JOURNAL
Thoughts, Memories, Dreams, & Imagination
Thoughts, Memories, Dreams, & Imagination
My soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak, I call you-are you there? I have returned, I am here again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you again. Should I tell you everything I have seen, experienced, and drunk in? Or do you not want to hear about all the noise of life and the world? But one thing you must know: the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 232.
Jung suggested that his patients prepare their own Red Books. Morgan recalled him saying:
I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can-in some beautifully bound book. It will seem as if you were making the visions banal-but then' you need to do that-then you are freed from the power of them. If you do that with these eyes for instance they will cease to draw you. You should never try to make the visions come again.
Think of it in your imagination and try to paint it. Then when these things are in some precious book you can go to the book & turn over the pages & for you it will be your church -- your cathedral-the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal. If anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them-then you will lose your soul-for in that book is your soul. ~Red Book; Page 216.
In a letter to J. A. Gilbert in 1929, he commented on his procedure:
I found sometimes, that it is of great help in handling such a case, to encourage them, to express their peculiar contents either in the form of writing or of drawing and painting. There are so many incomprehensible intuitions in such cases, phantasy fragments that rise from the unconscious, for which there is almost no suitable language. I let my patients find their own symbolic expressions, their "mythology" ~Red Book; Page 216
1959
I worked on this book for 16 years. My acquaintance with alchemy in 1930 tool( me away from it. The beginning of the end came in 1928, when Wilhelm sent me the text of the "Golden Flower," an alchemical treatise.
There the contents of this bool(,found their way into actuality and I could no longer continue working on it. To the. superficial observer, it will appear like madness. It would also have developed into one, had I not been able to absorb the overpowering force of the original experiences. With the help of alchemy, I could finally arrange them into a whole. I always knew that these experiences contained something precious, and therefore I knew of nothing better than to write them down in a "precious," that is to say, costly book and to paint the images that emerged through reliving it all-as well as I could. I knew how frightfully inadequate this undertaking was, but despite much work and many distractions I remained true to it, even if another possibility never ... ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Epilogue.
I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can-in some beautifully bound book. It will seem as if you were making the visions banal-but then' you need to do that-then you are freed from the power of them. If you do that with these eyes for instance they will cease to draw you. You should never try to make the visions come again.
Think of it in your imagination and try to paint it. Then when these things are in some precious book you can go to the book & turn over the pages & for you it will be your church -- your cathedral-the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal. If anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them-then you will lose your soul-for in that book is your soul. ~Red Book; Page 216.
In a letter to J. A. Gilbert in 1929, he commented on his procedure:
I found sometimes, that it is of great help in handling such a case, to encourage them, to express their peculiar contents either in the form of writing or of drawing and painting. There are so many incomprehensible intuitions in such cases, phantasy fragments that rise from the unconscious, for which there is almost no suitable language. I let my patients find their own symbolic expressions, their "mythology" ~Red Book; Page 216
1959
I worked on this book for 16 years. My acquaintance with alchemy in 1930 tool( me away from it. The beginning of the end came in 1928, when Wilhelm sent me the text of the "Golden Flower," an alchemical treatise.
There the contents of this bool(,found their way into actuality and I could no longer continue working on it. To the. superficial observer, it will appear like madness. It would also have developed into one, had I not been able to absorb the overpowering force of the original experiences. With the help of alchemy, I could finally arrange them into a whole. I always knew that these experiences contained something precious, and therefore I knew of nothing better than to write them down in a "precious," that is to say, costly book and to paint the images that emerged through reliving it all-as well as I could. I knew how frightfully inadequate this undertaking was, but despite much work and many distractions I remained true to it, even if another possibility never ... ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Epilogue.
The Prologue to Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Jung:
My life is a story of the self-realization of the unconscious.
Everything in the unconscious seeks outward manifestation, and the personality too desires to evolve out of its unconscious conditions and to experience itself as a whole. I cannot employ the language of science to trace this process of growth in myself, for I cannot experience myself as a scientific problem.
What we are to our inward vision, and what man appears to be sub specie aeternitatis, can only be expressed by way of myth. Myth is more individual and expresses life more precisely than does science. Science works with concepts of averages which are far too general to do justice to the subjective variety of an individual life. Thus it is that I have now undertaken, in my eighty-third year, to tell my personal myth. I can only make direct statements, only "tell stories." Whether or not the stories are "true" is not the problem.
The only question is whether what I tell is my fable, my truth....
