Quotes
“My soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak. I call you—are you there? I have returned. I am here again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you again.” --Jung, The Red Book, p. 232
My contention that man is born equipped with a highly differentiated and fully developed brain with innumerable attributes has often met with antagonism. Most people continue to believe that everything they have become, every reaction of their psychic ego to everyday occurrences, is determined by their education and their environment. Few people know anything about the ancestral soul and even fewer believe in it. Aren't we all the carriers of the entire history of mankind? Why is it so difficult to believe that each of us has two souls? ...
Quite often the impersonal and the personal psyche are even in direct opposition. There are hundreds of examples which demonstrate to the psychologist that two souls live in every man. Exercising their imagination—which I call the mother of human consciousness—many of my patients painted pictures and described dreams which displayed a strange conformity with definite laws and showed peculiar parallels to Indian and Chinese temple, images. Where were these people supposed to have obtained knowledge about the ancient temple cultures of the Far East? I have treated patients who had visions about events which happened hundreds of years ago. All this can come only from the unconscious, the impersonal soul, the finished brain of the new born in Contemporary man is but the latest ripe fruit on the tree of the human race. None of us knows what we know. ~Carl Jung [Interview in 1932 found in C.G. Jung Speaking; Pages 57-58.
My contention that man is born equipped with a highly differentiated and fully developed brain with innumerable attributes has often met with antagonism. Most people continue to believe that everything they have become, every reaction of their psychic ego to everyday occurrences, is determined by their education and their environment. Few people know anything about the ancestral soul and even fewer believe in it. Aren't we all the carriers of the entire history of mankind? Why is it so difficult to believe that each of us has two souls? ...
Quite often the impersonal and the personal psyche are even in direct opposition. There are hundreds of examples which demonstrate to the psychologist that two souls live in every man. Exercising their imagination—which I call the mother of human consciousness—many of my patients painted pictures and described dreams which displayed a strange conformity with definite laws and showed peculiar parallels to Indian and Chinese temple, images. Where were these people supposed to have obtained knowledge about the ancient temple cultures of the Far East? I have treated patients who had visions about events which happened hundreds of years ago. All this can come only from the unconscious, the impersonal soul, the finished brain of the new born in Contemporary man is but the latest ripe fruit on the tree of the human race. None of us knows what we know. ~Carl Jung [Interview in 1932 found in C.G. Jung Speaking; Pages 57-58.
Tree arising! O pure ascendance!
Orpheus Sings! Towering tree within the ear!
Everywhere stillness, yet in this abeyance:
seeds of change and new beginnings near.
Creatures of silence emerged from the clear
unfettered forest, from dens, from lairs.
Not from shyness, this silence of theirs;
nor from any hint of fear,
simply from listening. Brutal shriek and roar
dwindled in their hearts. Where stood a mere
hut to house the passions of the ear,
constructed of longing darkly drear,
haphazardly wrought from front to rear,
you built them a temple at listening's core.
~Rainer Rilke
Orpheus Sings! Towering tree within the ear!
Everywhere stillness, yet in this abeyance:
seeds of change and new beginnings near.
Creatures of silence emerged from the clear
unfettered forest, from dens, from lairs.
Not from shyness, this silence of theirs;
nor from any hint of fear,
simply from listening. Brutal shriek and roar
dwindled in their hearts. Where stood a mere
hut to house the passions of the ear,
constructed of longing darkly drear,
haphazardly wrought from front to rear,
you built them a temple at listening's core.
~Rainer Rilke
He sees the tree of life, whose roots reach into Hell and whose top touches Heaven. He also no longer knows differences: Who is right? What is holy? What is genuine? What is good? What is correct? He knows only one difference: the difference between below and above. For he sees that the tree of life grows from below to above, and that it has its crown at the top, clearly differentiated from the roots. To him this is unquestionable. Hence he knows the way to salvation.
To unlearn all distinctions save that concerning direction is part of your salvation. Hence you free yourself from the old curse of the knowledge of good and evil. Because you separated good from evil according to your best appraisal and aspired only to the good and denied the evil that you committed nevertheless and ailed to accept, your roots no longer suckled the dark nourishment of the depths and your tree became sick and withered.
Therefore the ancients said that after Adam had eaten the apple, the tree of paradise withered. Your life needs the dark. But if you know that it is evil, you can no longer accept it and you suffer anguish and you do not know why: Nor can you accept it as evil, else your good will reject you. Nor can you deny it since you know good and evil. Because of this the knowledge of good and evil was an insurmountable curse.
But if you return to primal chaos and if you feel and recognize that which hangs stretched between the two unbearable poles of fire, you will notice that you can no longer separate good and evil conclusively, neither through feeling nor through knowledge, but that you can discern the direction of growth only from below to above. You thus forget the distinction between good and evil, and you no longer know it as long as your tree grows from below to above. But as soon as growth stops, what was united in growth falls apart and once more you recognize good and evil.
You can never deny your knowledge of good and evil to yourself so that you could betray your good in order to live evil. For as soon as you separate good and evil, you recognize them. They are united only in growth. But you grow if you stand still in the greatest doubt, and therefore steadfastness in great doubt is' a veritable flower of life.
