expands. Well, perhaps not expands, but is fully accessible. This we are is compassion, is a gentle acceptance, a fierce love of all that is. The joy and love that is felt is limitless, as is humanity’s pain and suffering.
There is no escape from our humanity. This is the human life-time experiential! Our cherished ideals will not save us from what is ours to experience. They will only make life more painful when they are not realized. Neither will our well-honed spiritual understanding. It may make it easier to be with what is, but it won’t change the menu of what’s to come. More comfortable experiences will arise if and when they do, as will ones that require slightly different abilities, those that will expand comfort zones and make you more pliable, better able to engage with what’s next.
Every movement in apparent time and space has but one impetus—regardless of what it looks like—one imperative, precipitating the fall from the cliff of idealization into endless surrender. It heralds the end of looking, waiting, hoping, praying, dying for something better and ushers in the recognition that this is, that we are, already the magnificence, life’s infinite aliveness.
Amaya is the author of 7 books, the latest Actuality: infinity at play. It is available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and IngramSparks and others. Link to B&N https://bit.ly/4bXLFie
Image: AI WordPress by Amaya
