Embracing Shadow
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.
I cannot love anyone if I hate myself.
~Carl Jung, Psychological Reflections, Page 221.
If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 423.
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
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
Taking it in its deepest sense, the shadow is the invisible saurian tail that man still drags behind him. Carefully amputated, it becomes the healing serpent of the mysteries. Only monkeys parade with it.
~Carl Jung; The Integration of the Personality.
Seventy or eighty per cent of the population today belong to the middle ages, so that very few people are really adapted to this year 1934, and of those few the majority have forgotten their shadows which trail behind their well-adapted personas! ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 68.
So is healing given to us in the unlockable and ineffable symbol, for it prevents the devil from swallowing up the seed of life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 31-32
In wanting to understand, ethical and human as it sounds, there lurks the devil's will, which though not at first perceptible to me, is perceptible to the other. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 31-32
The principle of evil is just as autonomous and eternal as the principle of good.
~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 215.
If man does not reverence and submit to the unconscious, which created his consciousness, he loses his soul, that is, he loses his connection with soul and unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 214.
We carry our past with us, to wit, the primitive and inferior man with his desires and emotions, and it is only with an enormous effort that we can detach ourselves from this burden. If it comes to a neurosis, we invariably have to deal with a considerably intensified shadow. And if such a person wants to be cured it is necessary to find a way in which his conscious personality and his shadow can live together. ~Carl Jung; Answer to Job; CW 11; Psychology and Religion: West and East; Page 1.
The light of consciousness needs to be clearly distinguished from the cunning of the unfathomable depths of the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 10.
A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps. Whenever possible, he prefers to make an unfavorable impression on others. . . ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 222f.
It is indeed no small matter to know one's own guilt and one's own evil, and there is certainly nothing to be gained by losing sight of one's shadow. When we are conscious of our guilt we are in a more favorable position - we can at least hope to change and improve ourselves. ~Carl Jung, CW X, Para 440.
~Carl Jung; The Integration of the Personality.
Seventy or eighty per cent of the population today belong to the middle ages, so that very few people are really adapted to this year 1934, and of those few the majority have forgotten their shadows which trail behind their well-adapted personas! ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 68.
So is healing given to us in the unlockable and ineffable symbol, for it prevents the devil from swallowing up the seed of life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 31-32
In wanting to understand, ethical and human as it sounds, there lurks the devil's will, which though not at first perceptible to me, is perceptible to the other. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 31-32
The principle of evil is just as autonomous and eternal as the principle of good.
~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 215.
If man does not reverence and submit to the unconscious, which created his consciousness, he loses his soul, that is, he loses his connection with soul and unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 214.
We carry our past with us, to wit, the primitive and inferior man with his desires and emotions, and it is only with an enormous effort that we can detach ourselves from this burden. If it comes to a neurosis, we invariably have to deal with a considerably intensified shadow. And if such a person wants to be cured it is necessary to find a way in which his conscious personality and his shadow can live together. ~Carl Jung; Answer to Job; CW 11; Psychology and Religion: West and East; Page 1.
The light of consciousness needs to be clearly distinguished from the cunning of the unfathomable depths of the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 10.
A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps. Whenever possible, he prefers to make an unfavorable impression on others. . . ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 222f.
It is indeed no small matter to know one's own guilt and one's own evil, and there is certainly nothing to be gained by losing sight of one's shadow. When we are conscious of our guilt we are in a more favorable position - we can at least hope to change and improve ourselves. ~Carl Jung, CW X, Para 440.
Nothing is more valuable to the evil one than his eye, since only through his eye can emptiness seize gleaming fullness.
Because the emptiness lacks fullness, it craves fullness and its shining power. And it drinks it in by means of its eye, which is able to grasp the beauty and unsullied radiance of fullness.
The emptiness is poor, and if it lacked its eye it would be hopeless.
It sees the most beautiful and wants to devour it in order to spoil it.
The devil knows what is beautiful, and hence he is the shadow of beauty and follows it everywhere, awaiting the moment when the beautiful, writhing great with child, seeks to give life to the God.
If your beauty grows, the dreadful worm will also creep up you, waiting for its prey.
Nothing is sacred to him except his eye, with which he sees the most beautiful.
He will never give up his eye. He is invulnerable, but nothing protects his eye; it is delicate and clear, adept at drinking in the eternal light. It wants you, the bright red light of your life. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Hell, Page 289.
Because the emptiness lacks fullness, it craves fullness and its shining power. And it drinks it in by means of its eye, which is able to grasp the beauty and unsullied radiance of fullness.
The emptiness is poor, and if it lacked its eye it would be hopeless.
It sees the most beautiful and wants to devour it in order to spoil it.
The devil knows what is beautiful, and hence he is the shadow of beauty and follows it everywhere, awaiting the moment when the beautiful, writhing great with child, seeks to give life to the God.
If your beauty grows, the dreadful worm will also creep up you, waiting for its prey.
Nothing is sacred to him except his eye, with which he sees the most beautiful.
He will never give up his eye. He is invulnerable, but nothing protects his eye; it is delicate and clear, adept at drinking in the eternal light. It wants you, the bright red light of your life. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Hell, Page 289.
We confront our personal shadow in the personal unconscious.
We meet shadows of our forgotten ancestors in the collective unconscious.
“People around the world are confusing the therapeutic value of self-expression
with permission to manipulate others with their wounds.”
― Caroline Myss
The meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one’s own shadow.… Whoever looks into the water sees his own image, but behind it …[s]ometimes a nixie gets into the fisherman’s net.… The nixie is an even more instinctive version of a magical feminine being whom I call the anima.… Only when all props and crutches are broken, and no cover from the rear offers even the slightest hope of security does it become possible for us to experience an archetype that up to then had hidden behind the meaningful nonsense played out by the anima. This is the archetype of meaning, just as the anima is the archetype of life itself.
—C. G. Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, CW 9, par. 44-66
We carry our past with us, to wit, the primitive and inferior man with his desires and emotions, and it is only with an enormous effort that we can detach ourselves from this burden. If it comes to a neurosis, we invariably have to deal with a considerably intensified shadow. And if such a person wants to be cured it is necessary to find a way in which his conscious personality and his shadow can live together. ~Carl Jung; Answer to Job; CW 11; Psychology and Religion: West and East; Page 1.
"To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light.
Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle." ~Carl Jung; "Good and Evil in Analytical Psychology" (1959). CW 10. Civilization in Transition. P.872
When sacrifice is demanded it frequently implies the acceptance of our shadow- side. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.
The Archetype of the Shadow:
The Bible says, "Whosoever shall say "Racha" to his brother is guilty of hellfire. "
If we substitute "shadow" for "brother" and implicate the dark brother within, we
open out this biblical word into new perspectives.
It also says, "Reconcile yourself with him as long as he is on the road."
"What ye have done to the least of your brethren ye have done unto me."
The least of me is my inferior function which represents my shadow- side.
But what, if the inferior and neglected function expresses the will of God?
When sacrifice is demanded it frequently implies the acceptance of our shadow- side.
The the poles of the psyche are torn apart and there is no living centre in a person, he feels forsaken and dominated
by demons.
His self is empty and he cannot draw the opposites together.
The best protection against abandonment to demons is a conscious relationship to a close, living human being.
In the case of a woman the relationship should be to a man.
We should not try to escape upward or downward from the world.
To want to be the best or the worst of men is megalomania.
It is devilish arrogance to want to destroy ourselves whenever we feel profoundly miserable.
That state of consciousness which will not let us admit to having a shadow pushes his surroundings into a position of inferiority.
All "good people" suffer from irritability.
We must be charitable to our weaknesses.
An alchemical text says: "The mind should learn compassionate love for the body."
The unconscious shows us the face that we turn towards it.
It smiles if we are friendly to it; but if we neglect it, it makes faces at us.
We can only become real by accepting our sexuality and not denying it through saintliness.
We must descend into our own depths to have the visio Dei.
There are always people who want to bring light into the world because they are afraid to reach down into their
own dirt.
But who can be humble who has not sinned?
This is why sin is so important; this is why it is said that God loves the sinner more than ninety-nine righteous men.
The meaning of sin is that it teaches humility; the Church says, felix culpa. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Pages 25-26.
We meet shadows of our forgotten ancestors in the collective unconscious.
“People around the world are confusing the therapeutic value of self-expression
with permission to manipulate others with their wounds.”
― Caroline Myss
The meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one’s own shadow.… Whoever looks into the water sees his own image, but behind it …[s]ometimes a nixie gets into the fisherman’s net.… The nixie is an even more instinctive version of a magical feminine being whom I call the anima.… Only when all props and crutches are broken, and no cover from the rear offers even the slightest hope of security does it become possible for us to experience an archetype that up to then had hidden behind the meaningful nonsense played out by the anima. This is the archetype of meaning, just as the anima is the archetype of life itself.
