There is the void of an initially unacknowledged unconscious world filled with both positive and negative images. There is not the resolution found in the triadic representation of reality, nor the integrative force found in the dyadic individuation of Carl Jung. There is only a newly realized appreciation of all the diverse forces operating in the conscious and unconscious life. In the Epilogue of his book, Bruch Joy offers important insights into the emergence of something from nothing in the Epilogue of Avalanche (Joy, 1990, pp. 331-332):
“Much to my surprise, I feel more wholesome and real, more grounded and inspired than when my psychospiritual Unfoldment was directed primarily toward perceiving and celebrating only the positive and the Light. I have realized that the richness and vulnerability of inclusively embracing life, the soul, and the spirit can heal distortions that are created when parts of the Self imagine themselves to be separate from and superior to the profound mysteries of Life and Death.
Life Itself teaches dramatically and powerfully through events centered around crisis, loss, and death. When such events are not embraced–when the dark, the demonic, and the destructive are not integrated—the conscious mind partitions itself from total consciousness and creates a reality reflecting only that which is acceptable to one’s conscious awareness. That which is unacceptable simply disappears from awareness, though it certainly does not go away. What is created is a remarkable situation in which the right hand (consciousness) does not know what the left hand (unconsciousness) is doing. The left hand may know what the right hand is doing, but such a circumstance does not serve our conscious awareness … our ordinary sense of reality.”
Applying some of the concepts offered in this essay and my previous essays, Bruch Joy seems to be suggesting that partitioning the conscious from the unconscious mind creates a void or nothingness which limits one’s awareness of a full, richly textured life that is filled with both angels and demons, both life-giving and life-taking sources of energy and motivation, and both that which is to cherished and that which is to be endured. There is no miraculous redemption or path forward, as in the triadic perspective, nor is there an integration of the polar opposites and psychic tensions. There is instead, as Brugh Joy found in the top of Egypt’s Great Pyramid, an incarnation of one’s full inner strength and a powerful engagement in the mystery of Life. As Joy (1990, p. 333) indicates:
“. . . not all individuals will survive and initiate through the horrific challenges to human life. But those who do are immensely capable of contributing to the overall well-being of our planet and its people.”
Perhaps. Joy is offering us insights about the way(s) in which nothingness can be apprehended, comprehended, appreciated and transformed into something that does have these amazing outcomes.
