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Three Story Bridge

Manifestation of Human In-Formation

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Introduction

It is July 2020; I am listening to a podcast titled "Map of the Soul - The Journey." The talk is about Carl Jung's study of the psyche in regards to BTS's new album. Halfway into the discussion, the host of the show brings up a scene from the music video "ON." She describes one of the band members blowing a horn to call on others to come together. At work, I ask one of my students, a proud ARMY, if the one who blows the horn in the music video might be the youngest of the seven. She confirms that it is so. The song "ON" is the 10th song in the album "Map of the Soul - The Journey." The following passage is what I've been working on for the past three months prior to hearing the podcast.

10.7

Revelation to John

But when the seventh angel blows his trumpet, then God will accomplish his secret plan, as he announced it to his servants, the prophets.

I have been observing the Spirit of God working through various people to bring Carl Jung's work to a broader audience, namely the individuation process. I was vaguely familiar with some of Carl Jung's ideas through books I read, but it wasn't until I came across Jordan Peterson's lectures online that it impelled me to read Jung's writings firsthand. That was in the year two-thousand eighteen. I had just recently restarted working on the project which I had put on hold. The project that I had begun twelve years ago.

In my late twenties, I started seeing 11:11. Then the deliverance in my mid-thirties, followed by a beatific vision in my darkest hour, where I experienced all-knowing for a brief moment—a glimpse of Eternity. The year was 2007. From the beginning, I suspected that it had something to do with the number ascribed to my age at the time. The signs were all around me. Korean media made a constant reminder that it was the year of the golden boar, allegedly the planetary alignment that happens only every 600 years. The number of my office building was 3600. I had just turned 35 years old, which meant that I had entered my 36th year, the year of my Chinese zodiac sign. 

In hindsight, the signs that prompted me to acknowledge the call is right to the point: clock stopping at 7:40 two days in a row (7+4=11), a false packaging of the AA battery (false wrappings of the self), 36 (360, number of degrees in a complete circle), and the warning about the coming of the antichrist by John, Peter, and Paul (John, Peter, and Paul are names of my business partners and me). But at the time, every unusual correlation I recognized almost pushed me over to the edge. I thought I was going mad. I was in a state of utter chaos. I didn't know how to make sense of what was happening but somehow knew that it was God calling on me. My journey to the underworld, away from everyday life, came to a close as I turned 36 years old. I had exhausted all my resources. I was broke and homeless. It was time to return to the ordinary world. By this point, through the sequence of revelations, I had come to see that "the first and the last, the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega" are symbols of demarcation in which to orient oneself, an intimation that what is unveiled in the Book of Revelation is the coming of the Self.

Carl Jung

Aion

Modern psychology is therefore confronted with a question very like the one that faced the alchemists: Is the self a symbol of Christ, or is Christ a symbol of the self?

My initial plan was to relate my experience and the revelation in three parts. Part one, the story of how it began. Part two, the process of the journey, which consists of journal entries and poems I wrote as a way of understanding the experience. And part three, the contents of the revelation. Although much of the first two parts were complete, I didn't know how to communicate what was revealed to me. I had many of the symbols appointed to me analyzed but could not bring them together to make them intelligible. The topics seem to run sporadically without any coherence. Overwhelmed by the difficulty of the task, I withdrew from the project.  

Ten years had passed since my mystical adventure, and I was content living my life working as an art teacher and running an online shop selling my design work. However, when the unexpected turn of events forced me to close my online shop, it directed me to reexamine my priorities. And I knew that God was summoning me to get back to work. In all honesty, I was kind of hoping that I did not have to assume the role, but I did give my words that I will see the project through. Perhaps, the space of ten years was the time I needed to get over myself. 

Millions of people around the world have reported the "11:11" phenomenon. One only has to type in "11:11" online to recognize that its significance is widespread. As many have pointed out, seeing 11:11 is a call from one's higher self. It is a call from the unconscious, the Self, to consciously participate in the individuation process.