—C. G. Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, CW 9, par. 44-66
We carry our past with us, to wit, the primitive and inferior man with his desires and emotions, and it is only with an enormous effort that we can detach ourselves from this burden. If it comes to a neurosis, we invariably have to deal with a considerably intensified shadow. And if such a person wants to be cured it is necessary to find a way in which his conscious personality and his shadow can live together. ~Carl Jung; Answer to Job; CW 11; Psychology and Religion: West and East; Page 1.
"To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light.
Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle." ~Carl Jung; "Good and Evil in Analytical Psychology" (1959). CW 10. Civilization in Transition. P.872
When sacrifice is demanded it frequently implies the acceptance of our shadow- side. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.
The Archetype of the Shadow:
The Bible says, "Whosoever shall say "Racha" to his brother is guilty of hellfire. "
If we substitute "shadow" for "brother" and implicate the dark brother within, we
open out this biblical word into new perspectives.
It also says, "Reconcile yourself with him as long as he is on the road."
"What ye have done to the least of your brethren ye have done unto me."
The least of me is my inferior function which represents my shadow- side.
But what, if the inferior and neglected function expresses the will of God?
When sacrifice is demanded it frequently implies the acceptance of our shadow- side.
The the poles of the psyche are torn apart and there is no living centre in a person, he feels forsaken and dominated
by demons.
His self is empty and he cannot draw the opposites together.
The best protection against abandonment to demons is a conscious relationship to a close, living human being.
In the case of a woman the relationship should be to a man.
We should not try to escape upward or downward from the world.
To want to be the best or the worst of men is megalomania.
It is devilish arrogance to want to destroy ourselves whenever we feel profoundly miserable.
That state of consciousness which will not let us admit to having a shadow pushes his surroundings into a position of inferiority.
All "good people" suffer from irritability.
We must be charitable to our weaknesses.
An alchemical text says: "The mind should learn compassionate love for the body."
The unconscious shows us the face that we turn towards it.
It smiles if we are friendly to it; but if we neglect it, it makes faces at us.
We can only become real by accepting our sexuality and not denying it through saintliness.
We must descend into our own depths to have the visio Dei.
There are always people who want to bring light into the world because they are afraid to reach down into their
own dirt.
But who can be humble who has not sinned?
This is why sin is so important; this is why it is said that God loves the sinner more than ninety-nine righteous men.
The meaning of sin is that it teaches humility; the Church says, felix culpa. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Pages 25-26.
II. The Shadow
Whereas the contents of the personal unconscious are acquired during the individual’s lifetime, the contents of the collective unconscious are invariably archetypes that were present from the beginning.
Their relation to the instincts has been discussed elsewhere.
The archetypes most clearly characterized from the empirical point of view are those which have the most frequent and the most disturbing influence on the ego.
These are the shadow, the anima and the animus.
The most accessible of these, and the easiest to experience, is the shadow, for its nature can in large measure be inferred from the contents of the personal unconscious.
The only exceptions to this rule are those rather rare cases where the positive qualities of the personality are repressed, and the ego in consequence plays an essentially negative or unfavorable role.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort.
To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real.
This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and it therefore, as a rule, meets with considerable resistance. Indeed, self-knowledge as a psychotherapeutic measure frequently requires much painstaking work extending over a long period.
Closer examination of the dark characteristics – that is, the inferiorities constituting the shadow – reveals that they have an emotional nature, a kind of autonomy, and accordingly an obsessive, or, better, possessive quality.
Emotion, incidentally, is not an activity of the individual but something that happens to him.
Affects occur usually where adaptation is weakest, and at the same time they reveal the reason for its weakness, namely a certain degree of inferiority and the existence of a lower level of personality.
On this lower level with its uncontrolled or scarcely controlled emotions one behaves more or less like a primitive, who is not only the passive victim of his affects, but also singularly incapable of moral judgment.
Although, with insight and good will, the shadow can to some extent be assimilated into the conscious personality, experience shows that there are certain features which offer the most obstinate resistance to oral control and prove almost impossible to influence.
These resistances are usually bound up with projections, which are not recognized as such, and their recognition if a moral achievement beyond the ordinary.
While some traits peculiar to the shadow can be recognized without too much difficulty as one’s own personal qualities, in this case both insight and good will are unavailing because the cause of the emotion appears to lie, beyond all possibility of doubt, in the other person.
No matter how obvious it may be to the neutral observer that it is a matter of projection, there is little hope that the subject will perceive this himself.
He must be convinced that he throws a very long shadow before he is willing to withdraw his emotionally-toned projections from their object.
Let us suppose that a certain individual shows no inclination whatever to recognize his projections.
The projection-making factor then has a free hand and can realize its object – if it has one – or bring about some other situation characteristic of its power.
As we know, it is not the conscious subject but the unconscious which does the projecting.
Hence one meets with projections, one does not make them.
The effect of projection is to isolate the subject from his environment, since instead of a real relation to it there is now only an illusory one.
Projections change the world into the replica of one’s own unknown face.
In the last analysis, therefore, they lead to an autoerotic or autistic condition in which one dreams a world whose reality remains forever unattainable.
The resultant sentiment d’incompletude and the still worse feelings of sterility are in their turn explained by projection as the malevolence of the environment, and by means of this vicious circle the isolation is intensified.
The more projections are thrust in between the subject and the environment, the harder it is for the ego to see through its illusions.
A forty-five year old patient who had suffered from a compulsion neurosis since he was twenty and had become completely cut off from the world once said to me: “But I can never admit to myself that I've wasted the best twenty-five years of my life!”
It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, of course – for consciously he is engaged in bewailing and cursing a faithless world that recedes further and further into the distance.
Rather, it is an unconscious factor which spins the illusions that veil his world.
And what is being spun is a cocoon, which in the end will completely envelop him.
One might assume that projections like these, which are so very difficult if not impossible to dissolve, would belong to the realm of the shadow – that is, to the negative side of the personality.
This assumption becomes untenable after a certain point, because the symbols that then appear no longer refer to the same but to the opposite sex, in a man’s case to a woman and vice versa.
The source of projections is no longer the shadow – which is always of the same sex as the subject – but a contrasexual figure.
Here we meet the animus of a woman and the anima of a man, two corresponding archetypes whose autonomy and unconsciousness explain the stubbornness of their projections.
Though the shadow is a motif as well known to mythology as anima and animus, it represents first and foremost the personal unconscious, and its content can therefore be made conscious without too much difficulty.
In this it differs from anima and animus, for whereas the shadow can be seen through and recognized fairly easily, the anima and animus are much further away from consciousness and in normal circumstances are seldom if ever realized.
With a little self-criticism, one can see through the shadow – so far as its nature is personal.
But when it appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus. In other words, it is quite the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil. ~The Structure of the Psyche by C.G. Jung
“The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.” -Jung
The shadow can be viewed as the unlived life resulting from a certain pattern of life choices. Thomas Moore in The Care of the Soul states that, "The person we choose to be, ... automatically creates a dark double -- the person we choose not to be." The shadow, however, does hold significant positive features for the personality. Eventually these repressed positive features need integration if the individuation process is to proceed. Robert Johnson says that there is "gold" in the shadow. This gold needs to be mined and brought to the surface. Seeds of the future, including higher calling, call for restoration, attention, integration potential facets our being.
The intellect may be the devil, but the devil is the "strange son of chaos" who can most readily be trusted to deal effectively with his mother.
~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 90.
Carl Jung on the “Subtle Body.”]
Very little is known about this strange concept of the subtle body.
Mead has written a book about it.
You see, when we speak of the unconscious we meant the psychological unconscious, which is a possible concept; we are then dealing with certain factors in the unconscious which we really can understand and discriminate.
But the part of the unconscious which is designated as the subtle body becomes more and more identical with the functioning of the body, and therefore it grows darker and darker and ends in the utter darkness of matter; that aspect of the unconscious is exceedingly incomprehensible.
I only mention it because in dealing with Nietzsche’s concept of the self, one has to include a body, so one must include not only the shadow-the psychological unconscious-but also the physiological unconscious, the so-called somatic unconscious which is the subtle body.
You see, somewhere our unconscious becomes material, because the body is the living unit, and our conscious and our unconscious are embedded in it: the contact the body.
Somewhere there is a place where the two ends meet and become interlocked. And that is the place where one cannot say whether it is matter, or what one calls “psyche.”
Now everything that can be represented to the conscious is psychological, but if a thing cannot be made conscious, or can only be expressed by vague analogies or hints, it is so dark that one doesn’t know whether it has todo with the top or the bottom of the system, whether it leads into the body or into the air.
According to the old Gnostic system, the pneuma is above , that part of the unconscious which is divine; then below would come the body which was called hyle, or sarx, as Paul calls the flesh in the New Testament, and between the tow there is the human or the psychological sphere.
