Dialogical Gnosis
SACRED ENCOUNTERS
Bring Your Story to Life
Meeting the Sacred Within
Emergence of Meaning
Finding a Voice
Participatory Knowledge;
Soul Never Thinks Without a Picture
Gnosis: Inner Knowing - What is it a meta-for?
Meet Your Ancestors; Listen to Their Whispers
My conceptions are empirical and not at all speculative. If you understand them from a philosophical standpoint you go completely astray, since they are not rational but mere names of groups of irrational phenomena. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 302.
Mind you, I didn't say "there is a God."
I said: "I don't need to believe in God, I know." Which does not mean: I do know a certain God (Zeus, Yahweh, Allah, the Trinitarian God, etc.) but rather: I do know that I am obviously confronted with a factor unknown in itself, which I call "God" in consensu omnium (quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditur). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 525-526
Also, I have never discovered, either in the literature or in conversation with an Oriental, any cognition that could be said to be a cognition of the whole.
It is merely said to be so, just as we Christians say that we are redeemed of our sins by Christ. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 523-524
Nobody has ever been entirely liberated from the opposites, because no living being could possibly attain to such a state, as nobody escapes pain and pleasure as long as he functions physiologically.
He may have occasional ecstatic experiences when he gets the intuition of a complete liberation, f.i. in reaching the state of sat-chit-ananda. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 303.
Sooner or later it will be found that nothing really new happens in history. There could be talk of something really novel only if the unimaginable happened : if reason, humanity and love won a lasting victory. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1356.
I do not think that so-called personal messages from the dead can be dismissed in globo as self-deceptions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 333-334.
The language I speak must be ambiguous, must have two meanings, in order to do justice to the dual aspect of our psychic nature. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 69-71
Unequivocalness makes sense only in establishing facts but not in interpreting them; for "meaning" is not a tautology but always includes more in itself than the concrete object of which it is predicated. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 69-71
For me the psyche is an almost infinite phenomenon. I absolutely don't know what it is in itself and know only very vaguely what it is not. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 69-71
God is something unknowable. An old German mystic has said: "God is a sigh in our souls." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 86-87.
At the same time the psyche, or rather consciousness, introduces the prerequisites for cognition into the picture-the discrimination of particulars or qualities which are not necessarily separated in the self-subsistent world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 341-343.
From this we learn how the spirit of the depths considers the soul: he sees her as a living and self-existing being, and with this he contradicts the spirit of this time for whom the soul is a thing dependent on man… ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 232.
Rather, we have every reason to suppose that there is only one world, where matter and psyche are the same thing, which we discriminate for the purpose of cognition. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 341-343.
Your voice is too weak for those raging to be able to hear. Thus do not speak and do not show the God, but sit in a solitary place and sing incantations in the ancient manner. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 284.
We are men and not gods. The meaning of human development is to be found in the fulfilment of this life is rich enough in marvels and not in detachment from this world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 381.
Your attempts to formulate it are not vain or futile; on the contrary, our labours are witnesses to the living Mystery, honest attempts to find words for the Ineffable. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 392-396
Recognizing the shadow is what I call the apprentice piece,
but making out with the anima is the masterpiece which not
many can bring off.
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 481
I therefore stop speculating when I have no more possibilities of ideas and wait on events, no matter of what kind, for instance dreams in which possibilities of ideas are presented to me but do not come this time from my biased speculation but rather from the unfathomable law of nature herself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 445-449
That with which we are concerned is not God, the creature is the image of the human mind, neither alive nor dead. ~Dorneus cited in ETH Lectures, Page 103.
We think and talk metaphorically, and all metaphors are both technically wrong, yet embodied. Wrongness is makes metaphors meaningful. For one thing to be like another means they are not the same, yet are meaningfully similar.
Mind is inherently embodied.
Thought is largely unconscious.
Concepts are mostly metaphorical.
Mind matters deeply.
They [Intuitives] draw the souls out of things and act according to what they discover
by this process, just as if what they discovered were ordinary every day facts.
~Carl Jung, Lecture IV, 18May1934, Page 102.
As a matter of fact it is by no means everyone who can sit down and think out something voluntarily, and it is quite equally possible for someone to sit down and feel something out. It just depends which is your domesticated function. ~Carl Jung, Lecture IV, 18May1934, Page 102.
The word becomes your God, since it protects you from the countless possibilities of interpretation. The word is protective magic against the daimons of the unending, which tear at your soul and want to scatter you to the winds. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 270.
He who breaks the wall of words overthrows Gods and defiles temples. The solitary is a murderer. He murders the people, because he thus thinks and thereby breaks down ancient sacred walls. He calls up the daimons of the boundless. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 270.
Because I was a thinker and caught sight of the hostile principle of pleasure from forethinking, it appeared to me as Salome. If I had been one who felt, and had groped my way toward forethinking, then it would have appeared to me as a serpent-encoiled daimon, if I had actually seen it. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 248.
A thinker who descends in to his fore thinking finds his next step leading into the garden of Salome. Therefore the thinker fears his forethought, although he lives on the foundation of fore thinking. The visible surface is safer than the underground. Thinking protects against the way of error, and therefore it leads to petrification. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 248.
The place where Elijah and Salome live together is a dark space and a bright one. The dark space is the space of forethinking. It is dark so he who lives there requires vision.
~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 247.
That is to say even the enlightened person remains what he is, and is never more than his own limited ego before the One who dwells within him, whose form has no knowable boundaries, who encompasses him on all sides, fathomless as the abysms of the earth and vast as the sky. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 470.
Active imagination is only legitimate if one is confronted with an insurmountable obstacle in a situation where no one can give advice. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 18.
Images and numbers are doors through which the spiritual can reach man. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.
The character of the image is not determined by numbers. Pure spiritual substance is eternal. An image as such needs neither time nor space. ~Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Pg 60.
It is characteristic of the transcendent that it can be pictured and escribed by numbers; the passage of time, quantity, and identity, are spiritual substances. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.
So we should talk to our animus or anima….So you listen to the inner mentor, you develop the inner ear; or you write automatically, and a word is formed by your hand, or your mouth speaks that which you have not thought. ~Carl Jung, The Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
When you observe the world, you see people; you see houses; you see the sky; you see tangible objects. But when you observe yourself within, you see moving images, a world of images generally known as fantasies. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 22.
Fantasy is, you see, a form of energy, despite the fact that we can't measure it. It is a manifestation of something, and that is a reality. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 22.
Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.” ~Carl Jung, CW 16, The Practice of Psychotherapy, Para 181.
It seems quite strange to me that one doesn't see what an education without the humanities is doing to man. He loses his connection with his family, his connection with his whole past—the whole stem, the tribe —that past in which man has always lived. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 36.
The psyche creates reality every day, the only expression I can use for this activity is fantasy. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 78.
Science comes to a stop at the frontiers of logic, but nature does not: she thrives on ground as yet untrodden by theory. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 524.
The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories.
~Carl Jung; Freud Letters; Vol. 2.
Passive fantasy […] is always in need of conscious criticism […] whereas active fantasy [,,,] does not require criticism so much as understanding. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Par. 714.
People measure their self-knowledge by what the average person in their social environment knows of himself, but not by the real psychic facts which are for the most part hidden from them. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Par. 491
What we can experience empirically as underlying this image is the individuation process, which gives us clear intimations of a greater "Man" than our ego. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 341-343.
We think and talk metaphorically, and all metaphors are both technically wrong, yet embodied. Wrongness is makes metaphors meaningful. For one thing to be like another means they are not the same, yet are meaningfully similar.
Mind is inherently embodied.
Thought is largely unconscious.
Concepts are mostly metaphorical.
Mind matters deeply.
They [Intuitives] draw the souls out of things and act according to what they discover
by this process, just as if what they discovered were ordinary every day facts.
~Carl Jung, Lecture IV, 18May1934, Page 102.
As a matter of fact it is by no means everyone who can sit down and think out something voluntarily, and it is quite equally possible for someone to sit down and feel something out. It just depends which is your domesticated function. ~Carl Jung, Lecture IV, 18May1934, Page 102.
The word becomes your God, since it protects you from the countless possibilities of interpretation. The word is protective magic against the daimons of the unending, which tear at your soul and want to scatter you to the winds. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 270.
He who breaks the wall of words overthrows Gods and defiles temples. The solitary is a murderer. He murders the people, because he thus thinks and thereby breaks down ancient sacred walls. He calls up the daimons of the boundless. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 270.
Because I was a thinker and caught sight of the hostile principle of pleasure from forethinking, it appeared to me as Salome. If I had been one who felt, and had groped my way toward forethinking, then it would have appeared to me as a serpent-encoiled daimon, if I had actually seen it. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 248.
A thinker who descends in to his fore thinking finds his next step leading into the garden of Salome. Therefore the thinker fears his forethought, although he lives on the foundation of fore thinking. The visible surface is safer than the underground. Thinking protects against the way of error, and therefore it leads to petrification. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 248.
The place where Elijah and Salome live together is a dark space and a bright one. The dark space is the space of forethinking. It is dark so he who lives there requires vision.
~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 247.
That is to say even the enlightened person remains what he is, and is never more than his own limited ego before the One who dwells within him, whose form has no knowable boundaries, who encompasses him on all sides, fathomless as the abysms of the earth and vast as the sky. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 470.
Active imagination is only legitimate if one is confronted with an insurmountable obstacle in a situation where no one can give advice. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 18.
Images and numbers are doors through which the spiritual can reach man. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.
The character of the image is not determined by numbers. Pure spiritual substance is eternal. An image as such needs neither time nor space. ~Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Pg 60.
It is characteristic of the transcendent that it can be pictured and escribed by numbers; the passage of time, quantity, and identity, are spiritual substances. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.
So we should talk to our animus or anima….So you listen to the inner mentor, you develop the inner ear; or you write automatically, and a word is formed by your hand, or your mouth speaks that which you have not thought. ~Carl Jung, The Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
When you observe the world, you see people; you see houses; you see the sky; you see tangible objects. But when you observe yourself within, you see moving images, a world of images generally known as fantasies. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 22.
Fantasy is, you see, a form of energy, despite the fact that we can't measure it. It is a manifestation of something, and that is a reality. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 22.
Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.” ~Carl Jung, CW 16, The Practice of Psychotherapy, Para 181.
It seems quite strange to me that one doesn't see what an education without the humanities is doing to man. He loses his connection with his family, his connection with his whole past—the whole stem, the tribe —that past in which man has always lived. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 36.
The psyche creates reality every day, the only expression I can use for this activity is fantasy. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 78.
Science comes to a stop at the frontiers of logic, but nature does not: she thrives on ground as yet untrodden by theory. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 524.
The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories.
~Carl Jung; Freud Letters; Vol. 2.
Passive fantasy […] is always in need of conscious criticism […] whereas active fantasy [,,,] does not require criticism so much as understanding. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Par. 714.
People measure their self-knowledge by what the average person in their social environment knows of himself, but not by the real psychic facts which are for the most part hidden from them. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Par. 491
What we can experience empirically as underlying this image is the individuation process, which gives us clear intimations of a greater "Man" than our ego. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 341-343.
We do not know what a spirit is any more than we understand matter. We are really enclosed in a psychic world of images. We label everything as physical or spiritual but the only reality is purely psychic. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3 Feb 1939, Page 75.
' a symbol without love, without sympathy, without participation is not a symbol. If touching the symbol not touch me, that is not a symbol. The symbol is only when i am there, and at the same time, i am not there, because there ' is more. [...] When i think the symbol, the symbol starts to disappear. If i am looking for what it means, the symbol starts his dissolution.
The symbol is pure report, a report lived it. The report is so strong that empty me, clean out you and it is only report in the report ' are you there You are there i '; The important of the report i am not the poles of the report, but the report itself. [...] The fragmentation of knowledge has led to the fragmentation of acquaintance, and in particular to divorce between knowledge and love . but knowledge without love is mere calculation, does not penetrate in what she knows ; love without knowledge It is simple emotion, does not identify with what you love. Their relationship is intrinsic and constituent why, what allows us to see ', To touch ', To be in contact with the reality is our nature lover - acquaintance, is our Capacity of intelligence of love, for which we have lost a proper definition in our ordinary language When the ' heart ' has lost its symbolic power.' ( raimon panikkar )
Wakeful Dreaming
Invisible guests: The development of imaginal dialogues by Mary Watkins describes the dialogues we carry on silently—"with our reflection in the mirror...with a figure from a dream or movie, with our dog...with critics, with our mothers, with our god(s)..." They are not an incidental aspect of mental life but central phenomena, laden with both cognitive and emotional significance. Imaginative life deserves analysis based on appreciation of its centrality and generative nature. Dialogue is a fundamental—perhaps the primary—form in which we think. Operating "inwardly" or "outwardly," psyche is an exquisitely dialogical process. In both Jungian and archetypal work the bridging of conscious and unconscious occurs through dialogue, as in the practice of active imagination.Such bridging activates what Jung called the transcendent function. Hillman uses the language of "soul" for that space that opens up through dialogue.
You see, in the actual functioning of the psyche, it does not matter whether you do a thing or whether it happens to you; whether it reaches you from without or happens within, fate moves through yourself and outside circumstances equally. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 896.
The ancients devised magic to compel fate. They needed it to determine outer fate. We need it to determine inner fate and to find the way that we are unable to conceive. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 311.
Whether a person's fate comes to him from without or from within, the experiences and events of the way remain the same. ~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 93.
Passive fantasy […] is always in need of conscious criticism […] whereas active fantasy [,,,] does not require criticism so much as understanding. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Par. 714.
' a symbol without love, without sympathy, without participation is not a symbol. If touching the symbol not touch me, that is not a symbol. The symbol is only when i am there, and at the same time, i am not there, because there ' is more. [...] When i think the symbol, the symbol starts to disappear. If i am looking for what it means, the symbol starts his dissolution.
The symbol is pure report, a report lived it. The report is so strong that empty me, clean out you and it is only report in the report ' are you there You are there i '; The important of the report i am not the poles of the report, but the report itself. [...] The fragmentation of knowledge has led to the fragmentation of acquaintance, and in particular to divorce between knowledge and love . but knowledge without love is mere calculation, does not penetrate in what she knows ; love without knowledge It is simple emotion, does not identify with what you love. Their relationship is intrinsic and constituent why, what allows us to see ', To touch ', To be in contact with the reality is our nature lover - acquaintance, is our Capacity of intelligence of love, for which we have lost a proper definition in our ordinary language When the ' heart ' has lost its symbolic power.' ( raimon panikkar )
Wakeful Dreaming
Invisible guests: The development of imaginal dialogues by Mary Watkins describes the dialogues we carry on silently—"with our reflection in the mirror...with a figure from a dream or movie, with our dog...with critics, with our mothers, with our god(s)..." They are not an incidental aspect of mental life but central phenomena, laden with both cognitive and emotional significance. Imaginative life deserves analysis based on appreciation of its centrality and generative nature. Dialogue is a fundamental—perhaps the primary—form in which we think. Operating "inwardly" or "outwardly," psyche is an exquisitely dialogical process. In both Jungian and archetypal work the bridging of conscious and unconscious occurs through dialogue, as in the practice of active imagination.Such bridging activates what Jung called the transcendent function. Hillman uses the language of "soul" for that space that opens up through dialogue.
You see, in the actual functioning of the psyche, it does not matter whether you do a thing or whether it happens to you; whether it reaches you from without or happens within, fate moves through yourself and outside circumstances equally. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 896.
The ancients devised magic to compel fate. They needed it to determine outer fate. We need it to determine inner fate and to find the way that we are unable to conceive. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 311.
Whether a person's fate comes to him from without or from within, the experiences and events of the way remain the same. ~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 93.
Passive fantasy […] is always in need of conscious criticism […] whereas active fantasy [,,,] does not require criticism so much as understanding. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Par. 714.
Semantic, Symbolic & Noetic Field
Fields are domains of influence. Storytelling describes a deep field of myth and archetype. Elements are woven together by narrative, metaphor and illustration. A semantic field is a set of words grouped by meaning referring to a specific subject, much like symbols are held in the subtle net of an image. The language of symbols is older than the Ouroboros, Vortex, Yin-Yang, Ankh, Pentagram, Solar Cross, Circumpunct, Vesica Piscis, or Flower of Life.
Noetics, direct knowing, is the connection between mind and the physical universe - how the ‘inner cosmos’ of the mind (consciousness, soul, spirit) relates to the ‘outer cosmos’ of the physical world - the somatic field of our psychophysical being. All are components of the Ritual Field of mythic sensibility. The field of myth is emotional -- emergent, resonant, challenging -- inviting ritual enactment to animate and embody it. Thus, we recognize and develop our own style of mythic consciousness, stepping into joining with others, daring to live our larger lives within the field of historic life.
Components of the unconscious emerge in conscious life. Personal myth, (a biochemically-coded internal model of reality and a field of information), shapes individual behavior as cultural myths influence social behavior, Symbolic content is a mythic field. Shift the field, change the myth. Rituals shift the field.
no•et•ic: From the Greek noēsis/ noētikos, meaning inner wisdom, direct knowing, or subjective understanding. As defined by the philosopher William James in 1902, noetic refers to "states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority..."
You see, in the actual functioning of the psyche, it does not matter whether you do a thing or whether it happens to you; whether it reaches you from without or happens within, fate moves through yourself and outside circumstances equally. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 896.
He says directly that man has two lights: the one is the spirit and the other the light of nature. Man has a spirit in order to be able to understand the divine revelation, and a soul in order to recognise the world in the light of nature. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 193.
We meet with the possibility of a very dangerous misunderstanding here, because if we call becoming conscious becoming spirit, we think that consciousness is spirit and thus mix up the intellect and the spirit. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IX, Page 221.
The meaning of events is the way of salvation that you create. The meaning of events comes from the possibility of life in this world that you create. It is the mastery of this world and the assertion of your soul in this world. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 239.
Emotions are often confused with feelings but this is all wrong.
Feeling is a valuing function, whereas emotion is involuntary, in affect you are always a victim. ~Carl Jung, Lecture V 25May1934, Page 109.
There is what we might call a fifth function over all these four functions: the will.
This is a peculiar function set above the others with a certain quantity of disposable energy in direct relation to the ego. ~Carl Jung, Lecture V 25May1934, Page 107.
Fields are domains of influence. Storytelling describes a deep field of myth and archetype. Elements are woven together by narrative, metaphor and illustration. A semantic field is a set of words grouped by meaning referring to a specific subject, much like symbols are held in the subtle net of an image. The language of symbols is older than the Ouroboros, Vortex, Yin-Yang, Ankh, Pentagram, Solar Cross, Circumpunct, Vesica Piscis, or Flower of Life.
Noetics, direct knowing, is the connection between mind and the physical universe - how the ‘inner cosmos’ of the mind (consciousness, soul, spirit) relates to the ‘outer cosmos’ of the physical world - the somatic field of our psychophysical being. All are components of the Ritual Field of mythic sensibility. The field of myth is emotional -- emergent, resonant, challenging -- inviting ritual enactment to animate and embody it. Thus, we recognize and develop our own style of mythic consciousness, stepping into joining with others, daring to live our larger lives within the field of historic life.
Components of the unconscious emerge in conscious life. Personal myth, (a biochemically-coded internal model of reality and a field of information), shapes individual behavior as cultural myths influence social behavior, Symbolic content is a mythic field. Shift the field, change the myth. Rituals shift the field.
no•et•ic: From the Greek noēsis/ noētikos, meaning inner wisdom, direct knowing, or subjective understanding. As defined by the philosopher William James in 1902, noetic refers to "states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority..."
You see, in the actual functioning of the psyche, it does not matter whether you do a thing or whether it happens to you; whether it reaches you from without or happens within, fate moves through yourself and outside circumstances equally. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 896.
He says directly that man has two lights: the one is the spirit and the other the light of nature. Man has a spirit in order to be able to understand the divine revelation, and a soul in order to recognise the world in the light of nature. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 193.
We meet with the possibility of a very dangerous misunderstanding here, because if we call becoming conscious becoming spirit, we think that consciousness is spirit and thus mix up the intellect and the spirit. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IX, Page 221.
The meaning of events is the way of salvation that you create. The meaning of events comes from the possibility of life in this world that you create. It is the mastery of this world and the assertion of your soul in this world. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 239.
Emotions are often confused with feelings but this is all wrong.
Feeling is a valuing function, whereas emotion is involuntary, in affect you are always a victim. ~Carl Jung, Lecture V 25May1934, Page 109.
There is what we might call a fifth function over all these four functions: the will.
This is a peculiar function set above the others with a certain quantity of disposable energy in direct relation to the ego. ~Carl Jung, Lecture V 25May1934, Page 107.
The whole history of culture is really the history of a strengthening and widening of consciousness, and therefore of the controlling ego. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 137.
It is no wonder, therefore, that nature herself strives to produce a strengthening of the ego in order gradually to bring about more consciousness, for without this the further development of mankind would be impossible. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 137.
As the Chinese would say, the archetype is only the name of Tao, not Tao itself. Just as the Jesuits translated Tao as "God," so we can describe the "emptiness" of the center as "god." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 258-259.
It is no wonder, therefore, that nature herself strives to produce a strengthening of the ego in order gradually to bring about more consciousness, for without this the further development of mankind would be impossible. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 137.
As the Chinese would say, the archetype is only the name of Tao, not Tao itself. Just as the Jesuits translated Tao as "God," so we can describe the "emptiness" of the center as "god." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 258-259.
This turned out to be possible, for I discovered that if one concentrates enough attention on the contents of the unconscious, they begin to move and various peculiar phenomena take place. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 3, Page 11.
In spite of the fact that the majority of people do not know why the body needs salt, everyone demands it nonetheless because of an instinctive need. It is the same with the things of the psyche. That is the working of the intellect. ~Jung, CW 8, Pages 399-403.
Inasmuch as fantasy is not forced and violated by and subjugated to an intellectually preconceived bastard of an idea, it is a legitimate and authentic offspring of the unconscious mind and thus far it provided me with unadulterated information about the things that transcend the writer's conscious mind. ~Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 509-510.
It is remarkable how people can act so dumb when dealing with inner figures.
~Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 246.
Who exhausts the mystery of love? … There are those who love men, and those who love the souls of men, and those who love their own soul. Such a one is ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ, the host of the Gods. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 315.
In spite of the fact that the majority of people do not know why the body needs salt, everyone demands it nonetheless because of an instinctive need. It is the same with the things of the psyche. That is the working of the intellect. ~Jung, CW 8, Pages 399-403.
Inasmuch as fantasy is not forced and violated by and subjugated to an intellectually preconceived bastard of an idea, it is a legitimate and authentic offspring of the unconscious mind and thus far it provided me with unadulterated information about the things that transcend the writer's conscious mind. ~Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 509-510.
It is remarkable how people can act so dumb when dealing with inner figures.
~Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 246.
Who exhausts the mystery of love? … There are those who love men, and those who love the souls of men, and those who love their own soul. Such a one is ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ, the host of the Gods. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 315.
"That with which we are concerned is not God; the creature is the image of the human mind, neither alive nor dead." --Dorneus
Where Logos is ordering and insistence, Eros is dissolution and movement.
~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 365.
Where Logos is ordering and insistence, Eros is dissolution and movement.
~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 365.
"It will be good for your humility if you can accept the gifts of the unconscious guide that dwells in yourself, and it is good for your pride to humiliate itself to such an extent that you can accept what you receive." ~Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 458-459.
In reality we imagine nothing, it imagines itself. ~Jung, Modern Psychology, ETH Lectures, pg.53
It is impossible to live entirely in the personal attitude, the non-personal catches us somehow; we need both personal and impersonal points of view. ~Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Pg. 46
We do not perceive people and objects as they really are, we see rather an image of them, for we are always caught in subjective prejudices which have the effect of a kind of fog. ~Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 46.