He who cannot bear doubt does not bear himself. Such a one is doubtful; he does not grow and hence he does not live. Doubt is the sign of the strongest and the weakest. The strong have doubt, but doubt has the weak. Therefore the weakest is close to the strongest, and if he can say to his doubt: "I have you," then he is the strongest. But no one can say yes to his doubt, unless he endures wide-open chaos. Because there are so many among us who can talk about anything, pay heed to what they live. What someone says can be very much or very little. Thus examine his life. My speech is neither light nor dark, since it is the speech of someone who is growing. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 301
To unlearn all distinctions save that concerning direction is part of your salvation. Hence you free yourself from the old curse of the knowledge of good and evil. Because you separated good from evil according to your best appraisal and aspired only to the good and denied the evil that you committed nevertheless and ailed to accept, your roots no longer suckled the dark nourishment of the depths and your tree became sick and withered.
Therefore the ancients said that after Adam had eaten the apple, the tree of paradise withered. Your life needs the dark. But if you know that it is evil, you can no longer accept it and you suffer anguish and you do not know why: Nor can you accept it as evil, else your good will reject you. Nor can you deny it since you know good and evil. Because of this the knowledge of good and evil was an insurmountable curse.
But if you return to primal chaos and if you feel and recognize that which hangs stretched between the two unbearable poles of fire, you will notice that you can no longer separate good and evil conclusively, neither through feeling nor through knowledge, but that you can discern the direction of growth only from below to above. You thus forget the distinction between good and evil, and you no longer know it as long as your tree grows from below to above. But as soon as growth stops, what was united in growth falls apart and once more you recognize good and evil.
You can never deny your knowledge of good and evil to yourself so that you could betray your good in order to live evil. For as soon as you separate good and evil, you recognize them. They are united only in growth. But you grow if you stand still in the greatest doubt, and therefore steadfastness in great doubt is' a veritable flower of life.
He who cannot bear doubt does not bear himself. Such a one is doubtful; he does not grow and hence he does not live. Doubt is the sign of the strongest and the weakest. The strong have doubt, but doubt has the weak. Therefore the weakest is close to the strongest, and if he can say to his doubt: "I have you," then he is the strongest. But no one can say yes to his doubt, unless he endures wide-open chaos. Because there are so many among us who can talk about anything, pay heed to what they live. What someone says can be very much or very little. Thus examine his life. My speech is neither light nor dark, since it is the speech of someone who is growing. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 301
"Know that the sun is your father,the moon your mother. The wind bears you in its womb and the earth nurses you. You are more than your body, more than your emotions, and more than your mind. You are something else. From you will come the golden flower,the alchemical essence. Of this no man may speak. Such matters must be transmitted in mystical terms like employing fables and parables. The purpose of life is to square the circle. The four, the three and the two must become one. From the marriage of the opposites,the royal marriage of king and the queen is born the philosophers stone,the fifth essence".- Carl Gustav Jung
"When I worked in my family tree, I understood the strange communion of the destiny that unites me to my ancestors. I had the strong feeling that it was under the influence of events and problems that were incomplete and unresolved by my parents, my grandparents, and my other ancestors. I had the impression that there is often in the family an impersonal Karma transmitted from parents to children. I always knew that I had to answer questions already asked by my ancestors or I had to conclude, or continue on the previously unresolved issues". ~Carl Jung [At the Dawn of the 21st Century what do we do for our Dead?]
What the ancients did for their dead! You seem to believe that you can absolve yourself from the care of the dead, and from the work that they so greatly demand, since what is dead is past. You excuse yourself with your disbelief in the immortality of the soul. Do you think that the dead do not exist because you have' devised the impossibility of immortality? You believe in your idols of words. The dead produce effects, that is sufficient. In the inner world there is no explaining away, as little as you can explain away the sea in the outer world. You must finally understand your purpose in explaining away, namely to seek protection. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
What the ancients did for their dead! You seem to believe that you can absolve yourself from the care of the dead, and from the work that they so greatly demand, since what is dead is past. You excuse yourself with your disbelief in the immortality of the soul. Do you think that the dead do not exist because you have' devised the impossibility of immortality? You believe in your idols of words. The dead produce effects, that is sufficient. In the inner world there is no explaining away, as little as you can explain away the sea in the outer world. You must finally understand your purpose in explaining away, namely to seek protection. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
GENEALOGY IS A WAY OF KNOWING
Your Genetic Matrix, Archetypes & the Collective Unconscious
Your Own 'Book of the Dead'
"My name is not my own, it is borrowed from my ancestors. I must return it unstained. My honor is not my own, it is borrowed from my descendants, I must give it to them unbroken. Our blood is not our own, it is a gift to generations yet unborn. We should carry it with responsibility." --Vincent Enlund
KNOW THYSELF
On the portals of the Temple of Delphi it is written,
"My advice to you, whoever you may be, Oh you who desire to explore the Mysteries of Nature; if you do not discover within yourself that which you seek, neither will you find it without. If you ignore the excellence of your own house, how can you aspire to find excellence elsewhere? Within you is hidden the treasure of treasures. Oh Man! Know thyself, and you will know the universe and the Gods.