Carl Jung

Answer to Job

The dogmatization of the Assumptio Mariae (Assumption of Mary) points to the hieros gamos (holy marriage) in the pleroma, and this in turn implies, as we have said, the future birth of the divine child, who, in accordance with the divine trend towards incarnation, will choose as his birthplace the empirical man. The metaphysical process is known to the psychology of the unconscious as the individuation process. In so far as this process, as a rule, runs its course un-unconsciously as it has from time immemorial, it means no more than that the acorn becomes an oak, the calf a cow, and the child an adult. But if the individuation process is made conscious, consciousness must confront the unconscious and a balance between the opposites must be found. As this is not possible through logic, one is dependent on symbols which make the irrational union of opposites possible.

In my vision, I experienced omniscience, but I did not come away omniscient from my experience. It was a state that lasted for a brief moment. As the vision came to an end, I beheld an image of Jesus in my mind's eye and heard the word "Antichrist" reverberated. I did not dare to share this detail with anyone until now. I had a visceral understanding of what it meant, but I didn't know how to make sense of it logically. It gradually became clear that the task I had been allotted was to bring the symbols together, to make the irrational union of opposites possible. The Christ and the Antichrist represent, symbolically, the potential range of traits within the individual. They stand at each end of the spectrum, the highest to the lowest, and are not to be construed as two separate entities, one embodying the absolute Good and the other the absolute Evil. If the tension resulting from the polarization is not resolved from within, the bound up psychic energy gets projected outwards. The "evil" one does not recognize in oneself becomes the filter through which one perceives the world.

Matthew 7:3 - 5

Why, then, do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, and pay no attention to the log in your own eye? 4 How dare you say to your brother, 'Please, let me take that speck out of your eye,' when you have a log in your own eye? 5 You imposter! Take the log out of your own eye first, and then you will be able to see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.

In the case of those who are inclined to blame themselves because of their inability to analyze the situation correctly, if the tension is not resolved, will wither in depression. In Buddhism, the attainment of the inner balance is known as the middle way. In the movie Little Buddha, Siddhārtha, after six long years as an ascetic, hears a musician on a passing boat speaking to his pupil, "If you tighten the string too much, it'll snap and if you leave it to slap it won't play." The process of bridging the opposites, attaining the middle way, was to be found in the symbolic language of the Revelation. "The first and the last (front and behind), the beginning and the end (left and right), the Alpha and the Omega (above and below)," three pairs of opposites, can be visualized as six spatial reference points on a weathervane, three axes coming together in the center. To bring oneself to the center is the aim of the individuation process, a state of equilibrium achieved by uniting the opposites from within (pleroma). Although I am not a member of any organized religion, my metaphysical framework of Good and Evil had been programmed by the cultural assertions of my time. The frame of reference to which I view the world was the first obstruction I had to overcome. It wasn't what I didn't know that was impeding my understanding; it was what I thought I knew that limited my perception.

"If God is reaching out to me, what means would Good Lord utilize to communicate with me?" was the question I imposed on myself at the beginning. God, who has every means at His disposal, must communicate with me within the limits of my faculty. It would be senseless to have me learn a new language or a trait. That was my rationalization. I was born in Seoul, Korea (January 17, 1972), and moved to the States when I was ten. English is my primary language, but I could also read and write Korean. My study was in Visual Arts, which introduced me to the metaphorical language of the symbols. For a living, I worked mainly as a graphic designer, which extended my visual literacy to include typography.

The principal character in the Book of Revelation is the Lamb. The story culminates with the wedding of the Lamb and the bride, and with it a new heaven and a new earth. From early on, my typographically trained eyes recognized something peculiar in how some of the words stood out, particularly "Lamb" and "bride." By flipping the letter 'b' vertically, the word 'Lamb' can be read as 'Lamp' and 'bride' as 'pride.' I thought it was a neat occurrence but had no basis to give it any serious consideration, but yet it kept resurfacing on my notes. One of the symbols that I comprehended right from the beginning was "seven stars in his right hand," which served as the key in understanding other symbols. The meaning of the "seven stars" and what it signified was already in my possession. The pen I was using, which I got as a gift, bore a hexagram for a logo. The essential tool for examining the symbols was already placed in my right hand by God.

