Exploring the Unique Self and beyond … Discovery and Gratitude (Part 1)

Photo Credit: woodleywonderworks

By Hans Jecklin

When, more than 40 years ago, I undertook my first steps into the cosmos of Jungian psychology, I was soon confronted with the opposition of an “I”, the person I am in this life, and the “Self” that Carl Gustav Jung understood as both the source and fulfillment of the “I” or as the prior source of potentials for the “I” to manifest in life. Jung was aware of the danger for the “I” to identify with this “Autonomous Reality” or “Divine Archetype” and warned of ego-inflation when a person would – even unconsciously – try to occupy or control that higher reality.

This mostly intellectual differentiation of “I” and “Self” accompanied me for a long time after I started my spiritual search. The longing for the direct experience of God had not only led me beyond psychology, but also to quit the reformed (Christian) church that had been my parents’ choice. I then spent nearly twenty years of practicing Zazen, Tao Yoga and Kashmir Shivaism and went through many dis-illusions, having mis-taken the impermanent for the eternal, until finally grace took over.

Tired of the year-long search through cultures and places, I had at one point asked my Self to make no more fuss and take me over to the Siddhis: “This is like dying” it responded and faster-than-I-could-think a chorus of inner voices exclaimed “This is what we have been waiting for!”. When after a seemingly endless fall through extreme darkness, I ended in indescribable bliss, I realized that this was the unconditional love I had always been looking for and that the irresistible longing that had led me through this labyrinth of temptations is the nature of GRACE.

The natural wish to bring this deep experience into my life of a family-father and business-man soon brought me to understand that — yes! — on one hand there was nothing more to search for, but that, on the other, this was just the beginning of the real exploration into spirituality, one that might never end in this life-time.

Happily enough, my longing and curiosity had also led me to a form of past-life therapy where I could experience the “Inner Self” as an undeniable reality: as the presence of eternal, all-encompassing love and wisdom within me. Within this setting, I learnt to surrender to its guidance as an ever-present source that would not only send showers of love through my cellular, emotional and mental bodies but was capable to help me understand and transform traumatic imprints that had been limiting the unfoldment of my life purpose: Unconscious imprints or conditioning, resulting from this lifetime and — depending on our understanding — from cultural heritage (familiar, ethnic, racial, human) or past lifetimes.

Having become a facilitator of this transformational work — which I do not label as strictly “past-life” anymore — I  have over the years been enriched by so many experiences that I can gladly surrender to it, without any doubts about its unique power of love and wisdom. It is my supreme inner guide that not only carries the potential to manifest my unique role on this planet (or in the universe?!) but its wisdom is constantly guiding me into perfect circumstances and moments, right people, books and teachings that I need at a given moment to better respond to the challenges of the ever-evolving present.

I have learnt that I can grow into such subtle intimacy with this endless source of love and wisdom that it has become a supreme partner of dialogue  It may — at my request — permeate and transform or expand my consciousness by its love and wisdom in order to more completely perform my role in the favor of humanity, our planet and the cosmos.

I know that the “Unique Self” that manifests through me is but an aspect of what I would call a “Prior Unity” of all possible potentials, ready to manifest in this or other universes. These potentials constantly arise from the “ONE undivided and eternal presence”; they must originate from before the singular event that we assume as the BigBang and — according to limited human understanding — have evolved through the play of eros and agape ever since.

I have been shown by GRACE how to knock at the door of the “ONE”  that as to my present understanding might be my eternal home, but I know at the same time that NOW my role within this life will be guided by the “Unique Self” that is constantly present within and beyond me.

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I am open for additional inspiration to enlarge my present view which — as we all know — is provisional. Please also do not hesitate to ask whenever my limited capacity of writing in English needs support.