There are people who can read the past, the present and the future by gazing into a crystal, a glass of water or a mirror; in reality they are seeing processes out of their own unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 33.
…the brain is complete with the history of the world and every child is born with an unconscious assumption of the world. But for this we could not grasp the world at all. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 27.
Everything that happens to us, properly understood, leads us back to ourselves; it is as though there were some unconscious guidance whose aim it is to deliver us from all ties and all dependence and make us dependent on our-selves. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 78.
In the last resort the value of a person is never expressed in his relation to others but consists in itself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 78.
As the unconscious has a tendency to project itself into the outer world, there is a danger that one might get dissipated in the environment, instead of staying with oneself. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 373.
You must step into the fantasy yourself and compel the figures to give you an answer.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 561.
In reality we imagine nothing, it imagines itself. ~Jung, Modern Psychology, ETH Lectures, pg.53
It is impossible to live entirely in the personal attitude, the non-personal catches us somehow; we need both personal and impersonal points of view. ~Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Pg. 46
We do not perceive people and objects as they really are, we see rather an image of them, for we are always caught in subjective prejudices which have the effect of a kind of fog. ~Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 46.
There are people who can read the past, the present and the future by gazing into a crystal, a glass of water or a mirror; in reality they are seeing processes out of their own unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 33.
…the brain is complete with the history of the world and every child is born with an unconscious assumption of the world. But for this we could not grasp the world at all. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 27.
Everything that happens to us, properly understood, leads us back to ourselves; it is as though there were some unconscious guidance whose aim it is to deliver us from all ties and all dependence and make us dependent on our-selves. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 78.
In the last resort the value of a person is never expressed in his relation to others but consists in itself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 78.
As the unconscious has a tendency to project itself into the outer world, there is a danger that one might get dissipated in the environment, instead of staying with oneself. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 373.
You must step into the fantasy yourself and compel the figures to give you an answer.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 561.
You should not let yourself be represented by a fantasy figure.
You must safeguard the ego and only let it be modified by the unconscious, just as the latter must be acknowledged with full justification and only prevented from suppressing and assimilating the ego. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 561.
Ancestor work is not always about remembering the positive. Sometimes, it can be about demanding justice, making reparations, or healing wounds.
We engage the ancestral line where we have direct access to it — beginning with its endpoint, our own embodied selves. Whatever we have inherited from our ancestors that burdens or wounds us, we work to make it right: to atone for our ancestors’ wrongdoing with just action, or to heal grief that our grandmothers and grandfathers carried to their graves. It’s slow work, often painful. There are a thousand ways to deepen spiritually and serve community, and not everyone’s path will lead them to dig into the past this way.For those who are called to work with their ancestors, especially those who are trying to resolve an inherited spiritual burden, I can recommend an excellent mundane tool. If you have access to family stories, either through family members or through genealogical research, it can be enormously helpful to make a genogram, a tool often used in family systems therapy. A genogram is a kind of family tree that also records major life events (such as illnesses, career changes, etc.) and important aspects of family relationships (strained or very close connections, for example). The results can reveal a pattern that persists over generations, or behaviors in later generations that represent clear reactions to events that occurred before they were born. A genogram can help uncover issues that need to be addressed, and it may even identify specific ancestors who need help in healing, who need to be confronted for crimes, or who may be of aid in either process.
The process of healing one’s ancestral line will be different based on the situation, and it is probably best undertaken for the first time under the guidance of someone experienced in ancestor work. Successfully resolve an issue in one’s ancestral line can be an enormous relief that reverberates throughout one’s life. Ancestor work allows us to shift complexes that years of other spiritual practices and healing modalities fail to touch. Ancestor practice that goes beyond honoring can be heavy work. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/sermonsfromthemound/2014/10/ancestor-work-its-not-always-about-honoring/
It is high time we realized that it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it. It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 13.
You must safeguard the ego and only let it be modified by the unconscious, just as the latter must be acknowledged with full justification and only prevented from suppressing and assimilating the ego. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 561.
Ancestor work is not always about remembering the positive. Sometimes, it can be about demanding justice, making reparations, or healing wounds.
We engage the ancestral line where we have direct access to it — beginning with its endpoint, our own embodied selves. Whatever we have inherited from our ancestors that burdens or wounds us, we work to make it right: to atone for our ancestors’ wrongdoing with just action, or to heal grief that our grandmothers and grandfathers carried to their graves. It’s slow work, often painful. There are a thousand ways to deepen spiritually and serve community, and not everyone’s path will lead them to dig into the past this way.For those who are called to work with their ancestors, especially those who are trying to resolve an inherited spiritual burden, I can recommend an excellent mundane tool. If you have access to family stories, either through family members or through genealogical research, it can be enormously helpful to make a genogram, a tool often used in family systems therapy. A genogram is a kind of family tree that also records major life events (such as illnesses, career changes, etc.) and important aspects of family relationships (strained or very close connections, for example). The results can reveal a pattern that persists over generations, or behaviors in later generations that represent clear reactions to events that occurred before they were born. A genogram can help uncover issues that need to be addressed, and it may even identify specific ancestors who need help in healing, who need to be confronted for crimes, or who may be of aid in either process.
The process of healing one’s ancestral line will be different based on the situation, and it is probably best undertaken for the first time under the guidance of someone experienced in ancestor work. Successfully resolve an issue in one’s ancestral line can be an enormous relief that reverberates throughout one’s life. Ancestor work allows us to shift complexes that years of other spiritual practices and healing modalities fail to touch. Ancestor practice that goes beyond honoring can be heavy work. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/sermonsfromthemound/2014/10/ancestor-work-its-not-always-about-honoring/
It is high time we realized that it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it. It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 13.
BELIEFS AS DISSOCIATIVE SYSTEMS
What are Beliefs – what do they do?
Beliefs are our default heuristics, ways of interpreting the world and our experience -- cognitive bias and assumptions. Beliefs act as filters on communication. Mistaken beliefs are errors due to ignorance - lack of knowledge, trauma, or lack of critical thinking. Discernment in self-reality belief systems is a conceptual art. Beliefs give rise to distorted perceptions of self, world, and others.
Our behavior hinges on our beliefs. Unless we consciously work with our dissociated and unfactual beliefs, especially the dissociated ones, our unconscious beliefs will distort our reality. We follow our beliefs to meet our needs. We naturally and necessarily disconnect and dissociate some of our awareness. Repetitive cycles of dissociative effects create personal and social ills.
We may also dissociate our awareness of destructive or limiting patterns that interfere with or outright control our lives, especially the most challenging, difficult ones – those that are embarrassing, hurtful, fearful, or otherwise overwhelming or unbearably damaging to us or our lives. It isn’t a conscious process, but it means our lives are determined by our beliefs, whether or not we actually chose them for ourselves.
Beliefs are central to both the Dissociative Function and to the ways in which Dissociative Effects take shape in your life. We are usually resistant to changing our core substitute beliefs -- positive and negative. Even spiritual beliefs are linked to both repression, dissociation, and false ego states and magical thinking. They include beliefs about shame and negative self-image.
For example, stereotypical conspiracy theory believers embrace other magical thinking, such as belief in the supernatural, paranormal, or Bible prophecy. They actively seek out like-minded individuals, ideas, and stories in their self-confirmatory search to create a self-sustaining belief system, an alternate way of perceiving and classifying input and interpreting experience.
Ignorant beliefs and social memes make us confident idiots. We need to understand both our own and the false belief systems of others to avoid miscalibration, misattribution, and misunderstanding of reality. Our own subpersonalities (self-induced trance states), each hold their own conflicting, split-off or compartmentalized dissociative beliefs which support their interests.
Addictions, co-dependence, abuse, crime and more are built, and where they connect, when a cascade of dissociative effects forms a larger cluster of symptoms, and the whole intricate network of connections and disconnections, associations and dissociations becomes self-sustaining.
Reflective beliefs help us self-examine and grow. Counterfactual and false beliefs do not. Wishes (presuppositional beliefs) and beliefs produce actions. False core beliefs drive neurotic systems, a defense strategy where the truth of beliefs is not permitted to matter. An anti-scientific approach defends from burdonsome facts.
Substitute beliefs maintain nonrealizations about past, present and future. Inaccurate beliefs may be protective or pathological. They may include false beliefs and even phobias about healthy change and risk, False beliefs create hyperarousal and internal chaos even while trying to solve it.
We can actively guide ourselves toward more integrative viewpoints overcoming even core substitute beliefs. This requires widening the field of consciousness and raising the contents of consciousness. Relationships in general and intimacy in particular can be improved with such integration of old or outworn scripts, trauma-related beliefs, and reflexive beliefs.
Dissociation of understanding comes from applying others' false beliefs uncritically. There are many false belief paradigms and we have to apply critical thinking and knowledge to not fall into their traps. We need to examine and process them thoroughly before applying them in our own lives.
For example, in cognitive bias, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias: unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude. Conversely, highly skilled individuals tend to underestimate their relative competence, erroneously assuming that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.
Dissociation makes it possible to ignore your headache or the crying child in the backseat as you drive, enabling you to keep driving during a crisis, until safety is reached.
Once the crisis ends, the survival function of Dissociation ceases to serve its’ original purpose. Unprocessed dissociation can later leak bits of the past into the present, causing actions, thoughts, and/or behaviors that can in turn create such nasty interferences and/or trauma that you then need to dissociate the effects of them!
The common denominator at the core of all forms of dissociation is survival level self-protection and self-preservation that always involves 3 crucial core factors: Needs, Communication, and Beliefs.
Beliefs are key – the foundations upon which we build. They tell us how to meet our needs, serve as our baseline for what is or is not acceptable, how to get what we want, how to stay safe. Our beliefs create our habits, patterns, behaviors, and ways of thinking and being. They tell us what to trust, what to fear, what to think, feel, say and do to belong, succeed, be happy, and avoid getting hurt or being “losers.”
Our beliefs also create our affiliations and help us to know who we are, what we like, and who we want to associate with. They are critical to our sense of belonging. They color our relationships, shape our laws, spark wars and divisions. Differing beliefs are often the source of, and justification for, nasty stuff – hurt, anger, denial, force, violence, war, discrimination. Beliefs can make or break a project, a relationship, a business, a system, a person. Like our needs, our beliefs literally control our lives!
So, are your beliefs serving you, helping you meet your needs?
Or SOMEHOW messing up your life?
What are Beliefs – what do they do?
Beliefs are our default heuristics, ways of interpreting the world and our experience -- cognitive bias and assumptions. Beliefs act as filters on communication. Mistaken beliefs are errors due to ignorance - lack of knowledge, trauma, or lack of critical thinking. Discernment in self-reality belief systems is a conceptual art. Beliefs give rise to distorted perceptions of self, world, and others.
Our behavior hinges on our beliefs. Unless we consciously work with our dissociated and unfactual beliefs, especially the dissociated ones, our unconscious beliefs will distort our reality. We follow our beliefs to meet our needs. We naturally and necessarily disconnect and dissociate some of our awareness. Repetitive cycles of dissociative effects create personal and social ills.
We may also dissociate our awareness of destructive or limiting patterns that interfere with or outright control our lives, especially the most challenging, difficult ones – those that are embarrassing, hurtful, fearful, or otherwise overwhelming or unbearably damaging to us or our lives. It isn’t a conscious process, but it means our lives are determined by our beliefs, whether or not we actually chose them for ourselves.
Beliefs are central to both the Dissociative Function and to the ways in which Dissociative Effects take shape in your life. We are usually resistant to changing our core substitute beliefs -- positive and negative. Even spiritual beliefs are linked to both repression, dissociation, and false ego states and magical thinking. They include beliefs about shame and negative self-image.
For example, stereotypical conspiracy theory believers embrace other magical thinking, such as belief in the supernatural, paranormal, or Bible prophecy. They actively seek out like-minded individuals, ideas, and stories in their self-confirmatory search to create a self-sustaining belief system, an alternate way of perceiving and classifying input and interpreting experience.
Ignorant beliefs and social memes make us confident idiots. We need to understand both our own and the false belief systems of others to avoid miscalibration, misattribution, and misunderstanding of reality. Our own subpersonalities (self-induced trance states), each hold their own conflicting, split-off or compartmentalized dissociative beliefs which support their interests.
Addictions, co-dependence, abuse, crime and more are built, and where they connect, when a cascade of dissociative effects forms a larger cluster of symptoms, and the whole intricate network of connections and disconnections, associations and dissociations becomes self-sustaining.
Reflective beliefs help us self-examine and grow. Counterfactual and false beliefs do not. Wishes (presuppositional beliefs) and beliefs produce actions. False core beliefs drive neurotic systems, a defense strategy where the truth of beliefs is not permitted to matter. An anti-scientific approach defends from burdonsome facts.
Substitute beliefs maintain nonrealizations about past, present and future. Inaccurate beliefs may be protective or pathological. They may include false beliefs and even phobias about healthy change and risk, False beliefs create hyperarousal and internal chaos even while trying to solve it.
We can actively guide ourselves toward more integrative viewpoints overcoming even core substitute beliefs. This requires widening the field of consciousness and raising the contents of consciousness. Relationships in general and intimacy in particular can be improved with such integration of old or outworn scripts, trauma-related beliefs, and reflexive beliefs.
Dissociation of understanding comes from applying others' false beliefs uncritically. There are many false belief paradigms and we have to apply critical thinking and knowledge to not fall into their traps. We need to examine and process them thoroughly before applying them in our own lives.
For example, in cognitive bias, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias: unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude. Conversely, highly skilled individuals tend to underestimate their relative competence, erroneously assuming that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.
Dissociation makes it possible to ignore your headache or the crying child in the backseat as you drive, enabling you to keep driving during a crisis, until safety is reached.
Once the crisis ends, the survival function of Dissociation ceases to serve its’ original purpose. Unprocessed dissociation can later leak bits of the past into the present, causing actions, thoughts, and/or behaviors that can in turn create such nasty interferences and/or trauma that you then need to dissociate the effects of them!
The common denominator at the core of all forms of dissociation is survival level self-protection and self-preservation that always involves 3 crucial core factors: Needs, Communication, and Beliefs.
Beliefs are key – the foundations upon which we build. They tell us how to meet our needs, serve as our baseline for what is or is not acceptable, how to get what we want, how to stay safe. Our beliefs create our habits, patterns, behaviors, and ways of thinking and being. They tell us what to trust, what to fear, what to think, feel, say and do to belong, succeed, be happy, and avoid getting hurt or being “losers.”
Our beliefs also create our affiliations and help us to know who we are, what we like, and who we want to associate with. They are critical to our sense of belonging. They color our relationships, shape our laws, spark wars and divisions. Differing beliefs are often the source of, and justification for, nasty stuff – hurt, anger, denial, force, violence, war, discrimination. Beliefs can make or break a project, a relationship, a business, a system, a person. Like our needs, our beliefs literally control our lives!
So, are your beliefs serving you, helping you meet your needs?
Or SOMEHOW messing up your life?
SYMBOLIC & RATIONAL THINKING
Deep springs bubble up from nature, from the psyche, from the lumen naturae.
The artist is the antenna of the race. (Ezra Pound)
Just as you cannot see the atomic world without applying all sorts of means to make it visible, so you cannot enter the unconscious unless there are certain synthesized figures. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 1431-32.
How do we alter consciousness to remove the cultural blinders that prevent dialogue with ancestors, nature, and spirits? Once those blinders are removed, how to we proceed? How do we invite a spirit to present itself? Is this literal or metaphorical or both. Are there rules for encounter and engagement? And where is this apparition? In what reality does it dwell? What are the results of these conversations and how do we develop them further for our own benefit and the benefit of others.
Writing is Therapeutic
So what is it about writing that makes it so great for you?
James W. Pennebaker has been conducting research on writing to heal for years at the University of Texas at Austin. "When people are given the opportunity to write about emotional upheavals, they often experience improved health," Pennebaker writes. "They go to the doctor less. They have changes in immune function."
Why? Pennebaker believes this act of expressive writing allows people to take a step back and evaluate their lives. Instead of obsessing unhealthily over an event, they can focus on moving forward. By doing so, stress levels go down and health correspondingly goes up.
You don't have to be a serious novelist or constantly reflecting on your life's most traumatic moments to get these great benefits. Even blogging or journaling is enough to see results. One study found that blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to the effect from running or listening to music. From long-term health improvements to short-term benefits like sleeping better, it's official: Writers are doing something right.
http://mic.com/articles/98348/science-shows-writers-have-a-serious-advantage-over-the-rest-of-us?utm_source=huffingtonpost.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=pubexchange_facebook
The serious problems in life...are never fully solved. If ever they should appear to be so it is a sure sign that something has been lost. The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in our working at it incessantly. ~Carl Jung, Carl Jung,
The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, Page 394.
Deep springs bubble up from nature, from the psyche, from the lumen naturae.
The artist is the antenna of the race. (Ezra Pound)
Just as you cannot see the atomic world without applying all sorts of means to make it visible, so you cannot enter the unconscious unless there are certain synthesized figures. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 1431-32.
How do we alter consciousness to remove the cultural blinders that prevent dialogue with ancestors, nature, and spirits? Once those blinders are removed, how to we proceed? How do we invite a spirit to present itself? Is this literal or metaphorical or both. Are there rules for encounter and engagement? And where is this apparition? In what reality does it dwell? What are the results of these conversations and how do we develop them further for our own benefit and the benefit of others.
Writing is Therapeutic
So what is it about writing that makes it so great for you?
James W. Pennebaker has been conducting research on writing to heal for years at the University of Texas at Austin. "When people are given the opportunity to write about emotional upheavals, they often experience improved health," Pennebaker writes. "They go to the doctor less. They have changes in immune function."
Why? Pennebaker believes this act of expressive writing allows people to take a step back and evaluate their lives. Instead of obsessing unhealthily over an event, they can focus on moving forward. By doing so, stress levels go down and health correspondingly goes up.
You don't have to be a serious novelist or constantly reflecting on your life's most traumatic moments to get these great benefits. Even blogging or journaling is enough to see results. One study found that blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to the effect from running or listening to music. From long-term health improvements to short-term benefits like sleeping better, it's official: Writers are doing something right.
http://mic.com/articles/98348/science-shows-writers-have-a-serious-advantage-over-the-rest-of-us?utm_source=huffingtonpost.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=pubexchange_facebook
The serious problems in life...are never fully solved. If ever they should appear to be so it is a sure sign that something has been lost. The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in our working at it incessantly. ~Carl Jung, Carl Jung,
The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, Page 394.
Ruland’s Lexicon alchemiae defines meditatio as follows:
“The word meditatio is used when a man has an inner dialogue with someone unseen.
It may be with God, when He is invoked, or with himself, or with his good angel” (fig.137).
The psychologist is familiar with this “inner dialogue”; it is an essential part of the technique for coming to terms with the unconscious.
Ruland’s definition proves beyond all doubt that when the alchemists speak of meditari they do not mean mere cogitation, but explicitly an inner dialogue and hence a living relationship to the answering voice of the “other” in ourselves, i.e., of the unconscious.
The use of the term “meditation” in the Hermetic dictum “And as all things proceed from the One through the meditation of the One” must therefore be understood in this alchemical sense as a creative dialogue, by means of which things pass from an unconscious potential state to a manifest one. -Jung on “Meditation and Imagination.”
We are unable to measure the time in which a psychic process takes place; we can measure the psycho-physical reactions, but psychic things in and for themselves cannot be determined by time. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 40.
The psychic facts have neither length, breadth, nor weight, but are essentially spaceless , and it is exceedingly difficult to determine their duration.
~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 40.
LINKING BACK
CALLING THE ANCIENT ONES
...who are the dead and what does it mean to answer them?
What matters is not what you say, but what they say back.
All we have ever heard lies dormant in our unconscious till something provokes it and it walks out autonomously. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 40.
This process of active imagination is the making conscious of the material which lies on the threshold of consciousness. Consciousness is an effort and you have to sleep in order to recuperate from the task. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Volume II, Page 12.
Writing Our Memories, Riting Our Myth, Righting Our Lives
“The details of a life are themselves to be opened out so we can feel the archetypes playing under them.” —Joseph Campbell
Each of us is an amalgam of: a life lived, a life remembered, and a life storied. In this trinity, memory mingles with myth in a way that the ancient Greeks called mimesis, or “imitation,” which is at the heart of our myth-making impulse, transforming the past into memory. Writing is an intimate and forceful mode of remembering what we have not sufficiently shaped into a coherent form. --Dennis Slattery
“The endless challenges faced daily in this culture could be traced back to a disturbing relationship with ancestors. This in turn, could be a reflection of the rather dysfunctional relationship forced upon people by the circumstances of modernity. How do we repair, heal, and honor the undying tie with our forbears? How can this reflect on our relationship with this world and with each other in family and in community? These are some of the questions. We can engage our ancestors, the good and the bad, the appealing and the less than appealing in an attempt to clear whatever dirty laundry has been the unfinished homework that together we must do. We can learn of their wishes and share ours with them. Together with them we can ritualize our mutual concerns in an initiative that heals our world and theirs.” ~Malidoma Patrice Somé~
We Share the Breath of Our Ancestors
The meaning of events is the way of salvation that you create.
The meaning of events comes from the possibility of life in this world that you create.
It is the mastery of this world and the assertion of your soul in this world.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 239.
The meanings that follow one another do not lie in things, but lie in you, who are subject to many changes, insofar as you take part in life. Things also change, but you do not notice this if you do not change. But if you change, the countenance of the world alters. The manifold sense of things is your manifold sense. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 273.
The unconscious for me is a definite vis-a-vis with which one has to come to terms.
I have written a little book about this.
I have never asserted, nor do I think I know, what the unconscious is in itself.
It is the unconscious region of the psyche. When I speak of psyche I do not pretend to know what it is either, and how far this concept extends.
For this concept is simply beyond all possibility of cognition.
It is a mere convention for giving some kind of name to the unknown which appears to us psychic. This psychic factor, as experience shows, is something very different from our consciousness. C.G. Jung [Letters Volume 1, Pages 195-197]
So we should talk to our animus or anima….So you listen to the inner mentor, you develop the inner ear; or you write automatically, and a word is formed by your hand, or your mouth speaks that which you have not thought. ~Carl Jung, The Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
We can never enter the collective unconscious but we can send the anima or animus to bring us information. By making things with your hands without conscious intent you find a vision of the things of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, The Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
If ever you have the rare opportunity to speak with the devil, then do not forget to confront him in all seriousness. He is your devil after all. The devil as the adversary is your own other standpoint; he tempts you and sets a stone in your path where you least want it. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 261.
I earnestly confronted my devil and behaved with him as with a real person. This I learned in the Mysterium: to take seriously every unknown wanderer who personally inhabits the inner world, since they are real because they are effectual.
But a conscious attitude that renounces its ego-bound intentions—not in imagination only, but in truth—and submits to the supra-personal decrees of fate, can claim to be serving a king. This more exalted attitude raises the status of the anima from that of a temptress to a psychopomp. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 380.
CALLING THE ANCIENT ONES
...who are the dead and what does it mean to answer them?
What matters is not what you say, but what they say back.
All we have ever heard lies dormant in our unconscious till something provokes it and it walks out autonomously. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 40.
This process of active imagination is the making conscious of the material which lies on the threshold of consciousness. Consciousness is an effort and you have to sleep in order to recuperate from the task. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Volume II, Page 12.
