One Rule to Live By: Be Good, Chapter 32: Dr. Peterson's Jungian Gift to the World

CHAPTER 32

Dr. Peterson’s Jungian Gift to the World

“I have, I believe, known many of those the world considered great,

but Carl Gustav Jung is almost the only one

of whose greatness I am certain.”

Jung and the Story of Our Time

—Laurens van der Post

I knew from day one why professor Jordan Peterson was called by life to answer the angry question of my poem, “What the hell is going on out there?” But I had to let my creative unconscious work it out as I wrote One Rule to Live By: Be Good and make conscious what I had intuited; and the more I got into my story, the more it became cognitively clear to me that there was a void in the soul of man that religion, science and politics could not fill, and professor Jordan Peterson was called to help fill this void with his maps of meaning, and so desperate was the void in man’s soul to be filled with meaning that his book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos became an overnight bestseller, with thousands of wayward young men flocking to his lectures to hear his message, like his talk in Sidney, Australia where it took four and a half hours for Jordan Peterson to sign his book for his audience.

But I had to wonder, what was it about his message that attracted so many young men to his talks and online lectures? And as I wondered, a spiritual musing that I had posted on my blog Saturday, July 15, 2017 came to mind, and I knew why—because his message had inflicted these young men with an immortal wound of wonder:

Wounded with Wonder

Three years ago I wrote The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway, a memoir which I thought would bring resolution to my lifelong fascination with Ernest Hemingway who called me to writing in high school; but apparently I wasn’t done with him yet, because on March 1, 2017 I was called to write a sequel, which I completed on June 7, 2017, a private journal called My Writing Life, Reflections on My High School Hero and Literary Mentor Ernest “Papa” Hemingway, and now I’d like to write a spiritual musing on my unique literary experience…

In her book, A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women, Siri Hustvedt explores the question of where authors get their ideas in an essay called “Why One Story and Not Another?” And the conclusion she came to, as tentative as it may be because it seems to her that nothing is ever conclusive when it comes to the body-psyche relationship, was that “there are clearly unconscious processes that precede the idea, that are at work before it becomes conscious, work that is done subliminally in a way that resembles both remembering and dreaming,” further adding: “I argue that a core bodily, affective, timeless self is the ground of the narrative, temporal self, of autobiographical memory, and of fiction and that the secret of creativity lies not in the so-called higher cognitive processes, but in the dreamlike configurations of emotional meanings that take place unconsciously” (A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women, pp. 388-9). And I don’t disagree with her reasoning, but with qualifications.

But why one story and not another? Why was I called to write The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway and then a sequel three years later? Why did the idea for my literary memoirs come to me when they did, and with such a compelling need to write them?

“Every good novel is written because it has to be written. The need to tell it is compelling,” writes Siri Hustvedt; but this can be said of any genre, be it novels, short stories, poetry, plays, memoirs, or personal essays like my spiritual musings: when an idea comes to me, depending upon the urgency of the need to give it expression, the compulsion is determined, and my compulsion to write The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway possessed me with such daemonic intensity that I HAD to write it just to get it out of my system, just as I was compelled to write the sequel My Writing Life.

But why? Why was I possessed by the idea to write these books? Siri Hustvedt is a novelist and essayist with cross-disciplinary interests, and her compulsion to write possesses her as it does every writer who is called to their art; and herein lies the mystery—in the call to one’s life-path, whether it be art or whatever life path, which speaks to the individual nature of one’s destined purpose…

Over coffee the other morning, Penny and I got into a discussion on this mystery of being called to one’s life-path, because it was my conviction (drawn from years of being possessed by ideas that had to be given expression through novels, short stories, poetry, memoirs, and spiritual musings, not to mention the countless books that I felt compelled to read in my quest to find my true self that spoke to this issue) that to be called is to be ready to begin the journey of self-reconciliation, and to Penny’s disconcertment, I said to her: “Not everyone is called to their life-path. I was called to writing in high school by Hemingway, but my call to writing was supplanted by a higher calling to become a seeker when I read Maugham’s novel The Razor’s Edge in grade twelve; but I was ready to be called. Not everyone is ready—”

“I don’t agree,” Penny jumped in, contending that every person is on their own path no less than any writer, artist, doctor, or whatever the discipline; and I spent the next twenty minutes of our coffee time before Penny had to get ready for work explaining that a call to one’s life-path presupposes many lifetimes of experience in one’s calling. “It took many lifetimes for Mozart to become Mozart, and the same with Albert Einstein. Reincarnational memory and genetics work together. This is the mystery of being called,” I explained, which just happened to be the preoccupying theme of My Writing Life that I had just completed; but Penny still couldn’t see it, which is why I was called to write today’s spiritual musing…

My fascination with Ernest Hemingway called me to writing in the early grades of high school, but in grade twelve our English teacher assigned our class to read Maugham’s novel The Razor’s Edge, and so moved was I by Maugham’s hero Larry Darrell’s quest for the meaning and purpose of life that I was inflicted with what professor Harold Bloom called an “immortal wound” which set my soul on fire, a wound of wonder that supplanted my call to writing and launched me on my quest for my true self; and I devoted my best and most creative energies to my quest until I found “the most precious treasure in the world,” which I finally wrote about several years ago in my most intimate memoir, The Pearl of Great Price.

