Spiritual Immaturity, Neurosis, Estrangement from Being, ... & Maturation

     “Immaturity, unripeness, is the cancer of our time, the incapacity to ripen the specific mark of our time. The neurosis which drives the spiritually sick to the therapist is simply the clearest expression of the universal suffering, the suffering due to man’s estrangement from Being! Healthy and unhealthy alike are to be understood as ‘on the way’ – hence never statically, but always in the perspective of their becoming one with their being. So it comes to this, that as in the East since time immemorial between pupil and master, so today between a sound person and his spiritual counselor, between a ‘disturbed’ person and his therapist – all are seeking, over and above any psychological aid, a firm metaphysical foundation for life. A longing for their being moves them all. They seek resonance and guidance out of a need which is not only constitutional and personal but which involves their whole existence.
     Modern man suffers from his immaturity and causes suffering to all around him. What we are called upon to do is to restore him to the context of the Greater Life, to un-block the door to at-one-ment with the wellsprings of his existence, and to show him the way to give expression to his contact with Being through life-affirming attitude. For there is a way to be trodden by actual practice.”

       Durckheim KG. “Hara – The vital center of man.” Inner Traditions, Rochester VT, 1975 (originally published 1956 - hence the masculine terminology). 

Richard Kirsten Daiensai    http://www.kirstengallery.com