Six emotions from the abyss
They are rippling through this time
I was languidly reading this Morton Kelsey book from 1983: Companions on the Inner Way: The Art of Spiritual Guidance, when I got stuck on Chapter 5: “Atheism, Agnosticism and Spiritual Guidance.” I discovered that long before I had to disable Copilot (a Microsoft A.I. invader hoping to monetize my creativity), Kelsey pondered the spiritual diseases of modern/post-modern life. That sickness is coming to the fore, right now, since the electorate (probably) unleashed the sociopathic Trump on the world and he brought a slew of grandiose, incompetent individualists with him. Their wickedness is infectious.
Just last week the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Collins “doubled down” on “no amnesty” for undocumented farmworkers and implied that a mythic number of “able-bodied” Medicaid recipients could fill in for them, all in the cause of creating an “all-American workforce” [YouTube]. Then President Trump hosted a televised roundtable with African leaders in which a favored reporter asked the group if they would support Trump receiving the Nobel Peace Prize (for suggesting the depopulation of Gaza and sending stealth bombers from the heartland to bomb Iran, I suppose). Several fawning leaders cravenly supported the notion. Then the President complimented the Liberian president, Joseph Boakai, on his good English, apparently not knowing that Liberia was created by Americans and the official language has been English since 1847 [YouTube]. Once again, the slavers and the autocrats who enable them are set loose on the world. It is depressing. Many of us can’t see a way out of it, yet.
The abyss
Not seeing the way is just what Kelsey was exploring, too. So I had to pause. He realized his way of seeing was too shallow. His intellect was not enough to keep him in the faith he needed. Like Abbe Huvelin said, “In faith we have just enough light to follow the right way, but on either side there is the abyss.” Kelsey saw that, left alone with his own understanding, he would keep falling into the abyss.
It was getting to know about Carl Jung that helped him come to “realize that the spiritual world was real and the Divine Lover could be known and shared.” After that realization, his experience of love plus intellectual belief kept him out of the pit. He says,
Later I met Jung, who told how he was jolted out of the rational, materialistic agnosticism of his medical training. He learned that there was a nonphysical dimension to reality, which was observable to anyone who would take the trouble to experience it. It was, as he said, as experienceable as were the two moons of Jupiter to those in Galileo’s time who would take the trouble to look through the telescope. He believed that one of the most important therapeutic tasks was to free people caught in the constricting materialism of our time and open them up to a more adequate view of reality. He viewed the person wholly caught up in materialism as more sick than amoral or immoral. We need to outthink our materialistic world, just as the early Christians outthought the ancient world.
Kelsey was writing during the “Reagan Revolution” years which did not come to full fruit until Trump and his minions took over. The unleashing of sick, unfettered greed backed by the power of the American war machine is overwhelming. It is not hard to see a wave of depression rippling through the country in reaction -- and it has to be depressing for African leaders to abase themselves on international TV. If there is no more meaning to life than winning the economic battle for supremacy there are steep personal prices to pay.
We have meaning
One of Jung’s important contributions to psychology and theology was his recognition that the inability to believe in anything, or the belief in a meaningless world, can be classified as disease or sickness which can cause as much damage as childhood trauma, acute tension or a dose of poison. If anyone believes they have no meaningful place in the universe, it can result in emotional and physical illness.
We yearn to join in the meaning of the universe. But it is all-too-easy to fall into the abyss when we are overwhelmed by meaninglessness. Suicide studies draw the simple conclusion that relying on hotlines to give desperate people attention and shore up their reason to live, providing a moment of community to shore up their capacity to take up their lonely responsibility, are not enough. The linked study concludes what I think is obvious: “Giving a person a job or proper health care can also be a suicide-prevention tool,” since such care allows for a minimal sense of meaning and value.
The present regime calls such practical, caring measures "socialist," I think. Instead, they practice devaluing people, like when an ICE army invaded the heart of Los Angeles last week, teaching kids at a summer camp to hide [YouTube]. The message the regime delivers everyday is clearly received, especially by the most vulnerable. For instance, the Trevor Project reports a huge increase in the use of their hotlines after Trump’s election and inauguration.
The six signs of the abyss
Kelsey lists six “devastating emotions” which result from a sense of being an alien in a hostile or indifferent universe. The first three are related.
Fear
The sense of being an alien is a hostile or indifferent universe leads to fear of meaninglessness, fear of extinction at death, fear that we are faced with more than we can handle, fear that no one loves me, and fear of sickness.
Anger
Anger is the aggressive reaction to the same threatening feelings. Sometimes we turn our anger inward where it burns like a slow smoldering, consuming fire. Sometimes it strikes out in hatred and revenge. Many say we are living in an "age of rage."
Stress
Stress is the understandable result of our belief that we, alone, have the power to protect ourselves from threat and we must do this by our own relentless alertness and energy. In a meaningless world we are faced with an impossible task, so stress is inevitable.
Depression
Depression is the unconscious twin of stress; it is giving up in the face of hopelessness. When there is no friendliness in the universe, there is less reason to expect it from human beings and less reason to reach out.
Loneliness
A gnawing loneliness is the inevitable circumstance that accompanies separation from social meaning. It is presently epidemic. Before DOGE got to HHS, the agency advised us on health issues. The Surgeon General produced a notable study on loneliness in 2023. Now we have RFK Jr’s “MAHA” report.
Psychic infection
All these things make us susceptible to psychic infection, which is the contamination by the fear, anger, stress, depression and lonely hopelessness of others. Drugs of every kind have been unleashed to combat this infection, but they don’t quite hit the spot. When we are wallowing in our own and in society’s abyss, we need some meaning, some love, some supernatural connection. As Jung said, “The approach to the numinous is the real therapy.”
People are fond of saying things like “The world has been crazy before, we’ll be OK.” I appreciate those good people who have a psychological KN95 mask to wear and seem immune to infection. I, on the other hand, am suffering the wounds of political disaster, climate change, out-of-control militarism and whatever A.I. is going to do to me. What’s more, I experience Kelsey's six devastating emotions in my beloved clients, who are bravely struggling for meaning in the middle of our oppositional society.
Rather than relying on Nature to right itself, I turn to Jesus who has two important things to say to us today. I hope focusing on them is like seeing the moons of Jupiter. They are a lens that reveals meaning in our suffering and a lens that looks beyond the borders of our understanding into Love.
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” – John 16:33
“You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.” – John 6:67-69
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Tomorrow is Peter Waldo Day! He is one of the “regular Joes” who were so inspired by Jesus they reoriented their whole lives to follow him radically and changed society as a result. Visit him at The Transhistorical Body.