Writing Our Memories, Riting Our Myth, Righting Our Lives
“The details of a life are themselves to be opened out so we can feel the archetypes playing under them.” —Joseph Campbell
Each of us is an amalgam of: a life lived, a life remembered, and a life storied. In this trinity, memory mingles with myth in a way that the ancient Greeks called mimesis, or “imitation,” which is at the heart of our myth-making impulse, transforming the past into memory. Writing is an intimate and forceful mode of remembering what we have not sufficiently shaped into a coherent form. --Dennis Slattery
“The endless challenges faced daily in this culture could be traced back to a disturbing relationship with ancestors. This in turn, could be a reflection of the rather dysfunctional relationship forced upon people by the circumstances of modernity. How do we repair, heal, and honor the undying tie with our forbears? How can this reflect on our relationship with this world and with each other in family and in community? These are some of the questions. We can engage our ancestors, the good and the bad, the appealing and the less than appealing in an attempt to clear whatever dirty laundry has been the unfinished homework that together we must do. We can learn of their wishes and share ours with them. Together with them we can ritualize our mutual concerns in an initiative that heals our world and theirs.” ~Malidoma Patrice Somé~
We Share the Breath of Our Ancestors
The meaning of events is the way of salvation that you create.
The meaning of events comes from the possibility of life in this world that you create.
It is the mastery of this world and the assertion of your soul in this world.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 239.
The meanings that follow one another do not lie in things, but lie in you, who are subject to many changes, insofar as you take part in life. Things also change, but you do not notice this if you do not change. But if you change, the countenance of the world alters. The manifold sense of things is your manifold sense. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 273.
The unconscious for me is a definite vis-a-vis with which one has to come to terms.
I have written a little book about this.
I have never asserted, nor do I think I know, what the unconscious is in itself.
It is the unconscious region of the psyche. When I speak of psyche I do not pretend to know what it is either, and how far this concept extends.
For this concept is simply beyond all possibility of cognition.
It is a mere convention for giving some kind of name to the unknown which appears to us psychic. This psychic factor, as experience shows, is something very different from our consciousness. C.G. Jung [Letters Volume 1, Pages 195-197]
So we should talk to our animus or anima….So you listen to the inner mentor, you develop the inner ear; or you write automatically, and a word is formed by your hand, or your mouth speaks that which you have not thought. ~Carl Jung, The Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
We can never enter the collective unconscious but we can send the anima or animus to bring us information. By making things with your hands without conscious intent you find a vision of the things of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, The Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
If ever you have the rare opportunity to speak with the devil, then do not forget to confront him in all seriousness. He is your devil after all. The devil as the adversary is your own other standpoint; he tempts you and sets a stone in your path where you least want it. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 261.
I earnestly confronted my devil and behaved with him as with a real person. This I learned in the Mysterium: to take seriously every unknown wanderer who personally inhabits the inner world, since they are real because they are effectual.
But a conscious attitude that renounces its ego-bound intentions—not in imagination only, but in truth—and submits to the supra-personal decrees of fate, can claim to be serving a king. This more exalted attitude raises the status of the anima from that of a temptress to a psychopomp. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 380.
James Hillman and Jung on Ancestors
Be prepared to accept the view that spirit is not absolute, but something relative that needs completing and perfecting through life. –Carl Jung; "Spirit and Life" CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. Page 645
Journaling & Curating Your Inner Life and Ancestors
Relative Autonomy * Genealogical Memoirs
Metaphors assemble around core ideas.
The meaning of events is the supreme meaning, that is not in events, and not in the soul, but is the God standing between events and the soul, the mediator of life, the way, the bridge and the going across. My soul is my supreme meaning, my image of God, neither God himself nor the supreme meaning. God becomes apparent in the supreme meaning of the human community. ~Carl Jung; Red Book; Liber Primus, iii(v))
I have also realized that one must accept the thoughts that go on within oneself of their own accord as part of one's reality. The categories of true and false are, of course, always present; but because they are not binding they take second place. The presence of thoughts is more important than our subjective judgment of them. But neither must these judgments be suppressed, for they also are existent thoughts which are part of our wholeness. -Jung
In contrast to the meditation found in yoga practice, the psychoanalytic aim is to observe the shadowy presentation — whether in the form of images or of feelings — that are spontaneously evolved in the unconscious psyche and appear without his bidding to the man who looks within.
In this way we find once more things that we have repressed or forgotten. Painful though it may be, this is in itself a gain — for what is inferior or even worthless belongs to me as my Shadow and gives me substance and mass. How can I be substantial if I fail to cast a Shadow?
I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole; and inasmuch as I become conscious of my Shadow I also remember that I am a human being like any other.
~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 35.
The self in its divinity (i.e., the archetype) is unconscious of itself. It can become conscious only within our consciousness. And it can do that only if the ego stands firm.
~Carl Jung; Letters Volume 1; 335-336
Relative Autonomy * Genealogical Memoirs
Metaphors assemble around core ideas.
The meaning of events is the supreme meaning, that is not in events, and not in the soul, but is the God standing between events and the soul, the mediator of life, the way, the bridge and the going across. My soul is my supreme meaning, my image of God, neither God himself nor the supreme meaning. God becomes apparent in the supreme meaning of the human community. ~Carl Jung; Red Book; Liber Primus, iii(v))
I have also realized that one must accept the thoughts that go on within oneself of their own accord as part of one's reality. The categories of true and false are, of course, always present; but because they are not binding they take second place. The presence of thoughts is more important than our subjective judgment of them. But neither must these judgments be suppressed, for they also are existent thoughts which are part of our wholeness. -Jung
In contrast to the meditation found in yoga practice, the psychoanalytic aim is to observe the shadowy presentation — whether in the form of images or of feelings — that are spontaneously evolved in the unconscious psyche and appear without his bidding to the man who looks within.
In this way we find once more things that we have repressed or forgotten. Painful though it may be, this is in itself a gain — for what is inferior or even worthless belongs to me as my Shadow and gives me substance and mass. How can I be substantial if I fail to cast a Shadow?
I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole; and inasmuch as I become conscious of my Shadow I also remember that I am a human being like any other.
~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 35.
The self in its divinity (i.e., the archetype) is unconscious of itself. It can become conscious only within our consciousness. And it can do that only if the ego stands firm.
~Carl Jung; Letters Volume 1; 335-336
'There is a natural magnetism toward unity, the unity between our true nature and our individual consciousness. We feel drawn to it, driven toward it, and also feel it as a mutual attraction. It is not only that we are attracted to truth—the truth is attracted to us. It is not only are we attracted to God, God is attracted to us. We are pulled toward God, as God is pulled toward us. The two are drawn together because they are one at the center. I know that some teachings think of God as totally separate from the human soul, but in true mystical union, all separation evaporates, in one way or another. In the type of unity we are exploring, there is no possibility of such a separation.' - A. H. Almaas, 'The Power of Divine Eros'.
Dialogue with Inner Figures
Persinger's has cited two senses of self in the human brain-- the left side has the language center, and the right side is the silent self. "What I think is happening is that when we're experiencing God, an angel, a non-physical being, a demon... [or] a sensed presence...the you that is on the left side of the brain and the you on the right side of the brain are not in communication the way they normally are...they've fallen out of phase, and the sense of self on the right side of the brain emerges into our awareness as a prevalence outside of ourselves." --Todd Murphy, Sacred Pathways
The God-image thrown up by a spontaneous act of creation is a living figure, a being that exists in its own right and there-fore confronts its ostensible creator autonomously… As proof of this it may be mentioned that the relation between the creator and the created is a dialectical” (CW8, para. 95-96).
“I have often met with the objection that the thoughts which the voice represents are no more than the thoughts of the individual himself. That may be; but I would call a thought my own only when I have thought it, just as I would call money my own only when I have earned or acquired it in a conscious and legitimate manner.
If somebody gives me the money as a present, then I shall certainly not say to my benefactor, “Thank you for my money,” although to a third person I might say afterwards: “This is my own money.”
With the voice I am in a similar situation. The voice gives me certain contents, exactly as if a friend were informing me of his ideas. It would be neither decent nor truthful to suggest that what he says are my own ideas. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Religion; Page 46.
There are incorporeal spirits with which the soul associates. ~Carl Jung; CW 8
Persinger's has cited two senses of self in the human brain-- the left side has the language center, and the right side is the silent self. "What I think is happening is that when we're experiencing God, an angel, a non-physical being, a demon... [or] a sensed presence...the you that is on the left side of the brain and the you on the right side of the brain are not in communication the way they normally are...they've fallen out of phase, and the sense of self on the right side of the brain emerges into our awareness as a prevalence outside of ourselves." --Todd Murphy, Sacred Pathways
The God-image thrown up by a spontaneous act of creation is a living figure, a being that exists in its own right and there-fore confronts its ostensible creator autonomously… As proof of this it may be mentioned that the relation between the creator and the created is a dialectical” (CW8, para. 95-96).
“I have often met with the objection that the thoughts which the voice represents are no more than the thoughts of the individual himself. That may be; but I would call a thought my own only when I have thought it, just as I would call money my own only when I have earned or acquired it in a conscious and legitimate manner.
If somebody gives me the money as a present, then I shall certainly not say to my benefactor, “Thank you for my money,” although to a third person I might say afterwards: “This is my own money.”
With the voice I am in a similar situation. The voice gives me certain contents, exactly as if a friend were informing me of his ideas. It would be neither decent nor truthful to suggest that what he says are my own ideas. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Religion; Page 46.
There are incorporeal spirits with which the soul associates. ~Carl Jung; CW 8
300 Years in Either Direction, by j. karl bogartte
http://intensivejournal.org/index.php
http://www.intensivejournal.org/info/articles.php
http://intensivejournal.org/index.php
http://www.intensivejournal.org/info/articles.php
“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense,
not between right and wrong.” ― C.G. Jung.
Just as conscious contents can vanish into the unconscious, other contents can also arise from it. Besides a majority of mere recollections, really new thoughts and creative ideas can appear which have never been conscious before. They grow up from the dark depths like a lotus. ~"Approaching the Unconscious" In Man and His Symbols; CW 18: Page 37.
Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 183.
The procreative urge– which is how love must be regarded from the natural standpoint– remains the essential attribute of the God (para.87)
Conscience itself [asserts] that it is a voice of God.
~Carl Jung; "Civilization in Transition", 1958.
*******************************
The Imaginal Genealogist
Journaling & Curating Your Inner Life and Ancestors
When I ignore or deny the meaning of the other,
I've really denied only myself.
Metaphor is how we give meaning to the most important and complex aspects of our lives. As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson conclude, in their ear-opening book Metaphors We Live By: "Metaphors are not mere poetical or rhetorical embellishments ... [they] affect the ways in which we perceive, think and act . Reality itself is defined by metaphor."
"Your awareness, bright, empty, and inseparable from the great body of radiance, has no birth nor death, and is the immutable light, Amitabha Buddha."
not between right and wrong.” ― C.G. Jung.
Just as conscious contents can vanish into the unconscious, other contents can also arise from it. Besides a majority of mere recollections, really new thoughts and creative ideas can appear which have never been conscious before. They grow up from the dark depths like a lotus. ~"Approaching the Unconscious" In Man and His Symbols; CW 18: Page 37.
Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 183.
The procreative urge– which is how love must be regarded from the natural standpoint– remains the essential attribute of the God (para.87)
Conscience itself [asserts] that it is a voice of God.
~Carl Jung; "Civilization in Transition", 1958.
*******************************
The Imaginal Genealogist
Journaling & Curating Your Inner Life and Ancestors
When I ignore or deny the meaning of the other,
I've really denied only myself.
Metaphor is how we give meaning to the most important and complex aspects of our lives. As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson conclude, in their ear-opening book Metaphors We Live By: "Metaphors are not mere poetical or rhetorical embellishments ... [they] affect the ways in which we perceive, think and act . Reality itself is defined by metaphor."
"Your awareness, bright, empty, and inseparable from the great body of radiance, has no birth nor death, and is the immutable light, Amitabha Buddha."
To understand metaphysically is impossible; it can only be done psychologically I therefore strip things of their metaphysical wrappings in order to make them objects of psychology.
In this way, I can at least get something comprehensible out of them, and can avail myself of it.
Moreover, I learn psychological conditions and processes which before were veiled in symbols and out of reach of my understanding. In doing this I am also enabled to follow a path similar to the alleged metaphysical one, and can have similar experiences.
Finally, if there should still lurk something metaphysical that cannot be formulated, it would then have the best opportunity of showing itself. --Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower.
In this way, I can at least get something comprehensible out of them, and can avail myself of it.
Moreover, I learn psychological conditions and processes which before were veiled in symbols and out of reach of my understanding. In doing this I am also enabled to follow a path similar to the alleged metaphysical one, and can have similar experiences.
Finally, if there should still lurk something metaphysical that cannot be formulated, it would then have the best opportunity of showing itself. --Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower.
Perseus kills Medusa by looking into the reflection of his shield in order to conquer the monster. We cannot resolve the problem of assimilation of the anima/animus by looking for the solution in the outer world but only through its reflection in our inner reality. Tackling the problem by looking directly at it one is turned to stone; projections petrify and one is unable to move forward. Dialogical reflection moves the process forward.
“Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretence. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.” — Adyashanti
Numinosity is wholly outside conscious volition, for it transports the subject into the state of rapture, which is a state of will-less surrender. --On the Nature of Psyche, Jung
“Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretence. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.” — Adyashanti
Numinosity is wholly outside conscious volition, for it transports the subject into the state of rapture, which is a state of will-less surrender. --On the Nature of Psyche, Jung
Embracing the inwardness of psychology in an absolute manner, its aim is to advance the discipline by subjecting psychology, again and again and at ever new levels, to its constituting recognition that everything that it asserts about the psyche--all of its insights, theoretical statements, knowledge claims, and topic choices--are at the same time expressions of the psyche, a part of its on-going phenomenology.
But the true inner has no outside, nothing surrounding it. It is not the inside of people. Nor is it some sort of positively existing interior world. On the contrary, having been absolved from having to be yoked in a binary relation as the inner of some outer or the interiority of something external, its inwardness can be described as an absolute inwardness which is produced by a methodological stance that approaches each psychic phenomenon, whatever that may be (an affect, dream, idea, cultural artifact, life situation, or technological innovation) in a speculative manner such that the inner dialectical logic as which each matter of interest exists is allowed to think itself out and to become explicit.
It is a matter of succession, on the one hand, and of the keeping up of a soulful tradition, on the other. The depth psychology that began with Freud, Adler, and Jung was itself but a late expression of the history of consciousness, the history of the soul. Passing through many stages and statuses on its way to becoming conscious of itself—stages such as the shamanic/ritualistic, the mythological, the religious, the metaphysical, and so on -- consciousness only “came home to itself” very recently in such simultaneously phenomenal and theoretical expressions as the philosophies of the subject, medial modernity, and contemporary depth psychology. And to this list there may now be added psychology as the discipline of interiority.
But the true inner has no outside, nothing surrounding it. It is not the inside of people. Nor is it some sort of positively existing interior world. On the contrary, having been absolved from having to be yoked in a binary relation as the inner of some outer or the interiority of something external, its inwardness can be described as an absolute inwardness which is produced by a methodological stance that approaches each psychic phenomenon, whatever that may be (an affect, dream, idea, cultural artifact, life situation, or technological innovation) in a speculative manner such that the inner dialectical logic as which each matter of interest exists is allowed to think itself out and to become explicit.
It is a matter of succession, on the one hand, and of the keeping up of a soulful tradition, on the other. The depth psychology that began with Freud, Adler, and Jung was itself but a late expression of the history of consciousness, the history of the soul. Passing through many stages and statuses on its way to becoming conscious of itself—stages such as the shamanic/ritualistic, the mythological, the religious, the metaphysical, and so on -- consciousness only “came home to itself” very recently in such simultaneously phenomenal and theoretical expressions as the philosophies of the subject, medial modernity, and contemporary depth psychology. And to this list there may now be added psychology as the discipline of interiority.
[Carl Jung and "it was necessary for me to instruct the figures of the unconscious,..]
The figures from the unconscious are uninformed too, and need man, or contact with consciousness, in order to attain to knowledge. When I began working with the unconscious, I found myself much involved with the figures of Salome and Elijah. Then they receded, but after about two years they reappeared. To my enormous astonishment, they were completely unchanged; they spoke and acted as if nothing had happened in the meanwhile.
In actuality the most incredible things had taken place in my life. I had, as it were, to begin from the beginning again, to tell them all about what had been going on, and explain things to them. At the time I had been greatly surprised by this situation.
Only later did I understand what had happened: in the interval the two had sunk back into the unconscious and into themselves I might equally well put it, into timelessness. They remained out of contact with the ego and the ego's changing circumstances, and therefore were ignorant of what had happened in the world of consciousness.
Quite early I had learned that it was necessary for me to instruct the figures of the unconscious, or that other group which is often indistinguishable from them, the "spirits of the departed." The first time I experienced this was on a bicycle trip through upper Italy which I took with a friend in 1911.
On the way home we cycled from Pavia to Arona, on the lower part of Lake Maggiore, and spent the night there. We had intended to pedal on along the lake and then through the Tessin as far as Faido, where we were going to take the train to Zurich.
But in Arona I had a dream which upset our plans. In the dream I was in an assemblage of distinguished spirits of earlier centuries; the feeling was similar to the one I had later toward the "illustrious ancestors" in the black rock temple of my 1944 vision.
The conversation was conducted in Latin.
A gentleman with a long, curly wig addressed me and asked a difficult question, the gist of which I could no longer recall after I woke up. I understood him, but did not have a sufficient command of the language to answer him in Latin. I felt so profoundly humiliated by this that the emotion awakened me.
At the very moment of awakening I thought of the book I was then working on, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, and had such intense inferiority feelings about the unanswered question that I immediately took the train home in order to get back to work.
It would have been impossible for me to continue the bicycle trip and lose another three days. I had to work, to find the answer. Not until years later did I understand the dream and my reaction.
The bewigged gentleman was a kind of ancestral spirit, or spirit of the dead, who had addressed questions to me in vain! It was still too soon, I had not yet come so far, but I had an obscure feeling that by working on my book I would be answering the question that had been asked.
It had been asked by, as it were, my spiritual forefathers, in the hope and expectation that they would learn what they had not been able to find out during their time on earth, since the answer had first to be created in the centuries that followed.
If question and answer had already been in existence in eternity, had always been there, no effort on my part would have been necessary, and it could all have been discovered in any other century.
There does seem to be unlimited knowledge present in nature, it is true, but it can be comprehended by consciousness only when the time is ripe for it.
The process, presumably, is like what happens in the individual psyche: a man may go about for many years with an inkling of something, but grasps it clearly only at a particular moment. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections
The figures from the unconscious are uninformed too, and need man, or contact with consciousness, in order to attain to knowledge. When I began working with the unconscious, I found myself much involved with the figures of Salome and Elijah. Then they receded, but after about two years they reappeared. To my enormous astonishment, they were completely unchanged; they spoke and acted as if nothing had happened in the meanwhile.
In actuality the most incredible things had taken place in my life. I had, as it were, to begin from the beginning again, to tell them all about what had been going on, and explain things to them. At the time I had been greatly surprised by this situation.
Only later did I understand what had happened: in the interval the two had sunk back into the unconscious and into themselves I might equally well put it, into timelessness. They remained out of contact with the ego and the ego's changing circumstances, and therefore were ignorant of what had happened in the world of consciousness.
Quite early I had learned that it was necessary for me to instruct the figures of the unconscious, or that other group which is often indistinguishable from them, the "spirits of the departed." The first time I experienced this was on a bicycle trip through upper Italy which I took with a friend in 1911.
On the way home we cycled from Pavia to Arona, on the lower part of Lake Maggiore, and spent the night there. We had intended to pedal on along the lake and then through the Tessin as far as Faido, where we were going to take the train to Zurich.
But in Arona I had a dream which upset our plans. In the dream I was in an assemblage of distinguished spirits of earlier centuries; the feeling was similar to the one I had later toward the "illustrious ancestors" in the black rock temple of my 1944 vision.
The conversation was conducted in Latin.
A gentleman with a long, curly wig addressed me and asked a difficult question, the gist of which I could no longer recall after I woke up. I understood him, but did not have a sufficient command of the language to answer him in Latin. I felt so profoundly humiliated by this that the emotion awakened me.
At the very moment of awakening I thought of the book I was then working on, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, and had such intense inferiority feelings about the unanswered question that I immediately took the train home in order to get back to work.
It would have been impossible for me to continue the bicycle trip and lose another three days. I had to work, to find the answer. Not until years later did I understand the dream and my reaction.
The bewigged gentleman was a kind of ancestral spirit, or spirit of the dead, who had addressed questions to me in vain! It was still too soon, I had not yet come so far, but I had an obscure feeling that by working on my book I would be answering the question that had been asked.
It had been asked by, as it were, my spiritual forefathers, in the hope and expectation that they would learn what they had not been able to find out during their time on earth, since the answer had first to be created in the centuries that followed.
If question and answer had already been in existence in eternity, had always been there, no effort on my part would have been necessary, and it could all have been discovered in any other century.
There does seem to be unlimited knowledge present in nature, it is true, but it can be comprehended by consciousness only when the time is ripe for it.
The process, presumably, is like what happens in the individual psyche: a man may go about for many years with an inkling of something, but grasps it clearly only at a particular moment. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections
Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life.
Philemon represented a force which was not myself. In my fantasies I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought.
For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I.
He said I treated thoughts as if I generated them myself, but in his view thoughts were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air, and added, "If you should see people in a room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them."
It was he who taught me psychic objectivity, the reality of the psyche.
Through him the distinction was clarified between myself and the object of my thought.
He confronted me in an objective manner, and I understood that there is something in me which can say things that I do not know and do not intend, things which may even be directed against me. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams, Reflections; Page 183.
Philemon represented a force which was not myself. In my fantasies I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought.
For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I.
He said I treated thoughts as if I generated them myself, but in his view thoughts were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air, and added, "If you should see people in a room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them."
It was he who taught me psychic objectivity, the reality of the psyche.
Through him the distinction was clarified between myself and the object of my thought.
He confronted me in an objective manner, and I understood that there is something in me which can say things that I do not know and do not intend, things which may even be directed against me. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams, Reflections; Page 183.
Paadoxical Game of Night by J Karl Bogartte
Read some of the artist's equally evocative prose at The Cabinet of The Solar Plexus
Read some of the artist's equally evocative prose at The Cabinet of The Solar Plexus
The post-Jungian depth psychologist James Hillman pioneered a view of the soul as a perspective which sees by means of root cultural metaphors and their images, rather than as a substance or entity. One assumption of this tradition is that the inner image is used (in the manner of a lens) to apprehend the world and its narratives. According to Hillman, the main question is no longer a matter for psychoanalysis (“What does this mean?”) but one of desire and acculturated response (“What does this move in my soul?)”
James Hillman has studied at length the "language of alchemy" and "alchemy of the language", considering it as a real mode of therapy, He says that "it is therapeutic in itself [because] ... requires us to metaphor. In the real act of pronouncing our words we are transported from the language "as if" in the materialization of the psyche and at the same time in psychisizazion of the matter". It breaks substantially our literalism and our one-sidedness ...
James Hillman has studied at length the "language of alchemy" and "alchemy of the language", considering it as a real mode of therapy, He says that "it is therapeutic in itself [because] ... requires us to metaphor. In the real act of pronouncing our words we are transported from the language "as if" in the materialization of the psyche and at the same time in psychisizazion of the matter". It breaks substantially our literalism and our one-sidedness ...