But the more we become conscious of ourselves through self-knowledge, and act accordingly, the more the layer of the personal unconscious that is superimposed on the collective unconscious will be diminished. In this way there arises a consciousness which is no longer imprisoned in the petty, oversensitive, personal world of the ego, but participates freely in the wider world of objective interests. ~Carl Jung
"Reflection should be understood not simply as an act of thought, but rather as an
attitude. It is privilege born of human freedom in contradistinction to the compulsion of
natural law. As the word itself testifies reflection means literally bending back, reflection is
a spiritual act that runs counter to the natural process; an act whereby we stop, call
something to mind, form a picture, and take up a relation to and come to terms with what
we have seen. It should, therefore, be understood as an act of becoming conscious."
--C.G. Jung
Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books
but lives in our very blood? ~Carl Jung
The Unconscious believes in Life after Death. ~Carl Jung
"The body as a whole, so it seems to me, is a pattern of behavior, and man as a whole is an archetype." ~Carl Jung; Letter to Medard Boss June 27, 1947l
"You are an image of the unending world, all the last mysteries of becoming and passing away live in you. If you did not possess all this, how could you know?"
~Jung, Red Book
"We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us." ~Joseph Campbell
“When you look inside yourself, you see the universe and all its stars in infinity. The result is an infinite mystery within yourself as great as the one without. “ --Arthur Eddington
"The self is like a crowd", says Jung (Jung 1988, p. 102) "when people integrate their unconscious (...) it is as if one man were becoming a whole town." (Jung 1988, p. 827). I could think of no better way of starting a presentation on the theme of "multiplicity" than with this quotation of Jung taken from his Seminars on Zarathustra. Inner multiplicity is a natural state of any human psyche. Individuation consequently can be understood as a process of engaging in a dynamic relationship with the elements of one's "inner village", thereby responding to the psyche’s natural tendency towards wholeness." --Diane Cousineau Brutsche
The mind which is in each of us is able to comprehend all other things, but has not the capability of understanding itself. For as the eye sees all other things, but cannot see itself, so also the mind perceives the nature of other things but cannot understand itself. For if it does, let it tell us what it is, or what kind of thing it is, whether it is a spirit, or blood, or fire, or air, or any other substance: or even only so much whether it is a substance at all, or something incorporeal. Are not those men then simple who speculate on the essence of God? For how can they who are ignorant of the nature of the essence of their own soul, have any accurate knowledge of the soul of the universe? For the soul of the universe is according to our definition, -- God.
~Philo the Jew; Allegorical Interpretations I.
"And just as in the past each civilization was the vehicle of its own mythology, developing in character as its myth became progressively interpreted, analyzed, and elucidated by its leading minds, so in this modern world – where the application of science to the fields of practical life has now dissolved all cultural horizons, so that no separate civilization can ever develop again – each individual is the center of a mythology of his own, of which his own intelligible character is the Incarnate God, so to say, whom his empirically questing consciousness is to find. The aphorism of Delphi, 'Know thyself,' is the motto. And not Rome, not Mecca, not Jerusalem, Sinai, or Benares, but each and every 'thou' on earth is the center of the world, in the sense of that formula quoted from the twelfth century 'Book of the Twenty-four Philosophers,' of God 'as an intelligible sphere, whose center is everywhere.'" --Joseph Campbell, "The Masks of God, Volume IV: Creative Mythology," p. 36
Your Genetic Matrix, Archetypes & the Collective Unconscious
Your Own 'Book of the Dead'
"My name is not my own, it is borrowed from my ancestors. I must return it unstained. My honor is not my own, it is borrowed from my descendants, I must give it to them unbroken. Our blood is not our own, it is a gift to generations yet unborn. We should carry it with responsibility." --Vincent Enlund
KNOW THYSELF
On the portals of the Temple of Delphi it is written,
"My advice to you, whoever you may be, Oh you who desire to explore the Mysteries of Nature; if you do not discover within yourself that which you seek, neither will you find it without. If you ignore the excellence of your own house, how can you aspire to find excellence elsewhere? Within you is hidden the treasure of treasures. Oh Man! Know thyself, and you will know the universe and the Gods.
But the more we become conscious of ourselves through self-knowledge, and act accordingly, the more the layer of the personal unconscious that is superimposed on the collective unconscious will be diminished. In this way there arises a consciousness which is no longer imprisoned in the petty, oversensitive, personal world of the ego, but participates freely in the wider world of objective interests. ~Carl Jung
"Reflection should be understood not simply as an act of thought, but rather as an
attitude. It is privilege born of human freedom in contradistinction to the compulsion of
natural law. As the word itself testifies reflection means literally bending back, reflection is
a spiritual act that runs counter to the natural process; an act whereby we stop, call
something to mind, form a picture, and take up a relation to and come to terms with what
we have seen. It should, therefore, be understood as an act of becoming conscious."
