“It would be a regrettable mistake if anybody should take my observations a a kind of proof for the existence of God. They prove only the existence of an archetypal God-image, which to my mind is the most we can assert about God psychologically. But as it is a very important and influential archetype, its relatively frequent occurrence seems to be a noteworthy fact of anytheologia naturalis. (Jung, CW 11, par. 102)
And yet, we do believe something no matter what we say or don’t say. Most pay little attention to belief or the archetype. Rather than think about it, most just let the churches and their priesthoods do the thinking for us. We have other, more important things to worry about such as our families, our jobs, or the physical needs that often become matters of life and death. It seems that the question of God only assaults us in youth, especially adolescence, and once we have turned the corner of midlife., and only then if we have done our “work” so as to have the time, energy and resources to tackle the question of God.
This quest for a God is as old as the human race. We have looked for him or her in the stars, in the animated world, in the sun and the moon. But rarely do we dare to look within for the presence of a God. We want our God to be more than the frail and fallible beings that we find ourselves to be. And so, we push God further and further from our centre of self. We build the most magnificent structures imaginable so that they can point towards this God at distance. We decorate our imaginings with the most precious of objects and materials we can find so that this God will not be associated with the baseness that we can see and feel of ourselves. And in the process, we lose God.
I lost God and now I must begin to look downward and inward in search of the wellsprings of the spirit which I know must be where I will find this God. This is my quest.