My thoughts are not my self but exactly like the things of the world, alive and dead. Just as I am not damaged through living in a partly chaotic world, so too I am not damaged if I live in my partly chaotic thought world. Thoughts are natural events that you do not possess, and whose meaning you only imperfectly recognize. Thoughts grow in me like a forest, populated by many different animals. But man is domineering in his thinking, and therefore he kills the pleasure of the forest and that of the wild animals. Man is violent in his desire, and he himself becomes a forest and a forest animal. Just as I have freedom in the world, I also have freedom in my thoughts. Freedom is conditional. ~Carl Jung, Red Book.
The best analogue for the Holy Guardian Angel (HGA) of Abramelin is the Holy Spirit (as understood in Gnosticism). Like the Spiritus Sanctus, the HGA is a child of the Christos/Logos and Sophia. It stands outside of any of the established hierarchies of angels (it is not a Kherub, or a Seraph, or a Chashmal, etc, etc). Rather, it is the direct representative of the Christos/Sophia in your life. It is the "Voice of God" (shades of Metatron there) geared specifically toward you, a personal redeemer, filling the same redemptive role as Jesus to mainstream Christianns, but it is also the personal genius, the daemon or creative spirit. It is what supports you when you can no longer support yourself.
Hillman says : "Through the 'wonder' takes the transfiguration of matter. This ' aesthetical ' reaction , which precedes intellectual astonishment [ the childlike wonder of Elemire Zolla ] , inhales the data beyond itself , allowing everything to disclose its particular aspiration within a cosmic order . (...) " to take " [ for ex.response-ability . ] means take it to heart , internalize it, become intimate in the agostinian sense .But it is not just ' my ' confession of my soul , instead is listening the confession of the Anima mundi in speaking of things. (...) " to take " means to return the object into its own interiority in its image , so that it is activated ' its ' imagination ( and not the ours) so as to show his heart and reveal his soul , becoming personified and therefore lovable. (...) When there is no other place to turn , set thy face to the face in front of yourself . Here is the Goddess who gives the world a sense that it is neither myth nor meaning , but the immediate thing that is ' image ' : his smile is a joy, a joy that is "forever". --James Hillman
The best analogue for the Holy Guardian Angel (HGA) of Abramelin is the Holy Spirit (as understood in Gnosticism). Like the Spiritus Sanctus, the HGA is a child of the Christos/Logos and Sophia. It stands outside of any of the established hierarchies of angels (it is not a Kherub, or a Seraph, or a Chashmal, etc, etc). Rather, it is the direct representative of the Christos/Sophia in your life. It is the "Voice of God" (shades of Metatron there) geared specifically toward you, a personal redeemer, filling the same redemptive role as Jesus to mainstream Christianns, but it is also the personal genius, the daemon or creative spirit. It is what supports you when you can no longer support yourself.
Hillman says : "Through the 'wonder' takes the transfiguration of matter. This ' aesthetical ' reaction , which precedes intellectual astonishment [ the childlike wonder of Elemire Zolla ] , inhales the data beyond itself , allowing everything to disclose its particular aspiration within a cosmic order . (...) " to take " [ for ex.response-ability . ] means take it to heart , internalize it, become intimate in the agostinian sense .But it is not just ' my ' confession of my soul , instead is listening the confession of the Anima mundi in speaking of things. (...) " to take " means to return the object into its own interiority in its image , so that it is activated ' its ' imagination ( and not the ours) so as to show his heart and reveal his soul , becoming personified and therefore lovable. (...) When there is no other place to turn , set thy face to the face in front of yourself . Here is the Goddess who gives the world a sense that it is neither myth nor meaning , but the immediate thing that is ' image ' : his smile is a joy, a joy that is "forever". --James Hillman
Indulging The Unavoidable J Karl Bogartte
Communicability
Web of Dialogues
Genuine novelty emerges through dialogical creativity. This creative process is not an instantaneous 'eureka' moment, but a patiently sustained process of responsiveness, addressing the ideas of others, both actual and imaginal. Taken metaphorically, not literally, such internal dialogue can be psychologically fruitful.
How do we know about knowing; and how do we get to know? And when you know, how do you know, and what's it like? That is the epistemological metaphor. How you get to know is a mystery. Uncertainty and doubt build into theorizing, an articulation of conceptual and emotional turmoil created by interpretive attempts.
The dialectical relationship is between conscious and unconscious mind. The dialogical self is a psychological concept which describes the mind's ability to imagine the different positions of participants in an internal dialogue. Internal dialogue powerfully programs and shapes your self-concept.
The dialogical tendency of the psyche has been noticed and utilized by both mystics and psychologists. Examples include meditative encounters with wise figures, such as Christ, the Beloved, an Inner Healer, guide or shaman figure. The dialogue might even take place with an animal or object. Other pluralistic spiritual constructs include the chakra system and the multiple states of consciousness circuit of the Tree of Life in Qabala.
A multidirectional process takes place in a communicative network with many interlocotures and leads to discovery. Fragments of insight gradually emerge. Ideas clash, change, disappear or survive, forming a preference, choosing an interpretation for the coalescence of insights.
http://asklepia.tripod.com/Chaosophy/chaosophy7.html
Narration is a root metaphor. These stories help order world and self. We can investigate this dialogical realm which is familiar from mysticism. It creates a mind-space with multiple positions possible for multiple selves. The result is a multiplicity of dialogically interacting selves, in a variety of "as if" (virtual) realities. The free flow of fantasy as internal dialogues with various aspects of the self allows for creative development of higher thought.
Uncertainty is a complex process of disagreements, qualifications, elaborations, supplementations, borrowings, and confabulation. We can be immersed in interpretive efforts without any foundational commitments. Constructs form from many contradictory arguments, ad hoc strategies, and powerful forms of persuasion with archetypal roots.
Many-voiced multidirectional theorizing, thought has a complex dialogical nature. It ranges from paradigmatic to idiosyncratic. Multidirectional dialogical flux (matrix) flattens into a personally meaningful monological narrative. Philosophy can inspire intuition along some path in the dialogical web of creativity. We can imagine a clearly delineated conceptual framework without 'beliefs' or 'commitments'. You have to leave the door to the unknown ajar. It's a stream of meaning flowing from, through, and among us.
http://holographicarchetypes.weebly.com/multimind.html
"...Any metaphysics, any reflection of the individual on the world, implies a theory of perception, and any consideration of the latter will react on the former, whether or not one accepts the esse est percipi of Berkeley. Thus, a closed circuit of knowing exists; our concept of the universe depends on the knowledge that we have of the process of perceiving it." --Abraham Moles, INFORMATION THEORY AND ESTHETIC PERCEPTION
Web of Dialogues
Genuine novelty emerges through dialogical creativity. This creative process is not an instantaneous 'eureka' moment, but a patiently sustained process of responsiveness, addressing the ideas of others, both actual and imaginal. Taken metaphorically, not literally, such internal dialogue can be psychologically fruitful.
How do we know about knowing; and how do we get to know? And when you know, how do you know, and what's it like? That is the epistemological metaphor. How you get to know is a mystery. Uncertainty and doubt build into theorizing, an articulation of conceptual and emotional turmoil created by interpretive attempts.
The dialectical relationship is between conscious and unconscious mind. The dialogical self is a psychological concept which describes the mind's ability to imagine the different positions of participants in an internal dialogue. Internal dialogue powerfully programs and shapes your self-concept.
The dialogical tendency of the psyche has been noticed and utilized by both mystics and psychologists. Examples include meditative encounters with wise figures, such as Christ, the Beloved, an Inner Healer, guide or shaman figure. The dialogue might even take place with an animal or object. Other pluralistic spiritual constructs include the chakra system and the multiple states of consciousness circuit of the Tree of Life in Qabala.
A multidirectional process takes place in a communicative network with many interlocotures and leads to discovery. Fragments of insight gradually emerge. Ideas clash, change, disappear or survive, forming a preference, choosing an interpretation for the coalescence of insights.
http://asklepia.tripod.com/Chaosophy/chaosophy7.html
Narration is a root metaphor. These stories help order world and self. We can investigate this dialogical realm which is familiar from mysticism. It creates a mind-space with multiple positions possible for multiple selves. The result is a multiplicity of dialogically interacting selves, in a variety of "as if" (virtual) realities. The free flow of fantasy as internal dialogues with various aspects of the self allows for creative development of higher thought.
Uncertainty is a complex process of disagreements, qualifications, elaborations, supplementations, borrowings, and confabulation. We can be immersed in interpretive efforts without any foundational commitments. Constructs form from many contradictory arguments, ad hoc strategies, and powerful forms of persuasion with archetypal roots.
Many-voiced multidirectional theorizing, thought has a complex dialogical nature. It ranges from paradigmatic to idiosyncratic. Multidirectional dialogical flux (matrix) flattens into a personally meaningful monological narrative. Philosophy can inspire intuition along some path in the dialogical web of creativity. We can imagine a clearly delineated conceptual framework without 'beliefs' or 'commitments'. You have to leave the door to the unknown ajar. It's a stream of meaning flowing from, through, and among us.
http://holographicarchetypes.weebly.com/multimind.html
"...Any metaphysics, any reflection of the individual on the world, implies a theory of perception, and any consideration of the latter will react on the former, whether or not one accepts the esse est percipi of Berkeley. Thus, a closed circuit of knowing exists; our concept of the universe depends on the knowledge that we have of the process of perceiving it." --Abraham Moles, INFORMATION THEORY AND ESTHETIC PERCEPTION
"Primordial wisdom" is "unborn, unceasing, unlimited, undying," and that is always our fundamental nature. And, yes, it says with great authority that "mind creates matter".
Never say that it is a pleasure to live oneself. It will be no joy but a long suffering, since you must become your own creator. If you want to create yourself then you do not begin with the best and the highest, but with the worst and the deepest. Therefore say that you are reluctant to live yourself .The flowing together of the stream of life is not joy but pain, since it is power against power, guilt, and shatters the sanctified.
The image of the mother of God with the child that I foresee, indicates to me the mystery of the transformation. If forethinking and pleasure unite in me, a third arises from them, the divine son, who is the supreme meaning, the symbol, the passing over into a new creation. I do not myself become the supreme meaning or the symbol, but the symbol becomes in me such that it has its substance, and I mine. Thus I stand like Peter in worship before the miracle of the transformation and the becoming real of the God in me ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
As a doctor it is my task to help the patient to cope with life.
I cannot presume to pass judgment on his final decisions, because I know from experience that all coercion-be it suggestion, insinuation, or any other method of persuasion-ultimately proves to be nothing but an obstacle to the highest and most decisive experience of all, which is to be alone with his own self, or whatever else one chooses to call the objectivity of the psyche.
The patient must be alone if he is to find out what it is that supports him when he can no longer support himself. Only this experience can give him an indestructible foundation. ~Psychology and Alchemy (1944) CW 12: P.32
[The future should be left to those of the future. ~Carl Jung]
The future should be left to those of the future. I return to the small and the real, for this is the great way, the way of what is to come. I return to my simple reality, to my undeniable and most minuscule being. And I take a knife and hold court over
everything that has grown without measure and goal. Forests have grown around me, winding plants have climbed up me, and I am completely covered by endless proliferation.
The depths are inexhaustible, they give everything. Everything is as good as nothing. Keep a little and you have something. To recognize and lmow your
ambition and your greed, to gather your craving, to cultivate it, grasp it, make it serviceable, influence it, master it, order it, to give it interpretations and meanings, is extravagant. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
The scene in the landscape resembles one of Jung's waking fantasies during his childhood in which Alsace is submerged by water, Basle is turned into a port, there is a ship with sails and a steamer, a medieval town, a castle with cannons and soldiers and inhabitants of the town, and a canal (Memories, p. 100). ~Carl Jung; Red Book; Footnote 237.
Never say that it is a pleasure to live oneself. It will be no joy but a long suffering, since you must become your own creator. If you want to create yourself then you do not begin with the best and the highest, but with the worst and the deepest. Therefore say that you are reluctant to live yourself .The flowing together of the stream of life is not joy but pain, since it is power against power, guilt, and shatters the sanctified.
The image of the mother of God with the child that I foresee, indicates to me the mystery of the transformation. If forethinking and pleasure unite in me, a third arises from them, the divine son, who is the supreme meaning, the symbol, the passing over into a new creation. I do not myself become the supreme meaning or the symbol, but the symbol becomes in me such that it has its substance, and I mine. Thus I stand like Peter in worship before the miracle of the transformation and the becoming real of the God in me ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
As a doctor it is my task to help the patient to cope with life.
I cannot presume to pass judgment on his final decisions, because I know from experience that all coercion-be it suggestion, insinuation, or any other method of persuasion-ultimately proves to be nothing but an obstacle to the highest and most decisive experience of all, which is to be alone with his own self, or whatever else one chooses to call the objectivity of the psyche.
The patient must be alone if he is to find out what it is that supports him when he can no longer support himself. Only this experience can give him an indestructible foundation. ~Psychology and Alchemy (1944) CW 12: P.32
[The future should be left to those of the future. ~Carl Jung]
The future should be left to those of the future. I return to the small and the real, for this is the great way, the way of what is to come. I return to my simple reality, to my undeniable and most minuscule being. And I take a knife and hold court over
everything that has grown without measure and goal. Forests have grown around me, winding plants have climbed up me, and I am completely covered by endless proliferation.
The depths are inexhaustible, they give everything. Everything is as good as nothing. Keep a little and you have something. To recognize and lmow your
ambition and your greed, to gather your craving, to cultivate it, grasp it, make it serviceable, influence it, master it, order it, to give it interpretations and meanings, is extravagant. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
The scene in the landscape resembles one of Jung's waking fantasies during his childhood in which Alsace is submerged by water, Basle is turned into a port, there is a ship with sails and a steamer, a medieval town, a castle with cannons and soldiers and inhabitants of the town, and a canal (Memories, p. 100). ~Carl Jung; Red Book; Footnote 237.
Existence, Android Jones
Gnosis is about what we are and where we come from; transcendent perception of space and time. And that is the truth of it. Logic cannot get at Gnosis - only consciousness can; and all things return to from whence they came; and only that which comes from there can return there. Everyone has this gnosis (eternal base wisdom) within them; but some come to experience it here and now, and some do not. Nonetheless it is applicable to every living entity anywhere in existence; for it is the foundation of BEING. But there is more too it all than simply BEING, there is also BECOMING, becoming more that we are.
The Winged Personification of Fortune on a Wheel. circa. 1550. The Florentine School. oil on panel.
“To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how profoundly difficult the discovery of individuality in fact is.”
~Carl Jung.
~Carl Jung.
“It is only through mystery and madness that the soul is revealed.” ―Thomas Moore
”More especially the threat to one’s inmost self from dragons and serpents points to the danger of the newly acquired consciousness being swallowed up again by the instinctive psyche, the unconscious.” ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, paragraph 282.
“The symbols of the self arise in the depths of the body and they express its materiality every bit as much as the structure of the perceiving consciousness. The symbol is thus a living body, corpus et anima.” -Carl Jung, CW 9i, paragraph 291.
”More especially the threat to one’s inmost self from dragons and serpents points to the danger of the newly acquired consciousness being swallowed up again by the instinctive psyche, the unconscious.” ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, paragraph 282.
“The symbols of the self arise in the depths of the body and they express its materiality every bit as much as the structure of the perceiving consciousness. The symbol is thus a living body, corpus et anima.” -Carl Jung, CW 9i, paragraph 291.
Lilith
(The) theoria and the Arcanum in matter are both called veritas. This truth “shines” in us, but it is not of us: it “is to be sought not in us, but in the image of God which is in us.” Dorn thus equates the transcendent center in man with the God-image. This identification makes it clear why the alchemical symbols for wholeness apply as much to the Arcanum in man as to the Deity. Aion 171
The God-image is not something invented; it is an experience that comes upon man spontaneously – as anyone can see for himself unless he is blinded to the truth by theories and prejudices. The unconscious God-image can therefore alter the state of consciousness, just as the later modify the God-image once it has become conscious. Aion 194
The God-image is not something invented; it is an experience that comes upon man spontaneously – as anyone can see for himself unless he is blinded to the truth by theories and prejudices. The unconscious God-image can therefore alter the state of consciousness, just as the later modify the God-image once it has become conscious. Aion 194
The dialectical relationship is between conscious and unconscious mind. One of the root ideas of Carl Jung is the transcendent function. The transcendent function is a psychic process that occurs through the dialectical tension between the conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind. The transcendent function occurs when the conscious mind (or ego) begins to become aware of some aspect of the unconscious mind.
Jung says that “once the unconscious content has been given form, and the meaning of the formulation is understood, the question arises as to how the ego will relate to this position, and how the ego and the unconscious are to come to terms”.
The conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind work together to conceptualize life experience. The conscious mind holds the capacity for language and reason, while the unconscious is the realm of archetypes, imagination and dreams– giving rise to deep, ineffable truths. By opening to the unconscious, the conscious mind can begin to give form and meaning to these deep ineffable truths. The ineffable truths are archetypal in nature. They are known, but unknown: intuited, but unspoken. They take disguise in art and projective relations equally. But their true home is in the realms of the imaginal.
It is only within this process of dialectical synthesis that we can realize immanence as the divine play of life, as creation and pro-creation through opposition and integration. It is lila– the dance of sacred lovers. It is the dance of the divine mother and father forever playing out their games of love and strife. And it is the dance of consciousness which is capable of awareness of this wondrous game of love… which we call life.
One of the primary forms of psychic development is the ability to hold a dialectical tension without collapsing to one side or the other. The height of psychological development is represented by the coincidentia oppositorum, or coincidence of opposites. This is not a collapsed unity, but a dynamic co-incidence created through dialectical tension. This tension is no less true for the opposition between spirit and matter.
“To put it in modern language, spirit is the dynamic principle, forming for that very reason the classical antithesis of matter-the antithesis, that is, of its stasis and inertia. Basically it is the contrast between life and death. The subsequent differentiation of this contrast leads to the actually very remarkable opposition of spirit and nature.” (Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 390)
“The psyche is far from being a homogeneous unit- on the contrary, it is a boiling cauldron of contradictory impulses, inhibitions, and affects, and for many people the conflict between them is so insupportable that they even wish for the deliverance preached by theologians. Deliverance from what? Obviously, from a highly questionable psychic state. The unity of consciousness or of the so-called personality is not a reality at all but a desideratum.” (Carl Jung, CW 9i, para 191)
Carl Jung says, “the unity of consciousness or of the so-called personality is not a reality.” In other words, we are split within. At the most basic level this is a split between the conscious and the unconscious dimensions of the psyche. This basic split is the “fallen state,” creating all sorts of “impulses, inhibitions, and affects.”
Jung says that “once the unconscious content has been given form, and the meaning of the formulation is understood, the question arises as to how the ego will relate to this position, and how the ego and the unconscious are to come to terms”.
The conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind work together to conceptualize life experience. The conscious mind holds the capacity for language and reason, while the unconscious is the realm of archetypes, imagination and dreams– giving rise to deep, ineffable truths. By opening to the unconscious, the conscious mind can begin to give form and meaning to these deep ineffable truths. The ineffable truths are archetypal in nature. They are known, but unknown: intuited, but unspoken. They take disguise in art and projective relations equally. But their true home is in the realms of the imaginal.
It is only within this process of dialectical synthesis that we can realize immanence as the divine play of life, as creation and pro-creation through opposition and integration. It is lila– the dance of sacred lovers. It is the dance of the divine mother and father forever playing out their games of love and strife. And it is the dance of consciousness which is capable of awareness of this wondrous game of love… which we call life.
One of the primary forms of psychic development is the ability to hold a dialectical tension without collapsing to one side or the other. The height of psychological development is represented by the coincidentia oppositorum, or coincidence of opposites. This is not a collapsed unity, but a dynamic co-incidence created through dialectical tension. This tension is no less true for the opposition between spirit and matter.
“To put it in modern language, spirit is the dynamic principle, forming for that very reason the classical antithesis of matter-the antithesis, that is, of its stasis and inertia. Basically it is the contrast between life and death. The subsequent differentiation of this contrast leads to the actually very remarkable opposition of spirit and nature.” (Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 390)
“The psyche is far from being a homogeneous unit- on the contrary, it is a boiling cauldron of contradictory impulses, inhibitions, and affects, and for many people the conflict between them is so insupportable that they even wish for the deliverance preached by theologians. Deliverance from what? Obviously, from a highly questionable psychic state. The unity of consciousness or of the so-called personality is not a reality at all but a desideratum.” (Carl Jung, CW 9i, para 191)
Carl Jung says, “the unity of consciousness or of the so-called personality is not a reality.” In other words, we are split within. At the most basic level this is a split between the conscious and the unconscious dimensions of the psyche. This basic split is the “fallen state,” creating all sorts of “impulses, inhibitions, and affects.”
The Night Escorted by the Geniuses of Love and Study (1886) - Pedro Américo
"We have not understood yet that the discovery of the unconscious means
an enormous spiritual task, which must be accomplished if
we wish to preserve our civilization." --C.G. Jung
Our instincts, emotions, and habits manifest as images to which we collectively attribute power and meaning; our ancestors called them gods.
Immanence and Transcendence
Immanence can only be discovered in a dialectical relationship to transcendence, which means “to surmount, to go beyond or to climb above”. And the concept of transcendence expresses an impulse to surmount the flow of intensities, to move beyond multiplicity, to climb out of the womb of nature. Like an acorn sprouting to become a tree, transcendence is the instinctual impulse of humans to grow and individuate. This impulse towards growth takes the spirit up to lofty heights, but it is only the initial movement of the spirit.
Immanence is the counter movement of the spirit. Experienced as a shift in consciousness: an immanent turn occurs as we shift our gaze from the transcendent horizon of our individuality to the truth of our relationality. In this shift, immanence is discovered in tandem with the realization of the depths of subjectivity; a subjectivity that is both personal and interpersonal, and yet extends beyond subject-object duality. While transcendence is the movement that individuates us from the larger body of life, immanence is realization of our unity and interdependence within the web of life.
Immanence is union, but never a fixated union. Imagine divine lovers in play: simultaneously one couple, but two beings, who through their love and opposition recognize the divine nature of each other. In a similar way we are simultaneously particular individuals and we are in relation to, and part of, a larger body: call it the Body of God or Body of Life. It is the process of working with this paradox that brings the soul into full realization. For the soul is the union of the finite & infinite, temporal & eternal, body & soul. And our immanence is the full realization of this paradox.
Immanence is a concept that can only be understood in dialectical tension with transcendence. Immanence is “the state of being within.” The word is derived from the Latin root en maneo (the present infinitive is manēre) which means “to stay, wait, or remain within” or “I remain within.” The word transcendence is derived from the Latin roots trans- “from or beyond”, and scandere “to climb.” These two concepts form a dialectical unity, expressing shifting perspectives on our relationship with the divine.
Immanence and transcendence are a pair; they are dialectical signifier to each other. Like black and white, or figure and ground, these concepts can only be fully realized in relationship to each other. Sometimes one aspect is in focus, and at other times the other. But just as it takes a mother and a father to produce a child, so too it takes transcendence and immanence to realize the true nature of being. Western culture has focused on the idea of transcendence, but immanence has been there all along, awaiting our realization.
In Western philosophy, immanence may have found its first full exposition in a co-relationship with heretical religious explorations of the Body of God. Baruch Spinoza conceived of an immanent philosophy, writing that “all things are in God and so depend on him that without him they can neither be nor be conceived.” (1677) The concept that all things are in God is a radical one, declaring that life itself is divine and holy.
In the image above Robert Fludd, express these sentiments. In Fludd’s painting the energy from the godhead, in the form of a dove, circles into life and then back to God. This represents the completion of God through the Holy Spirit. This movement of the Holy Spirit can been seen as representing the history of consciousness, through the movements of transcendence and immanence.