--C.G. Jung
Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books
but lives in our very blood? ~Carl Jung
The Unconscious believes in Life after Death. ~Carl Jung
"The body as a whole, so it seems to me, is a pattern of behavior, and man as a whole is an archetype." ~Carl Jung; Letter to Medard Boss June 27, 1947l
"You are an image of the unending world, all the last mysteries of becoming and passing away live in you. If you did not possess all this, how could you know?"
~Jung, Red Book
"We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us." ~Joseph Campbell
“When you look inside yourself, you see the universe and all its stars in infinity. The result is an infinite mystery within yourself as great as the one without. “ --Arthur Eddington
"The self is like a crowd", says Jung (Jung 1988, p. 102) "when people integrate their unconscious (...) it is as if one man were becoming a whole town." (Jung 1988, p. 827). I could think of no better way of starting a presentation on the theme of "multiplicity" than with this quotation of Jung taken from his Seminars on Zarathustra. Inner multiplicity is a natural state of any human psyche. Individuation consequently can be understood as a process of engaging in a dynamic relationship with the elements of one's "inner village", thereby responding to the psyche’s natural tendency towards wholeness." --Diane Cousineau Brutsche
The mind which is in each of us is able to comprehend all other things, but has not the capability of understanding itself. For as the eye sees all other things, but cannot see itself, so also the mind perceives the nature of other things but cannot understand itself. For if it does, let it tell us what it is, or what kind of thing it is, whether it is a spirit, or blood, or fire, or air, or any other substance: or even only so much whether it is a substance at all, or something incorporeal. Are not those men then simple who speculate on the essence of God? For how can they who are ignorant of the nature of the essence of their own soul, have any accurate knowledge of the soul of the universe? For the soul of the universe is according to our definition, -- God.
~Philo the Jew; Allegorical Interpretations I.
"And just as in the past each civilization was the vehicle of its own mythology, developing in character as its myth became progressively interpreted, analyzed, and elucidated by its leading minds, so in this modern world – where the application of science to the fields of practical life has now dissolved all cultural horizons, so that no separate civilization can ever develop again – each individual is the center of a mythology of his own, of which his own intelligible character is the Incarnate God, so to say, whom his empirically questing consciousness is to find. The aphorism of Delphi, 'Know thyself,' is the motto. And not Rome, not Mecca, not Jerusalem, Sinai, or Benares, but each and every 'thou' on earth is the center of the world, in the sense of that formula quoted from the twelfth century 'Book of the Twenty-four Philosophers,' of God 'as an intelligible sphere, whose center is everywhere.'" --Joseph Campbell, "The Masks of God, Volume IV: Creative Mythology," p. 36
“There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were.” ― Hazrat Inayat Khan
"When we must deal with problems, we instinctively resist trying the way that leads through obscurity and darkness. We wish to hear only of unequivocal results, and completely forget that these results can only be brought about when we have ventured into and emerged again from the darkness. But to penetrate the darkness we must summon all the powers of enlightenment that consciousness can offer." ~Carl Jung; "The Stages of Life" (1930). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.752
"When we must deal with problems, we instinctively resist trying the way that leads through obscurity and darkness. We wish to hear only of unequivocal results, and completely forget that these results can only be brought about when we have ventured into and emerged again from the darkness. But to penetrate the darkness we must summon all the powers of enlightenment that consciousness can offer." ~Carl Jung; "The Stages of Life" (1930). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.752
“The place of magic transformation and rebirth… are presided over by the mother.”
(Carl Jung, 9i, para. 157)
"Apparently in every sphere of human search and experience the mystery of the ultimate nature of being breaks into oxymoronic paradox, and the best that can be said of it has to be taken simply as metaphor—whether as particles and waves or as Apollo and Dionysus, pleasure and pain. Both in science and in poetry, the principal of the anagogical metaphor is thus recognized today; it is only from the pulpit and the press that one hears of truths and virtues definable in fixed terms." --Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Volume IV: Creative Mythology, p. 190
The Grail is a metaphor for connection to the mystical Source of everything,
the ever-renewing Fountain of all manifestation. Archetypes are Nature's constants. “The question is—can the ego hear the generative voice of Wisdom, or will it be possessed by unassimilated archetypal contents of the unconscious?”
In order for an ego to serve the mandates of the Self (that life be lived, that humans and God partner in the evolution of the Creation), there has to be a relationship. Relationality is the feminine aspect of the Self. Invite the story back into your life. Wisdom requires sacrifice and the courage to take action, regardless of how the collective views it or what the consequences might be.
Wisdom is always available to the ego and both Wisdom and ego are in relationship with God (the Self). The question is—can the ego hear the generative voice of Wisdom, or will it be possessed by unassimilated archetypal contents of the unconscious? Myths matter because they are the collective dreams that wed inner and outer, people and places, known and unknown.
Alchemy facilitates our personal development by amplifying natural processes heated by conscious intention, love, and a personal confrontation with the unconscious. Jung says this leads to self-knowledge: a transcendent relationship with the unconscious and freedom from the duality of the opposites, such as time and space.
Spirituality is not a religion but means you are in touch with your own self. The spiritual path is not to be followed by rising upward through one's head toward a heaven in the sky, but through the personal and then tribal and then collective unconscious, downward and inward, through deeper and deeper layers of our own inner darkness, finally breaking through to eternity and light.