The real breakthrough came when I started reading Carl Jung's work, namely the concept of the shadow. Jung points out that arrogance increases the blind spot in one's perception. This input provided a new apperception to my typographic reading of the word 'bride.' This is how I visualized it: Imagine putting a spotlight on top of the letter b from the word bride. The letter b is the head of the bride. Light represents consciousness. The increase in self-awareness increases the prominent role of the ego. However, if the ego does not recognize that its role is a part of the whole, one's ego becomes the dictator that supposes absolute control in the psyche economy. As a result, a blind spot manifests in the bride's personality. The unrecognized part of the letter b then appears as the letter p in the form of the shadow to spell pride.

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My conceptual reading of the word 'bride' and 'pride' makes for a clever typographic piece but wasn't adequate to substantiate my speculation. It had to hold up from multiple levels of analysis. Then came the connection to the numbers attributed to specific elements mentioned in the Book of Revelation. The letter b is the 2nd letter in the alphabet, and the letter p the 16th. By putting 2 and 16 together, it becomes 216. Two hundred and sixteen is the number produced when the "number of the beast," 666, is multiplied to itself (6x6x6=216). Two hundred and sixteen is the height of the wall of the city, the new Jerusalem. 

The angel also measured the wall, and it was two hundred and sixteen feet high, according to the standard unit of measure which he was using.

The wall is a divider that can keep you in or keep you out. It is both the protection as well as obstruction. The wall as an obstacle from without is the barrier that forbade the uninitiated from entering the Holy City. From within, the wall is that which confines the breadth of one's understanding to the limits of its dimension. Whether it's spiritual or intellectual, pride in the form of hubris is the deadliest of all sins because it blinds the individual and renders hitting the mark impossible.

The other symbol that repeatedly emerged on my notes was the mathematical sign of division, which I imagined as an aerial view of two figures standing divided by the wall, one looking in and the other looking out. The city, a bounded space, is the symbol of the individual's psyche structure. The wall is the divider between the inner and the outer space, which measures 216 in height. The height of the wall measured from the inside and the outside equals 432 in total. 432 is the number accredited to the duration of the Kali Yuga, the age of discordance. The discordance between the inner and the outer, the past and the present, the unconscious and the conscious.

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It took some time for me to recognize that the typographic reading and my understanding of Korean were pointers directing me to consider their suggested meaning in the Book of Revelation. Once I allowed the clues planted by God to guide me through the Book, other symbols started to open up: the wedding of the Lamb and the bride, the number of the redeemed, four living creatures, etc. Many of the hints were to be found in the events of my life. The memories that bubbled up as I read the Revelation were not just random thoughts and emotions; they were messages coming up from the depths of the unconscious. When my quest first began, I thought I was given the task because of my experience. It seems to me now the experience of my life had been the preparation for this purpose.

Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass

Immense have been the preparations for me,
Faithful and friendly the arms that have help'd me.

Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like

       cheerful boatmen,
For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,
They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.

I am still amazed at everything that transpired, but I must confess it was not an easy journey. There were many nights I pleaded in tears asking God to show me what He wanted me to realize. The most difficult part was having to endure the loneliness of the journey. Unable to talk to anyone because I did not know to what end I was seeking to accomplish. Now I understand that it couldn't have been any other way, for what I've gained through the process is not mere information but a transformation that could be attained only through the experience. I am honored that I get to be the one to share with you God's Secret Plan, but I cannot take too much credit for my effort. Many seeds have been laid by those who came before me. We have been collectively working toward this for thousands of years. My part was connecting the dots to bridge our way back home.

The Revelation I quote is based on the Bible entitled Good News for Modern Man, 1966 edition. The book that mysteriously appeared among the stack of books I had lying around. I have decided it will be best to share just Part Three, for now, the analyses of the parts of the Revelation that guided me in understanding the individuation process. My personal story I wrote was what I needed for myself to keep me anchored in reality. However, I don't want the particularity of my experience to get in the way of realizing yours, for That which seeks to manifest dwells within.

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