Conversations with Christine
Conversations with Christine, Chapter 11: We Are Whole
I woke the next morning ready to continue my conversation with Christine. I was eager to explore her views on the micro aspects of the world, curious how she would tie all these pieces together into a comprehensive blueprint.
After we made breakfast, we carried a large wooden tray out to the side yard. It was an unusually warm, sunny day for Port Townsend, and the shade from the camellia bush was welcome.
“Before we dive in,” Christine said after we poured our second cups of tea, “I think I need to go over some things we’ve discussed over the years. I’m not sure if you’ve made the connections about how they all fit together.”
“Sure. Please don’t assume I know anything. I love a good recap!” I replied.
“It is still the macro view of things, but hopefully it will help as we start to process the journey of the soul during a lifetime. The ultimate purpose of life is to remember that we are whole, complete, and in Union with all.” Christine paused as she drizzled honey into her tea.
“I think a misconception many people have,” Christine began again, “is that we need to understand every wound throughout our lives to know ourselves. That we have to process every detail in therapy, looking for the pieces of ourselves that are broken and need fixing.”
“I can relate to that,” I responded as I pulled my sweater over my head as the yard warmed up. “Even after diving into my early childhood woundings for all these years, I’ve still felt like a part of me was missing something. Like there was always a stone that needed to be turned over and examined to see if there was some hidden aspect of me I hadn’t yet healed.”
“I think it is healthy to be curious about why we do the things we do,” Christine responded. “But where I think we ‘miss the mark’ is when we keep examining things from the perspective that we are broken and need to be fixed or healed.”
“How would you define what it means to be healed?” I asked.
“I’m basing my definition of healing on the Proto-Indo-European worldview stretching from the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age.” Christine paused to sip her tea. “During this time, there wasn’t a written language, just a spoken language that dates back to 4500–2500 BCE. Within their vocabulary, the root of the word healing is kailo. It translates to ‘whole,’ ‘uninjured,’ or ‘a good omen.’”
“Oh! What is a good omen?” I asked excitedly.
“A good omen for the ancients, within their cosmology, meant being in active, harmonious alignment with the living divine order,” Christine replied.
“A state? As in a state of mind?” I asked.
“No, a state of being. During this time period, the ancients believed this state to be holistic; it wasn’t just the mind,” Christine replied.
After a bit of time, she continued.
“For them, a human being wasn’t fragmented, but a unified field, as Albert Einstein talked about. Many of the people we have been studying called it by other names, such as Brahman, the Godhead, or the collective unconscious. Humans were the physical body of our intuitive intelligence, the inner life of our heart or emotional intelligence, and of our minds, our intellectual intelligence. The ancients of this time period had the worldview that as humans here on earth, they and the surrounding cosmos were completely intertwined.”
“Ahhh, that makes total sense!” I jumped in. The pieces of so many of our conversations were dropping into place. “G.I. Gurdjieff, the Armenian mystic from the early 1900s whom we have talked about, said something similar to this. He said that in order to be human, we have to be operating on all three intelligences. That wasn’t just a concept he made up! It was ancient and, as C.G. Jung would state, in our collective unconscious.”
“Yes.” Christine smiled. “You are making connections that I haven’t made yet myself. Thank you for that, Becky!”
I smiled. My sister had a way of helping me feel seen. Something I was getting more confident in leaning into within myself, without needing outside reassurance.
“Do you remember how we talked about the mythic worldview in the Christian creation story of Adam and Eve?” Christine continued.
“In my macro view, I explained how we have to know our separateness through the development of the egocentric self, the parts of us that are wounded. Did you understand how the story of Adam and Eve is symbolically stating that we have to be wounded in order to know and experience good and evil, light and darkness? How we have to see the opposites and the world of dualism in order to transcend them?”
“I know this was the Christian creation story,” I responded. “But what would the Proto-Indo-Europeans have believed if they had the worldview that as humans here on earth, we and the surrounding cosmos were completely intertwined?”
“Good question,” Christine responded. “I’m not sure I know the answer to that. What you are bringing up is interesting to me. If the ancients only relied on the spoken word, is there a possibility that when we humans recorded the written word, we could have gotten off track? Let me think about this.”
I jumped in, interrupting her train of thought.
“What if all of this stuff about the necessity of knowing our separateness so we can transcend isn’t even accurate?
“What if the teachings of C.G. Jung through the world myth of the creation story have kept us following a false narrative? The narrative that we were broken!
“What if, for the past hundred years, we have been following Jung’s work as the gospel and basing all of human psychology on something that missed the mark?”
“Wow,” Christine responded as she stopped in the middle of taking a sip of tea. “What you bring up fits the narrative that separation actually never really happened, a point that many religious scholars are starting to question within the meta-modern religious movement.”
“I’m not tracking you,” I replied, trying not to get too ahead of myself. “C.G. Jung was brilliant, but what I am trying to do is understand this from the perspective that both of these great thinkers, Jung and Gurdjieff, were right. Both/and thinking.”
“Say more, Becky,” Christine said as she shifted to the hammock. She slowly lowered herself down, not fully trusting that the worn fabric would hold her. “I like where you are going with this because it is in alignment with Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory on the evolution of consciousness. In his scaffolding of the journey of the soul, the teal level holds the worldview that both of these great minds are correct. I think it is important to start integrating these practices and not seeing them as opposite, fragmented beliefs opposing one another.”
“Yes, I like Ken Wilber’s work. Especially how he talks about evolution as transcending and including.”
“Exactly. So, if we were going to take the perspective that both of them were right, how do you think these two could dovetail with one another?” Christine asked as she gently started to push off and swing, causing an avalanche of camellia leaves to flutter down from the tree overhead.
I sat in silence for a while. So did Christine.
“Let’s take a break,” I suggested. “Maybe a walk? Give this a little time to sink in for both of us?”
“Good idea,” Christine said as she brought the hammock to a gentle stop with her foot.
Conversations with Christine Series
Becky has been exploring creativity, spirituality, and the patterns that shape us through her ongoing series, Conversations with Christine. The series imagines two sisters in deep conversation about life’s larger questions, who we are, what shapes us, and why we are here.
Chapter 1: Archetypes, Symbols and Talismans ·
Chapter 2: Defining the Ego ·
Chapter 3: Woundings ·
Chapter 4: Vices and Virtues ·
Chapter 5: The Spiritual Practice of Journaling ·
Chapter 6: Redefining God ·
Chapter 7: Trinities
Chapter 8: Reconnecting
Chapter 9: Evolution of Consciousness
Chapter 10: Understanding the Persona
Chapter 11: We Are Whole
Chapter 12: This/And
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