We become our authentic self – the true gold of the alchemists. Jung saw the psyche as an inherently more spiritual and fluid place, an ocean that could be fished for enlightenment and healing. The purpose is to give life back to someone who’s lost it.
Our conscious mind is limited to the sequential flow of words and their corresponding ideas which arise from our subconscious. Our subconscious mind being formed from knowledge and experiences gathered over our lifetime (and possibly from the lives of our ancestors where knowledge is stored in genetic structures). Thus if we are to have harmony between our conscious and sub-conscious minds and the external world we experience, we must unite these apparently separate things. To do to this at a fundamental level requires understanding what matter is and thus what we are (as humans) and how we are necessarily connected to all other matter in the universe. ~Carl Jung.
"My life often seemed to me like a story that has no beginning and no end. I had the feeling that I was a historical fragment, an excerpt for which the preceding and succeeding text was missing. I could well imagine that I might have lived in former centuries and there encountered questions I was not yet able to answer; that I had been born again because I had not fulfilled the task given to me.” --Carl Jung.
"Life wants to be real. If you love life you want to live really, not as a mere promise hovering above things. Life inevitably leads down into reality. Life is of the nature of water: it always seeks the deepest place, which is always below in the darkness and heaviness of the earth." --Carl Jung
''The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves''.~Carl Jung
I: And the crown? Solve the riddle of the crown for me!"
Soul Bird: "The crown and serpent are opposites, and are one. Did you not see the serpent that crowned the head of the crucified?"
I: "What, I don't understand you."
Soul Bird: "What words did the crown bring you?
"Love never ends" - that is the mystery of the crown and the serpent."
~Carl Jung; Red Book.
The stages of psychological development progress like this:
1. Discovery of opposites - the conscious (& Ego) is born
2. Preference of opposites - the Shadow is born
3. Out of opposites comes a distinction between I and not-I. The qualities identified with at this stage are not uniquely individual, but identified with the collective - beginning of the development of the Persona.
4. Persona development - copying others in order to ‘fit in’.
5. Re-cognizing the Persona (become conscious of the MASK).
6. Dissolution of the Persona - strictly by ‘act of will’.
7. Persona complex gets replaced by Archetypes
8. Re-cognizing the Archetypes:
9. Dissolution of the Archetypes: (the Shadow, the Anima or Animus, and the Self)
10. Individuation (self-realization)
(Carl Jung, 9i, para. 157)
"Apparently in every sphere of human search and experience the mystery of the ultimate nature of being breaks into oxymoronic paradox, and the best that can be said of it has to be taken simply as metaphor—whether as particles and waves or as Apollo and Dionysus, pleasure and pain. Both in science and in poetry, the principal of the anagogical metaphor is thus recognized today; it is only from the pulpit and the press that one hears of truths and virtues definable in fixed terms." --Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Volume IV: Creative Mythology, p. 190
The Grail is a metaphor for connection to the mystical Source of everything,
the ever-renewing Fountain of all manifestation. Archetypes are Nature's constants. “The question is—can the ego hear the generative voice of Wisdom, or will it be possessed by unassimilated archetypal contents of the unconscious?”
In order for an ego to serve the mandates of the Self (that life be lived, that humans and God partner in the evolution of the Creation), there has to be a relationship. Relationality is the feminine aspect of the Self. Invite the story back into your life. Wisdom requires sacrifice and the courage to take action, regardless of how the collective views it or what the consequences might be.
Wisdom is always available to the ego and both Wisdom and ego are in relationship with God (the Self). The question is—can the ego hear the generative voice of Wisdom, or will it be possessed by unassimilated archetypal contents of the unconscious? Myths matter because they are the collective dreams that wed inner and outer, people and places, known and unknown.
Alchemy facilitates our personal development by amplifying natural processes heated by conscious intention, love, and a personal confrontation with the unconscious. Jung says this leads to self-knowledge: a transcendent relationship with the unconscious and freedom from the duality of the opposites, such as time and space.
Spirituality is not a religion but means you are in touch with your own self. The spiritual path is not to be followed by rising upward through one's head toward a heaven in the sky, but through the personal and then tribal and then collective unconscious, downward and inward, through deeper and deeper layers of our own inner darkness, finally breaking through to eternity and light.
We become our authentic self – the true gold of the alchemists. Jung saw the psyche as an inherently more spiritual and fluid place, an ocean that could be fished for enlightenment and healing. The purpose is to give life back to someone who’s lost it.
Our conscious mind is limited to the sequential flow of words and their corresponding ideas which arise from our subconscious. Our subconscious mind being formed from knowledge and experiences gathered over our lifetime (and possibly from the lives of our ancestors where knowledge is stored in genetic structures). Thus if we are to have harmony between our conscious and sub-conscious minds and the external world we experience, we must unite these apparently separate things. To do to this at a fundamental level requires understanding what matter is and thus what we are (as humans) and how we are necessarily connected to all other matter in the universe. ~Carl Jung.