There is a paradox to immanence: from one perceptive immanence is the holy spirit immanent to nature (as in Fludd’s paining); from the other perspective nature is within the field of immanence.The modern philosophy of Gilles Deleuze explores the second perspective. In his book titled Pure Immanence, Deleuze describes immanence as a life, he says:
“We will say of pure immanence that it is A LIFE and noting else. [later he adds] A life is everywhere, in all moments that a given living subject goes through and that are measured by giving lived objects: an immanent life carrying with it the events or singularities that are actualized in subjects and objects. This indefinite life does not itself have moments, close as they may be to one another, but only between-times”(2001)
We find immanence in the heart of human existence, and yet always “beneath the transcendence of effort.” Deleuze describes immanence in terms such as “becoming” and “possibility” or as a “pure stream of subjective consciousness.” Deleuze tells us, “immanence has two facets as Thought and as Nature, as Nous and as Physis.” He adds, “the plane of immanence is ceaselessly being woven.”(ibid.) This weaving of Nous and as Physis, thought and nature, can be thought of as the rhizomal root of life, ceaseless birthing existence, and yet it is the also the totality of existence itself. Deleuze says, “immanence is not immanent to substance; rather, substance and modes are in immanence.”(ibid) Thus all things are contained within immanence. All things both arise from immanence and exist within immanence.
The base of life is immanence: that which ‘remains within’. The path is transcendence: that which ‘goes beyond’ (the development of consciousness). The fruit is the realization of the divine which is both within us and all around us.
As we explore the psychology of Carl Jung (on this blog) we will see that the soul (anima) is immanent and “remains within”. The ego (persona) is transcendent and “goes beyond”. The Self is the fruit: as coincidentia oppositorum, the unity of opposites. We will also see that this is in relationship to God, as ‘the divine spirit of life in all things’, which is the enlivening and animating force of materiality, simultaneously within and beyond.
References:
an enormous spiritual task, which must be accomplished if
we wish to preserve our civilization." --C.G. Jung
Our instincts, emotions, and habits manifest as images to which we collectively attribute power and meaning; our ancestors called them gods.
Immanence and Transcendence
Immanence can only be discovered in a dialectical relationship to transcendence, which means “to surmount, to go beyond or to climb above”. And the concept of transcendence expresses an impulse to surmount the flow of intensities, to move beyond multiplicity, to climb out of the womb of nature. Like an acorn sprouting to become a tree, transcendence is the instinctual impulse of humans to grow and individuate. This impulse towards growth takes the spirit up to lofty heights, but it is only the initial movement of the spirit.
Immanence is the counter movement of the spirit. Experienced as a shift in consciousness: an immanent turn occurs as we shift our gaze from the transcendent horizon of our individuality to the truth of our relationality. In this shift, immanence is discovered in tandem with the realization of the depths of subjectivity; a subjectivity that is both personal and interpersonal, and yet extends beyond subject-object duality. While transcendence is the movement that individuates us from the larger body of life, immanence is realization of our unity and interdependence within the web of life.
Immanence is union, but never a fixated union. Imagine divine lovers in play: simultaneously one couple, but two beings, who through their love and opposition recognize the divine nature of each other. In a similar way we are simultaneously particular individuals and we are in relation to, and part of, a larger body: call it the Body of God or Body of Life. It is the process of working with this paradox that brings the soul into full realization. For the soul is the union of the finite & infinite, temporal & eternal, body & soul. And our immanence is the full realization of this paradox.
Immanence is a concept that can only be understood in dialectical tension with transcendence. Immanence is “the state of being within.” The word is derived from the Latin root en maneo (the present infinitive is manēre) which means “to stay, wait, or remain within” or “I remain within.” The word transcendence is derived from the Latin roots trans- “from or beyond”, and scandere “to climb.” These two concepts form a dialectical unity, expressing shifting perspectives on our relationship with the divine.
Immanence and transcendence are a pair; they are dialectical signifier to each other. Like black and white, or figure and ground, these concepts can only be fully realized in relationship to each other. Sometimes one aspect is in focus, and at other times the other. But just as it takes a mother and a father to produce a child, so too it takes transcendence and immanence to realize the true nature of being. Western culture has focused on the idea of transcendence, but immanence has been there all along, awaiting our realization.
In Western philosophy, immanence may have found its first full exposition in a co-relationship with heretical religious explorations of the Body of God. Baruch Spinoza conceived of an immanent philosophy, writing that “all things are in God and so depend on him that without him they can neither be nor be conceived.” (1677) The concept that all things are in God is a radical one, declaring that life itself is divine and holy.
In the image above Robert Fludd, express these sentiments. In Fludd’s painting the energy from the godhead, in the form of a dove, circles into life and then back to God. This represents the completion of God through the Holy Spirit. This movement of the Holy Spirit can been seen as representing the history of consciousness, through the movements of transcendence and immanence.
There is a paradox to immanence: from one perceptive immanence is the holy spirit immanent to nature (as in Fludd’s paining); from the other perspective nature is within the field of immanence.The modern philosophy of Gilles Deleuze explores the second perspective. In his book titled Pure Immanence, Deleuze describes immanence as a life, he says:
“We will say of pure immanence that it is A LIFE and noting else. [later he adds] A life is everywhere, in all moments that a given living subject goes through and that are measured by giving lived objects: an immanent life carrying with it the events or singularities that are actualized in subjects and objects. This indefinite life does not itself have moments, close as they may be to one another, but only between-times”(2001)
We find immanence in the heart of human existence, and yet always “beneath the transcendence of effort.” Deleuze describes immanence in terms such as “becoming” and “possibility” or as a “pure stream of subjective consciousness.” Deleuze tells us, “immanence has two facets as Thought and as Nature, as Nous and as Physis.” He adds, “the plane of immanence is ceaselessly being woven.”(ibid.) This weaving of Nous and as Physis, thought and nature, can be thought of as the rhizomal root of life, ceaseless birthing existence, and yet it is the also the totality of existence itself. Deleuze says, “immanence is not immanent to substance; rather, substance and modes are in immanence.”(ibid) Thus all things are contained within immanence. All things both arise from immanence and exist within immanence.
The base of life is immanence: that which ‘remains within’. The path is transcendence: that which ‘goes beyond’ (the development of consciousness). The fruit is the realization of the divine which is both within us and all around us.
As we explore the psychology of Carl Jung (on this blog) we will see that the soul (anima) is immanent and “remains within”. The ego (persona) is transcendent and “goes beyond”. The Self is the fruit: as coincidentia oppositorum, the unity of opposites. We will also see that this is in relationship to God, as ‘the divine spirit of life in all things’, which is the enlivening and animating force of materiality, simultaneously within and beyond.
References:
- Benedict De Spinoza, 1677, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (The Ethics)
- In The Vertigo of Immanence, Miguel De Beistegui says, “Given the relatively recent nature of Deleuzian scholarship, we still lack a unified understanding of the significance (and signification) of that thought… Judging by the ever-increasing number of publications devoted to it, this is a thought that is in the process of being canonized.”
- Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life. Deleuze, 2001 Gilles. p. 28-29
- Ibid, p. 38
Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors. The "newness" in the individual psyche is an endlessly varied recombination of age-old components. Body and soul therefore have an intensely historical character and find no proper place in what is new, in things that have just come into being.
That is to say, our ancestral components are only partly at home in such things. We are very far from having finished completely with the Middle Ages, classical antiquity, and primitivity, as our modern psyches pretend. Nevertheless, we have plunged down a cataract of progress which sweeps us on into the future with ever wilder violence the farther it takes us from our roots.
But it is precisely the loss of connection with the past, our up-rootedness, which has given rise to the "discontents" of civilization and to such a flurry and haste that we live more in the future and its chimerical promises of a golden age than in the present, with which our whole evolutionary background has not yet caught up.
We rush impetuously into novelty, driven by a mounting sense of insufficiency, dissatisfaction, and restlessness. We no longer live on what we have, but on promises, no longer in the light of the present day, but in the darkness of the future, which, we expect, will at last bring the proper sunrise.
We refuse to recognize that everything better is purchased at the price of something worse; that, for example, the hope of greater freedom is canceled out by increased enslavement to the state, not to speak of the terrible perils to which the most brilliant discoveries of science expose us.
The less we understand of what our fathers and forefathers sought, the less we understand ourselves, and thus we help with all our might to rob the individual of his roots and his guiding instincts, so that he becomes a particle in the mass, ruled only by what Nietzsche called the spirit of gravity. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections.
That is to say, our ancestral components are only partly at home in such things. We are very far from having finished completely with the Middle Ages, classical antiquity, and primitivity, as our modern psyches pretend. Nevertheless, we have plunged down a cataract of progress which sweeps us on into the future with ever wilder violence the farther it takes us from our roots.
But it is precisely the loss of connection with the past, our up-rootedness, which has given rise to the "discontents" of civilization and to such a flurry and haste that we live more in the future and its chimerical promises of a golden age than in the present, with which our whole evolutionary background has not yet caught up.
We rush impetuously into novelty, driven by a mounting sense of insufficiency, dissatisfaction, and restlessness. We no longer live on what we have, but on promises, no longer in the light of the present day, but in the darkness of the future, which, we expect, will at last bring the proper sunrise.
We refuse to recognize that everything better is purchased at the price of something worse; that, for example, the hope of greater freedom is canceled out by increased enslavement to the state, not to speak of the terrible perils to which the most brilliant discoveries of science expose us.
The less we understand of what our fathers and forefathers sought, the less we understand ourselves, and thus we help with all our might to rob the individual of his roots and his guiding instincts, so that he becomes a particle in the mass, ruled only by what Nietzsche called the spirit of gravity. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections.
Creating a Living Relationship with Your Ancestors
by Iona Miller, (c)2012
‘The Work’, to Jung, involved firstly accessing archetypal forces resident in the collective unconscious such that they entered into a meaningful discourse with consciousness. Active imagination is one of the techniques Jung developed to encourage this consciousness/unconsciousness exchange of energies. Symbols communicate archetypal patterns and conflicts originating in the personal or collective unconscious to consciousness.
Our quest for psychological integrations is a pilgrimage of archetypal encounters. The anima and animus, the process of individuation, the mythopoetic archetypes of the collective unconscious--all spring to life in the fiery imagery of the vision quest. In our visioning we link earth and sky, body and spirit, the infernal and sublime.
by Iona Miller, (c)2012
‘The Work’, to Jung, involved firstly accessing archetypal forces resident in the collective unconscious such that they entered into a meaningful discourse with consciousness. Active imagination is one of the techniques Jung developed to encourage this consciousness/unconsciousness exchange of energies. Symbols communicate archetypal patterns and conflicts originating in the personal or collective unconscious to consciousness.
Our quest for psychological integrations is a pilgrimage of archetypal encounters. The anima and animus, the process of individuation, the mythopoetic archetypes of the collective unconscious--all spring to life in the fiery imagery of the vision quest. In our visioning we link earth and sky, body and spirit, the infernal and sublime.
We can gain access to the deeper psyche, soul, or imagination through both the rational and experiential methods. These are self-analysis and active imagination. Active imagination includes consciousness journeys deep into the psyche, identification, and internal dialogues with personified archetypes. It is the dialogical method. This is a way of building experiential relationships with archetypal forces--harmonizing with them, honoring them. These are "as if" real relationships, not taken literally.
These internal dialogues can be useful, revealing the autonomous dynamics and agendas at work in our lives. They reveal things to us we know, but don't know we know. We can use many methods for this communication, such as journal work, hypnosis, or ritual. These are moments where we create and enter sacred space. These relationships reveal the meaningfulness behind the many complications in our modern lives. The more we approach our individual wholeness, through expanding our awareness and experiences, the more we are likely to encounter these divine principles from the realm of imagination.
This journey toward wholeness is easier to integrate into daily life with a psychological framework for containing and accommodating a wide range of images, emotions, moral views, styles of thought, beliefs, and even dress. When we know the characteristics of the various archetypes, we find them relected back to our consciousness from the environment.
We can learn to view their effects on our lives directly and gain in personal, social, and spiritual freedom. If we fail to become consciously aware of their effects, their spontaneous activation may produce devastating effects on the personality. They can create internal divisions in the psyche which may lead to the disintegration of personality. This can result in disease, self-destructive behavior, or even culminate in death.
These internal dialogues can be useful, revealing the autonomous dynamics and agendas at work in our lives. They reveal things to us we know, but don't know we know. We can use many methods for this communication, such as journal work, hypnosis, or ritual. These are moments where we create and enter sacred space. These relationships reveal the meaningfulness behind the many complications in our modern lives. The more we approach our individual wholeness, through expanding our awareness and experiences, the more we are likely to encounter these divine principles from the realm of imagination.
This journey toward wholeness is easier to integrate into daily life with a psychological framework for containing and accommodating a wide range of images, emotions, moral views, styles of thought, beliefs, and even dress. When we know the characteristics of the various archetypes, we find them relected back to our consciousness from the environment.
We can learn to view their effects on our lives directly and gain in personal, social, and spiritual freedom. If we fail to become consciously aware of their effects, their spontaneous activation may produce devastating effects on the personality. They can create internal divisions in the psyche which may lead to the disintegration of personality. This can result in disease, self-destructive behavior, or even culminate in death.
Hillman knows we are many, encased in the spirits of our ancestors; or, as Ventura stresses, telepathic, living inside constant psychic contagions. Not only are we continually resonating with others, we're fused also with the "things" of this world: our rooms, city streets, fluorescent lights, traffic jams, the homeless, dying animal species. Hillman says: "The world is getting worse. Ask the animals, ask the trees, ask the wind ... " He ends this letter: "Once individualism dissolves its notion of self ... there is no alone. I am never only myself, always out of myself, out of control. And I can never recover."
Community doesn't reside in grand utopian schemes, but it's already alive in our nuanced moments, simply by reframing the small episodes that make up our days.
http://open.salon.com/blog/wendyo/2011/10/30/james_hillman_just_died_he_was_my_mentor_close_friend
So, like our question of the rigidity of so-called "basic" "image schemas", we have the question of which comes first: The "non-imaginal archetype" or the "archetypal image"?
If Jung privileged the abstract concept before the precision of the thing, it is because he understood it to be a “psychological fact” that, upon encountering an archetypal situation (say, crossing a raging river in the jungle) we are already psychologically pre-conditioned by our ancestors in history. That is, we do actually respond accordingly to these archetypes and the abstract concept may be actual (indeed, more actual) in a way that the “precision of the thing” is not.
http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/james-hillman
Psychologically speaking, the domain of "gods" begins where consciousness leaves off, for at that point man is already at the mercy of the natural order, whether he thrive or perish. To the symbols of wholeness that come to him from there he attaches names which vary according to time and place.
The self is defined psychologically as the psychic totality of the individual. Anything that a man postulates as being a greater totality than himself can become a symbol of the self. For this reason the symbol of the self is not always as total as the definition would require. -Jung
Meaning is not an entity, not a creed, a doctrine, a worldview, also not something like the fairytale treasure hard to attain. It is not semantic, not a content. Meaning, where it indeed exists, is first of all an implicit or a priori fact of existence. It can never be the answer to a question. It is, conversely, an unquestioned and unquestionable certainty that predates any possible questioning. It is the groundedness of existence, a sense of embededness in life, of containment in the world.
Community doesn't reside in grand utopian schemes, but it's already alive in our nuanced moments, simply by reframing the small episodes that make up our days.
http://open.salon.com/blog/wendyo/2011/10/30/james_hillman_just_died_he_was_my_mentor_close_friend
So, like our question of the rigidity of so-called "basic" "image schemas", we have the question of which comes first: The "non-imaginal archetype" or the "archetypal image"?
If Jung privileged the abstract concept before the precision of the thing, it is because he understood it to be a “psychological fact” that, upon encountering an archetypal situation (say, crossing a raging river in the jungle) we are already psychologically pre-conditioned by our ancestors in history. That is, we do actually respond accordingly to these archetypes and the abstract concept may be actual (indeed, more actual) in a way that the “precision of the thing” is not.
http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/james-hillman
Psychologically speaking, the domain of "gods" begins where consciousness leaves off, for at that point man is already at the mercy of the natural order, whether he thrive or perish. To the symbols of wholeness that come to him from there he attaches names which vary according to time and place.
The self is defined psychologically as the psychic totality of the individual. Anything that a man postulates as being a greater totality than himself can become a symbol of the self. For this reason the symbol of the self is not always as total as the definition would require. -Jung
Meaning is not an entity, not a creed, a doctrine, a worldview, also not something like the fairytale treasure hard to attain. It is not semantic, not a content. Meaning, where it indeed exists, is first of all an implicit or a priori fact of existence. It can never be the answer to a question. It is, conversely, an unquestioned and unquestionable certainty that predates any possible questioning. It is the groundedness of existence, a sense of embededness in life, of containment in the world.
dragon (n.) early 13c., from Old French dragon, from Latin draconem (nominative draco) "huge serpent, dragon," from Greek drakon (genitive drakontos) "serpent, giant seafish," apparently from drak-, strong aorist stem of derkesthai "to see clearly," from PIE *derk- "to see." Perhaps the literal sense is "the one with the (deadly) glance."
Dialoging with Ancestors Using the Intensive Journal Method
http://intensivejournal.org/index.php
Of course, interpretation is not the only Jungian method. There is also active imagination. Active imagination requires an ego-image that is curious and inquisitive. The ego-image actively engages the non-ego image in a dialogue. Active imagination is a conversation between the ego-image and the non-ego image. It is not a dictation but a negotiation. In this sense, active imagination is a variety of diplomacy. It is not only a "talking cure" but also a "listening cure." In active imagination, the ego-image talks to the non-ego image and listens to it, and the non-ego image talks to the ego-image and listens to it. Active imagination is interactive imagination. Both the ego-image and the non-ego image pose questions, and both provide answers. There is no imperative, I would emphasize, for the ego-image to capitulate to the non-ego image. In active imagination, the only obligation is for the ego-image to entertain seriously and consider critically what the non-ego image has to say. What the non-ego image has to say is not necessarily the "truth." It is an opinion that the ego-image may either accept or reject. In the process, not only may the non-ego image persuade the ego-image, but also the ego-image may convince the non-ego image. The non-ego image may transform the ego-image, and the ego-image may transform the non-ego image. In active imagination, the ego-image is just as much an "image of transformation" as the non-ego image is. http://www.jungnewyork.com/imaginology.shtml
http://intensivejournal.org/index.php
Of course, interpretation is not the only Jungian method. There is also active imagination. Active imagination requires an ego-image that is curious and inquisitive. The ego-image actively engages the non-ego image in a dialogue. Active imagination is a conversation between the ego-image and the non-ego image. It is not a dictation but a negotiation. In this sense, active imagination is a variety of diplomacy. It is not only a "talking cure" but also a "listening cure." In active imagination, the ego-image talks to the non-ego image and listens to it, and the non-ego image talks to the ego-image and listens to it. Active imagination is interactive imagination. Both the ego-image and the non-ego image pose questions, and both provide answers. There is no imperative, I would emphasize, for the ego-image to capitulate to the non-ego image. In active imagination, the only obligation is for the ego-image to entertain seriously and consider critically what the non-ego image has to say. What the non-ego image has to say is not necessarily the "truth." It is an opinion that the ego-image may either accept or reject. In the process, not only may the non-ego image persuade the ego-image, but also the ego-image may convince the non-ego image. The non-ego image may transform the ego-image, and the ego-image may transform the non-ego image. In active imagination, the ego-image is just as much an "image of transformation" as the non-ego image is. http://www.jungnewyork.com/imaginology.shtml
The Mystic Vortex
The gateway between the physical and spirit realms is known as a vortex. Geomagnetic vortex sites are often called Dragon’s Lairs and link the Dragon ley lines in a vast Earth grid. The Serpent life-force is the spiraling life-force energy that moves through the portals. Shaman consider these Serpent vortices inter-dimensional doorways. These vortex sites facilitate spontaneous synchronization of the anomalous geomagnetic event, EEG brainwaves, and Schumann Resonance which amplifies the vortex effect (Miller & Lonetree, 2010). This resonance produces a sense of high well-being and paranormal effects.
Within the energy body, vortexes manifest as chakras. The vortex in our DNA enables vision, illumination, lucid dreaming, and memory through death. Genetic memory is invoked to explain feelings and ideas inherited from our ancestors as part of a "collective unconscious". Entering the primal transformative spiral means entering the vortex of the internal structuring process, the natural kaleidoscope of shapes.
In a vortex of consciousness, questions and answers form in the scintillating swirling ether that also symbolizes the Collective Unconscious. Ezra Pound defined the vortex as, "a radiant node or cluster" "from which, and into which, ideas are constantly rushing." An image is a compositional vortex. Soulful images weave a vortex of longing. In the flow, the forces impel us. As we spin deeper into the creative vortex we are flooded with knowledge -- gnosis.
The interaction of fields, and the formation of a vortex of energy, the attractor, represents the beginning of our consciousness structure. This process culminates in the formation of separate identity, the ego. In therapy or shamanic Dreamhealing, the vortex can also heal. For example, an image of a deep red stab wound with a black center might become a swirling vortex pulling the dreamer and guide into a blackness. It is cold and empty, and the spinning of the vortex dismembers the dreamer. In fact, he experiences a sense of being disintegrated. The old self dies, so the transformed self image can be reborn, completing the transformational cycle.
The unconscious lends itself to the language of chaos. The whirling, twisting motion of a molecule of water in the chaotic world of non-laminar flow through a pipe is analogous to chaos consciousness. The disorienting, dizzying surrender to the vortex, tornado, or whirlpool is a surrender to chaos, an experience of no form and total confusion and disorientation. We penetrate deeper into the psyche -- into the vortex of the internal structuring process -- through progressively de-structuring patterns of organization.
It is like the experience of committing oneself to the fire and becoming it, then as the random flickering of the flames and torrid heat, disintegrating into pure energy. It means becoming the boiling, flowing, every-changing molten magma at the core of the earth, or the root of a volcano. A spiral or a vortex exerts a magnetic draw and the journeyers are drawn into it. Sensations of spinning and being drawn deeper often cause the journeyer to report intense dizziness and disorientation. Often there are feelings of flying apart, limbs and eventually all parts of the self flying off in the centrifugal forces experienced in the vortex.
These are all descriptions of the personal, subjective experience of total chaos. Always, after passing through this state, the new order which emerges of self-image, thought, emotion, and sensory perception reflects the new and less dis-eased state of being. The deeper self-image undercut or superseded the old belief system, and began to create a new order of being, a new way of perceiving self and world. The new image provides a magnetic nucleus around which to order the personality, and often the physiology.
Carl Jung likened complexes to impersonal psychological vortex points, into which we are drawn. We mediate it through myths, ritual, art and dreams. The vortex is a focal point or eddy in the vast ocean of consciousness, in the individual stream of consciousness. It is an icon of the Flow State, from which creativity emerges. For active, trancendent consciousness, the center of the vortex is primordial emptiness, the gap between breaths, the stillpoint of illumination which is a royal marriage with the eternal. Our future is a vortex of emergent fateful change. Mythemes of the Vortex form their own widening gyre.
Chaos is self-organizing, self-iterating, and self-generating. It is an evolutionary force. The tendency of new forms emerging from chaos is toward a higher degree of adaptation, hence evolution. This "recycling" of consciousness leads to a self-referential vortex. Chaotic systems revolve around nexus points, known as strange attractors, because of their unpredictable quality. Rather than being "point-like," they are more like vortices within vortices. The Philosopher's Stone is like a psychic lodestone (or vortex). It acts like an inner magnet, ordering the contents of our consciousness around it (through feedback loops) in chaotic, yet meaningful fashion.