The Latin words for pneuma are spiritus and in another connection animus, not to be mistaken for the specific animus concept in our psychology.
Then with the psyche would be the anima, with the connotations of the breath of life, the living flame, the living warmth of the body.
This anima has a spiritual side, called in China the shen, and their concept of kuei would be the somatic called in China the shen, and their concept of kuei would be the somatic or corporeal part.
This region contains the psychology of the subtle see the body, the sarx, and only by inference do you come to the psychological side; you get reflected rays of light from a body of flesh, and you hear a voice, vibrations of the air, and they give you the necessary hints to conclude as to the psyche.
I you are inside yourself, in your own body, they your are in the psyche, which is the center.
It would be like this.
The mountain would be the conscious and the unconscious, and the spiritual would be on one side and the somatic on the other. The greatest intensity of life is in the center and the darkness is on either side, on the spiritual side as well as on the side of matter.
You may have read that famous work, Pistis Sophia.
Pistis means fidelity, confidence, trust, loyalty, wrongly translated by “belief” or “creed,” and Sophia is the woman wisdom of God.
She is God’s wife in a way, and therefore has also been understood as the so-called theotokos, the mother of God-that is the term used in the Greek Orthodox church for Mother Mary-and certain Gnostics held that Sophia was the mother of the spiritual Jesus.
The man Jesus has of course been born of an earthly woman, but the spiritual Jesus that descended into him when he was baptized by John was born out of Sophia.
They were convinced that the man Jesus who was hanging on the cross was only the material body, that during his sruggle in the garden, hours before his crucifiction, the God had departed from him. . .
You see, the subtle body-assuming that there is such a thing-necessarily must be beyond space and time.
Every real body fills space because it consists of matter, while the subtle body is said not to consist of matter, or it is matter which is so exceedingly subtle that it cannot be perceived.
So it must be a body which does not fill space, a matter which is beyond space, and therefore it would be in no time.
You know, we can only have a notion of time by the measure of distance; for instance, to move from this end of the room to the other needs a certain length of time, but if there is no extension, no change, there is no time; even if that moment stands still for ten thousand eternities, there is no time because nothing happens.
This idea of the subtle body is very important, and it is marvelous to encounter it in a text which naively comes from the wholeness of man.
You will see from the next chapter that Zarathustra is one of the books that is written with blood, and anything written with blood contains the notion of that subtle body, the equivalent of the somatic unconscious.
I usually do not deal with that concept simply because it is too difficult I content myself with things of which I can really know something.
It is beyond our grasp per definition; the subtle body is a transcendental concept which cannot be expressed in terms of our language or our philosophical views, because they are all inside the categories of time and space. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 441-443.
Note: G.R.S. Mead authored “The Doctrine of the Subtle Body in Western Tradition.”
Taking it in its deepest sense, the shadow is the invisible saurian tail that man still drags behind him. Carefully amputated, it becomes the healing serpent of the mysteries. Only monkeys parade with it. ~Carl Jung; The Integration of the Personality.
With a little self-criticism one can see through the shadow -- so far as its nature is personal.
But when it appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus. In other words, it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil. ~Carl Jung; CW 17; The Shadow; Page 338; par. 19.
• The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge. ~Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14
With a little self-criticism one can see through the shadow – so far as its nature is personal.
But when it appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus. In other words, it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil. --Jung, Collected Works 9ii, Paragraph 14
*
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality…., for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of It involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and It therefore, as a rule, meets with considerable resistance. Indeed, self-knowledge as a psycho-therapeutic measure frequently requires much painstaking work extending over a long period.
Closer examination of the dark characteristics that is, the inferiorities constituting the shadow reveals that they have an emotional nature, a kind of autonomy, and accordingly an obsessive or, better, possessive quality. Emotion, incidentally, Is not an activity of the individual but something that happens to him. Affects occur usually where adaptation is weakest, and at the same time they reveal the reason for its weakness, namely a certain degree of inferiority and the existence of a lower level of personality. On this lower level with its uncontrolled or scarcely controlled emotions one behaves more or less like a primitive, who is not only the passive victim of his affects but also singularly incapable of moral judgment. --Jung, Aion
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.
With a little self-criticism one can see through the shadow -- so far as its nature is personal.
But when it appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus. In other words, it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil. ~Carl Jung; CW 17; The Shadow; Page 338; par. 19.
• The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge. ~Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14
With a little self-criticism one can see through the shadow – so far as its nature is personal.
But when it appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus. In other words, it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil. --Jung, Collected Works 9ii, Paragraph 14
*
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality…., for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of It involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and It therefore, as a rule, meets with considerable resistance. Indeed, self-knowledge as a psycho-therapeutic measure frequently requires much painstaking work extending over a long period.
Closer examination of the dark characteristics that is, the inferiorities constituting the shadow reveals that they have an emotional nature, a kind of autonomy, and accordingly an obsessive or, better, possessive quality. Emotion, incidentally, Is not an activity of the individual but something that happens to him. Affects occur usually where adaptation is weakest, and at the same time they reveal the reason for its weakness, namely a certain degree of inferiority and the existence of a lower level of personality. On this lower level with its uncontrolled or scarcely controlled emotions one behaves more or less like a primitive, who is not only the passive victim of his affects but also singularly incapable of moral judgment. --Jung, Aion
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.
Psychology Of Antagonism © 2012 J Karl Bogartte
If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc.
This meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one’s own shadow.
The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well.
But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is. For what comes after the door is, surprisingly enough, a boundless expanse full of unprecedented uncertainty, with apparently no inside and no outside, no above and no below, no here and no there, no mine and no thine, no good and no bad. It is the world of water…..where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me. ~Carl Jung; The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious; Page 21.
It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism.
The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself.
But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster’s body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost.
Having a dark suspicion of these grim possibilities, man turns a blind eye to the shadow-side of human nature.
Blindly he strives against the salutary dogma of original sin, which is yet so prodigiously true.
Yes, he even hesitates to admit the conflict of which he is so painfully aware.
--Jung, On the Psychology of the Unconscious (1912)
Collected Works 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology
Page 35
*
"With a little self-criticism one can see through the shadow-so far as its nature is personal. But when it appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus. In other words, it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil." ~ Carl Jung
It is in the nature of political bodies always to see the evil in the opposite group, just as the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything he does not know and does not want to know about himself by foisting it off on somebody else. ~Carl Jung
http://www.american-buddha.com/lit.jungaion.2.htm
This meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one’s own shadow.
The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well.
But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is. For what comes after the door is, surprisingly enough, a boundless expanse full of unprecedented uncertainty, with apparently no inside and no outside, no above and no below, no here and no there, no mine and no thine, no good and no bad. It is the world of water…..where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me. ~Carl Jung; The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious; Page 21.
It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism.
The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself.
But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster’s body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost.
Having a dark suspicion of these grim possibilities, man turns a blind eye to the shadow-side of human nature.
Blindly he strives against the salutary dogma of original sin, which is yet so prodigiously true.
Yes, he even hesitates to admit the conflict of which he is so painfully aware.
--Jung, On the Psychology of the Unconscious (1912)
Collected Works 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology
Page 35
*
"With a little self-criticism one can see through the shadow-so far as its nature is personal. But when it appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus. In other words, it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil." ~ Carl Jung
It is in the nature of political bodies always to see the evil in the opposite group, just as the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything he does not know and does not want to know about himself by foisting it off on somebody else. ~Carl Jung
http://www.american-buddha.com/lit.jungaion.2.htm
The Realization of the Shadow
. . . one becomes acquainted with aspects of one's own personality that for various reasons one has preferred not to look at too closely. P. 174 "realization of the shadow" . . . used because it actually often appears in dreams in a personified form. P. 174
The shadow is not the whole . . . it represents unknown or little-known attributes of the ego. P. 174
When an individual makes an attempt to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he denies in himself but can plainly see in other people . . . such as egotism, mental laziness, sloppiness, unreal fantasies, schemes, plots, carelessness, cowardice, inordinate love of money and possessions . . . in short, all the little sins about which he might previously have told himself: "that doesn't matter". P. 174
If you feel an overwhelming rage coming up in you when a friend reproaches you about a fault, you can be fairly sure . . . you will find a part of your shadow, of which you are unconscious. P. 174
. . . the work of self-education begins . . . a work, we might say, that is the psychological equivalent of the labors of Hercules. P. 174
. . . a task so enormous that the ordinary mortal would be overcome by discouragement at the mere thought of it. P. 174
. . . shadow does not consist only of omissions. . . just as often in an impulsive or inadvertent act. . . the shadow is exposed to collective infections . . . when a man is alone . . . he feels all right, but as soon as "the others" do dark . . . things, he begins to fear that if he doesn't join in he will be considered a fool. P. 175
. . . he gives way to impulses that do not belong to him at all. P. 175
If people observe their own unconscious tendencies in other people, this is called "projection". Projections of all kinds obscure our view of our fellow men, spoiling its objectivity, and . .. all possibility of genuine human relations. P. 181
Whether our shadow becomes our friend or enemy depends largely upon ourselves. The shadow becomes hostile only when he is ignored or misunderstood. P. 182
Sometimes . . . an individual feels impelled to live out the worse side of his nature and to repress his better side. P. 182
So, whatever form it takes, the function of the shadow is to represent the opposite side of the ego and to embody just those qualities that one dislikes most in other people. P. 182
There is such a passionate drive within the shadow that reason may not prevail against it. A bitter experience coming from outside may occasionally help; a brick, so to speak, has to drop on one's head to put a stop to shadow drives and impulses. At times a heroic decision may serve to halt them, but such a superhuman effort is usually possible only if the Great Man within (the Self) helps the individual to carry it through. P. 182
The discovery of the unconscious is one of the most far-reaching discoveries of recent times. But the fact that recognition of its unconscious reality involves honest self-examination and reorganization of one's life causes many people to continue to behave as if nothing at all has happened. P. 185
It takes a lot of courage to . . . tackle the problems it raises. Most people are too indolent to think deeply about even those moral aspects of their behavior of which they are conscious; they are certainly too lazy to consider how the unconscious affects them. P. 185
'Shadow' Carried by All, Says Jung'
Special to The New York Times
New Haven, Oct. 22, 1937--Dr. Carl G. Jung, Professor of Analytic Psychology at Zurich, said today in the third and last of the annual Terry lectures at Yale University that not only is there an authentic religious function in the unconscious mind, but the manifestations of it have followed the same pattern for more than 2,000 years.