"My life often seemed to me like a story that has no beginning and no end. I had the feeling that I was a historical fragment, an excerpt for which the preceding and succeeding text was missing. I could well imagine that I might have lived in former centuries and there encountered questions I was not yet able to answer; that I had been born again because I had not fulfilled the task given to me.” --Carl Jung.
"Life wants to be real. If you love life you want to live really, not as a mere promise hovering above things. Life inevitably leads down into reality. Life is of the nature of water: it always seeks the deepest place, which is always below in the darkness and heaviness of the earth." --Carl Jung
''The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves''.~Carl Jung
I: And the crown? Solve the riddle of the crown for me!"
Soul Bird: "The crown and serpent are opposites, and are one. Did you not see the serpent that crowned the head of the crucified?"
I: "What, I don't understand you."
Soul Bird: "What words did the crown bring you?
"Love never ends" - that is the mystery of the crown and the serpent."
~Carl Jung; Red Book.
The stages of psychological development progress like this:
1. Discovery of opposites - the conscious (& Ego) is born
2. Preference of opposites - the Shadow is born
3. Out of opposites comes a distinction between I and not-I. The qualities identified with at this stage are not uniquely individual, but identified with the collective - beginning of the development of the Persona.
4. Persona development - copying others in order to ‘fit in’.
5. Re-cognizing the Persona (become conscious of the MASK).
6. Dissolution of the Persona - strictly by ‘act of will’.
7. Persona complex gets replaced by Archetypes
8. Re-cognizing the Archetypes:
9. Dissolution of the Archetypes: (the Shadow, the Anima or Animus, and the Self)
10. Individuation (self-realization)
It all starts with the Blood - "If it bleeds, it leads".
“Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end… The exclusivism of there being only one way in which we can be saved, the idea that there is a single religious group that is in sole possession of the truth—that is the world as we know it that must pass away. What is the kingdom? It lies in our realization of the ubiquity of the divine presence in our neighbors, in our enemies, in all of us.”--Joseph Campbell
Our blight is ideologies - they are the long-expected Antichrist! --Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)
Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you. —Aldous Huxley
"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled." --Plutarch
Sovereignty: It is the individual's task to differentiate himself from all the others and stand on his own feet. All collective identities . . . interfere with the fulfillment of this task. Such collective identities are crutches for the lame, shields for the timid, beds for the lazy, nurseries for the irresponsible. . . .--Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)
“Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end… The exclusivism of there being only one way in which we can be saved, the idea that there is a single religious group that is in sole possession of the truth—that is the world as we know it that must pass away. What is the kingdom? It lies in our realization of the ubiquity of the divine presence in our neighbors, in our enemies, in all of us.”--Joseph Campbell
Our blight is ideologies - they are the long-expected Antichrist! --Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)
Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you. —Aldous Huxley
"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled." --Plutarch
Sovereignty: It is the individual's task to differentiate himself from all the others and stand on his own feet. All collective identities . . . interfere with the fulfillment of this task. Such collective identities are crutches for the lame, shields for the timid, beds for the lazy, nurseries for the irresponsible. . . .--Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)
"It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings." --Wendell Berry
"The goal of the hero's journey is to discover, defend, declare and establish our Self in the world. The great achievement of the feminine quest is communion, connection and relatedness to the other in order to make meaning of our existence. There, it isn't grit or physical prowess that gives the feminine her heroic stature. It is her courageous ability to descend into the dark, forbidding places that lie within each of us in order to retrieve our essence. Strong stories aren't masculine or feminine; they are a balance of both, and understanding how to engage the feminine heroic is essential for exposing the soul of a narrative and making it whole." -Dara Marks
"In any given culture... I mean let us face it, we are at once the beneficiaries and the victims of our culture, without our culture we just couldn't do anything at all, we should be baboons, apes. But any given culture is ambivalent. It permits one to be fully human, but at the same time it limits our humanity, I mean... it imposes certain kinds of prejudices, certain kinds of likes and dislikes upon us. But I think it's perfectly true to say that any self-actualizing human being is one who, to some extent, breaks out of his culture. After all one sees that in fact all the great seers and religious prophets have always broken out of their culture. I mean... needless to say that "love thy neighbor as thyself" is breaking out of a narrow culture that insists that you should love only this person and that everybody else is not your neighbor. And I think we have too see that these people who have broken out of their culture, the seers and the prophets, are essentially right!" -Aldous Huxley
Everything we know, but are not at the moment thinking; everything which was once conscious but now forgotten; everything perceived by the senses, but not noted by the conscious mind. It is everything which, involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want, and do; all the future things that are taking shape in me and will sometime come to consciousness: all this is the content of the unconscious. ["On the Nature of the Psyche," CW 8, par. 382.]
Ultimately, every individual life is at the same time the eternal life of the species.
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light
in the darkness of mere being. —C. G. Jung
“My thesis, then, is as follows: In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited.
It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.”
--Carl Jung, “The Concept of the Collective Unconscious”
I believe that we have the choice: I preferred the living wonders of the God. I daily weigh up my whole life and I continue to regard the fiery brilliance of the God as a higher and fuller life than the ashes of rationality. The ashes are suicide to me. I could perhaps put out the fire but I cannot deny to myself the experience of the God. Nor can I cut myself off from this experience. I also do not want to, since I want to live. My life wants itself whole.
