@SophiaCycles Feels relevant to mention @MMeade_Myth and @RichardRohrOFM who both argue, as Jung, that life is divided into a first and second half, and who have done much work - with men specifically - in this regard. Fair to say, many of the finest souls I know come through group mens' work.
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THE SUN: How do you personally deal with what you’re calling midlife crisis? MEADE: To me, the first half of life is looking forward, with very little looking back. Where am I going? How great is it going to be out there? How big is it? Where are things, anyway? It’s almost as if in the second half we have to pivot around, look back, look down, and say, “Where have I been? What have I become here? What do I want? What’s moving inside me?” So the first half is: what do I want to do with my life? — as if it were that simple. And the second half is: what do I want to do in my life? I’m in it now; it’s not going to change that much....But going through that change alone without some connection to family, to a sense of community, and, nowadays, to an intentional group of men seems to me very, very scary.
@EsmeLKPartridge Humility lands as a bastard. Typically, Sages aver that fully owning psychic elements completely scotomized from consciousness and which touch into the essence of psychopathology and the perennial problem of evil, delineates a maturation that folk lean into only later in life.
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‘. . . the intolerable pretensions of saints who have forgotten that they are sinners.’ -Reinhold Niebuhr, ND2:130 1/ Didn't he note that kind folk, especially, underestimate their capacity for self-deception? A tendency compounded by the occupational hazards of the Path. Around shadow work, other traditions provide essential complements. Buddhist existential psychology is worth a check in. Quote tweet: Indeed, for many, it can actively encourage and support it. I presume you know the growing body of work on 'spiritual bypassing'. Welwood, for example, described the correlation between certain psychological complexes and specific meditation practices. end/ Frankly, the most impressive locus of shadow work I've encountered hasn't been around a couch or with a 'religious current' per se, but in mensgroupwork Stateside, specifically @mankindproject, and #Illuman, a smaller initiative leaning more fully into God acknowledgement.