The gateway between the physical and spirit realms is known as a vortex. Geomagnetic vortex sites are often called Dragon’s Lairs and link the Dragon ley lines in a vast Earth grid. The Serpent life-force is the spiraling life-force energy that moves through the portals. Shaman consider these Serpent vortices inter-dimensional doorways. These vortex sites facilitate spontaneous synchronization of the anomalous geomagnetic event, EEG brainwaves, and Schumann Resonance which amplifies the vortex effect (Miller & Lonetree, 2010). This resonance produces a sense of high well-being and paranormal effects.
Within the energy body, vortexes manifest as chakras. The vortex in our DNA enables vision, illumination, lucid dreaming, and memory through death. Genetic memory is invoked to explain feelings and ideas inherited from our ancestors as part of a "collective unconscious". Entering the primal transformative spiral means entering the vortex of the internal structuring process, the natural kaleidoscope of shapes.
In a vortex of consciousness, questions and answers form in the scintillating swirling ether that also symbolizes the Collective Unconscious. Ezra Pound defined the vortex as, "a radiant node or cluster" "from which, and into which, ideas are constantly rushing." An image is a compositional vortex. Soulful images weave a vortex of longing. In the flow, the forces impel us. As we spin deeper into the creative vortex we are flooded with knowledge -- gnosis.
The interaction of fields, and the formation of a vortex of energy, the attractor, represents the beginning of our consciousness structure. This process culminates in the formation of separate identity, the ego. In therapy or shamanic Dreamhealing, the vortex can also heal. For example, an image of a deep red stab wound with a black center might become a swirling vortex pulling the dreamer and guide into a blackness. It is cold and empty, and the spinning of the vortex dismembers the dreamer. In fact, he experiences a sense of being disintegrated. The old self dies, so the transformed self image can be reborn, completing the transformational cycle.
The unconscious lends itself to the language of chaos. The whirling, twisting motion of a molecule of water in the chaotic world of non-laminar flow through a pipe is analogous to chaos consciousness. The disorienting, dizzying surrender to the vortex, tornado, or whirlpool is a surrender to chaos, an experience of no form and total confusion and disorientation. We penetrate deeper into the psyche -- into the vortex of the internal structuring process -- through progressively de-structuring patterns of organization.
It is like the experience of committing oneself to the fire and becoming it, then as the random flickering of the flames and torrid heat, disintegrating into pure energy. It means becoming the boiling, flowing, every-changing molten magma at the core of the earth, or the root of a volcano. A spiral or a vortex exerts a magnetic draw and the journeyers are drawn into it. Sensations of spinning and being drawn deeper often cause the journeyer to report intense dizziness and disorientation. Often there are feelings of flying apart, limbs and eventually all parts of the self flying off in the centrifugal forces experienced in the vortex.
These are all descriptions of the personal, subjective experience of total chaos. Always, after passing through this state, the new order which emerges of self-image, thought, emotion, and sensory perception reflects the new and less dis-eased state of being. The deeper self-image undercut or superseded the old belief system, and began to create a new order of being, a new way of perceiving self and world. The new image provides a magnetic nucleus around which to order the personality, and often the physiology.
Carl Jung likened complexes to impersonal psychological vortex points, into which we are drawn. We mediate it through myths, ritual, art and dreams. The vortex is a focal point or eddy in the vast ocean of consciousness, in the individual stream of consciousness. It is an icon of the Flow State, from which creativity emerges. For active, trancendent consciousness, the center of the vortex is primordial emptiness, the gap between breaths, the stillpoint of illumination which is a royal marriage with the eternal. Our future is a vortex of emergent fateful change. Mythemes of the Vortex form their own widening gyre.
Chaos is self-organizing, self-iterating, and self-generating. It is an evolutionary force. The tendency of new forms emerging from chaos is toward a higher degree of adaptation, hence evolution. This "recycling" of consciousness leads to a self-referential vortex. Chaotic systems revolve around nexus points, known as strange attractors, because of their unpredictable quality. Rather than being "point-like," they are more like vortices within vortices. The Philosopher's Stone is like a psychic lodestone (or vortex). It acts like an inner magnet, ordering the contents of our consciousness around it (through feedback loops) in chaotic, yet meaningful fashion.
THE BLOOD & THE BONE
Ancestors Gone and Yet to Come
Inherent Wisdom: 'Foresight through Insight on Hindsight!
"We have not understood yet that the discovery of the unconscious means an enormous spiritual task, which must be accomplished if we wish to preserve our civilization." C.G. Jung
We all have a need for meaning that drives us to search deeply within and without ourselves for connection and creativity. Meta-meaning pulls us to discover from within, by breaking through old paradigms to discover what is waiting to be born. We can experience a personal archaic renaissance through reflexive practice (RP), turning our attention back toward the deep time of our being and all it contains. The universal field isn't just manifesting itself all around us. The field is coming through us and expressing itself in our inner subjective domain as well.
A method helps these deeper underlying patterns to come into focus and be seen, identified, even communicated with and ultimately fitted together like pieces, or shards, of a higher-order jigsaw/mosaic and simultaneously a deeper order grounding/embodying. Not merely the ‘subjects’ of our inner process, we become the ‘objects’ of a deeper, mythic, archetypal and divine process that is incarnating through us. We are the conduits through which the universe, in becoming consciously aware of itself, is waking itself up. Self-reflection i.e. reflexion, is therefore the best service we can do for ourselves and the world.
Such reflexive practice is self-referential. Retrospectivity is often found at the heart of creativity and poetics. "Reflexivity" refers to recursion, of referring back to a starting point, an original position, a beginning state. There is a loop in the time course of an action, where that action goes "out" to something, then comes "back" to oneself. Self-reference is the act, let us say, of paying attention being "bent" back towards the self that is paying attention. Self-description is the act of description being directed back toward the person actually doing the description. The "loop" structure is from you, your "self", back into or towards your self.
Wildman suggests, "accept the challenge of looking backwards from time to time over the years and let the patterns emerge, to surface the deep structures, patterns, processes, insights and connections. Not only individuals, but also organizations, communities and cultures could well undertake such an approach." It is a response to the need to seek for general explanations. Transcendent research embraces the spiritual, symbolic and physical realities of being fully human.
Internal Encounters
It is through this reflexive - even meditative, poetic, noetic process (one of apperception) that we believe we can gain vital noumenal (understanding, perception, discernment) insights. Out of the spaces can come the patterns and linkages so vital to understanding. Process work helps us uncover these deeper patterns and linkages. It might even be a form of deep futures reverse causation -- psychoretrocausality. What might conventionally be seen as an effect that exists in the future could in some way be a causal agent affecting the outcome of events that occurred before it in linear time.
Immersion leads to a recognition of intuitive knowledge and tacit understanding (incubation) generating enhanced awareness and knowledge of (illumination) one's inner world which in turn suggests the validation of this knowledge. Finally, the process concludes with an integration of these illuminations (creative synthesis) into the way the we see the world. We may even be entranced by images, intuitions, and dreams that can connect themselves to our personal quest. An unshakeable connection exists between what is out there, in its appearance and reality, and what is within us -- the internal world of reflexive thought, tacit knowledge, feeling, and awareness.
We are a braided emanation of our ancestral lines. There is a world of characters within us, waiting to share their knowledge and their gnosis with us, if we but ask. We may also explore awakening and finding our divinity within. Hypnosis and self-hypnosis have been used for years if not aeons. for such self-knowledge, therapeutic and healing purposes. Besides our ancestors, we all host an inner healer, a critic or judge, an inner child and a host of other "discarnate" participants in our multimind.
The basis of the human psyche seems to be a collective of selves -- a multimind in a multiverse. Independent and autonomous, they relate with one another mostly unknown to the outer awareness. The "multistate paradigm" of human nature extends toward a psychology and spirituality that is polytheistic, even pantheistic. Parapsychology is primarily a social science, though we try to bring in measuring tools of the physical sciences. The best evidence still comes from
people who witness the phenomena. The only way to study consciousness, whether of the living or the dead, is through the experiences of people.
Meta-Cognition
Dialogue is a form of imagery which creates and sustains a worldview through the means of imaginal conversations. Within the fabric of multiple centers or vortices within the psyche, an on-going dialogue emerges which ranges from selftalk (ego to ego), through "group" discussion (ego with subpersonalities), to spiritual dialogue (ego with transpersonal entities), even ancestral spirits. Beyond the dialogical realm lies the unspeakable experience (untranslatable) of the Void or Clear Light, the realm of archetypal light and sound as pure consciousness.
The "Word" helps us create and define reality. Conversation as well as observation defines our reality. Dialogue of the self with its various conscious and unconscious forms creates a series of "virtual realities" which form the basis of self-simulation and world-simulation. These forms are limitless in number, far beyond the classic archetypes such as persona, anima/animus, etc., suggesting the notion of "radical pluralism."
Dialogical Gnosis
Gnosis, wisdom from within, can arise in imaginal dialogues with our Ancestors, by adapting Ira Progoff's Intensive Journal technique to the process. Non-literal, imaginal, dialogical "discussions" often turn up material that can be proofed through history, archaeology, genealogy and genetic genealogy. This is yet another special case of "knowing more than we know we know." The simple technique can be used by anyone, virtually anywhere.
While not an official part of the the journal process, it can be readily adopted both with or without the rest of the program. Such imaginal conversations give a voice to the deeper constituents of our unconscious psychophysical system, and can even reveal unknown details about the functioning and fate of our physical organism. As such, it is a therapeutic tool which reflexively plumbs the depths of the collective unconscious and personal ancestral base.
The technique functions as a "ghost bridge", but not in the literal way of speaking with the dead used by mentalists and psychics. It is a conscious act, unlike dream contact with deceased or ancient ancestors. The process can be facilitated by pictures and art of the chosen ancestor, and pictures of their ancestral homes and lands that prompt memory and imagination.
Dialogue and questions open the way for myriad possibilities. Immersing oneself and trusting the process opens a virtual world, a holographic domain that is multidimensional. It is capable of influencing us by changing our attitudes, which affects our psychophysical, hormonal, and energetic being. It isn't 'real' or 'unreal', but takes place in psychic reality -- that is, the realm of the psyche which is both physical and imaginal.
Gestalt theory contends that we are all of the figures within our dreams, and well as the ground underlying them. Jung extended this notion inferring that we each contain and can contact many figures of the collective unconscious "within" us. Today, we speak of the quantum and holographic encoding of our DNA and our holographic memory, which is analogous to the Akashic Field of the East.
Dialogue is a social device we can employ in our noetic exploration. When we intentionally enter a conscious dialogue meditation we understand that we are evoking a portion of our self with its inherent wisdom. We may personify and amplify that feeling in numerous ways, including artistic means, or perhaps Tarot cards, and other means of divination. While the process shares some features of automatic writing and channelling, one maintains consciousness and critical thinking, not confusing the planes. It is more a process of "letting go", allowing than dissociating, of associating and amplifying than trance.
Wikipedia describes Progoff's method:
The intensive journal method is a psychotherapeutic technique largely developed in 1966 at Drew University and popularized by Ira Progoff. It consists of a series of writing exercises using loose leaf notebook paper in a simple ring binder, divided into sections to help in accessing various areas of the writer's life. These include a dialogue section for the personification of things, a "depth dimension" to aid in accessing the subconscious and other places for recording remembrances and meditations.
The original Intensive Journal contained only 16 sections, but was later expanded to include five additional sections as part of Progoff's "process meditation" method. It has been the inspiration for many other "writing therapies" since then and is used in a variety of settings, including hospitals and prisons, by individuals as an aid to creativity or autobiography, and often as an adjunct to treatment in analytic, humanistic or cognitive therapy.
Dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog in American English) is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more ("dia" means through or across) people or imaginal characters. Its chief historical origins as narrative, philosophical or didactic device are found in classical Greek and Indian literature, in particular in the ancient art of rhetoric.
Once you are proficient in the technique it can also be employed as a group discussion, along the lines of NLP's subpersonalities, Boardroom or "part's party" discussions. Another source of therapeutic suggestions is Assagioli's Psychosynthesis, which likewise can employ dialogue. It can be combined with the Gestalt two-chair technique, but with a written record one has the additional benefit of a permanent record, which might yield additional depth over time.
Bohm's Dialogue
Physicist David Bohm proposed a dialogue technique with different aims. He introduced the concept of a dialogue stating that dialogue can be considered as a free flow of meaning between people in communication, in the sense of a stream that flows between banks. These “banks” are understood as representing the various points of view of the participants.
In a Bohm dialogue, twenty to forty participants sit in a circle for a few hours during regular meetings, or for a few days in a workshop environment. This is done with no predefined purpose, no agenda, other than that of inquiring into the movement of thought, and exploring the process of "thinking together" collectively. This activity can allow group participants to examine their preconceptions and prejudices, as well as to explore the more general movement of thought. Bohm's intention regarding the suggested minimum number of participants was to replicate a social/cultural dynamic (rather than a family dynamic). This form of dialogue seeks to enable an awareness of why communicating in the verbal sphere is so much more difficult and conflict-ridden than in all other areas of human activity and endeavor.
Participants in the Bohmian form of dialogue "suspend" their beliefs, opinions, impulses, and judgments while speaking together, in order to see the movement of the group's thought processes and what their effects may be. According to Dialogue a Proposal [Bohm, Factor, Garrett], this kind of dialogue should not be confused with discussion or debate, both of which, says Bohm, suggest working towards a goal or reaching a decision, rather than simply exploring and learning. Meeting without an agenda or fixed objective is done to create a "free space" for something new to happen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohm_Dialogue
Bohm claims, "...it may turn out that such a form of free exchange of ideas and information is of fundamental relevance for transforming culture and freeing it of destructive misinformation, so that creativity can be liberated."
Principles of Dialogue
"Bohm Dialogue" has been widely used in the field of organizational development, and has evolved beyond what David Bohm intended: rarely is the minimum group size as large as what Bohm originally recommended, and there are often other numerous subtle differences. Specifically, any method of conversation that claims to be based on the "principles of dialogue as established by David Bohm" can be considered to be a form of Bohm Dialogue. Those principles of "Bohm Dialogue" are:
Usually, the goal of the various incarnations of "Bohm Dialogue" is to get the whole group to have a better understanding of itself. In other words, Bohm Dialogue is used to inform all of the participants about the current state of the group they are in.
Ancestors Gone and Yet to Come
Inherent Wisdom: 'Foresight through Insight on Hindsight!
"We have not understood yet that the discovery of the unconscious means an enormous spiritual task, which must be accomplished if we wish to preserve our civilization." C.G. Jung
We all have a need for meaning that drives us to search deeply within and without ourselves for connection and creativity. Meta-meaning pulls us to discover from within, by breaking through old paradigms to discover what is waiting to be born. We can experience a personal archaic renaissance through reflexive practice (RP), turning our attention back toward the deep time of our being and all it contains. The universal field isn't just manifesting itself all around us. The field is coming through us and expressing itself in our inner subjective domain as well.
A method helps these deeper underlying patterns to come into focus and be seen, identified, even communicated with and ultimately fitted together like pieces, or shards, of a higher-order jigsaw/mosaic and simultaneously a deeper order grounding/embodying. Not merely the ‘subjects’ of our inner process, we become the ‘objects’ of a deeper, mythic, archetypal and divine process that is incarnating through us. We are the conduits through which the universe, in becoming consciously aware of itself, is waking itself up. Self-reflection i.e. reflexion, is therefore the best service we can do for ourselves and the world.
Such reflexive practice is self-referential. Retrospectivity is often found at the heart of creativity and poetics. "Reflexivity" refers to recursion, of referring back to a starting point, an original position, a beginning state. There is a loop in the time course of an action, where that action goes "out" to something, then comes "back" to oneself. Self-reference is the act, let us say, of paying attention being "bent" back towards the self that is paying attention. Self-description is the act of description being directed back toward the person actually doing the description. The "loop" structure is from you, your "self", back into or towards your self.
Wildman suggests, "accept the challenge of looking backwards from time to time over the years and let the patterns emerge, to surface the deep structures, patterns, processes, insights and connections. Not only individuals, but also organizations, communities and cultures could well undertake such an approach." It is a response to the need to seek for general explanations. Transcendent research embraces the spiritual, symbolic and physical realities of being fully human.
Internal Encounters
It is through this reflexive - even meditative, poetic, noetic process (one of apperception) that we believe we can gain vital noumenal (understanding, perception, discernment) insights. Out of the spaces can come the patterns and linkages so vital to understanding. Process work helps us uncover these deeper patterns and linkages. It might even be a form of deep futures reverse causation -- psychoretrocausality. What might conventionally be seen as an effect that exists in the future could in some way be a causal agent affecting the outcome of events that occurred before it in linear time.
Immersion leads to a recognition of intuitive knowledge and tacit understanding (incubation) generating enhanced awareness and knowledge of (illumination) one's inner world which in turn suggests the validation of this knowledge. Finally, the process concludes with an integration of these illuminations (creative synthesis) into the way the we see the world. We may even be entranced by images, intuitions, and dreams that can connect themselves to our personal quest. An unshakeable connection exists between what is out there, in its appearance and reality, and what is within us -- the internal world of reflexive thought, tacit knowledge, feeling, and awareness.
We are a braided emanation of our ancestral lines. There is a world of characters within us, waiting to share their knowledge and their gnosis with us, if we but ask. We may also explore awakening and finding our divinity within. Hypnosis and self-hypnosis have been used for years if not aeons. for such self-knowledge, therapeutic and healing purposes. Besides our ancestors, we all host an inner healer, a critic or judge, an inner child and a host of other "discarnate" participants in our multimind.
The basis of the human psyche seems to be a collective of selves -- a multimind in a multiverse. Independent and autonomous, they relate with one another mostly unknown to the outer awareness. The "multistate paradigm" of human nature extends toward a psychology and spirituality that is polytheistic, even pantheistic. Parapsychology is primarily a social science, though we try to bring in measuring tools of the physical sciences. The best evidence still comes from
people who witness the phenomena. The only way to study consciousness, whether of the living or the dead, is through the experiences of people.
Meta-Cognition
Dialogue is a form of imagery which creates and sustains a worldview through the means of imaginal conversations. Within the fabric of multiple centers or vortices within the psyche, an on-going dialogue emerges which ranges from selftalk (ego to ego), through "group" discussion (ego with subpersonalities), to spiritual dialogue (ego with transpersonal entities), even ancestral spirits. Beyond the dialogical realm lies the unspeakable experience (untranslatable) of the Void or Clear Light, the realm of archetypal light and sound as pure consciousness.
The "Word" helps us create and define reality. Conversation as well as observation defines our reality. Dialogue of the self with its various conscious and unconscious forms creates a series of "virtual realities" which form the basis of self-simulation and world-simulation. These forms are limitless in number, far beyond the classic archetypes such as persona, anima/animus, etc., suggesting the notion of "radical pluralism."
Dialogical Gnosis
Gnosis, wisdom from within, can arise in imaginal dialogues with our Ancestors, by adapting Ira Progoff's Intensive Journal technique to the process. Non-literal, imaginal, dialogical "discussions" often turn up material that can be proofed through history, archaeology, genealogy and genetic genealogy. This is yet another special case of "knowing more than we know we know." The simple technique can be used by anyone, virtually anywhere.
While not an official part of the the journal process, it can be readily adopted both with or without the rest of the program. Such imaginal conversations give a voice to the deeper constituents of our unconscious psychophysical system, and can even reveal unknown details about the functioning and fate of our physical organism. As such, it is a therapeutic tool which reflexively plumbs the depths of the collective unconscious and personal ancestral base.
The technique functions as a "ghost bridge", but not in the literal way of speaking with the dead used by mentalists and psychics. It is a conscious act, unlike dream contact with deceased or ancient ancestors. The process can be facilitated by pictures and art of the chosen ancestor, and pictures of their ancestral homes and lands that prompt memory and imagination.
Dialogue and questions open the way for myriad possibilities. Immersing oneself and trusting the process opens a virtual world, a holographic domain that is multidimensional. It is capable of influencing us by changing our attitudes, which affects our psychophysical, hormonal, and energetic being. It isn't 'real' or 'unreal', but takes place in psychic reality -- that is, the realm of the psyche which is both physical and imaginal.
Gestalt theory contends that we are all of the figures within our dreams, and well as the ground underlying them. Jung extended this notion inferring that we each contain and can contact many figures of the collective unconscious "within" us. Today, we speak of the quantum and holographic encoding of our DNA and our holographic memory, which is analogous to the Akashic Field of the East.
Dialogue is a social device we can employ in our noetic exploration. When we intentionally enter a conscious dialogue meditation we understand that we are evoking a portion of our self with its inherent wisdom. We may personify and amplify that feeling in numerous ways, including artistic means, or perhaps Tarot cards, and other means of divination. While the process shares some features of automatic writing and channelling, one maintains consciousness and critical thinking, not confusing the planes. It is more a process of "letting go", allowing than dissociating, of associating and amplifying than trance.
Wikipedia describes Progoff's method:
The intensive journal method is a psychotherapeutic technique largely developed in 1966 at Drew University and popularized by Ira Progoff. It consists of a series of writing exercises using loose leaf notebook paper in a simple ring binder, divided into sections to help in accessing various areas of the writer's life. These include a dialogue section for the personification of things, a "depth dimension" to aid in accessing the subconscious and other places for recording remembrances and meditations.
The original Intensive Journal contained only 16 sections, but was later expanded to include five additional sections as part of Progoff's "process meditation" method. It has been the inspiration for many other "writing therapies" since then and is used in a variety of settings, including hospitals and prisons, by individuals as an aid to creativity or autobiography, and often as an adjunct to treatment in analytic, humanistic or cognitive therapy.
Dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog in American English) is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more ("dia" means through or across) people or imaginal characters. Its chief historical origins as narrative, philosophical or didactic device are found in classical Greek and Indian literature, in particular in the ancient art of rhetoric.
Once you are proficient in the technique it can also be employed as a group discussion, along the lines of NLP's subpersonalities, Boardroom or "part's party" discussions. Another source of therapeutic suggestions is Assagioli's Psychosynthesis, which likewise can employ dialogue. It can be combined with the Gestalt two-chair technique, but with a written record one has the additional benefit of a permanent record, which might yield additional depth over time.
Bohm's Dialogue
Physicist David Bohm proposed a dialogue technique with different aims. He introduced the concept of a dialogue stating that dialogue can be considered as a free flow of meaning between people in communication, in the sense of a stream that flows between banks. These “banks” are understood as representing the various points of view of the participants.
In a Bohm dialogue, twenty to forty participants sit in a circle for a few hours during regular meetings, or for a few days in a workshop environment. This is done with no predefined purpose, no agenda, other than that of inquiring into the movement of thought, and exploring the process of "thinking together" collectively. This activity can allow group participants to examine their preconceptions and prejudices, as well as to explore the more general movement of thought. Bohm's intention regarding the suggested minimum number of participants was to replicate a social/cultural dynamic (rather than a family dynamic). This form of dialogue seeks to enable an awareness of why communicating in the verbal sphere is so much more difficult and conflict-ridden than in all other areas of human activity and endeavor.
Participants in the Bohmian form of dialogue "suspend" their beliefs, opinions, impulses, and judgments while speaking together, in order to see the movement of the group's thought processes and what their effects may be. According to Dialogue a Proposal [Bohm, Factor, Garrett], this kind of dialogue should not be confused with discussion or debate, both of which, says Bohm, suggest working towards a goal or reaching a decision, rather than simply exploring and learning. Meeting without an agenda or fixed objective is done to create a "free space" for something new to happen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohm_Dialogue
Bohm claims, "...it may turn out that such a form of free exchange of ideas and information is of fundamental relevance for transforming culture and freeing it of destructive misinformation, so that creativity can be liberated."
