May God deny you peace

I came across the following quote in Stephan A.Hoeller’s book Jung and the Lost Gospels today :

May God deny you peace and give you glory.

Peace at any price is not wisdom and in that chapter Errant Wisdom Hoeller was discussing Sophia as the concept of wisdom who falling in love with Depth gives birth to Jesus after a descent into the abyss which occurs as she attempts to bond with light.. The light Sophia seeks in a way is too overpowering to be contained but it is through the suffering both she and Jesus experience that true depth and wisdom are born..

I think what is being implied here is that often we learn more through the things that give us pain, through struggling through and with as well as by fully experiencing the full range of our primal passions and tendencies as they without allowing them to be completely disallowed, restrained and repressed by society…

To quote Hoeller :

Left outside the supernal spiritual universe, alone and comfortless, Sophia experienced every sort of psychic storm imaginable. Passion, sorrow, fear, despair,and ignorance exuded from her being like mighty clouds and condensed into the four elements of earth, water, fire, and air as well as into a number of beings….. fierce and troublesome spirits one and all. The mightiest of these, a lion faced being filled with pride and will for power, marshaled his host of world fashioning spirits, and out of the raw material of (the four elements) they built a world of impressive external appearance, yet replete with great flaws, having been created in the image of its creators. Sorrow, fear, ignorance and other painful and destructive passions were built into the fabric of this imperfect world, in as much as the raw material used by the fashioners originated in feelings like those experienced by Sophia.

Looking down at the flawed and troubled world pridefully fashioned by her own ignorant offspring, Sophia was filled with pity for creation and resolved to assist in such ways as would be available to her. She thus became the spirit of the world, anxiously observing it like a mother is wont to do when watching over a feeble and misshapen child.

Meanwhile in the lofty heights Jesus was anxiously observing the sorrowful fate of his mother, Sophia. He joined himself to Sophia twin aeon, Christ, and thus became Jesus Christ the Messiah and messenger of God. . rallying around him… sublime and compassionate powers of fullness… (he gathered them together in himself) so he could be ready to form acts of redemption and liberate Sophia from her sorrowful fate in the void.

The continuation of this story speaks of the earthly journey of Jesus Christ where through teaching and crucifixion he then ascends again to heaven holding Sophia by the hand. But Sophia could not leave her struggling children behind in that void and so she separated herself into two parts, one ascended and the other descended in proximity to humans to help them through great compassion.

Hoeller goes onto to describe the subsequent creation of three regions of being :

Firstly, the sublunar or material world ruled over by Pan (later inaccurately to be called the devil) who overseas earth, plants and living creatures, turning the great wheel of birth and death and rebirth.

Secondly, higher in immaterial space exists the world of soul and mind ruled over by both a childish God and a blind one, an arrogant and power hungry world is this with a love for the restrictive limiting rule of law devised to diminish man or woman’s freedom which is the true birthright of his or her spirit. Philosophies and ideologies also rule in this world beclouding deeper wisdom and insight.

Thirdly, the world of Sophia-Achamoth, this is the world of spirit where twin angels of the human personalities reside to assist us.

These three dimensions exist in all of us material, soul and spirit and some of us are ruled or are dominated by one dimension more than another but I believe Jung thought we could in time blend all of them to become more complete, more full of wisdom, more in touch with primal depths, more fully intelligently and vibrantly alive. It is through the battle with all parts of ourselves that so often become splintered, through bearing with the struggle and tussle that we grow and expand and deepen..

So it is that we cannot really wish for peace if we truly wish to find glory.. there is surely so much that goes on in the silence within the deep primal material body soul and spirit of one human being but there is also much to be said that must be externalized and voiced as well.

Reading this chapter really spoke to me today after a few days of wrestling with where my own desires have taken me over past years and the suffering that has resulted.

Some of the ideas in Hoeller’s book are complex to understand but what is highlights is the redeeming aspect of higher consciousness a and wisdom as well as its twin sister compassion.. both of these seem to be the redeeming qualities that can help us to come to terms with and embrace not only our own, passions and stormy depths but those of others too.. This insight most certainly seems to make sense of my own life.