Man's struggles with anti-social tendencies were vividly illustrated by Dr. Jung as suppression, a conscious moral choice, or repression, a sort of half-hearted letting go of things.
"To live with a saint," he said, "might cause an inferiority complex or even wild outburst of immorality in individuals less morally gifted. You cannot pump morality into a system where it is not indigenous, though you may spoil it.
"Unfortunately there is no doubt about the fact that man is, as a whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Every one carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one has always a chance to correct it.
Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is steadily subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected. It is, moreover, liable to burst forth in a moment of unawareness. At all events, it forms an unconscious snag, blocking the most recent attempts.
"We carry our past with us, viz: the primitive and inferior man with his desires and emotions, and it is only by a considerable effort that we can detach ourselves from this burden. If it comes to a neurosis, we have invariably to deal with a considerably intensified shadow. And if such a case wants to be cured it is necessary to find a way in which man's conscious personality and his shadow can live together.
"This is a very serious problem for all those who are either themselves in such a predicament, or who have to help other people to live. A mere suppression of the shadow is just as little of a remedy as beheading against headache. To destroy a man's morality does not help either because it would kill his better self, without which even the shadow makes no sense.
"The reconciliation of these opposites is a major problem. It is natural that the more robust mentality of the fathers could not appreciate the delicacy and the merit of this subtle and, from a modern point of view, immensely practical argument. It was also dangerous, and it is still the most vital and yet the most ticklish problem of a civilization that has forgotten why man's life should be sacrificial, that means, offered up to an idea greater than man."
Applying the struggle to European upheavals, Dr. Jung stated that the mental effort has gone on until now there is no civilized country where the lower strata are not in a state of unrest, and that in some European nations such a condition is overtaking the upper strata, too.
"This state of affairs," he declared, "is the demonstration of our psychological program in a gigantic state. Such problems can only be solved by a general change of attitude. It begins with a change in individuals. The accumulation of such individual changes only will produce a collective solution."
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/21/reviews/jung-lecture2.html
. . . one becomes acquainted with aspects of one's own personality that for various reasons one has preferred not to look at too closely. P. 174 "realization of the shadow" . . . used because it actually often appears in dreams in a personified form. P. 174
The shadow is not the whole . . . it represents unknown or little-known attributes of the ego. P. 174
When an individual makes an attempt to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he denies in himself but can plainly see in other people . . . such as egotism, mental laziness, sloppiness, unreal fantasies, schemes, plots, carelessness, cowardice, inordinate love of money and possessions . . . in short, all the little sins about which he might previously have told himself: "that doesn't matter". P. 174
If you feel an overwhelming rage coming up in you when a friend reproaches you about a fault, you can be fairly sure . . . you will find a part of your shadow, of which you are unconscious. P. 174
. . . the work of self-education begins . . . a work, we might say, that is the psychological equivalent of the labors of Hercules. P. 174
. . . a task so enormous that the ordinary mortal would be overcome by discouragement at the mere thought of it. P. 174
. . . shadow does not consist only of omissions. . . just as often in an impulsive or inadvertent act. . . the shadow is exposed to collective infections . . . when a man is alone . . . he feels all right, but as soon as "the others" do dark . . . things, he begins to fear that if he doesn't join in he will be considered a fool. P. 175
. . . he gives way to impulses that do not belong to him at all. P. 175
If people observe their own unconscious tendencies in other people, this is called "projection". Projections of all kinds obscure our view of our fellow men, spoiling its objectivity, and . .. all possibility of genuine human relations. P. 181
Whether our shadow becomes our friend or enemy depends largely upon ourselves. The shadow becomes hostile only when he is ignored or misunderstood. P. 182
Sometimes . . . an individual feels impelled to live out the worse side of his nature and to repress his better side. P. 182
So, whatever form it takes, the function of the shadow is to represent the opposite side of the ego and to embody just those qualities that one dislikes most in other people. P. 182
There is such a passionate drive within the shadow that reason may not prevail against it. A bitter experience coming from outside may occasionally help; a brick, so to speak, has to drop on one's head to put a stop to shadow drives and impulses. At times a heroic decision may serve to halt them, but such a superhuman effort is usually possible only if the Great Man within (the Self) helps the individual to carry it through. P. 182
The discovery of the unconscious is one of the most far-reaching discoveries of recent times. But the fact that recognition of its unconscious reality involves honest self-examination and reorganization of one's life causes many people to continue to behave as if nothing at all has happened. P. 185
It takes a lot of courage to . . . tackle the problems it raises. Most people are too indolent to think deeply about even those moral aspects of their behavior of which they are conscious; they are certainly too lazy to consider how the unconscious affects them. P. 185
'Shadow' Carried by All, Says Jung'
Special to The New York Times
New Haven, Oct. 22, 1937--Dr. Carl G. Jung, Professor of Analytic Psychology at Zurich, said today in the third and last of the annual Terry lectures at Yale University that not only is there an authentic religious function in the unconscious mind, but the manifestations of it have followed the same pattern for more than 2,000 years.
Man's struggles with anti-social tendencies were vividly illustrated by Dr. Jung as suppression, a conscious moral choice, or repression, a sort of half-hearted letting go of things.
"To live with a saint," he said, "might cause an inferiority complex or even wild outburst of immorality in individuals less morally gifted. You cannot pump morality into a system where it is not indigenous, though you may spoil it.
"Unfortunately there is no doubt about the fact that man is, as a whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Every one carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one has always a chance to correct it.
Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is steadily subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected. It is, moreover, liable to burst forth in a moment of unawareness. At all events, it forms an unconscious snag, blocking the most recent attempts.
"We carry our past with us, viz: the primitive and inferior man with his desires and emotions, and it is only by a considerable effort that we can detach ourselves from this burden. If it comes to a neurosis, we have invariably to deal with a considerably intensified shadow. And if such a case wants to be cured it is necessary to find a way in which man's conscious personality and his shadow can live together.
"This is a very serious problem for all those who are either themselves in such a predicament, or who have to help other people to live. A mere suppression of the shadow is just as little of a remedy as beheading against headache. To destroy a man's morality does not help either because it would kill his better self, without which even the shadow makes no sense.
"The reconciliation of these opposites is a major problem. It is natural that the more robust mentality of the fathers could not appreciate the delicacy and the merit of this subtle and, from a modern point of view, immensely practical argument. It was also dangerous, and it is still the most vital and yet the most ticklish problem of a civilization that has forgotten why man's life should be sacrificial, that means, offered up to an idea greater than man."
Applying the struggle to European upheavals, Dr. Jung stated that the mental effort has gone on until now there is no civilized country where the lower strata are not in a state of unrest, and that in some European nations such a condition is overtaking the upper strata, too.
"This state of affairs," he declared, "is the demonstration of our psychological program in a gigantic state. Such problems can only be solved by a general change of attitude. It begins with a change in individuals. The accumulation of such individual changes only will produce a collective solution."