Despite my call to find my true self, I never gave up on writing, and whatever energies I had left over from earning my daily living (I started my own contract painting business after I left university where my quest had taken me), desperately seeking my true self (the “pearl of great price”) by  “working” on myself with Gurdjieff’s teaching, and all the reading that I was called to do, I spent on writing; and my fascination with Hemingway grew in proportion to what he taught me about the craft of writing. He was my high school hero because he called me to writing, and he became my literary mentor because I never stopped learning from him; but my quest for my true self initiated me into the sacred mysteries of the secret way of life that parted the veil that shrouds poetry and literature, and my two callings became one.

So I owed a debt to Ernest Hemingway who called me to writing, and I owed a debt to Somerset Maugham whose novel The Razor’s Edge inflicted me with an immortal wonder; and though I thought I had resolved my obligation to my high school hero and literary mentor with The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway (in which I did my level best to shed light on his paradoxical personality), I had not done with him yet, nor had I even addressed my debt to Somerset Maugham for writing The Razor’s Edge that set my soul on fire; that’s why I was called back to Hemingway when I received an Indigo Hemingway Notebook for Christmas from Penny’s sister three years after I had written The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway, and I HAD to write a sequel and resolve my debt to these two great writers who affected the course of my life.

I would never have parted the veil that shrouds poetry and literature had I not found my true self, but the quest for the “pearl of great price” opens up pathways to one’s destined purpose; and in my journey of self-discovery so many pathways opened up to me that I finally came to see the archetypal pattern of every soul’s journey through life, which is to realize our own individual identity.

Jesus called this final stage of soul’s journey through life being born again, but this is much too abstruse for today’s scientifically-minded world, and the only way to convey the gnostic wisdom of the secret way of life would be through what Jung called “the process of individuation,” the natural course of soul’s evolution to wholeness and completeness, as Emily Dickinson implied in one of her poems—

Adventure most unto itself

 The Soul condemned to be;

       Attended by a Single Hound—

                                                               Its own Identity.

Maugham’s novel launched me on my quest for my true self; and in my quest, I discovered the secret way to the most precious treasure in the world, the secret way of self-reconciliation. Jesus called it making the two into one, our inner and outer self that psychologists call our essence and personality, philosophers call our being and non-being, and mystics and poets call our real and false self, which was a price much too dear for the shadow-afflicted Ernest “Papa” Hemingway to pay, and way beyond the reach of William Somerset Maugham who did not even believe in God or the immortal soul and afterlife; that’s why I had to write a sequel to The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway. I had to thank them both for their life-changing inspiration with the incredible story of my own conflicted journey of self-discovery.

This is the mystery that shrouds poetry and literature, the incomprehensible journey of self-discovery that we are all condemned to complete by the archetypal pattern of our essential nature, a journey that takes us through one lifetime to the next until we are made ready by life experience to take evolution into our own hands and complete what Nature cannot finish; only then will one be called to the path that will initiate them into the sacred mystery of their own identity…

 I finally got Penny to see that a call to one’s path is a call to one’s own life, but a life that has evolved in its essential nature and is ready to begin its long and difficult journey of self-reconciliation; and it doesn’t matter what path one is called to—be it religion, art, science, medicine, psychology, politics or whatever; that’s the path that one has earned over the course of many lifetimes of natural evolution, the path off self-reconciliation that Socrates referred to as “soul gathering and collecting herself into herself.”

 “As each plant grows from a seed and becomes in the end an oak tree, so man must become what he is meant to be. He ought to get there, but most get stuck,” said Jung, and we all get stuck despite our best efforts. Ernest Hemingway got so stuck in his shadow-afflicted personality that he blew his brains out with his favorite shotgun because he had lost his reason for living, and Somerset Maugham got so mired in the soul-denying nihilism of his ego-driven life that he got tired of life altogether and just wanted to fade away into oblivion; but I prefer Emily Dickinson’s poetic perspective over Jung’s metaphor of the acorn seed, because it’s a little closer to the mark and a little more hopeful: we are all condemned to become our true self, and getting there is what life is all about. That’s what I tried to say in The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway, and what I tried to bring to resolution in my sequel My Writing Life, Reflections on My High School Hero and Literary Mentor Ernest “Papa” Hemingway.

———

          And that’s why my oracle beckoned me to send professor Jordan Peterson my four books that amplified the secret way of self-reconciliation, The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway and The Pearl of Great Price before he became a public figure, and My Writing Life and The Merciful Law of Divine Synchronicity when he was catapulted onto the world stage; but explaining why Jordan Peterson has attracted so many followers, predominantly young men looking for meaning and purpose (Peterson is uneasy about calling them “followers,” but he can’t come up with another word that would make him risk-free of being labelled “prophet” or “guru”—or “Pied Piper” even, which he smiles at but hates) is next to impossible to do, because who has the omniscience to factor in all the variables?

