46: The Quandary of Our Modern World

46

The Quandary of Our Modern World

Unquestionably, the pace of life has quickened with the onslaught of the Internet and Social Media; but are we any closer to where we want, or ought to be? That’s the quandary of our modern world that came to me as I reflected upon our purpose in life as I re-read half a dozen or so books on the Edgar Cayce literature that I chanced upon in my basement library last week when I went downstairs to look for one book in particular, which I couldn’t find, and I took that as a sign that I was meant to re-acquaint myself with the literature on reincarnation; but why? That’s the subject of today’s spiritual musing…

I make no pretense to the fact that I believe in reincarnation, which given the copious amounts of information that we have today on the subject makes me wonder why society is still so resistant to the ancient concept of rebirth—reminding me of a letter that Carl Gustav Jung wrote on his startling insight on man’s resistance to understanding, which I will refer to later as I approach a solution to the quandary of our modern world; but it was Jess Stearn’s book The Search for a Soul: Taylor Caldwell’s Psychic Lives that inspired my re-reading of the Edgar Cayce literature, because it gave me the perspective that I needed to make sense of our modern dilemma—and by dilemma I mean the paradoxical fact that the quicker the pace of our modern world gets (and it seems to be speeding up exponentially with the advances we make in digital technology), the greater the distance we seem to be from where we want, or ought to be. It’s a whirlwind of activity out there, but where are we going?

I read an article in one of my weekend papers a month or so ago about a ritzy resort hotel that offered luxury suites at exorbitant rates because they were architecturally designed so the occupants could not access the outside world with their laptops and mobile units, thereby offering them a box of time for disconnected rest and relaxation. How ironic, that our modern world has become so obsessed and self-indulgent that we can no longer say no to our addiction to smart phones and our need to be connected with what’s going on out there.

I chuckled at the irony, because it’s not what’s going on out there that has our modern world in a schizophrenic frenzy, but what’s going on in here—in the little universe of our own private lives; and that’s the crux of our dilemma, because what’s going on out there can’t seem to satisfy the longing in our soul, and we’re always left wanting.

As synchronicity would have it (I just love it when the synchronicity principle kicks in to assist me in my writing), just to confirm my point about our modern world’s need to be connected with what’s going on out there, I just happened to check my email a moment ago as I took a break from this musing, and a friend had just posted a cartoon depicting a bunch of children sitting on the front steps of a house and others walking on the sidewalk all with their heads bent and eyes locked onto their smart phones and a yellow caution road sign with the warning: SLOW, CHILDREN TEXTING. And the caption read: “PLAYING OUTSIDE” THESE DAYS. What more proof does one need for our need to be connected?

This is the “disease” of our modern world that has infected the next generation—the need to be connected with what’s going on out there, whatever out there may be for each afflicted person—be it one’s friends, one’s email, Facebook, Twitter, or whatever window onto the world that one may be locked into; and time fritters by as we hungrily try to satisfy that indefinable longing in our soul with the empty social calories of what’s going on out there. No wonder some enterprising individual has offered exorbitantly priced weekend retreats for those who can afford to pay to get away from what’s going on out there!

I had read Jess Stearn’s book The Search for a Soul, Taylor Caldwell’s Psychic Lives many years ago, which was the inspiration for my own seven past-life regressions many years later that became the foundational basis for my novel Cathedral of My Past Lives;  but I was strongly nudged to read Stearn’s book  again because I felt a need to re-acquaint myself with how our current life is unconsciously affected by our past lives, as Taylor Caldwell’s life certainly was because many of her novels were drawn from those ancient times in which she lived and where she drew her information from for her unbelievably knowledgeable novels—like Dear and Glorious Physician, a novel about St. Luke, and Great Lion of God, a fascinating novel about St. Paul and the life and times of the Jews.

Taylor Caldwell was regressed to some of her past lives, and it was enlightening to see how many of the people that she met in her current lifetime, like her husband, had played a vital role in her past lives; all of which points to a karmic purpose to our life. And that’s what’s missing in today’s modern world, the stubborn resistance to our karmic need for self-fulfillment which is displaced by our obsessive need for self-indulgence and social attention.

I wrote a spiritual musing a while back alluding to this obsessive need, which I titled “I’m On Facebook, Therefore I Am,” and as ironic as I was in my musing, the point I wanted to make was that Social Media cannot satisfy our longing for self-fulfillment; but very few people make the connection between what’s going on out there and what’s going on in here, and our world today suffers the malaise of spiritual emptiness more than any other age.

Doctor Jung, the founder of Analytical Psychology, foresaw this in his practice, and in his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul he tells us what the problem is: “During the past thirty years, people from all the civilized countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patient, the larger number being Protestants, a smaller number Jews, and not more than five or six believing Catholics. Among all of my patients in the second half of life—that is to say, over thirty-five—there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of not finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook” (Modern Man in Search of a Soul, C. G. Jung, p. 229, bold italics mine).

Jung said that most people who came to him for therapy suffered from a sense of meaninglessness, and it was his duty to help them find a sense of purpose; this is how he developed his psychology of individuation—because the more one grew in the consciousness of his own identity, the more fulfilled he would be. “As each plant grows from a seed and becomes in the end an oak tree, so man becomes what he is meant to be. He ought to get there, but most get stuck,” said Jung in an interview that I came across on the Internet; and that’s the problem of our modern world—we ought to get there, but we’re stuck.

As I see it, modern man is stuck out there somewhere; and until we come to the realization that in the final analysis where it’s really at is in here, in the little universe of our own private world, we will never satisfy that longing in our soul to be what we are meant to be—which is why I was drawn to re-read my Edgar Cayce literature.

Edgar Cayce was America’s greatest living psychic who would go into a trance state and do past-life readings as well as health readings; and Jess Stearn helped to bring Edgar Cayce to the public’s attention with his books Edgar Cayce: The Sleeping Prophet and Intimates Through Time: Edgar Cayce’s Mysteries of Reincarnation. And then I re-read Stearn’s book Soul Mates, because I enjoyed reading about people who found their soul mate, quite often serendipitously, to fulfill their past-life karmic relationships—which is precisely how I met my soul mate Penny Lynn, because we had unresolved karma from our past life together in Genoa, Italy when I broke her heart by cheating on her with my mistress.

We’re all born with karmic purpose, which is why I felt compelled to write today’s spiritual musing; because the only solution that I can see to the quandary of our modern world is to embrace a philosophy of life that will connect us to our inner purpose. But to do that, we have to take a pause from what’s going on out there and pay more attention to what’s going in in here in the little universe of our own private world.

This brings me back to Jung’s insight into man’s resistance to understanding—which, when push comes to shove, is born of man’s fear of knowing himself; and I can vouchsafe Jung’s insight, because it’s also been my experience that when one is made conscious of their purpose in life, which is to become what we are meant to be, the responsibility is often too great to bear, and one flees into the world out there to escape their karmic responsibility—an insight which was confirmed for me with a dream I had on the night of my open heart surgery when I was chased from one lifetime to the next by Nazi-like soldiers, which I discerned to be my own karma hunting me from one life to the next—the spiritual crisis of our modern world, because our chickens have come home to roost; and not until we connect with our karmic purpose will we ever hope of resolving our dilemma.

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