Therefore I must serve my self I must win it in this way. But I must win it so that my life will become whole. For it seems to me to be sinful to deform life where there is yet the possibility to live it fully. The service of the self is therefore divine service and the service of mankind. If I carry myself I relieve mankind of myself and heal my self from the God.
I must free my self from the God, since the God I experienced is more than love; he is also hate, he is more than beauty, he is also the abomination, he is more than wisdom, he is also meaninglessness, he is more than power, he is also powerlessness, he is more than omnipresence, he is also my creature. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light
in the darkness of mere being. —C. G. Jung
“My thesis, then, is as follows: In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited.
It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.”
--Carl Jung, “The Concept of the Collective Unconscious”
I believe that we have the choice: I preferred the living wonders of the God. I daily weigh up my whole life and I continue to regard the fiery brilliance of the God as a higher and fuller life than the ashes of rationality. The ashes are suicide to me. I could perhaps put out the fire but I cannot deny to myself the experience of the God. Nor can I cut myself off from this experience. I also do not want to, since I want to live. My life wants itself whole.
Therefore I must serve my self I must win it in this way. But I must win it so that my life will become whole. For it seems to me to be sinful to deform life where there is yet the possibility to live it fully. The service of the self is therefore divine service and the service of mankind. If I carry myself I relieve mankind of myself and heal my self from the God.
I must free my self from the God, since the God I experienced is more than love; he is also hate, he is more than beauty, he is also the abomination, he is more than wisdom, he is also meaninglessness, he is more than power, he is also powerlessness, he is more than omnipresence, he is also my creature. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
My Soul, are you there?
When I beheld the vision of the flood in October of the year 1913, it happened at a time that was significant for me as a man. At that time, in the fortieth year of my life, I had achieved everything that I had wished for myself I had achieved honor, power, wealth,knowledge, and every human happiness.
Then my desire for the increase of these trappings ceased, the desire ebbed from me and horror came over me. The vision of the flood seized me and I felt the spirit of the depths, but I did not understand him.Yet he drove me on with unbearable inner longing and I said:
My soul you-are you there? I have returned, I am here again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you again.
Should I tell you everything I have seen, experienced, and drunk in? Or do you not want to hear about all the noise of life and the world? But one thing you must know: the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life. This life is the way, the long sought-after way to the unfathomable, which we call divine.
There is no other way, all other ways are false paths. I found the right way, it led me to you, to my soul. I return, tempered and purified. Do you still know me? How long the separation lasted! Everything has become so different. And how did I find you? How strange my journey was! What words should I use to tell you on what twisted paths a good star has guided me to you?
Give me your hand, my almost forgotten soul. How warm the joy at seeing you again, you long is avowed soul. Life has led me back to you. Let us thank the life I have lived for all the happy and all the sad hours, for every joy, for every sadness. My soul, my journey should continue with you. I will wander with you and ascend to my solitude."
The spirit of the depths forced me to say this and at the same time to undergo it against myself since I had not expected it then. I still labored misguidedly under the spirit of this time, and thought differently about the human soul. I thought and spoke much of the soul. I knew In many learned words for her, I had judged her and turned her into a scientific object.
I did not consider that my soul cannot be the object of my judgment and knowledge; much more are my judgment and knowledge the objects of my soul. Therefore the spirit of the depths forced me to speak to my soul, to call upon her as a living and self-existing being. I had to become aware that I had lost my soul.
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, which lets herself be judged and arranged, and whose circumference we can grasp. I had to accept that what I had previously called my soul was not at all my soul,but a dead system.
Hence I had to speak to my soul as to something far off and unknown, which did not exist through me, but through whom I existed. He whose desire turns away from outer things, reaches the place of the soul. If he does not find the soul, the horror of emptiness will overcome him, and fear will drive him with a whip lashing time and again in a desperate endeavor and a blind desire for the hollow things of the world.
He becomes a fool through his endless desire, and forgets the way of his soul, never to find her again. He will run after all things, and will seize hold of them, but he will not find his soul, since he would find her only in himself Truly his soul lies in things and men, but the blind one seizes things and men, yet not his soul in things and in men. He has no knowledge of his soul. How could he tell her apart from things and men?
He could find his soul in desire itself but not in the objects of desire. If he possessed his desire, and his desire did not possess him, he would lay a hand on his soul, since his desire is the image and expression of his soul.
If we possess the image of a thing, we possess half the thing.The image of the world is half the world. He who possesses the world but not its image possesses only half the world, since his soul is poor and has nothing. The wealth of the soul exists in images He who possesses the image of the world, possesses half the world, even if his humanity is poor and owns nothing But hunger makes the soul into a beast that devours the unbearable and is poisoned by it. My friends, it is wise to nourish the soul, otherwise you will breed dragons and devils in your heart. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Pages 231-232
When I beheld the vision of the flood in October of the year 1913, it happened at a time that was significant for me as a man. At that time, in the fortieth year of my life, I had achieved everything that I had wished for myself I had achieved honor, power, wealth,knowledge, and every human happiness.