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/21/reviews/jung-lecture2.html
Study for: The Shadows J Karl Bogartte
Stage Four: the Virtuous/the Shadow
Routinizing and rationalizing the self-sacrifice (performed by the Hero spontaneously), this stage lives by moral or patriotic rules. Very young children simply trust that what they are told is right (Stage Two) and slightly older ones think that they only have to obey people who are bigger, stronger, and less sensitive than they are (the conscious side of Stage Three). According to Piaget, between five and seven, children develop elementary desire to play with logical organization and from twelve on they may amplify this into mature skills with abstractions. Opportunities to develop organizational skills nonetheless depend on one’s culture. Tribes (Stage Two) have no openings for accountants (Stage Four). Eventually, however, a large kingdom needs a bureaucracy of educated clerks (at Stage Four) to administer and promulgate the rules.
At this stage, people presume rules flow from God’s Will (or from the Nature of Things or from the Little Red Book or some other version of Absolute Order). They express the only Truth—a cosmic neatness contemplated with the same pleasure as putting in its place every stamp or baseball card in a collection. At Stage Four, actions are either correct or incorrect (not somewhere in between). Unlike Stage Three’s “shame culture” (where malefactors only fear loss of “face” or honor), Stage Four brings a “guilt culture” (where remorse comes from violating Order). Stressing the patience required for such virtuousness, Graves phrased Stage Four “Sacrifice Self Now for Salvation (or Attainment) Later”—a painful procedure.
Trying to live those rules consequently breeds an “archetypal” Shadow, a collection of all the impulses and exceptions contrary to the society’s dominant systematization of Truth. Like the other archetypes, it gradually absorbs much-needed energy. Thus despite virtuously trying to contain the monstrous green Shadow that takes possession of his body, Bruce Banner (the Hulk), in comic books, cartoons, and live action films, periodically succumbs to it, thereby receiving healing and empowerment. Comparably, The Mask (1994) and The Shadow (1994) fantasize the Shadow as a source of abilities that the good can utilize in their struggle with evil. Another, theme that arises late in Stage Four is the felix culpa or fortunate fall, whereby the reformed sinners’ transgressions render them more knowledgeable and stronger than before becoming aware of the Shadow.
Since Stage Four still constitutes the highest level much of the population reaches, movies frequently adopt its conscious perspective—that the Shadow is evil. The Shadow, thus, is often presented as a devilish tempter, sometimes explicitly a sub-personality within the protagonist, as in Fight Club (1999). Surreptitiously in viewing such movies, a Stage-Four audience partly identifies with that Shadow, thereby venting repressed longings (while pretending to condemn them). --Whitlark, 2006
http://www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/2005/Whitlark.htm
Stage Four: the Virtuous/the Shadow
Routinizing and rationalizing the self-sacrifice (performed by the Hero spontaneously), this stage lives by moral or patriotic rules. Very young children simply trust that what they are told is right (Stage Two) and slightly older ones think that they only have to obey people who are bigger, stronger, and less sensitive than they are (the conscious side of Stage Three). According to Piaget, between five and seven, children develop elementary desire to play with logical organization and from twelve on they may amplify this into mature skills with abstractions. Opportunities to develop organizational skills nonetheless depend on one’s culture. Tribes (Stage Two) have no openings for accountants (Stage Four). Eventually, however, a large kingdom needs a bureaucracy of educated clerks (at Stage Four) to administer and promulgate the rules.
At this stage, people presume rules flow from God’s Will (or from the Nature of Things or from the Little Red Book or some other version of Absolute Order). They express the only Truth—a cosmic neatness contemplated with the same pleasure as putting in its place every stamp or baseball card in a collection. At Stage Four, actions are either correct or incorrect (not somewhere in between). Unlike Stage Three’s “shame culture” (where malefactors only fear loss of “face” or honor), Stage Four brings a “guilt culture” (where remorse comes from violating Order). Stressing the patience required for such virtuousness, Graves phrased Stage Four “Sacrifice Self Now for Salvation (or Attainment) Later”—a painful procedure.
Trying to live those rules consequently breeds an “archetypal” Shadow, a collection of all the impulses and exceptions contrary to the society’s dominant systematization of Truth. Like the other archetypes, it gradually absorbs much-needed energy. Thus despite virtuously trying to contain the monstrous green Shadow that takes possession of his body, Bruce Banner (the Hulk), in comic books, cartoons, and live action films, periodically succumbs to it, thereby receiving healing and empowerment. Comparably, The Mask (1994) and The Shadow (1994) fantasize the Shadow as a source of abilities that the good can utilize in their struggle with evil. Another, theme that arises late in Stage Four is the felix culpa or fortunate fall, whereby the reformed sinners’ transgressions render them more knowledgeable and stronger than before becoming aware of the Shadow.
Since Stage Four still constitutes the highest level much of the population reaches, movies frequently adopt its conscious perspective—that the Shadow is evil. The Shadow, thus, is often presented as a devilish tempter, sometimes explicitly a sub-personality within the protagonist, as in Fight Club (1999). Surreptitiously in viewing such movies, a Stage-Four audience partly identifies with that Shadow, thereby venting repressed longings (while pretending to condemn them). --Whitlark, 2006
http://www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/2005/Whitlark.htm
"In the renewed world you can have no outer possessions, unless you create them out of yourselves. You can enter only into your own mysteries. The spirit of the depths has other things to teach you than me. I only have to bring you tidings of the new God and of the ceremonies and mysteries of his service. But this is the way. It is the gate to darkness" ~The Red Book (Draft), Footnote 163,
This play that I witnessed is my play, not your play.
It is my secret, not yours.
You cannot imitate me.
My secret remains virginal and my mysteries are inviolable, they belong to me and cannot belong to you.
You have your own. [See Footnote 163]
He who enters into his own must grope through what lies at hand, he must sense his way from stone to stone. He must embrace the worthless and the worthy with the same love.
A mountain is nothing, and a grain of sand holds kingdoms, or also nothing.
Judgment must fall from you, even taste, but above all pride, even when it is based on merit. Utterly poor, miserable, unknowingly humiliated, go on through the gate.
Turn your anger against yourself, since only you stop yourself from looking and from living.
The mystery play is soft like air and thin smoke, and you are raw matter that is disturbingly heavy.
But let your hope, which is your highest good and highest ability, lead the way and serve you as a guide in the world of darkness) since it is of like substance with the forms of that world. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 178.
"In the renewed world you can have no outer possessions, unless you create them out of yourselves. You can enter only into your own mysteries. The spirit of the depths has other things to teach you than me. I only have to bring you tidings of the new God and of the ceremonies and mysteries of his service. But this is the way. It is the gate to darkness" ~The Red Book (Draft), Footnote 163,
This play that I witnessed is my play, not your play.
It is my secret, not yours.
You cannot imitate me.
My secret remains virginal and my mysteries are inviolable, they belong to me and cannot belong to you.
You have your own. [See Footnote 163]
He who enters into his own must grope through what lies at hand, he must sense his way from stone to stone. He must embrace the worthless and the worthy with the same love.
A mountain is nothing, and a grain of sand holds kingdoms, or also nothing.
Judgment must fall from you, even taste, but above all pride, even when it is based on merit. Utterly poor, miserable, unknowingly humiliated, go on through the gate.
Turn your anger against yourself, since only you stop yourself from looking and from living.
The mystery play is soft like air and thin smoke, and you are raw matter that is disturbingly heavy.
But let your hope, which is your highest good and highest ability, lead the way and serve you as a guide in the world of darkness) since it is of like substance with the forms of that world. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 178.
"In the renewed world you can have no outer possessions, unless you create them out of yourselves. You can enter only into your own mysteries. The spirit of the depths has other things to teach you than me. I only have to bring you tidings of the new God and of the ceremonies and mysteries of his service. But this is the way. It is the gate to darkness" ~The Red Book (Draft), Footnote 163,
"I am Mime, and I will show you the wellsprings. The collected light becomes water and flows in many springs from the summit into the valleys of the earth."
He then dives down into a crevice. I follow him down into a dark cave. I hear the rippling of a spring. I hear the voice of the dwarf from below: "Here are my wells, whoever drinks from them becomes wise." ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 251
In Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung, the Nibelung dwarf Mime is the brother of Alberich and a master craftsman. Alberich stole the Rhinegold from the Rhinemaidens; through renouncing love, he was able to forge a ring out of it that conferred limitless power.
In Siegfried, Mime, who lives in a cave, brings up Siegfried so that he will kill Fafner the giant, who has transformed into a dragon and now has the ring. Siegfried slays Fafner with the invincible sword that Mime has fashioned, and kills Mime, who had intended to kill him after he had recovered the gold. ~The Red Book, Footnote 209
He then dives down into a crevice. I follow him down into a dark cave. I hear the rippling of a spring. I hear the voice of the dwarf from below: "Here are my wells, whoever drinks from them becomes wise." ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 251
In Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung, the Nibelung dwarf Mime is the brother of Alberich and a master craftsman. Alberich stole the Rhinegold from the Rhinemaidens; through renouncing love, he was able to forge a ring out of it that conferred limitless power.
