Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.
Lee Legault
June 23, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
Join ministerial intern, Lee Legault, in reflecting on what we gain when we leave the narrow straits of Egypt and lose our ego identities in the wilderness. Psychologist C.G Jung developed a paradigm for psychological growth called individuation and believed it to be humanity’s most important work. From a Jungian perspective, the Exodus account of Moses’ early life becomes a map to freedom through the arduous inner work of individuation.
Call to Worship
Mary Oliver
THE JOURNEY
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and
began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to
do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and
deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life that you could
save.
Reading
Celeste Snowber
Know there is a flow
working within the vessels
of your life and blood
through each spiritual artery and vein
which has a current all to its own
you cannot stop the life stream,
only enhance its surge
listen for the sound
of grace inhabiting
the map of your path
let what is Unseen carry you
in its crest
give into the wave
of the ebb and flow
of your own pulse
who knows where your journey will lead
or what you may discover
you are in a new chapter
of your own autobiography
rewriting your own narrative
every moment you take a breath
Sermon
I’m pretty new to religion. I grew up unchurched and adopted Unitarian Universalism as my family’s faith in 2012. In 2015, I decided to leave the law and become a Unitarian Universalist minister. As a warm-up, I spent a year working half-time as a lawyer and taking one course per semester at the seminary. I studied biblical Hebrew and the book of Exodus, in Hebrew.
I had never owned a Bible before seminary, and I needed something I was more fluent in than Hebrew to help me translate the biblical concepts into something meaningful to me. So in parallel with Exodus, I read up on Carl Gustav Jung, the founder of analytical depth psychology. He helped me see the archetypal elements of my seminary experience: As Moses declared during his psychologically formative years in the Midean wilderness, I have been a stranger in a strange land.
To illustrate, I’ll tell you about my visit to the chapel at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. I went there after my first Hebrew class, to catch my breath, calm down, and meditate in their sacred space. It is a breathtaking place. A miniature version of the spired, buttressed cathedrals I associate with old Europe. Nobody else was there, so I could let my mouth hang open a little and turn around and around, soaking it in. Still loaded up from class, I went to put my books down on top of an ornate glass-topped table so I could have a better look at the even more ornate candelabra behind it — only to discover that the glass-topped table was, in fact, an enormous basin of holy water.
Fortunately, I was alone in the chapel, so nobody knew of my baptism by faux pas. Unfortunately, I was also alone with the sudden knowledge that my egocentric identity — “Lee Legault, attorney at law” — got me nowhere in this strange new land where I didn’t know up from down.
But after immersing myself in the Moses myth and Carl Jung, I see that losing my comfortable, safe, egocentric identity in that foreign place was not only embarrassing and wrenching, but also a WONDERFUL psychological development! I had taken a modest step towards psychological freedom, or what Jung calls an individuated life.
Jung by Way of Carrots
Individuation is Jung’s word for the transformation from an unconscious, egocentric person into one whose ego is in dialogue with the Self with a capital S. The Self is the central, creative, organizing source of life energy. Unitarian Universalists might call the Self the Spirit of Life.
I’ll use a carrot as an analogy. You could think of the Self as the vast expanse of soil that undergirds and nourishes the carrot and the leaves above it. The little leaves of the carrot pushing up into the light is the ego. Our ego is our sense of identity — the “I” part of each of us. But prior to individuation, the leaf of ego is unaware of the existence of the soil or the carrot and believes it is growing all alone, without any support.
Now, when I called Moses a myth, I meant no disrespect. In Jungian terms, myths are sacred stories. Irrespective of their external, historic truth, myths ring true on the inside. Myths are maps, and they contain keys: symbolic elements — called archetypes — that weave their teachings into the fabric of our souls, consciously and unconsciously. Let me tell you part of the Moses Myth from a Jungian perspective, focusing on the archetype of the wilderness journey.
Mitzrayim
Moses is born in Egypt to Hebrew parents at a time when the Pharaoh fears the ballooning Hebrew population. The Pharoah has ordered all Hebrew male babies be killed at birth. To save her son, Moses’s mother weaves a basket out of reeds, and sets him afloat on the Nile River. The Pharaoh’s daughter finds him, adopts him, and raises him as an Egyptian prince.
Moses, as we all do, spends roughly the first third of his life in Egypt developing his ego (his little green leaves). The Exodus text on Moses’s early life is spare, but we imagine he led a life of power, privilege, and safety there in the palace. He has an inkling of his Hebrew roots, but he is living life as Egyptian royalty.
The Hebrew word for Egypt is “mitzrayim” and aptly, it translates to narrow, constricted place. Right now, Moses’s sense of the world and his ego-bound, psychological state is narrow and constricted, but safe and protected.
Driven by some internal sense of restlessness, young man Moses (with his spring green ego) leaves the palace and ventures out to the Hebrew labor camp. He sees an Egyptian soldier beating a Hebrew. Moses becomes enraged, beats the Egyptian soldier to death, and hides the body.
