Union With the Spirit

About this poem

The story of Nicodemus is told in the New Testament Gospel of John 3:1-15, in which there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council, who came to the Jewish itinerant preacher Jesus by night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God….How can a man be born when he is old?” This story serves as a prequel to the sequel of John 3:16-21 concerning the story of human salvation and the quest for eternal life. It compares remarkably with the quest of wholeness and healing depicted in the individuation journey of analytical psychology. In Jungian depth psychology, individuation is a three-fold process having these three parts: Integration of the archetypal Shadow, Confrontation of the archetypal Anima or Animus, and Encounter with the archetypal Wise Inner Being; all towards the goal of formulating a stable composite personality that has garnered a clearer image of self and the desire to attain wholeness. This psychological quest can be seen as mirrored in the “Born Again” goal of the Christian faith, in which the aim of therapeutic wholeness or self-fulfillment, as a “regenerative union” (the achievement of eternal life through union of the individual pilgrim with the archetypal Christ), is accomplished by and via mediation of the three-fold aid and power of union with the Holy Trinity; and through a transformation of the soul’s governance of mind, emotion, and will (Matthew 11:28-30; Romans 8:9, 16; 9:16; John 3:3; Acts 1:8). This Tanka poem asserts implicitly, in conjunction with my earlier written poem entitled “Two Peas in a Pod,” that the three-fold individuation goal of analytical psychology and the Christian faith three-fold “Born-Again” aim, involving the engagement of the Father-Son-Holy Spirit Trinity, bear underlying mutual commonalities and teleological expectations for humanity: transcendence of the Eternal Spirit, or Psyche, over the illusiveness of things temporal, idealized by the desires of human ego and by material gain. more »