In Siegfried, Mime, who lives in a cave, brings up Siegfried so that he will kill Fafner the giant, who has transformed into a dragon and now has the ring. Siegfried slays Fafner with the invincible sword that Mime has fashioned, and kills Mime, who had intended to kill him after he had recovered the gold. ~The Red Book, Footnote 209
Generation after generation of ancestors wreak violent revenge on each other: each act required to respond to an earlier one, but none able to claim any ultimate moral justification.
We bring into analysis our whole family background, and not only our immediate, known family, but the whole ancestral background too. We are part of dynasty; indeed, it might be argued that dynasty is our destiny.
Jung was fond of quoting from the second commandment, that the sins of the fathers are visited on the children to the third and fourth generation. And, he avers, that no matter how unfair this might seem, the psychological truth is much more severe. In fact the sins of the ancestors continue down the generations until one person comes to consciousness and redeems the curse. A deep and prolonged exploration brings healing, not only to the individual, but to an entire dynasty.
The facts of history cannot be changed, but the whole aura of them, their feeling and influence over time, can be transformed into an abiding effect of peace and wholeness. This is also the motivation behind the psychological inquiry and ritual which has been developing in a small way in the mainstream churches under the title, ‘Healing the Family Tree’.
So what is the typical family and dynastic background that drives someone into analysis? Whatever the individual characteristics, it is to a lesser or greater degree dysfunctional; it does not operate with emotional or creative productivity, because it is stunted and starved of love. The inability to love and to demonstrate love to children, whose birthright it is to be nurtured in love, is the root of all family dysfunction. Children are not loved and lovingly nurtured, so they grow up unable to love. Short of a near-miracle which sometimes happens and delivers them from the cycle, they grow up and are, by grim, inevitable magnetism, each attracted to like partners who have not been loved nor lovingly nurtured and therefore cannot love, and the couple co-parent another cloned loveless generation, and so on and so on down the dynasty. If there is no love, then the law of the jungle – what Nietzsche and later Alfred Adler called the ‘will to power’ – flourishes. Love and power are reciprocal opposites: the more there is of one, the less there is of the other. And real love is hard work; for, as St Paul informs us, ‘Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous;…it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offence, and is not resentful. Love…is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes.’ This is an ideal; but (in Winnicott’s celebrated little phrase) a ‘good enough’ measure of this kind of love, usually termed ‘agape’ or selfless compassionate love, will minimalise dysfunction.
http://www.jungwa.org/Resources/Oedipus/oedipusAndBeyond.html
We bring into analysis our whole family background, and not only our immediate, known family, but the whole ancestral background too. We are part of dynasty; indeed, it might be argued that dynasty is our destiny.
Jung was fond of quoting from the second commandment, that the sins of the fathers are visited on the children to the third and fourth generation. And, he avers, that no matter how unfair this might seem, the psychological truth is much more severe. In fact the sins of the ancestors continue down the generations until one person comes to consciousness and redeems the curse. A deep and prolonged exploration brings healing, not only to the individual, but to an entire dynasty.
The facts of history cannot be changed, but the whole aura of them, their feeling and influence over time, can be transformed into an abiding effect of peace and wholeness. This is also the motivation behind the psychological inquiry and ritual which has been developing in a small way in the mainstream churches under the title, ‘Healing the Family Tree’.
So what is the typical family and dynastic background that drives someone into analysis? Whatever the individual characteristics, it is to a lesser or greater degree dysfunctional; it does not operate with emotional or creative productivity, because it is stunted and starved of love. The inability to love and to demonstrate love to children, whose birthright it is to be nurtured in love, is the root of all family dysfunction. Children are not loved and lovingly nurtured, so they grow up unable to love. Short of a near-miracle which sometimes happens and delivers them from the cycle, they grow up and are, by grim, inevitable magnetism, each attracted to like partners who have not been loved nor lovingly nurtured and therefore cannot love, and the couple co-parent another cloned loveless generation, and so on and so on down the dynasty. If there is no love, then the law of the jungle – what Nietzsche and later Alfred Adler called the ‘will to power’ – flourishes. Love and power are reciprocal opposites: the more there is of one, the less there is of the other. And real love is hard work; for, as St Paul informs us, ‘Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous;…it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offence, and is not resentful. Love…is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes.’ This is an ideal; but (in Winnicott’s celebrated little phrase) a ‘good enough’ measure of this kind of love, usually termed ‘agape’ or selfless compassionate love, will minimalise dysfunction.
http://www.jungwa.org/Resources/Oedipus/oedipusAndBeyond.html
Satan represents elements of our personal lives.
Extracts from The Red Book Below
I: "It seems to me that it depends on what you call life. Your notion of life has to do with climbing up and tearing down, with assertion and doubt, with impatient dragging around, with hasty desire. You lack the absolute and its forbearing patience."
Satan: "Quite right. My life bubbles and foams and stirs up turbulent waves, it consists of seizing and throwing away, ardent wishing and restlessness. That is life, isn't it?"
I: "But the absolute also lives."
Satan: "That is no life. It is a standstill or as good as a standstill, or rather: it lives interminably slowly and wastes thousands of years, just like the miserable condition that you have created."
I: "You enlighten me. You are personal life, but the apparent standstill is the forbearing life of eternity, the life of divinity! This time you have counseled me well. I will let you go. Farewell." ~Carl Jung Red Book
Satan crawls deftly like a mole back into his hole again. The symbol of the trinity and its entourage rise up in peace and equanimity to Heaven. I thank you, serpent, for hauling up the right one for me. Everyone understands his words, since they are personal. We can live again, a long life. We can
waste thousands of years. ~Carl Jung; Red Book
I: "What is it, then, with this damned personal quality? Satan recently made / a strong impression on me, as if he were the quintessence of the personal."
Satan: "Of course he would, since he is the eternal adversary; and because you can never reconcile personal life with absolute life."
I: "Can't one unite these opposites?"
Satan: "They are not opposites, but simply differences. Just as little as you make the day the opposite of the year or the bushel the opposite of the cubit." ~Carl Jung; Red Book
Thus I built a firm structure. Through this I myself gained stability and duration and could withstand the fluctuations of the personal. Therefore the immortal in me is saved. Through drawing the darkness from my beyond over into the day, I emptied my beyond. Therefore the demands of the dead disappeared, as they were satisfied. ~Carl Jung; Red Book
I am no longer threatened by the dead, since I accepted their demands though accepting the serpent. But through this I have also taken over something of the dead into my day. Yet it was necessary, since death is the most enduring of all things, that which can never be canceled out. Death gives me durability and solidity. So long as I wanted to satisfy only my own demands, I was personal and therefore living in the sense of the world. But when I recognized the demands of the dead in me and satisfied them, I gave up my earlier personal striving and the world had to take me for a dead man. For a great cold comes over whoever in the excess of his personal striving has recognized the demands of the dead and seeks to satisfy them.
While he feels as if a mysterious poison has paralyzed the living quality of his personal relations, the voices of the dead remain silent in his beyond; the threat, the fear, and the restlessness cease. For everything that previously lurked hungrily in him no longer lives with him in his day. His life is beautiful and rich, since he is himself. ~Carl Jung; Red Book
Extracts from The Red Book Below
I: "It seems to me that it depends on what you call life. Your notion of life has to do with climbing up and tearing down, with assertion and doubt, with impatient dragging around, with hasty desire. You lack the absolute and its forbearing patience."
Satan: "Quite right. My life bubbles and foams and stirs up turbulent waves, it consists of seizing and throwing away, ardent wishing and restlessness. That is life, isn't it?"
I: "But the absolute also lives."
Satan: "That is no life. It is a standstill or as good as a standstill, or rather: it lives interminably slowly and wastes thousands of years, just like the miserable condition that you have created."
I: "You enlighten me. You are personal life, but the apparent standstill is the forbearing life of eternity, the life of divinity! This time you have counseled me well. I will let you go. Farewell." ~Carl Jung Red Book
Satan crawls deftly like a mole back into his hole again. The symbol of the trinity and its entourage rise up in peace and equanimity to Heaven. I thank you, serpent, for hauling up the right one for me. Everyone understands his words, since they are personal. We can live again, a long life. We can
waste thousands of years. ~Carl Jung; Red Book
I: "What is it, then, with this damned personal quality? Satan recently made / a strong impression on me, as if he were the quintessence of the personal."
Satan: "Of course he would, since he is the eternal adversary; and because you can never reconcile personal life with absolute life."
I: "Can't one unite these opposites?"