Principles of Dialogue
"Bohm Dialogue" has been widely used in the field of organizational development, and has evolved beyond what David Bohm intended: rarely is the minimum group size as large as what Bohm originally recommended, and there are often other numerous subtle differences. Specifically, any method of conversation that claims to be based on the "principles of dialogue as established by David Bohm" can be considered to be a form of Bohm Dialogue. Those principles of "Bohm Dialogue" are:
- 1. The group agrees that no group-level decisions will be made in the conversation. "...In the dialogue group we are not going to decide what to do about anything. This is crucial. Otherwise we are not free. We must have an empty space where we are not obliged to anything, nor to come to any conclusions, nor to say anything or not say anything. It's open and free" (Bohm, "On Dialogue", p.18-19.)"
- 2. Each individual agrees to suspend judgement in the conversation. (Specifically, if the individual hears an idea he doesn't like, he does not attack that idea.) "...people in any group will bring to it assumptions, and as the group continues meeting, those assumptions will come up. What is called for is to suspend those assumptions, so that you neither carry them out nor suppress them. You don't believe them, nor do you disbelieve them; you don't judge them as good or bad...(Bohm, "On Dialogue", p. 22.)"
- 3. As these individuals "suspend judgement" they also simultaneously are as honest and transparent as possible. (Specifically, if the individual has a "good idea" that he might otherwise hold back from the group because it is too controversial, he will share that idea in this conversation.)
- 4. Individuals in the conversation try to build on other individuals' ideas in the conversation. (The group often comes up with ideas that are far beyond what any of the individuals thought possible before the conversation began.)
Usually, the goal of the various incarnations of "Bohm Dialogue" is to get the whole group to have a better understanding of itself. In other words, Bohm Dialogue is used to inform all of the participants about the current state of the group they are in.
Preparation
Temple Sleep a traditional way of non-interpretive dream incubation and healing. It also refers to hypnosis, and by extension to self-hypnosis.
Egyptian priest, Imhotep. (I-em-hotep, he comes in peace) is the great-grandfather of Hypnosis, or suggestive therapy, which can be traced back over 4000 years to ancient Egypt. The Egyptians used healing sanctuaries for curing all sorts of problems, both physical and mental, most of which today would be classed as psychological problems. Before falling asleep they were influenced by suggestions, in the hope of provoking dreams sent by the gods.
These healing sanctuaries were called "Sleep or Dream Temples." In these temples, the sick person was put into a trance like sleep; priests and priestesses then facilitated healing dreams to gain knowledge about the illnesses and to find a cure for the illnesses. Such dreams were themselves epiphanies with the inner healer. It is that contact, not interpretations, that is healing.
Healing took place while the person being cured was in a deep trance-like sleep. The god Asklepius could perform miraculous cures in the dreams. The priests used chanting and magical spells to put the patient into a trance, known as incubation. A person could be kept in this state for up to three days, during which time the priests using suggestions would help the person, through their dreams, to make contact with the god, thus helping them to obtain a cure for their illness. The temples were a place of spirits, and mysterious powers, a place to find mental and physical healing.
The people looking for a cure or an insight to their problems were called Seekers. The Seeker did not just go in to the temple; they had to wait for the right time to come. A Seeker had something on their mind, an ailment, an issue, and an inner quest to discover themselves. They came on a pilgrimage to seek an insight into their problems, to contact the healing god, to get a new vision that would heal, guide, or provide comfort.
They had to cleanse the body, mind and soul. They would meditate, fast, take hot baths, and make a sacrifice to the god. They looked for signs in their dreams. They would dream of the god healing them. A good dream would be one in which the god or a serpent would cure the wound by touching it. The dreams of the seeker contained the insightful seeds of their own healing.
Ritualistic methods include purifying baths, trance-inducing chanting, and symbolic sacrifices, The Greek treatment was referred to as incubation, and focused on prayers to Asklepius for healing. A similar Hebrew treatment was referred to as Kavanah, and involved focusing on letters of the Hebrew alphabet spelling the name of the Hebrew God. Sir Mortimer Wheeler unearthed a Roman Sleep temple at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire in 1928, with the assistance of a young J.R.R. Tolkien.
When a candidate for initiation into these mysteries had been prepared through various disciplines, the priest (hierophant) then led the candidate into a cave or tomb where he or she was put to sleep. The priest suggested the etheric body leave the initiate for three and a half days. During this time it was joined to the astral body and received through it impressions from the spiritual world. When the etheric body was brought back into the physical, the initiate was awakened by the priest and remembered what was experienced in the spiritual world. But while the etheric body was out of the physical, the latter would have appeared to an outsider to be dead.
SECOND SIGHT
http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_13_3_cohn.pdf
Second Sight and Family History: Pedigree and Segregation Analyses
This study concerns second sight, a psychic ability that has for centuries been believed, in Scotland and other traditions, to be hereditary. The ability manifests itself through the person having spontaneous vivid imagery through different senses which apparently gives information about a spatially or temporally distant event. A total of 130 family histories were constructed and examined using segregation analysis. Second sight seems to be consistent with an autosomal dominant mode of inheritance, particularly for small family sizes. People with the trait were also evenly distributed with respect to their birth order position, in line with the expectations of a genetic model. It is argued that if other studies find a similar mode of inheritance in other cultures, then second sight could be a creative mental ability where the hereditary aspect lies in the sensitivity of the sensory systems which convey the experiences.
Invoking the Gods
There is nothing to prevent us from including in our dialogues the calling up of godforms, who are found both in Jungian practice as archetypes and within our antic family lines. For example, having Aphrodite, Zeus, or Odin included in your genealogy adds an air of familiarity to the essentially universal phenomenon.
What you might ask of a grandparent might be very different than what a mere mortal might request of the gods. One should likely approach this as a ritual activity or at least an exercise in sacred space, which opens the timeless realm to penetration and assimilation of entangled information from the deepest layers of Being. Below is an example of Venus or Aphrodite. Many such dialogue outlines appear in my online book, PANTHEON: ARCHETYPAL GODS IN DAILY LIFE. http://holographicarchetypes.weebly.com/pantheon.html
PANTHEON, as a manual of personal self-discovery, is a practical guide to recognizing and realizing the origins and development of our individual characters and characteristics. As such, it leads to a growth of self-knowledge, and gives us insight into the traits and behaviors of our acquaintances and intimates. Pantheon provides not only background knowledge for reference, but also practical psychological technique which we can implement in our journey toward understanding.
One can gain access to the deeper psyche, soul, or imagination through both the rational and experiential methods. These are self-analysis and active imagination. Active imagination includes consciousness journeys deep into the psyche, identification, and internal dialogues with personified archetypes. It is the dialogical method. This is a way of building experiential relationships with archetypal forces--harmonizing with them, honoring them. These are "as if" real relationships, not taken literally.
These internal dialogues can be useful, revealing the autonomous dynamics and agendas at work in our lives. They reveal things to us we know, but don't know we know. We can use many methods for this communication, such as journal work, hypnosis, or ritual. These are moments where we create and enter sacred space. These relationships reveal the meaningfulness behind the many complications in our modern lives. The more we approach our individual wholeness, through expanding our awareness and experiences, the more we are likely to encounter these divine principles from the realm of imagination.
DIALOGUE WITH APHRODITE
Suggestions are given to kick-start the process but it can go in any productive direction you wish to follow, based on your own instinct and intuition. The goal as in any discussion is creating rapport with your counterpart -- a resonance or harmonization of essential nature, mood, and being that promotes perhaps even a quantum entanglement.
You are already entangled through your genetic heritage, whether or not you express genes from that particular ancestor. They are with you in a holistic or holographic way, where the part is contained in the whole, and the whole in every part. The same method can be employed with our less-divine ancestors. The content of your inquiry should be matched to the qualities, wisdom and timelines of your respondent.
Most people are interested in juicy tidbits, foreknowledge, signs or information about their once and future lovelife. We may be able to extract it, but we may or may not like what we find. If wishful thinking intrudes, the psychological exercise become an elaborately-staged daydream. We need to remain open yet focused, aware at a deeper level than normal.
Background
We all experience the personal aspects of Aphrodite as love and lust, and all forms of sensual pleasure. Neither men, women, nor the gods were immune to the charms of this goddess. In women she appears as the irresistibly attractive "other woman," mistress, flirt, or gold-digger. She creates the Don Juan type of personality. More positively she manifests in the deep physical and spiritual love between spouses, and in the perfect host or hostess, socially.
In projection, she appears as that other whom we find irresistibly attractive and sexy, despite social sanctions against such feelings. Or, we can project a magnetic rival. Through invasion or possession, we become that magnetic personality. Those who act out her promiscuity expose themselves to the dangers of various venereal diseases, including aids, legacy of the sexual revolution. By ceasing to identify exclusively with this archetype, we can dialogue with her in active imagination. She can inform us of the subconscious aspects of our relationship to our own sexuality.
The Archetype
Aphrodite is one of the most active and pleasantly aggressive of the goddesses, so she is easier to connect with than a remote goddess, like Artemis. When anima is projected in the physical world, Jung claimed she appears in three stages of development: 1) naive or elementary, 2) manipulative flirt, 3) conscious or inspirational. Aphrodite corresponds with the sophisticated manipulator, she uses her sexuality to get what she wants -- that is her script and game. She is no innocent thing, unaware of the devastation her charm can wreak. She knows what she has and uses it to her advantage at every chance.
She is dark, full-blooded and passionate. When we are unconsciously identified with her we are controlled by her unconscious power motives. Someone may lure us into an enchantment by being very charming at first. Perhaps the aim is immediate sensual gratification, or worse, aiming to disrupt a marriage. This type then uses seeming indifference to make themselves more desirable. They use wiles and tricks to attract another's attention, gifts, and strokes. They deliberately exploit the anima/animus projections of another onto themselves, using it for personal advantage. This is the motivation of the flirt. In an egotistical identification with Aphrodite, a person becomes a lady-killer or man-killer, the stud, sex kitten, gigolo, whore, or other role-bound image.
Preparation
The strength of the identification depends on what others archetypes are at work in the soul. For example, a strong Hera aspect would constantly be urging toward marriage rather than remaining as mistress or philanderer; Athena would caution consideration of the implications on career of promiscuous behavior or reputation; Artemis would move us to be more modest and pious if not chaste. On a more pragmatic level, Artemis might say that to steal another's man violates the sisterhood all women share.
Considering the various aspects and manifestations of Aphrodite, think back over all the ways she has entered your life over the years, creating pleasure or leaving a trail of pain. Remember your sexual awakening, first love, your rivals, attention-getting gambits. Consider what areas of your life are in disharmony with her principles, or where you may have identified with her too exclusively. Consider how your attitudes toward sexuality may have changed over different periods in your life.
The Method
Sitting quietly in a dimly lit room with your journal open, visualize any of the familiar images of Aphrodite or Venus from sculpture and paintings of the masters. Alternatively, she may take a modern form as an admired actress or actor who you find irresistible, but this mortal form could never carry all of the archetypal potencies, so it is best to work toward visualizing a traditional forms.
You may also use a Tarot card such as THE EMPRESS, which corresponds with her. Greet her and begin discussing those questions that are unresolved regarding your physical and aesthetic passions. Then let her speak about any subconscious patterns she may know about you. Be careful--she may try to seduce you or use her wiles in any number of ways. She will guard any attention you shower on her jealously, unless your inform her about certain aspects of your mortal life. Let her know your human limitations and your ethical standards within which she must learn to operate. She is passion personified.
APHRODITE IN YOUR LIFE
1. What were your emotional reactions to your first sexual experience?
2. Have you ever fallen in love-at-first-sight? Did the other reciprocate? How long did this feeling last? Did it develop into mature, realistic love?
3. Have you ever been addicted to any sensual pleasures?
4. Have you ever felt insecure about your looks or attractiveness and been compulsively driven to prove that you were sexy or desirable ? What effect did this have on those around you?
5. Were you ever the "other woman" or "other man"? How did you feel about it?
6. If you have ever ben "dumped" by a lover for another, what qualities of the goddess did that other embody that you weren't manifesting with your partner?
7. Is there a "lost love" for whom you still yearn or feel nostalgia?
8. Are you considered vain person by friends or foes? How much time and money do you spend keeping yourself attractive? Are you frequently before the mirror, primping and fussing? Do you worry about the physical results of aging?
9. Is courtship or romance an extremely important aspect of love to you. What types of situations do you consider romantic?
10. Describe your romantic ideal: age, style of dress, behavior, education, income bracket, etc.
11. How many times a day do you become conscious of your sexual fantasies? Do you dream about sex frequently? Describe a recent sexual fantasy or dream.
12. How do you feel about pre-marital and extra-marital sex? Have you felt differently about this at other times, depending on your evolving morals or whether you were married or single at the time? Do you feel different about sexual standards for yourself and others?
13. Have you ever had a strong physical attraction for another who was socially forbidden to you--a teacher, doctor, employer, psychotherapist, etc.?
14. Have you ever had to learn how to sublimate sexual feelings into a more platonic type of relationship? or toward a higher ideal than personal desire?
15. Have you experienced the excitement of illicit or secret sexual relations? Were you addicted to this intense feeling of potential danger? What events brought the situation into the light of scrutiny by others?
16. Do you feel guilty over past sexual encounters or experience shame for past sexual adventures you might now consider immoral or ill-advised?
17. What is the balance between power motives and devotional love in your current relationships? Do you try to manipulate your lover(s)?
18. Do you use affairs or sexual fantasies to escape from the pressures of other aspects of life which seek your immediate attention for your development?
19. How are your mothering and nurturing qualities qualities being used right now? What creative prpjects are growing and developing? What are you attracting to you?
20. Who is inspiring and nurturing you? How are you indulging your senses?
The dialogue can move from a structured to a less structured form. Such mundane inquiries open up the process to flow where you can ask more personal, less interviewing style questions, letting the responses flow. When you find yourself responding with surprise at the responses of "the other", the process is working, making the psyche fluid and permeable. No one needs to know the content but yourself. It is a message from your deeper self. Such exercises stimulates inspiration and creativity.
Multimind
The dialogical tendency of the psyche has been noticed and used by both mystics and psychologists. Examples include meditative encounters with wise figures, such as Christ, the Beloved, an Inner Healer, guide or shaman figure. The dialogue might even take place with an animal or object. Other pluralistic spiritual constructs include the chakra system and the multiple states of consciousness circuit of the Tree of Life in Qabala.
Examples from psychology include "self talk," cognitive restructuring, ego states, psychodrama, "invisible guests." Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) and Psychosynthesis have the technique of the "Parts' Party," round-table discussion, or board meeting, giving voice to the various semi-autonomous subpersonalities. It provides a forum for the airing of conflicting views, empathic alignment, circumspect judgment, and personification of conscience. Transactional Analysis (T.A.) posits three dialogical ego-states--Parent, Adult, and Child. The dialogical content consists of "scripts, games and rackets."
Gestalt psychology uses dialogue such as the "two chair technique" to create imaginal spaces for therapeutic process. In these "virtual realities," point-of-view is shifted between the various entities imaginally engaged in the dialogue. The participant becomes the imaginal other, and speaks "as if" that other. The self takes the actual perspective of the other, outside the self. That other may be one or several dream figures, as well as familiar or unfamiliar people, in an imaginary social world. The other is "felt" to be there. Oneself is conceived of as I (self as subject) or Me (self as object, viewed as the main figure in the story of one's life).
I is observer; Me is observed. I is an author; Me is an actor in the psychodrama. I construes another person or being as a position I can occupy and this position creates an alternative perspective on the world and self. If that "other" is transpersonal in nature, the engagement becomes one of the ego with the unconscious (I-Thou), emphasizing the bodily nature of thought and imagination. The "I" constructs an analog space and metaphorically moves in this space. I is not a center of "control" but actively engaged with the autonomous flow of primal consciousness.
Transpersonal theory is wholly based on the "Dynamic-Dialectical Paradigm," conversations between the ego and the dynamic ground of psyche (Washburn, 1988). Its static representation is the "Structural-Hierarchal Paradigm." In the therapeutic context, Jungians refer to this dialectical process as "active imagination," engagement of the ego and the unconscious. Active imagination is patterned after the alchemical meditatio, which consisted of an imaginal dialogue between the alchemist and his alchemical process, personified in various forms. Active imagintion is a process in which the imagination and the images it throws up are experienced as something separate from the ego--a "thou" or an "other"--to which the ego can relate, and with which the ego can have a dialogue (Edinger, 1972, Ego and Archetype).
It is a dialectic of development, like the Hegelian "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis." Narration (storytelling) puts the general human condition into the particulars of experience. It locates experience in space and time, even imaginal space and time. Imaginal others, despite their invisible quality, are typically perceived as having a spatially separated position.
Metaphor -- what the experience is like -- is the structure producing coherent, ordered experiences. The metaphors are usually those of physical experience. Creative engagement with chaos means direct experience of self as a changing, pluralistic, multi-dimensional entity. This existential philosophy of "dynamic co-consciousness" is process-oriented, rather than "state-oriented" even though we employ the term state to imply a stable-yet-transitory condition. This is not an experience of a static "self" moving through process, but rather existential experience of self as process.
Based on a plurality of perspectives, a plurality of consciousness, a plurality of worlds, this notion means giving breath to many voices. Dialogue reveals the essential pristine nature of the character's psyche, and psyche's character. Our consensus consciousness is not our natural condition, but a construction within cultural constraints. This construction is semi-arbitrary. The constructivist approach in psychology conceives of the self as dialogical, a view that transcends both individualism and rationalism (Hermans, Kempen & van Loon, 1992). It is a concept of self that takes the role of the body, or embodied nature of the self into consideration. It is based in the notion that story telling is cross-cultural.
Narration is a root metaphor. These stories help order world and self. We can investigate this dialogical realm which is familiar from mysticism. It creates a mind-space with multiple positions possible for multiple selves. The result is a multiplicity of dialogically interacting selves, in a variety of "as if" (virtual) realities.
The free flow of fantasy as internal dialogues with various aspects of the self allows for creative development of higher thought. These fictions, like myth, may not correspond to reality, but they contain "constructs" which are freely fashioned of empirical elements. Constructs are ways in which some things are construed as being alike and yet different from others.
Co-consciousness on the individual level means plurality of selves; Plurality of consciousness is available to "both" participants simultaneously, from the infinite field of possibilities.
Temple Sleep a traditional way of non-interpretive dream incubation and healing. It also refers to hypnosis, and by extension to self-hypnosis.
Egyptian priest, Imhotep. (I-em-hotep, he comes in peace) is the great-grandfather of Hypnosis, or suggestive therapy, which can be traced back over 4000 years to ancient Egypt. The Egyptians used healing sanctuaries for curing all sorts of problems, both physical and mental, most of which today would be classed as psychological problems. Before falling asleep they were influenced by suggestions, in the hope of provoking dreams sent by the gods.
These healing sanctuaries were called "Sleep or Dream Temples." In these temples, the sick person was put into a trance like sleep; priests and priestesses then facilitated healing dreams to gain knowledge about the illnesses and to find a cure for the illnesses. Such dreams were themselves epiphanies with the inner healer. It is that contact, not interpretations, that is healing.
Healing took place while the person being cured was in a deep trance-like sleep. The god Asklepius could perform miraculous cures in the dreams. The priests used chanting and magical spells to put the patient into a trance, known as incubation. A person could be kept in this state for up to three days, during which time the priests using suggestions would help the person, through their dreams, to make contact with the god, thus helping them to obtain a cure for their illness. The temples were a place of spirits, and mysterious powers, a place to find mental and physical healing.
The people looking for a cure or an insight to their problems were called Seekers. The Seeker did not just go in to the temple; they had to wait for the right time to come. A Seeker had something on their mind, an ailment, an issue, and an inner quest to discover themselves. They came on a pilgrimage to seek an insight into their problems, to contact the healing god, to get a new vision that would heal, guide, or provide comfort.
They had to cleanse the body, mind and soul. They would meditate, fast, take hot baths, and make a sacrifice to the god. They looked for signs in their dreams. They would dream of the god healing them. A good dream would be one in which the god or a serpent would cure the wound by touching it. The dreams of the seeker contained the insightful seeds of their own healing.
Ritualistic methods include purifying baths, trance-inducing chanting, and symbolic sacrifices, The Greek treatment was referred to as incubation, and focused on prayers to Asklepius for healing. A similar Hebrew treatment was referred to as Kavanah, and involved focusing on letters of the Hebrew alphabet spelling the name of the Hebrew God. Sir Mortimer Wheeler unearthed a Roman Sleep temple at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire in 1928, with the assistance of a young J.R.R. Tolkien.
When a candidate for initiation into these mysteries had been prepared through various disciplines, the priest (hierophant) then led the candidate into a cave or tomb where he or she was put to sleep. The priest suggested the etheric body leave the initiate for three and a half days. During this time it was joined to the astral body and received through it impressions from the spiritual world. When the etheric body was brought back into the physical, the initiate was awakened by the priest and remembered what was experienced in the spiritual world. But while the etheric body was out of the physical, the latter would have appeared to an outsider to be dead.
SECOND SIGHT
http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_13_3_cohn.pdf
Second Sight and Family History: Pedigree and Segregation Analyses
This study concerns second sight, a psychic ability that has for centuries been believed, in Scotland and other traditions, to be hereditary. The ability manifests itself through the person having spontaneous vivid imagery through different senses which apparently gives information about a spatially or temporally distant event. A total of 130 family histories were constructed and examined using segregation analysis. Second sight seems to be consistent with an autosomal dominant mode of inheritance, particularly for small family sizes. People with the trait were also evenly distributed with respect to their birth order position, in line with the expectations of a genetic model. It is argued that if other studies find a similar mode of inheritance in other cultures, then second sight could be a creative mental ability where the hereditary aspect lies in the sensitivity of the sensory systems which convey the experiences.
Invoking the Gods
There is nothing to prevent us from including in our dialogues the calling up of godforms, who are found both in Jungian practice as archetypes and within our antic family lines. For example, having Aphrodite, Zeus, or Odin included in your genealogy adds an air of familiarity to the essentially universal phenomenon.
What you might ask of a grandparent might be very different than what a mere mortal might request of the gods. One should likely approach this as a ritual activity or at least an exercise in sacred space, which opens the timeless realm to penetration and assimilation of entangled information from the deepest layers of Being. Below is an example of Venus or Aphrodite. Many such dialogue outlines appear in my online book, PANTHEON: ARCHETYPAL GODS IN DAILY LIFE. http://holographicarchetypes.weebly.com/pantheon.html
PANTHEON, as a manual of personal self-discovery, is a practical guide to recognizing and realizing the origins and development of our individual characters and characteristics. As such, it leads to a growth of self-knowledge, and gives us insight into the traits and behaviors of our acquaintances and intimates. Pantheon provides not only background knowledge for reference, but also practical psychological technique which we can implement in our journey toward understanding.
One can gain access to the deeper psyche, soul, or imagination through both the rational and experiential methods. These are self-analysis and active imagination. Active imagination includes consciousness journeys deep into the psyche, identification, and internal dialogues with personified archetypes. It is the dialogical method. This is a way of building experiential relationships with archetypal forces--harmonizing with them, honoring them. These are "as if" real relationships, not taken literally.
These internal dialogues can be useful, revealing the autonomous dynamics and agendas at work in our lives. They reveal things to us we know, but don't know we know. We can use many methods for this communication, such as journal work, hypnosis, or ritual. These are moments where we create and enter sacred space. These relationships reveal the meaningfulness behind the many complications in our modern lives. The more we approach our individual wholeness, through expanding our awareness and experiences, the more we are likely to encounter these divine principles from the realm of imagination.
