“On many occasions I have observed that the spontaneous manifestations of the Self [the inner image of God] and the appearance of certain symbols relating thereto, bring with them something of the timelessness of the unconscious which expresses itself in a feeling of eternity or immortality. Such experiences can be extraordinarily impressive.”-CG Jung The Psychology of the Transference p150
One may experience beauty and illumination through Divine Idea, as well as, through Divine Feeling. One is masculine, the other feminine.
“A feeling is as indisputable a reality as the existence of an idea, and can be experienced to exactly the same degree.” -CG Jung
It has been my experience that the beautiful feeling is often on the other side of pain, which must be endured with grace and humility in order to reach the other side, to give birth to a new state of being.
Breathe, it hurts, take a step.
Breathe, endure, do your duty, take another step.
Be humble. Take loving care of yourself. Pray for Grace.
We often classify the emotional tension caused by conflicting desires as pain, and we may think of conflicting desire as two opposites colliding.
“Submission to the fundamental contrariety of human nature amounts to an acceptance of the fact that the psyche is at cross purposes with itself. Alchemy teaches that the tension is fourfold, forming a cross which stands for the four warring elements […] The cross as a form of suffering expresses a psychic reality, and carrying the cross is therefore an apt symbol for the wholeness and also for the passion which the alchemist saw in his work.” -CG Jung, Psychology of the Transference p143
In addition to the symbol of the cross, we may also look to another symbol to signify this tension of opposites: the mandorla.
To consent to the cross is to consent to paradox.
To consent to paradox is to consent to suffering that which is greater than the ego, in order that we may access higher aspects of Self.
The mandorla offers a path through the suffering, towards a transcendent feeling or state of being, born out of the crucible.
The mandorla is the birth of a transcendent state from the union of opposites. It is the birth of wisdom through the acceptance of necessary suffering.
“A mandorla is that almond shaped segment that is made when two circles partly overlap. It is not by chance that mandorla is also the Italian word for almond. This symbol signifies nothing less than the overlap of the opposites. Generally, the mandorla is described as the overlap of heaven and earth. There is not one of us who is not torn by the competing demands of heaven and earth; the mandorla instructs us how to engage in reconciliation. Christ and the Virgin are often portrayed within the framework of the mandorla, and the Virgin sits with majesty within the mandorla as often as the Christ […] It binds together [and makes whole- holy] that which was torn apart, unwhole- unholy. It is the most profound religious experience we can have in life." -Robert Johnson, Owning your own Shadow p103
As we hold psychic tension with grace and humility, enduring the pain, we are at the same time carving out new territory within our psyche for a new experience of God, beauty, and freedom. It’s as if some kind of psychic or spiritual substance were being generated, creating the potential for a new state of being. This is the function of the mandorla, the birth of a transcendent third when two circles (two opposites) begin to overlap. This third thing always exists on a higher plane than the two opposites, which is why a problem can never be solved on the level it was created. The solution/mandorla is invisible to us when we are in contradiction, which is on the level of the problem, rather than in the mystery of paradox within the mandorla on a higher plane.
"If we can stay with the tension of opposites long enough —sustain it, be true to it—we can sometimes become vessels within which the divine opposites come together and give birth to a new reality. This is the meaning of the alchemical marriage of opposites, which is the goal of the whole process of individuation."-Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology
In the beginning the mandorla starts out small, just a sliver, then gradually increases over time, similar to the phases of the moon. Faith is required in the most intense beginnings of this process, for the simple reason that it often takes a good deal of time and endurance to feel the creation and healing effect of the mandorla.
“All good stories are mandorlas [...] Do you remember the story of Moses and the burning bush? In this story the burning and the bush overlap; the bush is not consumed and so we know that two orders of reality have been superimposed. In a moment we find that God is near- the result of the overlap.
"Whenever you have a clash of opposites in your being and neither will give way to the other (the bush will not be consumed and the fire will not stop), you can be certain that God is present. We dislike the experience intensely and avoid it all cost; but if we can endure it, the conflict-without-resolution is a direct experience of God.” P107
This parallels the work of St. John of the Cross in his writing on the Dark Night of the Soul. He describes this spiritual night as a very positive event, because it signifies the invisible (and therefore dark) radiance of God piercing and purifying the soul.
I am also reminded of St Paul’s words on Faith, Hope, and Charity:
“For Faith voids and darkens the intellect of all its human knowledge, and by so doing, prepares it for union with the Divine Wisdom. And Hope empties and alienates the memory from all creature possessions and sets it upon what it hopes to enjoy in the future. And this is why the hope of God alone, can absolutely dispose the memory because of the vacuum it causes therein, to be united with Him. Just in the same way doth Charity void and empty the affections and appetites of the will of whatsoever thing is not God, and sets them on Him alone; and so this virtue prepares this faculty and unites it with God through Love.” -Gareth Knight
When I felt the truth of this relationship between necessary suffering and the nearness of God, I felt I could at last catch a glimpse of understanding of what was meant by St Basil the Great when he said,
“My God, my God! Why hast Thou forsaken me? Be it unto me according to Thy will, O Lord! If Thou wouldst grant me light, be Thou blessed; if Thou wouldst grant me darkness, be Thou equally blessed. If Thou wouldst destroy me together with my lawlessness, glory to Thy righteous judgment; and if Thou wouldst not destroy me together with my lawlessness, glory to Thy boundless mercy!”