Satan: "They are not opposites, but simply differences. Just as little as you make the day the opposite of the year or the bushel the opposite of the cubit." ~Carl Jung; Red Book
Thus I built a firm structure. Through this I myself gained stability and duration and could withstand the fluctuations of the personal. Therefore the immortal in me is saved. Through drawing the darkness from my beyond over into the day, I emptied my beyond. Therefore the demands of the dead disappeared, as they were satisfied. ~Carl Jung; Red Book
I am no longer threatened by the dead, since I accepted their demands though accepting the serpent. But through this I have also taken over something of the dead into my day. Yet it was necessary, since death is the most enduring of all things, that which can never be canceled out. Death gives me durability and solidity. So long as I wanted to satisfy only my own demands, I was personal and therefore living in the sense of the world. But when I recognized the demands of the dead in me and satisfied them, I gave up my earlier personal striving and the world had to take me for a dead man. For a great cold comes over whoever in the excess of his personal striving has recognized the demands of the dead and seeks to satisfy them.
While he feels as if a mysterious poison has paralyzed the living quality of his personal relations, the voices of the dead remain silent in his beyond; the threat, the fear, and the restlessness cease. For everything that previously lurked hungrily in him no longer lives with him in his day. His life is beautiful and rich, since he is himself. ~Carl Jung; Red Book
The Shadow
The shadow is an archetypal form that serves as the focus for material that has been repressed from consciousness; its contents include those tendencies desires and memories that are rejected by the individual as incompatible with the persona and contrary to social standards and ideals. The shadow contains all the negative tendencies the individual wishes to deny, including our animal instincts, as well as undeveloped positive and negative qualities.
The stronger our persona is and the more we identify with it, the more we deny other parts of ourselves. The shadow represents what we consider to be inferior in our personality and also that which we have neglected and never developed in ourselves. In dreams, a shadow figure may appear as an animal, a dwarf, a vagrant, or any other low-status figure.
The shadow is most dangerous when unrecognized. Then the individual tends to project his or her unwanted qualities onto others or to become dominated by the shadow without realizing it. Images of evil, the devil and the concept of original sin are all aspects of the shadow archetype. The more the shadow material is made conscious, the less it can dominate. But the shadow is an integral part of our nature, and it can never be simply eliminated. A person who claims to be without a shadow is not a complete individual but a two-dimensional caricature, denying the mixture of good and evil that is necessarily present in all of us.
The following passage from one of Jung's letters provides a clear illustration of Jung's concept of the shadow and of the unconscious in general:
It is a very difficult and important question, what you call the technique of dealing with the shadow. There is, as a matter of fact, no technique at all, inasmuch as technique means that there is a known and perhaps even prescribable way to deal with a certain difficulty, or task. It is rather a dealing comparable to diplomacy or statesmanship. There is, for instance, no particular technique that would help us to reconcile two political parties opposing each other.... If one can speak of a technique at all, it consists solely in an attitude. First of all, one has to accept and to take seriously into account the existence of the shadow. Secondly, it is necessary to be informed about its qualities and intentions. Thirdly, long and difficult negotiations will be unavoidable....
Nobody can know what the final outcome of such negotiations will be. One only knows that through careful collaboration the problem itself becomes changed. Very often certain apparently impossible intentions of the shadow are mere threats due to unwillingness on the part of the ego to enter upon a serious consideration of the shadow. Such threats diminish usually when one meets them seriously. (1973,p.234)
Just when we think we understand it, the shadow will appear in another form. Dealing with the shadow is a lifelong process of looking within and honestly reflecting on what we see there (von Franz, 1995).
http://www.sofia.edu/content/transpersonal-pioneers-carl-jung
The shadow is an archetypal form that serves as the focus for material that has been repressed from consciousness; its contents include those tendencies desires and memories that are rejected by the individual as incompatible with the persona and contrary to social standards and ideals. The shadow contains all the negative tendencies the individual wishes to deny, including our animal instincts, as well as undeveloped positive and negative qualities.
The stronger our persona is and the more we identify with it, the more we deny other parts of ourselves. The shadow represents what we consider to be inferior in our personality and also that which we have neglected and never developed in ourselves. In dreams, a shadow figure may appear as an animal, a dwarf, a vagrant, or any other low-status figure.
The shadow is most dangerous when unrecognized. Then the individual tends to project his or her unwanted qualities onto others or to become dominated by the shadow without realizing it. Images of evil, the devil and the concept of original sin are all aspects of the shadow archetype. The more the shadow material is made conscious, the less it can dominate. But the shadow is an integral part of our nature, and it can never be simply eliminated. A person who claims to be without a shadow is not a complete individual but a two-dimensional caricature, denying the mixture of good and evil that is necessarily present in all of us.
The following passage from one of Jung's letters provides a clear illustration of Jung's concept of the shadow and of the unconscious in general:
It is a very difficult and important question, what you call the technique of dealing with the shadow. There is, as a matter of fact, no technique at all, inasmuch as technique means that there is a known and perhaps even prescribable way to deal with a certain difficulty, or task. It is rather a dealing comparable to diplomacy or statesmanship. There is, for instance, no particular technique that would help us to reconcile two political parties opposing each other.... If one can speak of a technique at all, it consists solely in an attitude. First of all, one has to accept and to take seriously into account the existence of the shadow. Secondly, it is necessary to be informed about its qualities and intentions. Thirdly, long and difficult negotiations will be unavoidable....
Nobody can know what the final outcome of such negotiations will be. One only knows that through careful collaboration the problem itself becomes changed. Very often certain apparently impossible intentions of the shadow are mere threats due to unwillingness on the part of the ego to enter upon a serious consideration of the shadow. Such threats diminish usually when one meets them seriously. (1973,p.234)
Just when we think we understand it, the shadow will appear in another form. Dealing with the shadow is a lifelong process of looking within and honestly reflecting on what we see there (von Franz, 1995).
http://www.sofia.edu/content/transpersonal-pioneers-carl-jung
The Shadow
The figure of the Adversary or Antagonist emerged in the myths of many cultures in the earliest times. It signifies a polarized psyche, suspended between the opposites, rather than freely circulating within the whole field. One representation of archetypal shadow and collective evil is The Devil. Jung claimed the Devil comes to all desirous solitaries "with smooth tongue and clear reasoning" knowing "the right word at the right moment", to lure us to his desire.
In alchemical writing, the shadow is the healing power, the antidote to disease. As the epitome of opposition, it is also symbolized by figures whose essence is “the other”. Jung understood a wide range of alchemic symbols and noticed the shadow appears in the shape of strange and threatening animals such as the wolf, snake and dragon.
The shadow is not experienced directly by the ego because it is part of the unconscious, so instead it is projected onto others. It includes our defense mechanisms: acting out, autistic fantasy, denial, devaluation, displacement, dissociation, idealization, intellectualization, isolation, passive aggression, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, repression, somatization, splitting, suppression, and undoing.
Such emergence in the collective or individual psyche signifies the constellation and energetic challenge of a meta-conflict (Good vs. Evil), the outcome of which will remain in doubt until these energies are either subdued or integrated. The solution of the protagonist (ego)-antagonist duality lies in the Observer Self -- an unidentified source of transfinite information that reconciles the opposites.
Toxic chemical and hormonal responses can be triggered by events in the present that remind us of the past. Locked in by fear and pain, we revert to feelings of insecurity, low self esteem, lack of confidence, lack of abundance, lack of joy etc., stuck and replaying old traumas and insults, again and again. This disturbs self-organization and self-regulation at the psychogenic root.
The nervous system governs the range of emotional expression, quality of communication, mobilization, and the ability to regulate bodily and behavioral states. The autonomic nervous system animates affective experience, emotional expression, facial gestures, communication and contingent social behavior.
Jung contends, "Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is." We might say, the less it is embodied in conscious awareness the more likely it is to go "into" or disturb the body, structurally and symptomatically. It is everything we deny and disown in ourselves, and therefore project outwardly and "stuff" inwardly. In part it is our link to more primitive animal instincts, superseded in early childhood by the conscious mind.
Jung saw the imagination as a bridge, over which the Psyche ("God") can cross from unconsciousness into consciousness. In the mythopoetic approach, The Devil is both the Ur-Adversary, and a tremendous source of strength, a nearly inexhaustible source of energy. Battling him gives us strength. Submitting to him completely is ego-death. The Adversary can be represented by death and dark symbols.
Jung referred to distinct images of Dragons in a number of his works. He initially cites it as the arch-enemy of the Hero archetype, drawing mainly from the New Testament and Gnosticism. The mother Dragon threatens to overwhelm the birth of the God, thus the ego must defeat the Dragon before becoming the Hero/heroine. He later views the Tiamat-Marduk myth as the basis of the Mercurial Serpent image - the Dragon that both destroys and creates itself and represents the Prime Material (or Philosopher's Stone).
The hero/heroine and adversary archetype often resemble each other symbolizing their relationship as two parts of the same whole. Similarly, the treasure which is the goal of many legendary heroes is seen as life itself, the resolution of the struggle between conscious and unconscious; through introversion, the entering of the cave, the treasure is regained, the self reborn.