DIALOGUE WITH APHRODITE
Suggestions are given to kick-start the process but it can go in any productive direction you wish to follow, based on your own instinct and intuition. The goal as in any discussion is creating rapport with your counterpart -- a resonance or harmonization of essential nature, mood, and being that promotes perhaps even a quantum entanglement.
You are already entangled through your genetic heritage, whether or not you express genes from that particular ancestor. They are with you in a holistic or holographic way, where the part is contained in the whole, and the whole in every part. The same method can be employed with our less-divine ancestors. The content of your inquiry should be matched to the qualities, wisdom and timelines of your respondent.
Most people are interested in juicy tidbits, foreknowledge, signs or information about their once and future lovelife. We may be able to extract it, but we may or may not like what we find. If wishful thinking intrudes, the psychological exercise become an elaborately-staged daydream. We need to remain open yet focused, aware at a deeper level than normal.
Background
We all experience the personal aspects of Aphrodite as love and lust, and all forms of sensual pleasure. Neither men, women, nor the gods were immune to the charms of this goddess. In women she appears as the irresistibly attractive "other woman," mistress, flirt, or gold-digger. She creates the Don Juan type of personality. More positively she manifests in the deep physical and spiritual love between spouses, and in the perfect host or hostess, socially.
In projection, she appears as that other whom we find irresistibly attractive and sexy, despite social sanctions against such feelings. Or, we can project a magnetic rival. Through invasion or possession, we become that magnetic personality. Those who act out her promiscuity expose themselves to the dangers of various venereal diseases, including aids, legacy of the sexual revolution. By ceasing to identify exclusively with this archetype, we can dialogue with her in active imagination. She can inform us of the subconscious aspects of our relationship to our own sexuality.
The Archetype
Aphrodite is one of the most active and pleasantly aggressive of the goddesses, so she is easier to connect with than a remote goddess, like Artemis. When anima is projected in the physical world, Jung claimed she appears in three stages of development: 1) naive or elementary, 2) manipulative flirt, 3) conscious or inspirational. Aphrodite corresponds with the sophisticated manipulator, she uses her sexuality to get what she wants -- that is her script and game. She is no innocent thing, unaware of the devastation her charm can wreak. She knows what she has and uses it to her advantage at every chance.
She is dark, full-blooded and passionate. When we are unconsciously identified with her we are controlled by her unconscious power motives. Someone may lure us into an enchantment by being very charming at first. Perhaps the aim is immediate sensual gratification, or worse, aiming to disrupt a marriage. This type then uses seeming indifference to make themselves more desirable. They use wiles and tricks to attract another's attention, gifts, and strokes. They deliberately exploit the anima/animus projections of another onto themselves, using it for personal advantage. This is the motivation of the flirt. In an egotistical identification with Aphrodite, a person becomes a lady-killer or man-killer, the stud, sex kitten, gigolo, whore, or other role-bound image.
Preparation
The strength of the identification depends on what others archetypes are at work in the soul. For example, a strong Hera aspect would constantly be urging toward marriage rather than remaining as mistress or philanderer; Athena would caution consideration of the implications on career of promiscuous behavior or reputation; Artemis would move us to be more modest and pious if not chaste. On a more pragmatic level, Artemis might say that to steal another's man violates the sisterhood all women share.
Considering the various aspects and manifestations of Aphrodite, think back over all the ways she has entered your life over the years, creating pleasure or leaving a trail of pain. Remember your sexual awakening, first love, your rivals, attention-getting gambits. Consider what areas of your life are in disharmony with her principles, or where you may have identified with her too exclusively. Consider how your attitudes toward sexuality may have changed over different periods in your life.
The Method
Sitting quietly in a dimly lit room with your journal open, visualize any of the familiar images of Aphrodite or Venus from sculpture and paintings of the masters. Alternatively, she may take a modern form as an admired actress or actor who you find irresistible, but this mortal form could never carry all of the archetypal potencies, so it is best to work toward visualizing a traditional forms.
You may also use a Tarot card such as THE EMPRESS, which corresponds with her. Greet her and begin discussing those questions that are unresolved regarding your physical and aesthetic passions. Then let her speak about any subconscious patterns she may know about you. Be careful--she may try to seduce you or use her wiles in any number of ways. She will guard any attention you shower on her jealously, unless your inform her about certain aspects of your mortal life. Let her know your human limitations and your ethical standards within which she must learn to operate. She is passion personified.
APHRODITE IN YOUR LIFE
1. What were your emotional reactions to your first sexual experience?
2. Have you ever fallen in love-at-first-sight? Did the other reciprocate? How long did this feeling last? Did it develop into mature, realistic love?
3. Have you ever been addicted to any sensual pleasures?
4. Have you ever felt insecure about your looks or attractiveness and been compulsively driven to prove that you were sexy or desirable ? What effect did this have on those around you?
5. Were you ever the "other woman" or "other man"? How did you feel about it?
6. If you have ever ben "dumped" by a lover for another, what qualities of the goddess did that other embody that you weren't manifesting with your partner?
7. Is there a "lost love" for whom you still yearn or feel nostalgia?
8. Are you considered vain person by friends or foes? How much time and money do you spend keeping yourself attractive? Are you frequently before the mirror, primping and fussing? Do you worry about the physical results of aging?
9. Is courtship or romance an extremely important aspect of love to you. What types of situations do you consider romantic?
10. Describe your romantic ideal: age, style of dress, behavior, education, income bracket, etc.
11. How many times a day do you become conscious of your sexual fantasies? Do you dream about sex frequently? Describe a recent sexual fantasy or dream.
12. How do you feel about pre-marital and extra-marital sex? Have you felt differently about this at other times, depending on your evolving morals or whether you were married or single at the time? Do you feel different about sexual standards for yourself and others?
13. Have you ever had a strong physical attraction for another who was socially forbidden to you--a teacher, doctor, employer, psychotherapist, etc.?
14. Have you ever had to learn how to sublimate sexual feelings into a more platonic type of relationship? or toward a higher ideal than personal desire?
15. Have you experienced the excitement of illicit or secret sexual relations? Were you addicted to this intense feeling of potential danger? What events brought the situation into the light of scrutiny by others?
16. Do you feel guilty over past sexual encounters or experience shame for past sexual adventures you might now consider immoral or ill-advised?
17. What is the balance between power motives and devotional love in your current relationships? Do you try to manipulate your lover(s)?
18. Do you use affairs or sexual fantasies to escape from the pressures of other aspects of life which seek your immediate attention for your development?
19. How are your mothering and nurturing qualities qualities being used right now? What creative prpjects are growing and developing? What are you attracting to you?
20. Who is inspiring and nurturing you? How are you indulging your senses?
The dialogue can move from a structured to a less structured form. Such mundane inquiries open up the process to flow where you can ask more personal, less interviewing style questions, letting the responses flow. When you find yourself responding with surprise at the responses of "the other", the process is working, making the psyche fluid and permeable. No one needs to know the content but yourself. It is a message from your deeper self. Such exercises stimulates inspiration and creativity.
Multimind
The dialogical tendency of the psyche has been noticed and used by both mystics and psychologists. Examples include meditative encounters with wise figures, such as Christ, the Beloved, an Inner Healer, guide or shaman figure. The dialogue might even take place with an animal or object. Other pluralistic spiritual constructs include the chakra system and the multiple states of consciousness circuit of the Tree of Life in Qabala.
Examples from psychology include "self talk," cognitive restructuring, ego states, psychodrama, "invisible guests." Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) and Psychosynthesis have the technique of the "Parts' Party," round-table discussion, or board meeting, giving voice to the various semi-autonomous subpersonalities. It provides a forum for the airing of conflicting views, empathic alignment, circumspect judgment, and personification of conscience. Transactional Analysis (T.A.) posits three dialogical ego-states--Parent, Adult, and Child. The dialogical content consists of "scripts, games and rackets."
Gestalt psychology uses dialogue such as the "two chair technique" to create imaginal spaces for therapeutic process. In these "virtual realities," point-of-view is shifted between the various entities imaginally engaged in the dialogue. The participant becomes the imaginal other, and speaks "as if" that other. The self takes the actual perspective of the other, outside the self. That other may be one or several dream figures, as well as familiar or unfamiliar people, in an imaginary social world. The other is "felt" to be there. Oneself is conceived of as I (self as subject) or Me (self as object, viewed as the main figure in the story of one's life).
I is observer; Me is observed. I is an author; Me is an actor in the psychodrama. I construes another person or being as a position I can occupy and this position creates an alternative perspective on the world and self. If that "other" is transpersonal in nature, the engagement becomes one of the ego with the unconscious (I-Thou), emphasizing the bodily nature of thought and imagination. The "I" constructs an analog space and metaphorically moves in this space. I is not a center of "control" but actively engaged with the autonomous flow of primal consciousness.
Transpersonal theory is wholly based on the "Dynamic-Dialectical Paradigm," conversations between the ego and the dynamic ground of psyche (Washburn, 1988). Its static representation is the "Structural-Hierarchal Paradigm." In the therapeutic context, Jungians refer to this dialectical process as "active imagination," engagement of the ego and the unconscious. Active imagination is patterned after the alchemical meditatio, which consisted of an imaginal dialogue between the alchemist and his alchemical process, personified in various forms. Active imagintion is a process in which the imagination and the images it throws up are experienced as something separate from the ego--a "thou" or an "other"--to which the ego can relate, and with which the ego can have a dialogue (Edinger, 1972, Ego and Archetype).
It is a dialectic of development, like the Hegelian "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis." Narration (storytelling) puts the general human condition into the particulars of experience. It locates experience in space and time, even imaginal space and time. Imaginal others, despite their invisible quality, are typically perceived as having a spatially separated position.
Metaphor -- what the experience is like -- is the structure producing coherent, ordered experiences. The metaphors are usually those of physical experience. Creative engagement with chaos means direct experience of self as a changing, pluralistic, multi-dimensional entity. This existential philosophy of "dynamic co-consciousness" is process-oriented, rather than "state-oriented" even though we employ the term state to imply a stable-yet-transitory condition. This is not an experience of a static "self" moving through process, but rather existential experience of self as process.
Based on a plurality of perspectives, a plurality of consciousness, a plurality of worlds, this notion means giving breath to many voices. Dialogue reveals the essential pristine nature of the character's psyche, and psyche's character. Our consensus consciousness is not our natural condition, but a construction within cultural constraints. This construction is semi-arbitrary. The constructivist approach in psychology conceives of the self as dialogical, a view that transcends both individualism and rationalism (Hermans, Kempen & van Loon, 1992). It is a concept of self that takes the role of the body, or embodied nature of the self into consideration. It is based in the notion that story telling is cross-cultural.
Narration is a root metaphor. These stories help order world and self. We can investigate this dialogical realm which is familiar from mysticism. It creates a mind-space with multiple positions possible for multiple selves. The result is a multiplicity of dialogically interacting selves, in a variety of "as if" (virtual) realities.
The free flow of fantasy as internal dialogues with various aspects of the self allows for creative development of higher thought. These fictions, like myth, may not correspond to reality, but they contain "constructs" which are freely fashioned of empirical elements. Constructs are ways in which some things are construed as being alike and yet different from others.
Co-consciousness on the individual level means plurality of selves; Plurality of consciousness is available to "both" participants simultaneously, from the infinite field of possibilities.
REFERENCES
At a Journal Workshop by Ira Progoff, 1975.
The Practice of Process Meditation by Ira Progoff, 1980.
At a Journal Workshop: Writing to Access the Power of the Unconscious and Evoke Creative Ability by Ira Progoff, 1992. ISBN 0-87477-638-4
Miller, Iona, Pantheon, Archetypal Gods in Daily Life, OAK, 1984.
Miller, Iona, THE VARIETIES OF VIRTUAL EXPERIENCE: VIRTUAL REALITIES BEYOND THE DIALOGICAL SELF, Chaosophy 93, Asklepia Foundation. http://holographicarchetypes.weebly.com/multimind.html
Sasha Alex Lessin 12:55pm Sep 19 My teacher, Dr. Hal Stone, studied with Jung and with his wife, Dr. Sidra Stone, expanded Jung's work into Voice Dialogue Centering.
Here's a bit on it:
DIALOGUE INNER VOICES, WITNESS & CENTER by Sasha Lessin, Ph.D.
You CENTER yourself when you hold tension between two or more opposed inner voices. Centered, you recognize, embrace and coordinate your protective, vulnerable, instinctual and spiritual subselves. You center more easily when you review how you develop inner selves.
If you hide a subself from yourself or your lovers, you sour your relating with them. You project the hurt, fearful or angry subpersonality you won’t let yourself feel onto your lovers. You imagine they enact the sub you won’t acknowledge in yourself. You react to your lovers as though they, not you, were angry, scared or hurt. When you project these emotions you won’t see in yourself onto others, you distance yourself from them. Get over these pernicious do-loops and teach your seekers how.
Express your hidden inner voices, share your hurts and insecurities with your lovers. Then say how you harbor the same traits that you hate in them. Help other people do likewise.
Center yourself and access, own and integrate your voices concerned with relationships and sexuality. Balance voices that seem opposed. Manage emotional, defensive, instinctual, spiritual and everyday subselves. Remember, however, to avoid sanctimony that hides in the thought that you’re centered and forever enlightened. Your Center’s dynamic; whatever today you regard as your Center will tomorrow seem limited as you embrace underdeveloped and new subselves. The exercises in this section teach you--then you teach your lovers and seekers--how to recognize, accept and coordinate subselves and flow into ever-evolving centering.
VOICES DEVELOP
As baby and little kid you needed parents' love to live, get along and feel okay. You imprinted neediness. Your Inner Child, a subself, stays needy forever.
The Child feels things with its heart, remembers everything it felt. It stays sensitive.
The Child gives or retracts warmth as you relate to people. It says who you can trust. It says to leave painful situations you can't change.
Your Child can feel insecure. Other people can scare, shame or hurt it. The Child needs protection.
So you develop PROTECTIVE VOICES to make people like–or not hurt--you. Protective voices say how to get what you want. They say what to do and what to avoid so people--especially your family--won't scorn, shun, neglect, punish or abuse you.
Protective voices may hide vulnerable and instinctual voices–hurt, selfish, sexual and angry voices. If parents disliked your infantile, psychic, spiritual, creative or archetypal voices, you may inhibit or hide these voices from your lovers. You may even repress them from your own awareness. Then you project hidden and unconscious voices and react with discomfort or envy when you see them in your lovers and other people. If you repress your emotional, sexual, angry or spiritual subs, you see lovers as weak, lusty, aggressive, artistic or saintly and feel contemptuous, jealous or envious.
Protective Voice Development Example
At age 5, my Inner Critic saved me from Dad’s anger and won me his approbation. But first, I experienced his anger. When I saw Mom nursing my baby sister, I felt jealous, for I’d only been bottle fed. Mom covered her breast and said, “Don’t stare. Shelley’s a girl, so I can just cuddle her because she’s just going to marry someone and doesn’t need to study like you. Now go study your verb wheel.”
I hated baby Shelley. When I thought No one saw, I sneaked into her room and twisted her foot. She cried. Dad ran in. “Don’t hurt your little sister. Make nice to her; pet her like you pet your kitty,” he commanded.
A few days later, no one guarded the baby so I again went to scare and hurt her. . But before I got her, in my own head I replayed Dad’s command, “Don’t hurt the baby.” This inner voice, my Inner Critic, criticized me internally before I hurt her. It let me know internally that if I acted out my Jealous Voice’s impulse, my vulnerable Inner Child would experience fear and hurt from Dad’s anger. The Critic converted what would have been an attack to a love gesture. Rather than hurt Shelley, I stroked her hair. She smiled. As our eyes met, we fell in love.
My parents noticed and praised my behavior toward Shelley. My Critic saved me from disapproval and won me praise. Thus do protective voices develop.
If your parents encourage you to assert yourself, enjoy sex, do art and express spirituality, your Aphrodite, Artist and Saint can also contribute to, or even rule you. You show the voices your rearers revere (and maybe your Reasoner, Pleaser, Jealous voice and Conservative Selves) to other people and to yourself. The selves you think you are and ones you show others are your primary selves.
Primary selves help you minimize or even forget you feel vulnerable, scared, insecure, hurt. You forget you feel angry, sexy, creative or spiritual--you may forget your shadow and you forget your Child.
http://www.schooloftantra.net/articles/VoiceDialogue/VoiceDialogueArticles.htm
Here's a bit on it:
DIALOGUE INNER VOICES, WITNESS & CENTER by Sasha Lessin, Ph.D.
You CENTER yourself when you hold tension between two or more opposed inner voices. Centered, you recognize, embrace and coordinate your protective, vulnerable, instinctual and spiritual subselves. You center more easily when you review how you develop inner selves.
If you hide a subself from yourself or your lovers, you sour your relating with them. You project the hurt, fearful or angry subpersonality you won’t let yourself feel onto your lovers. You imagine they enact the sub you won’t acknowledge in yourself. You react to your lovers as though they, not you, were angry, scared or hurt. When you project these emotions you won’t see in yourself onto others, you distance yourself from them. Get over these pernicious do-loops and teach your seekers how.
Express your hidden inner voices, share your hurts and insecurities with your lovers. Then say how you harbor the same traits that you hate in them. Help other people do likewise.
Center yourself and access, own and integrate your voices concerned with relationships and sexuality. Balance voices that seem opposed. Manage emotional, defensive, instinctual, spiritual and everyday subselves. Remember, however, to avoid sanctimony that hides in the thought that you’re centered and forever enlightened. Your Center’s dynamic; whatever today you regard as your Center will tomorrow seem limited as you embrace underdeveloped and new subselves. The exercises in this section teach you--then you teach your lovers and seekers--how to recognize, accept and coordinate subselves and flow into ever-evolving centering.
VOICES DEVELOP
As baby and little kid you needed parents' love to live, get along and feel okay. You imprinted neediness. Your Inner Child, a subself, stays needy forever.
The Child feels things with its heart, remembers everything it felt. It stays sensitive.
The Child gives or retracts warmth as you relate to people. It says who you can trust. It says to leave painful situations you can't change.
Your Child can feel insecure. Other people can scare, shame or hurt it. The Child needs protection.
So you develop PROTECTIVE VOICES to make people like–or not hurt--you. Protective voices say how to get what you want. They say what to do and what to avoid so people--especially your family--won't scorn, shun, neglect, punish or abuse you.
Protective voices may hide vulnerable and instinctual voices–hurt, selfish, sexual and angry voices. If parents disliked your infantile, psychic, spiritual, creative or archetypal voices, you may inhibit or hide these voices from your lovers. You may even repress them from your own awareness. Then you project hidden and unconscious voices and react with discomfort or envy when you see them in your lovers and other people. If you repress your emotional, sexual, angry or spiritual subs, you see lovers as weak, lusty, aggressive, artistic or saintly and feel contemptuous, jealous or envious.
Protective Voice Development Example
At age 5, my Inner Critic saved me from Dad’s anger and won me his approbation. But first, I experienced his anger. When I saw Mom nursing my baby sister, I felt jealous, for I’d only been bottle fed. Mom covered her breast and said, “Don’t stare. Shelley’s a girl, so I can just cuddle her because she’s just going to marry someone and doesn’t need to study like you. Now go study your verb wheel.”
I hated baby Shelley. When I thought No one saw, I sneaked into her room and twisted her foot. She cried. Dad ran in. “Don’t hurt your little sister. Make nice to her; pet her like you pet your kitty,” he commanded.
A few days later, no one guarded the baby so I again went to scare and hurt her. . But before I got her, in my own head I replayed Dad’s command, “Don’t hurt the baby.” This inner voice, my Inner Critic, criticized me internally before I hurt her. It let me know internally that if I acted out my Jealous Voice’s impulse, my vulnerable Inner Child would experience fear and hurt from Dad’s anger. The Critic converted what would have been an attack to a love gesture. Rather than hurt Shelley, I stroked her hair. She smiled. As our eyes met, we fell in love.
My parents noticed and praised my behavior toward Shelley. My Critic saved me from disapproval and won me praise. Thus do protective voices develop.
If your parents encourage you to assert yourself, enjoy sex, do art and express spirituality, your Aphrodite, Artist and Saint can also contribute to, or even rule you. You show the voices your rearers revere (and maybe your Reasoner, Pleaser, Jealous voice and Conservative Selves) to other people and to yourself. The selves you think you are and ones you show others are your primary selves.
Primary selves help you minimize or even forget you feel vulnerable, scared, insecure, hurt. You forget you feel angry, sexy, creative or spiritual--you may forget your shadow and you forget your Child.
http://www.schooloftantra.net/articles/VoiceDialogue/VoiceDialogueArticles.htm
Through giving my soul all I could give, I came to the place of the soul and found that this place was a hot desert, desolate and unfruitful. No culture of the mind is enough to make a garden out of your soul. I had cultivated my spirit, the spirit of this time in me, but not that spirit of the depths that turns to the things of the soul, the world of the soul. The soul has its own peculiar world. Only the self enters in there, or the man who has completely become his self, he who is neither in events, nor in men, nor in his thoughts. Through the turning of my desire from things and men, I turned my' self away from things and men, but that is precisely how I became the secure prey of my thoughts, yes, I wholly became my thoughts.
~Carl Jung; Red Book.
I also had to detach myself from my thoughts through turning my desire away from them. And at once, I noticed that my self became a desert, where only the sun of unquiet desire burned. I was overwhelmed by the endless infertility of this desert. Even if something could have thrived there, the creative power of desire was still absent. Wherever the creative power of desire is, there springs the soil's own seed. But do not forget to wait. Did you not see that when your creative force turned to the world, how the dead things moved under it and through it, how they grew and prospered, and how your thoughts flowed in rich rivers? If your creative force now turns to the place of the soul, you will see how your soul becomes green and how its field bears wonderful fruit. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
I know that everything you say, Oh my soul, is also my thought. But I hardly live according to it. The soul said, "How; tell me, do you then believe that your thoughts should help you?" I would always like to refer to the fact that I am a human being, just a human being who is weak and sometimes does not do his best. But the soul said, "Is this what you think it means to be human?" You are hard, my soul, but you are right. How little we still commit ourselves to living. We should grow like a tree that likewise does not know its law. We tie ourselves up with intentions, not mindful of the fact that intention is the limitation, yes, the exclusion of life. We believe that we can illuminate the darkness with an intention, and in that way aim past the light. How can we presume to want to know in advance, from where the light will come to us? ~Carl Jung, Red Book.
On account of my thoughts, I had left myself; therefore my self became hungry and made God into a selfish thought. If I leave myself my hunger will drive me to find my self in my object, that is, in my thought. Therefore you love reasonable and orderly thoughts, since you could not endure it if your self was in disordered, that is, unsuitable thoughts. Through your selfish wish, you pushed out of your thoughts everything that you do not consider ordered, that is, unfitting. You create order according to what you know, you do not know the thoughts of chaos, and yet they exist. My thoughts are not my self and my I does not embrace the thought. Your thought has this meaning and that, not just one, but many meanings. No one knows how many.
My thoughts are not my self but exactly like the things of the world, alive and dead.199 Just as I am not damaged through living in a partly chaotic world, so too I am not damaged if I live in my partly chaotic thought world. Thoughts are natural events that you do not possess, and whose meaning you only imperfectly recognize. Thoughts grow in me like a forest, populated by many different animals. But man is domineering in his thinking, and therefore he kills the pleasure of the forest and that of the wild animals. Man is violent in his desire, and he himself becomes a forest and a forest animal. Just as I have freedom in the world, I also have freedom in my thoughts. Freedom is conditional. ~Carl Jung, Red Book.
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