Sometimes the most bitter medicine is the best medicine for the soul. The suffering endured, when approached with right attitude and right understanding, expands the heart, and creates the space and potential for greater Godliness and beauty to reside within the soul.
According to Carl Jung, when we reject our share of divine suffering (suffering in service of spiritual growth) the price is mental illness.
“The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering.” -CG Jung
From a Kabbalistic perspective, author Gareth Knight says it was fear of pain that caused the Prime Deviation after the Fall, causing all aspects of the Tree of Life under Daath to become corrupted. To heal this, he says we must learn to accept the pain that comes with spiritual growth and responsibility.
“Karma is not a popular word among esoteric students, the conceptions of its workings do not fill many with enthusiasm. This is typical of human nature, for the cure is often disliked more than the disease, dentists are often disliked more than tooth decay until perhaps the excruciating pain of toothache restores a sense of values. The Lords of Karma may be likened to physical surgeons, though more properly they are Restorers of Cosmic Balance or Lords of Truth.” -Garth Knight p111
If we can accept the suffering that comes with spiritual growth, instead of avoiding, we are in essence saying, “I have faith that the Lords of Karma (or the Lords of Truth) know what is needed for my soul better than I can see from this human vantage point.” In other words, it is having faith that God knows what God is doing.
And so there is a comfort, at least in my experience, knowing that God –the God within and God above- is the one directing which experiences are necessary to heal the ailments of my soul.
Spiritual maturity is taking responsibility for all the experiences of our life, the good and the bad, even if from the human vantage point it doesn’t make sense. It is having an expanded perspective while living within the finite physical dimension. We are more than just human, we are eternal beings, and when we align with the will of God, we are God. And God is never a victim of circumstance or the will of other humans. When we point fingers at others, we are not accepting our own Godliness and our participation in the creation of our reality.
But what about people who have experienced real harm at the hand of another person? Is the person who did the harm responsible? Yes! They are responsible, AND you are God and create your reality. It's shifting from an "either/or" mentality to a "both/and" mentality. And when we are able to hold both of those truths at the same time, we are creating a mandorla.
The following excerpt from Gareth Knight goes more deeply into this idea of responsibility:
"The confrontation of all past experience entails taking responsibility for it. This may seem difficult to understand, for the immediate usual reaction is to put blame upon others for all misfortunes (though personal credit is usually taken for successful circumstances). It may seem difficult to see why one is responsible for everything that happens to one, but, given a belief in reincarnation, it should not be too difficult to realise that even the things one would apparently be least responsible for, one's childhood circumstances for example, are in fact the result of one's own inter-incarnationary desires - we make our own karma to a large extent. And if one is of the turn of mind that considers the Laws of the Universe to be harsh, or even unjust or tyrannous, there is the fact that originally no Spirit was forced to enter the manifest Universe. All ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and of Evil of their own free will. That is to say, that all entered into a co-operation with the Solar Logos voluntarily, giving their aid in building an evolving Universe in return for the evolutionary experience that this would bring, thus equipping each human being with the means to become a God or any other of the high alternatives of Cosmic Evolution. 18. Most, of course, subsequently took their hands away from the plough, or tried to. The results are over-familiar. The goal for humanity remains, however, for all who press on to the uttermost -as all eventually will. In the meantime, the way in-between remains, and the key to that way is acceptance -acceptance of fact, and acceptance of responsibility for it. 19. It was attempted avoidance of fact and responsibility that led to all the trouble in the first place. Continued avoidance only makes matters worse. The reason for this avoidance was, in the first place, fear of pain - and this fear remains to this day. This is the reason why responsibility for error cannot be faced, why it has been pushed, compulsively and automatically, onto another. To accept the truth about one's own deep-seated faults is painful. 20. There is only one way finally to overcome this fear and pain, and that is to accept it. The symbolism of drinking from the Cup is a wellknown one in esoteric writings, but what does it mean in terms of actual fact? 21. It means the realisation and full acceptance within ourselves of the way we have departed from our true Path of Spiritual Destiny [i.e. the Prime Deviation]. The drinking of the Cup is the complete acceptance of the way we have erred; and the way each has erred is the way each has erred and cannot be altered by one hairs breadth. So there is no point in wasting time rejecting what we have done. If we spend our time crying about the past, or [pointing fingers], we are rejecting the way we have come, we are rejecting our sin, our responsibility. And in the degree that we reject the sin, or the imperfections of each one of us, in that degree do we fail to understand how resurrected life may be achieved. -A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism p127-128
This acceptance of necessary suffering is of course true for both men and women, but especially women. Women are a physical embodiment of the mandorla because of their ability to give birth. A pregnant woman is a flesh and blood mandorla, in that she and the child overlap. In order to give birth, accepting the suffering of labor and delivery is essential. The Feminine principle -Goddess- is deeply interwoven with the mandorla. It even has the shape of the female yoni. And as the woman is the energetic container for her family, any non-acceptance she holds affects those within her container. Women have a huge responsibility in this regard. When women do not accept their portion of psychic suffering for the sake of love and growth, it is often because they are operating from their unconscious masculine energy, what Jung calls the animus. The animus is constantly attempting to possess and estrange women from their femininity.