But I know from my own journey of self-discovery that a message that sets one’s soul on fire with an immortal wound of wonder has to bear the Logos, the redemptive power of Holy Spirit that Jesus called the way but which I simple refer to as the omniscient guiding principle of life, and Jordan Peterson’s message, which he spells out with vernacular ease in his 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, is so fraught with the Logos that it has the redemptive power to connect one with their destined purpose of becoming what they are meant to be—just as Jung intuited in his own journey of self-discovery; and this is Dr. Peterson’s Jungian gift to the world, the gift of reconnecting one with their life story, their inner path to wholeness and completeness in what they are meant to be…

In Jung and the Story of Our Time, Jung’s admiring friend Laurens van der Post reveals what I believe to be one of Jung’s most important discoveries, if not the most important discovery of his long career as a healer of souls (Claire Dunne called her biography Carl Jung: Wounded Healer of the Soul, because Jung had to suffer the cleansing fire of making the two into one for the “wholeness and singleness of self” that he finally achieved), Jung’s remarkable discovery that every person has their own personal story to wholeness and completeness that can become so interrupted they end up needing help, as Jung discovered in the Burgholzli mental hospital in Zurich where he began his career—

“Jung came to the conclusion that every human being had a story, or to put it in its most evolved form, a myth of its own…Jung said that he learned from the start how in every disturbance of the personality, even in its most extreme psychotic form of schizophrenia, or dementia praecox as it was then called, one could discern the elements of a personal story. That story was the personality’s most precious possession, whether it knew that or not, and the person could only be cured—or healed, as he put it…by the psychiatrist getting hold of the story. That was the secret key to unlock the door which barred reality in all its dimensions within and without from entering the personality and transforming it. More, he held that the story not only contained an account of the peculiar hurt, rejection, or trauma, as other men were hastening to call it, but the potential of wholesome development of the personality. The arrest of the personality in one profound unconscious timeless moment of itself called psychosis, he would tell me, occurred because the development of the person’s own story had been interrupted, however varied, individual, and numerous the cause of the interruption. All movement of the spirit and sense of beginning and end had been taken away from it and the story…suddenly stood still” (Jung and the Story of Our Time, by Laurens van der Post, pp.118, 119, 120; bold italics mine).

Out of his ten-year internship at the Burgholzli mental hospital under the tutelage of Dr. Bleuler, to whom he was greatly indebted “for the encouragement he gave him as a young man and for the example he set of total respect for his vocation as a psychiatrist,” Jung grew in his deep respect and understanding of the archetypal story that ensouled every person, like the case of “a comparatively young woman” who had been sent to the asylum as “insane beyond redemption.” But after considerable effort, Jung got her to tell him one of her dreams. “From that moment on, the dreaming process in her and the interchange between them accelerated and intensified,” wrote Laurens van der Post. She progressed so well that Jung was prepared to let her back out into the world to resume her life story, which had been interrupted for reasons we may never know. And on the morning of her release, Dr. Jung asked her, “Did you by any chance dream again last night?”

“Yes, I did,” she answered; paused, and then added, “And it’s no use badgering me, because for once I’m not going to tell you what it was.”

“I cannot tell you how moved I was,” Jung told his friend Laurens van der Post. “I could have wept with joy because you see at last the dream, the story, was her own again. And at once I discharged her.”

Dr. Peterson is a clinical psychologist with twenty years experience helping his clients reconnect with their story that got interrupted—a betrayal that led to a bitter divorce; intolerable working conditions beset with political correctness gone mad; crippling depression; agoraphobia; a devouring mother who cannot let go of her daughter; whatever trauma brought them to him, Dr. Peterson did his honor best to help them reconnect with the imperative of their interrupted story to personal wholeness, just as he had learned from the “wounded healer” who beckoned the budding psychologist to take up “the study of comparative mythological material” that connected him with his own story and “cured” him of his apocalyptic nightmares (a cure he tells us in Maps of Meaning that was “purchased at the price of complete and often painful transformation”); that’s why his message has inflicted the hearts of countless followers with an immortal wound of wonder that set their soul on fire, like the young man who waited in line for four hours in Sydney, Australia just to meet the “great man” who changed his life by following his online lectures for three years before meeting him to sign his book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.

“I had to look him in eyes and thank him for what he did for me,” said the young man from Brisbane, who finally secured a ticket to Peterson’s sold-out second lecture in Sydney; and he was only one out of the countless number of grateful benefactors whom our modern-day hierophant reconnected with the imperative of their inner self with his no-nonsense message of self-reconciliation by taking moral responsibility for their life—a courageous, Solzhenitsynian effort that must make the good professor proud...