Then my desire for the increase of these trappings ceased, the desire ebbed from me and horror came over me. The vision of the flood seized me and I felt the spirit of the depths, but I did not understand him.Yet he drove me on with unbearable inner longing and I said:
My soul you-are you there? I have returned, I am here again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you again.
Should I tell you everything I have seen, experienced, and drunk in? Or do you not want to hear about all the noise of life and the world? But one thing you must know: the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life. This life is the way, the long sought-after way to the unfathomable, which we call divine.
There is no other way, all other ways are false paths. I found the right way, it led me to you, to my soul. I return, tempered and purified. Do you still know me? How long the separation lasted! Everything has become so different. And how did I find you? How strange my journey was! What words should I use to tell you on what twisted paths a good star has guided me to you?
Give me your hand, my almost forgotten soul. How warm the joy at seeing you again, you long is avowed soul. Life has led me back to you. Let us thank the life I have lived for all the happy and all the sad hours, for every joy, for every sadness. My soul, my journey should continue with you. I will wander with you and ascend to my solitude."
The spirit of the depths forced me to say this and at the same time to undergo it against myself since I had not expected it then. I still labored misguidedly under the spirit of this time, and thought differently about the human soul. I thought and spoke much of the soul. I knew In many learned words for her, I had judged her and turned her into a scientific object.
I did not consider that my soul cannot be the object of my judgment and knowledge; much more are my judgment and knowledge the objects of my soul. Therefore the spirit of the depths forced me to speak to my soul, to call upon her as a living and self-existing being. I had to become aware that I had lost my soul.
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, which lets herself be judged and arranged, and whose circumference we can grasp. I had to accept that what I had previously called my soul was not at all my soul,but a dead system.
Hence I had to speak to my soul as to something far off and unknown, which did not exist through me, but through whom I existed. He whose desire turns away from outer things, reaches the place of the soul. If he does not find the soul, the horror of emptiness will overcome him, and fear will drive him with a whip lashing time and again in a desperate endeavor and a blind desire for the hollow things of the world.
He becomes a fool through his endless desire, and forgets the way of his soul, never to find her again. He will run after all things, and will seize hold of them, but he will not find his soul, since he would find her only in himself Truly his soul lies in things and men, but the blind one seizes things and men, yet not his soul in things and in men. He has no knowledge of his soul. How could he tell her apart from things and men?
He could find his soul in desire itself but not in the objects of desire. If he possessed his desire, and his desire did not possess him, he would lay a hand on his soul, since his desire is the image and expression of his soul.
If we possess the image of a thing, we possess half the thing.The image of the world is half the world. He who possesses the world but not its image possesses only half the world, since his soul is poor and has nothing. The wealth of the soul exists in images He who possesses the image of the world, possesses half the world, even if his humanity is poor and owns nothing But hunger makes the soul into a beast that devours the unbearable and is poisoned by it. My friends, it is wise to nourish the soul, otherwise you will breed dragons and devils in your heart. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Pages 231-232
"The fact that a man who goes his own way ends in ruin means nothing...He must obey his own law, as if it were a daemon whispering to him of new and wonderful paths...There are not a few who are called awake by the summons of the voice, whereupon they are at once set apart from the others, feeling themselves confronted with a problem about which the others know nothing.
In most cases it is impossible to explain to the others what has happened, for any understanding is walled off by impenetrable prejudices. "You are no different from anybody else," they will chorus or, "there's no such thing," and even if there is such a thing, it is immediately branded as "morbid"...He is at once set apart and isolated, as he has resolved to obey the law that commands him from within. "His own law!" everybody will cry. But he knows better: it is the law...The only meaningful life is a life that strives for the individual realization--absolute and unconditional--of its own particular law...To the extent that a man is untrue to the law of his being...he has failed to realize his own life's meaning.
The undiscovered vein within us is a living part of the psyche; classical Chinese philosophy names this interior way "Tao," and likens it to a flow of water that moves irresistibly towards its goal. To rest in Tao means fulfillment, wholeness, one's destination reached, one's mission done; the beginning, end, and perfect realization of the meaning of existence innate in all things." — C.G. Jung
In most cases it is impossible to explain to the others what has happened, for any understanding is walled off by impenetrable prejudices. "You are no different from anybody else," they will chorus or, "there's no such thing," and even if there is such a thing, it is immediately branded as "morbid"...He is at once set apart and isolated, as he has resolved to obey the law that commands him from within. "His own law!" everybody will cry. But he knows better: it is the law...The only meaningful life is a life that strives for the individual realization--absolute and unconditional--of its own particular law...To the extent that a man is untrue to the law of his being...he has failed to realize his own life's meaning.
The undiscovered vein within us is a living part of the psyche; classical Chinese philosophy names this interior way "Tao," and likens it to a flow of water that moves irresistibly towards its goal. To rest in Tao means fulfillment, wholeness, one's destination reached, one's mission done; the beginning, end, and perfect realization of the meaning of existence innate in all things." — C.G. Jung