“The classical type of animus argument is to be found in women where the animus says “don’t do this or that because you will suffer if you do.” This plea to avoid suffering is one of the main bribes of the animus, his primary way of attacking his opposing principal, Eros. Here, you find a feeling reaction of sorts in women that says, “If you love so-and-so, you will only involve yourself in suffering.“ And like most animus arguments, it is quite true, for love does entail an extension of suffering, not only one’s own, but the loved one’s pain as well. But again, like most animus arguments, it is totally beside the point, because such suffering belongs to the meaning of life. If you once accept avoiding suffering as a maxim of life, you won’t even own a dog for fear that it’s life is short… and so on. In the end, you won’t live life at all.” -Barbara Hannah, The Animus Volume Two
Going back to responsibility, it is all a matter of perspective. Are you viewing the situation solely through the lens of your humanity, or through the lens of your divinity as well? The mandorla teaches us to always see life through both lenses -human and divine- at the same time.
“No matter how much parents and grandparents may have sinned against the child, the man who is really adult will accept these sins as his own condition which has to be reckoned with. Only a fool is interested in other people's guilt, since he cannot alter it. The wise man learns only from his own guilt. He will ask himself: Who am I that all this should happen to me? To find the answer to this fateful question he will look into his own heart.”-CG Jung
Then it comes to pass, after much has been endured, we receive Grace. An inner flower blooms and a mandorla takes shape, maybe in the heart or maybe in the mind. A whole new inner world opens up. Suddenly, the weeks, months, or even years of suffering don’t seem to have access to one’s being in quite the same way, and a beautiful new feeling settles around the heart. However the mandorla may appear, in an infinite numbers of ways, we are healed and changed by it.
And as any good mother who has gone through labor and childbirth will tell you:
A little pain is worth a lot of beauty. A lot of pain is worth a lot of love.
“If the work succeeds, it often works like a miracle, and one can understand what it was that prompted the alchemists to insert a heartfelt ‘Deo concedente’ [God willing] in their recipes, or to allow that only if God wrought a miracle could their procedure be brought to a successful conclusion.” CG Jung, Psychology of the Transference p26
With acceptance, endurance, and humility, creating mandorlas becomes a daily practice. With awareness they can be seen everywhere.
"The mandorla is the place of poetry. It is the duty of a true poet to take the fragmented world that we find ourselves in and to make unity of it. In the Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot writes, "The fire and the rose are one."By overlapping the two elements of fire and a flower, he makes a mandorla. We are pleased to the depth of our soul to be told that the fire of transformation and the flower of rebirth are one and the same. All poetry is based upon the assertion that this is that. When the images overlap, we have a mystical statement of unity. We feel there is safety and sureness in our fractured world, and the poet has given us the gift of synthesis.
Great poetry makes these leaps and unites the beauty and the terror of existence. It has the ability to surprise and shock--to remind us that there are links between the things we have always thought of as opposites[...]
Every glance between a man and a woman is also a mandorla, a place where the great opposites of masculinity and femininity meet and honor one another. The mandorla is the divine container in which a new creation begins to form and germinate. Scripture never tires of speaking about courtship and marriage as the symbol for our reconciliation with the spirit."-Robert Johnson p115
The people we encounter in life who seem to have a healing effect on their environment are the people who have a natural affinity for making mandorlas in their inner world, whether they are aware of the actual symbol or not. But we all have this potential. Any time you notice you are at odds with yourself, try holding both desires at the same time, or both viewpoints, while meditating on the symbol of the mandorla, and endure it. Perhaps in so doing, if you are patient, you may experience a reconciliation that unites the opposites… Deo concedente.
1. Johnson, R. A. (1993). Owning your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche. HarperCollins.
2. Jung, C. (1966). The Psychology of the Transference Vol. 16, The Collected Works of CG Jung). Princeton University Press.
3. Knight, G. (2001). A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism. Red Wheel/Weiser.