For Jungians, this is a perfect example of the psychological stage of ego inflation, where the ego (the leaf) starts to get impressed with its own power and engages in some rash act that defies societal conventions.
The next day, Moses is inexplicably drawn back to the Hebrew labor camp. He sees two Hebrews fighting. His ego puffs up again, and he says, “Stop! Why are you fighting? You are brothers in oppression.”
One of the Hebrews stops fighting just long enough to put Moses in his place, saying “Who made you ruler over us? Do you mean to kill us too, like you did that Egyptian soldier?” This is the beginning of Moses’s ego demotion and identity crisis. Right now, he is not ready to lead anyone anywhere.
Sure enough, Pharaoh finds out about Moses’s killing the Egyptian soldier and orders his execution. Moses flees the narrow straights of Egypt, heading into the wilderness.
Midbar
A wilderness journey in a myth is an archetype for the psychological stage of alienation. Alienation is a painful, dark time when all that the ego thought it was, thought it had, and thought it knew is abruptly taken or discovered to be woefully insufficient. A seminary friend described alienation pretty well by saying, “Moses had to get the Moses out of Moses.”
In the wilderness, Moses comes across the semi-nomadic Midianites. Midianites don’t build pyramids or live in palaces; they herd sheep in the middle of nowhere. Moses spends years in Midean. He marries, has kids, herds sheep, and grows up.
Burning Bush
Painful as it is, alienation is probably the single biggest opportunity for psychological growth in a lifetime. Once the over-inflated ego (the leaf) is all battered to bits, it has a shot at realizing it is rooted in something bigger and deeper: the soil of the Self.
Archetypally, this reunion usually occurs in the wilderness.
One day while Moses is out shepherding in the wilderness, he sees a bush burning but not consumed by the fire, and he hears an awesome voice calling his name. Tn a less developed psyche that had not gone through the pain of alienation, the inner monologue might have gone something like this: “I’ve come to a fork in the path. On my left, there is a weird burning bush and a scary, disembodied voice. On the right is a well travelled sheep trail with regular shrubbery. Which way should I go? Moses forks left, toward the burning bush, and that has made all the difference.
Moses is eighty when he has that reunion with the Self at the burning bush. Individuation is not for the young pups.
Moses goes back to Egypt and has a talk with the Pharaoh about some plagues, but we’ll save that part of the myth for another day.
For today, our focus is on the fact that Moses has grown psychologically since the last time he was in Egypt. This time, he is able to lead the Hebrews, and he does: out of the narrow straights of Egypt.
As I understand it, this part of the Moses myth shows that — though it is not a fast, easy, or painless process–bending to the inner work of individuation is a path to psychological growth and freedom.
Three Tools
Here are three tools you might try out on your own inner searches for truth and meaning.
- Read myths for yourself and read them regularly.
I believe a myth must be reinterpreted in order to maintain its vitality and living connection with the world. A myth, after all, describes the relationship between humanity and the Spirit of Life, and I believe that relationship is not static. It is dynamic, direct, and evolving.
While myths abound in the world’s holy books, they are almost certainly also in the books that are holy to you. For me, these would include the Wrinkle in Time, Harry Potter, and the Alchemist. Know the myths that are sacred to you, and reread them periodically so their archetypes can do their conscious and unconscious work on your psyche.
- Practice listening for the still. small voice.
Follow it in minor matters (like Moses did when he broke the norm and ventured out of the palace to the Hebrew labor camp). But don’t be surprised if there are times in your symbolic wilderness journeys when that inner voice is not so small, and is more like a burning bush. You are less likely to turn away from the burning bush if you have practiced listening to the still, small voice.
- Mythologize your own life.
Dwell in your internal rather than external progress and see the myth patterns at play.
Notice when your ego has gotten inflated and you are too locked down in your safe, leaf life. Notice when you are in the wilderness and honor that for what it is.
In Jung’s autobiography, he exclusively discusses his inner life. Not the world wars. Not the famous people he knew. Just his internal shifts. His wilderness journeys. His burning bush experiences. That’s where the real action is.
Conclusion
You don’t have to live a myth on the scale of Moses. What I love most about the Jungian paradigm is that everyone’s inner journey matters. And not just to you. Your advances — however modest — on your inner work benefit humanity because we all contribute to and draw from the soil of the Self.
I’ll leave you with a story I’ve liked all my life, and like even more now that I’m familiar with individuation. A man came upon a construction site where three people were working. He asked the first, “What are you doing?” and the person without glancing up, replied: “I am laying bricks.” He asked the second, “What are you doing?” and the man rested on his knees and replied: “I am building a wall.” As he approached the third, he heard her humming a tune as she worked, and asked, “What are you doing?” The woman stood, looked up at the sky, and smiled, “I am building a great cathedral!”
From a Jungian perspective, every life is building the great cathedral of the Self.
Most sermons during the past 19 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link below or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776
