The I Ching > V. Junzidao = loop through psychic stations; the yantra, individuation

V. Junzidao = loop through psychic stations; the yantra, individuation

Junzidao, then, means full Self-cultivation for anyone, but particularly for those who intend to work with the collective from the Self center. This means that anyone of us can acquire this larger psyche and live and manifest in ordinary life, doing ordinary things. The difference is that greater consciousness that enables our connecting to our ground gives us a deeper perspective that is thoroughly true to our psyches.

To reiterate, the junzi is different from the non-junzi by virtue of consciousness and the work that higher consciousness demands of him in every minute of life. This higher consciousness enables him to sort and prioritize all life’s activities. Because he is not lost or confused, he enjoys quietude within, even though he might be working out things that are difficult and troublesome. The quietude within allows the psyche to do its own work; that is, find its own anchorage. At this point, the psyche knows for itself that everything is in harmony: the feeling that we get, but on a very deep level that places us in the cosmos, that “This time it’s right.”

For Confucius, it is only at this point that we can act consciously in our daily activities. The difference between not returning to this ground and returning is that we now act consciously, with this ground in tow. This means that, in everything we do, we do with the greater Self at center.

This chart describes the same path as specified in Jungian individuation. Jung’s individuation begins with making the unconscious conscious. After this, we get to know more and more what our choices are and what to choose. The psychic station of jing is one which all contemporary psychology and psychotherapy, as well as meditation techniques, attempt to achieve. In psychotherapy, jing may be the end goal, while meditation seems to have the same idea as in Passage B, that when the psyche is stilled, it will do its own work; that is, allow the larger Self to come through. The psychotherapy achievable through Jungian analysis definitely allows for a stage beyond quietude. In fact, dream analysis and analysis through sand play and active imagination graphically point out the workings of another consciousness within us.

Jungian individuation likewise enables us to act in a different (from previously unconscious) way in the world. It’s popularly called conscious living. While Jung has not stretched individuation to include the behavior of nations and rulers, Jung has definitely shown that our collective unconscious contains the residue of our collective togetherness. In other words, if a whole collective stays together in manifesting mingde, with a ruler that sits on the throne of the Self center of the collective, then what gets collected in the collective unconscious is this collective striving for mingde. (This is not to say that this would be the only thing in the collective unconscious.)

Why Jung has been so interested in the larger collective is simply that the collective manifests the larger Self in so many separate little consciousnesses. That is, the individual cannot really be separated from the larger picture of the collective and the cosmos. Whereas other forms of psychology delineate very clear and small boundaries, Jung, like Confucius, attempts the cosmos.