Confronting and transforming the past (the ancestral psyche) that remains within us is like reaching back in time and changing–or redeeming–history. But one must possess the courage and capacity for this kind of confrontation, a process defined as Inner Work.
I was raised in a culture that taught me to revere my ancestors. This fostered a great interest in the past and the experiences of my forebearers. And it seems as though I came into this world carrying a natural curiosity about those who have lived before me. Because of these influences, I have been particularly drawn to analytical psychology and its focus on the importance of the ancestors as the source of present psychological facts or issues continuing to influence each person’s life. Specifically, I have been drawn to the empirical discoveries of Carl Jung as they relate to ancestral work.
Just as we inherit certain genetic markers or traits within our physical bodies, we also come into the world imprinted with the psychological experiences (energy and markers) that dwelt in the ancestors before us. We get our hair, eyes, skin, and entire bodies from our ancestors. So why would our inner or psychological inheritance be any different?
Jung referred to this concept as “the deposit of ancestral experience.” (Jung, Analytical Psychology and Weltanschauung, CW 8, p. 376.) Our psyches are therefore a “living carrier of this ancestral experience.” (Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness, at p. 23.) If one generation in the ancestral past was–for whatever reasons–unable to address and resolve a particular problem confronting it, that problem descends through to the next generation until finally confronted and ultimately transformed. This teaching comes through Old Testament texts: “The Lord is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.” (Numbers 14:18, emphasis added.)
A major theme of analytical psychotherapy is rooted in the idea that “each age is faced with the solution of its problems which, if left unresolved, become then a form of psycho-historical karma for subsequent generations.” (John P. Dourley in A Strategy For A Loss Of Faith, at p. 21.) Dourley, who was both a Jungian analyst and Roman Catholic priest, argues in his book that Jung was called to resolve the problem of “suffering imposed on [Jung’s parents] by their Christianity”. This particular problem expressed itself in the Christian creed that denied their humanity (by refusing to acknowledge any form of shadow as legitimate human feelings or function because they are sinful) yet demanded their loyalty. Jung believed his father was “entrapped by the Church and its theological thinking. The[ church] had blocked all avenues by which he might have reached God directly, and then faithlessly abandoned him.” (Jung, MDR at p. 93, emphasis added.) The question is, how did this become Jung’s problem? And how did he confront and transform it?
Scholars of Jung’s expansive work and life experiences agree that Jung solved the problem or riddle of his parents’ suffering at the hands of creedal Christianity by working through the problem and then publishing the ideas behind the solution in his profound work, Answer To Job. This insightful essay reveals, persuasively, the God of Christian dogma as the source of sin (unconsciously dealing with conscious humans) who then had to suffer for that cause by becoming Christ. Because the purpose of this post is not to expound the ideas behind Jung’s Answer to Job, I will not delve into it here. But one should not dismiss this summary conclusion of his thesis without first reading the essay. It is extremely profound and thought provoking for anyone willing to search for truth.
Just as Jung wrestled and solved the problem carried forth to him by his parental and ancestral psyche (Jung’s grandfather, Samuel Preiswerk, was a distinguished Lutheran theologian, pastor, and hymn writer), each one of us is left asking ourselves: What problem has gone unsolved in the generations preceding me that is my opportunity to now—in waking ego consciousness—try and solve? And why do anything about the problem now if I had nothing to do with its cause in past generations?
If we are the “living carrier” of our ancestors’ collective psyche that has been wounded without healing or buried under various defenses, what does our work on this psyche consist of in the present? If we possess sufficient courage to confront this reality and then begin working on it, we will not only be reaching inward to address the problem and thereby find wholeness in our present lives, but healing the old wound is like reversing—or at least transforming—history. If history and its suffering is somehow transformed in this way, this work could also be defined as redeeming the dead.
We can reach back into time by confronting the challenges from the present that remain within us. In this way, inner work is a form of “time travel” if we can present ourselves to the past still living within us now in the present. According to the law of conservation of energy, energy never dies. It only travels. As such, we have the present opportunity to address our ancestors’ unresolved problems that have traveled to us and found their way to dwell within us. This view is supported by Malachi’s prophecy concerning Elijah, left as the last two verses of the Old Testament, “Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” (Malachi 4:5-6.)
So what are the open, unhealed wounds? What are the unsolved problems? Jung took guidance toward the problem from his dreams. This is where the task of Inner Work begins. What is your task? Following the messages communicated from the ancestral psyche within, as revealed through dreams, is the way to know.
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