Why the Name ‘Jonah’s’ Club?
Our Club derives its name from the book of Jonah and Jonah’s Complex (as psychologist Abraham Maslow identified). For Jonah’s Complex is our biggest and most self-deceptive of inner limitations:
That is, our fear to be all that we can be;
our fear to live out a life of meaning, happiness and power;
our fear to seek out, the total good!
This fear, as Maslow identified, is at the heart of nearly 98% of people, and it is what prevents most of us, from living the life that we are meant to live.
Abraham Maslow identified this hidden fear, from the biblical story of Jonah the prophet, as the archetypal example.
If you’re familiar with the story, Jonah was an ordinary man, who God personally called up, in order to take on a heroic journey.
He was divinely called – to go to the biggest city in the world at the time, Nineveh, (pictured above) and to take on the mission of saving this city from its self-destructive ways.
Sounds kind of exciting, right?
That is, to have a divine mission where you get to heroically change the destiny of millions of people for the better, with God by your side? What could be more meaningful and epic to do with one’s life than this?
But if you’d recall, what Jonah did as a response, was to think to himself the opposite…
So he decided, ‘Thanks, but no thanks’, and took the nearest boat, as to go in the exact opposite direction of Nineveh, (currently near Mosul, in northern Iraq). He went to go out onto the safe and secure plains of Spain. There he imagined he could just live out a simple and comfortable life…
But of course, as he tried to run away from his destiny, something else happened… While sailing away from his calling, he got ‘swallowed up’ by that famous whale (or big fish)!
Within the darkness of that great beast, Jonah came to reconsider… And so he returned to his mission, and ultimately succeeded – as to save the lives of millions in the process.
But why the story of Jonah matters is not just because of a historical curiosity from thousands of years ago…
It matters because the story of Jonah, is in fact a story of the choices we make in our own lives. It is ‘our story’.
Like the prophet Mohammad was to also note, let no one deceive themselves to think that they would have acted differently, or that they would do better than Jonah, when the call of Greatness comes.
The fear to live a life heroic is in fact our default condition. And this is why most people lead lives of quiet desperation.
By default we all would prefer to live the life of a mere “honest coward”.
So we have named our club ‘Jonah’, because if we would live a life that matters, we all need to come to terms with this fear, head on – as to become the person we are meant to be.
We need to face up to our own ‘Jonah’s Complex’ and do the work!
This is why we have it as our motto to:
Return to Your Calling, Stronger.
Jonah’s Club is here for those who believe that we do indeed live in a meaningful universe – where each one of us has a uniquely given mission that we are born to achieve.
And that in reality, the world is a much poorer, a much less loving place, if we fail to achieve it.
Inside Jonah’s Club, we aim to strengthen ourselves as to meet our calling, more fully.
A great recent explanation of Jonah’s Complex comes from professor Jordan Peterson, and it is well worth watching… Here’s how he put it:
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