Joseph Campbell called archetypes the "masks of God", because of their diversity and multidmensionality. Others suggest Lucifer as a "mask" of the Adversary, a motivator and illuminating force of the mind and subconscious. As higher intelligence, understanding and vision, the higher self and reason, Lucifer is seen as the Angel/Lord of Light, Divine Light and Pure Energy He is an initiatory rather than a Biblical character. Like God, he is a Mystery. The Self appears as evil incarnate because the polarities of good and evil are intrinsic to human life. Even spirit can be an adversary to the soul.
Jung identifies the adversarial Dragon directly with the unconscious, the natural state of consciousness vanquished by the Hero. The mother Dragon and the Mercurial Serpent are closely linked as creators. In Jung's idea of the Dragon as an archetype it may be a representation of the life-giving mother, though this is not true for all civilizations. The spirit of evil is fear, the forbidden desire, the adversary who opposes not only each individual heroic deed, but life in its struggle for eternal duration as well.
We have to fall back on Jung's statement that an archetype is a collective cultural artifact for Chaos. The Babylonian Tiamat is a Sumerian archetype. The Egyptian archetype is a snake which destroys life and has to be defeated before life is reborn - in other words the Prime Material. The Chinese archetype is that of the life-giver, the lizard which emerges with the onset of the spring rains.
Jung never contemplated the Hebrew God and the adversary the Devil (Satan) as literal persons. The occult is about energy, not personality. The Devil represents for us what Jung has called the collective shadow. It is a truism that we disown and project our own negativity through the shadow. "The opposite principle" splits the ego at work seeking to privilege its own insecurity. A healthy ego is capable of living with anxiety, ambiguity and ambivalence, without trying to always solve them. The spirit of evil is fear, negation, the adversary who opposes life, bondage, dissolution and extinction in the unconscious.
The reality is that life is anxious, life is ambivalent, life is ambiguous -- not just good or bad, black or white. The more we try to solve or resolve that or split it off, the more we're going to fall into a fundamentalism of some kind—military, political, theological, economic, psychological. The greater the light, the greater the shadow.
What we need is a more nuanced approach to the field -- the myriad psychological forms of gods and goddesses in dynamic interaction, in contemporary terms.
Jung believed to be spiritually alive and balanced we must perceive ourselves as part of a cosmic purpose. Our symptoms and difficulties are trying to transform us. In Quantum Mind and Healing, Arnold Mindell suggests, "Besides looking at symptoms as something to change or heal, you might also look at them this way: "From the viewpoint of dreamland, body symptoms are unsung songs. No body process is "wrong". Illness is simply a suitcase with unpacked musical gifts. Your symptoms are not just a part of an ill body but a group of parallel worlds waiting to be "sung".
We can renew our personal consciousness by examining all of our assumptions about ourselves and our lives, to assist us in growing beyond our difficulties to uncover our hidden potentials. Archetypes, embody our adversaries and allies and allow us to take up a conscious relationship with them.
Archetypes are universal principles, or forces that affect, impel, structure, and permeate the human psyche and the world of human experience on many levels. We can think of them in mythic terms as gods and goddesses. Essentially, archetypes are living symbols we all share in common. They reside in our psyche as patterns of potential but they also manifest in the physical world and in the depth dimension of soul through the imaginal process -- our stream of consciousness.
There is always an imaginal subtext or mythic overlay to the objective physical experiences of our lives. We react to both realities. Mythological motifs and recurrent expressions reawaken certain psychic experiences, formulated in an appropriate way. The remarkable thing is that 'the cure is in the poison'; that is, the healing is contained within the very process that plagues us through sickness, self-delusion, stuckness, fear, despair, pain -- and a poor self-image. Jung's individuation process, separating ourselves consciously from archetypal roles and collective imperatives, challenges us to become more fully engaged in life and a transformative way of life.
Analyst Bud Harris says, "Jung considered these things—that we usually dislike or despise about ourselves—as containers of a divine spark. At first they appear as blocks to our full development, such as the achievement of our goals or hopes and dreams, including those of having relationships built on love and trust. But, within these very blocks are the seeds, even the roadmaps and the energy, that when opened and tapped lead us to wholeness, which means the ability to live as fully as possible." He suggests we (1) Fully engage in life, (2) Reflect upon life, (3) Bear the burden of that conflict, and (4) Live the transformation.
Loss of soul is loss of self. If you are depressed, you have disconnected from the life giving place of energy, the bridge between the conscious and the unconscious. "Being that has soul is living being. Soul is the living thing in [us], which lives of itself and causes life" (Jung, CW 9/1, par. 56). Living spirituality grants us access to the numinous. Spirituality, allows our consciousness to be changed by the experience of the numinous. This is essential to confront and counteract the depression and confusion resulting from our existential condition.
We learn to listen more to the unconscious and its expressions, to discover and integrate our disowned parts and pursue an ultimate wholeness and balance. through continuous transformation. Difficult at times, it forces us to question our basic assumptions about who we are and what we value, again and again, even though our ego always prefers comfort and safety to transformation.
In mythology, defeating the dragon and winning the maiden is a metaphor for being heroic enough to leave the passive, dependent world of the illusory security of living unconsciously. We win our engagement with life through consciousness, mindfulness, and diffuse awareness -- unifying masculine and feminine energies within. When we experience ourselves, our being, as rooted in the unconscious and our instinctual lives, we are rooted in the feminine principle or the ground within ourselves. Becoming whole and renewing mystic vision is a spiritual necessity.
This is not self-improvement nor self-actualization, because it is not a heroic developmental process with a mundane social goal of security and prestige, but a way of life. It is about transformation and breaking through limitations -- conscious realization of our complex unique personality, including its strengths and weaknesses. Self-knowledge helps us recognize the importance the unconscious as a partner in informing our lives.
Facing the unpleasant reality that the pursuit of self-knowledge, we question every aspect of conventional wisdom, of our religion, or lack of religion, our notions of what love is, our approaches to problem solving, our ideas of peace and the value of struggle, of the value of suffering, and the meaning of unhappiness in our lives.
Jung suggested that the layer in our psyche he called collective unconscious provides the archetypal "geological" structure. Long forgotten memories strive to reveal itself in coded images and symbols, Jung called “archetypes.” Myths, fairy tales, legends, fantasies, and dreams give content to the events in our psyches. They underlie historical continuity and 'inhabit' a timeless, transcendent dimension. The collapse of time and space is characteristic of psychic experience. The energy created by the tension of opposites forms the raw material for a process.
The imaginal is a natural alternative level of reality, which is the spiritual aspect of our soul, but that doesn't mean we have to take psychic reality literally. We are part of a bigger reality that can change our perspective that has been within us since the beginning of time. We can learn the artless art of watching images in the psyche's mirror.and mindfulness of self. The imaginal is the voice of the transcendent. Imagination mediates between conscious and unconscious (outer and inner). It embodies the first images and the common matrix of myth and language.
Psyche "dresses up" the archetypes with our personal experience. Because they affect our attitudes, they impact what we believe, how we think and feel and our subsequent behavior. They are patterns of meaning and order that extends through every level. We know them largely by their EFFECTS. Images themselves are the embodiment of meaning. Metaphors of nature mirror our nature and processes of birth, death and renewal.
The gist of the holographic paradigm is that there is a more fundamental reality. There is an invisible flux not comprised of parts, but an inseparable interconnectedness. The holographic paradigm is one of reciprocal enfolding and unfolding of patterns of information. All potential information about the universe is holographically encoded in the spectrum of frequency patterns constantly bombarding us.
'Hologram' may be more than a metaphor for the emergence and expression of manifestation. Metaphors provide a reference point without defining reality. Thus metaphors are instructive. They are a central Way of leaping the epistemological chasm between old and new knowledge, old and new ways of essential being. Metaphorical understanding is the norm.
Hopefully the last in a series of mechanical models, the notion that the brain is like a computer is shifting toward more sufficient, more holistic analogies. Our understanding of complex, mysterious things always proceeds from metaphor to metaphor. When a metaphor changes new perspectives open in an ephochal shift that the old metaphor denied. We are all conditioned to think about our minds and selves on a very deep, very unconscious, very reflexive level. An effective metaphor must link up with revolutions in the realms of religion, spirituality, parapsychology, art, music, literature, and more.
Metaphors help us make this leap. A metaphor is the expression of an understanding of one concept in terms of another concept, where there is some similarity or correlation between the two; understanding one concept in terms of another. Perhaps universal history is the unfolding of several metaphors. Mental pictures and verbal processes meet in metaphor which promotes retrieval of images and verbal information that intersects with information aroused by the topic -- implying meaning. --Miller
(c)2013-2014; All Rights Reserved, Iona Miller, Sangreality Trust
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[email protected]
Fair Use Notice
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.