There is a personal integration process which has very definite antecedents; there are, indeed, certain karmic forces drawing us in particular directions. And these determinants will shape and bring into being our destiny, our fate.
The dark wood... Often, though not invariably, the individuation process starts with a profound inward turning of psychic energy. The former vivid interest in people and events vanishes. The meaning goes out of life and one is left stranded. This, at best, is an unpleasant experience. It may be a terrifying one. For the psychic energy is not lost. It has gone into the unconscious, is at large in the inner world. The archetypal images are awakened, and the man, unless he is aware of what is happening, is likely at times to have doubts of his sanity... Dante, in the opening lines of his great work, describes such an experience:
In the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
Gone from the path direct...
...Toynbee derives this hypothesis (withdrawal-and-return) from his reading of universal history. At the same time as he was assembling the comprehensive data on which it is based, Jung, in complete independence, was working out the psychological means by which the withdrawal-and-return can be made. And while Jung and Toynbee were thus approaching the problem from opposite ends - Jung from the depths of the individual psyche, Toynbee from a case-study of all the civilizations of which we have record - Eliot was personally making the experiment and expressing it in the greatest poetry of the age...the point at which these three approaches meet is in the direct realization of what Toynbee calls a 'different spiritual dimension' interpenetrating life.
- (P.W. Martin, Experiment in Depth)
Fortunately, it is becoming more and more obvious that there is something seminal, significant, and exciting emerging in our country and the world in that we are realizing that the meaning of life and true progress lies in helping others, in giving oneself to others, in a devotion to a calling beyond one's self (metaneeds)...which is without exception the key to self-actualization. (In fact, all those not committed to metaneeds - over and above the basic needs - fall prey to meaninglessness or existential vacuum.)
Whosoever would save his life shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the Gospels shall save it.
The reason we are generally playing games is definitely because we are asleep. Indeed, we're not awake, but are leading lives of waking-sleep which is also a main theme in the Bible - "awake," "death," "rebirth," all familiar terms but so terribly difficult to grasp because they're only really understood experientially.
Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. - John 11:25, 26
The metanoia to which the gospel summons us demands that we examine our own personal lives as well as the injustices and contradictions in the various institutions to which we belong, be they political, economic, educational, ecclesiastical, or whatever... What people who stress the conversion to Jesus as their personal savior fail to see that the evil in society has a twofold root, in the sinful hearts of men and in institutionalized injustices, and that this evil can only be overcome by a movement that includes social change...peace can not be purchased, it is not for sale; peace has to be lived. And I can't live my peace without commitment to men, and my commitment to men can't exist without their liberation, and their liberation can't exist without the final transformation of the structures that are dehumanizing them.
- (Excerpts from Gregory Baum, "Critical Theology" and Paulo Freire "Conscientisation," in Walter E. Conn, Ed., Conversion, Perspectives on Personal and Social Transformation)