"At a Journal Workshop":
Writing to Access the Power of the Unconscious and Evoke Creative Ability
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0874776384/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=12443822124&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=463064606171243598&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_8fea5nkkno_b
http://intensivejournal.org/index.php
At A Journal Workshop, Ira Progoff
Ira Progoff's Intensive Journal Process combines one of the oldest methods of self- exploration and expression--keeping a journal--with a structured format that enables you to get to know the inner core of your life on ever-deeper levels and gain a fuller perspective on where you are. The Intensive Journal Process also empowers you to take the action necessary to change the course of your life and unlock your hidden creative potential. This rich, insightful work is a treasure for all those involved in self-inquiry, artistic creation, and spiritual renewal.
Ira Progoff's Intensive Journal Process combines one of the oldest methods of self- exploration and expression--keeping a journal--with a structured format that enables you to get to know the inner core of your life on ever-deeper levels and gain a fuller perspective on where you are. The Intensive Journal Process also empowers you to take the action necessary to change the course of your life and unlock your hidden creative potential. This rich, insightful work is a treasure for all those involved in self-inquiry, artistic creation, and spiritual renewal.
From Library Journal
Progoff, a psychotherapist and pioneer in the therapeutic use of journal writing, has conducted workshops on the Intensive Journal Process since 1966. His program offers more than a chronological diary; the Intensive Journal Process is a complex and systematic method for gaining self-insight by recording thoughts, dreams, and significant events, which are then used as focal points for meditation and written reflection in separate sections. This book, a condensed version of two previous works, At a Journal Workshop ( LJ 11/1/75) and The Practice of Process Meditation ( LJ 12/1/80), follows the sequence of an introductory workshop, with the reader as an active participant. The casual reader looking for a summary or overview of the process will find this approach disappointing, while those familiar with the previous works will find little new other than a rearrangement of text. Nonetheless, this is a fascinating guidebook for those seriously committed to exploring journal writing as a means of self-discovery. Recommended for academic and large public libraries that don't own copies of the earlier works. - Lucille Boone, San Jose P.L., Cal. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review
Ira Progoff's purpose in creating the Intensive Journal workshops on which this book is based was to give others a language and a process for reflecting on and deepening the meaning of their lives. We have many tools handed to us in At a Journal Workshop-each with a specific shape and function, and each with a full set of instructions on its use. This is a strange, wonderful and complex approach for journey/journal-ing, using methods the author has taught and evolved over the last 40 years. Through multifaceted and interactive reflections on the events that make up our waking and dreaming lives, and on paths not taken, we are led to our deeper beings. Here is an ultimate workbook for teachers and students of the inner journey. -- From The WomanSource Catalog & Review: Tools for Connecting the Community for Women; review by Linda Hewitt Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A major role of the exercises in Dialogue with Events is to enable us to experience the movement of life in so broad a vista that we are not enclosed by the emotions of the moment. We perceive the ambiguity that is inherent in events. They may have not one or two but several levels of meaning, and these disclose themselves not at the time of the happening but only at later points in the course of our experience. It becomes essential, then, that we keep ourselves free from fixed conclusions and have a means of holding ourselves open for the further recognitions of meaning that will come to us with the passage of time. As it brings an inner self-guidance for life's problems, the Intensive Journal approach has also produced an interesting, if unexpected, extra. In the course of its work it deepens the level of experience, and this draws an individual into contact with the profound sources of inner wisdom. Many persons have found that as they involved themselves in the Intensive Journal process to resolve the immediate problems of personal life, they have inadvertently opened awarenesses that are transpersonal in scope. Without intending it, they find that they are drawn beyond themselves in wisdom to levels of experience that have the qualities of poetry and spirit.
Progoff, a psychotherapist and pioneer in the therapeutic use of journal writing, has conducted workshops on the Intensive Journal Process since 1966. His program offers more than a chronological diary; the Intensive Journal Process is a complex and systematic method for gaining self-insight by recording thoughts, dreams, and significant events, which are then used as focal points for meditation and written reflection in separate sections. This book, a condensed version of two previous works, At a Journal Workshop ( LJ 11/1/75) and The Practice of Process Meditation ( LJ 12/1/80), follows the sequence of an introductory workshop, with the reader as an active participant. The casual reader looking for a summary or overview of the process will find this approach disappointing, while those familiar with the previous works will find little new other than a rearrangement of text. Nonetheless, this is a fascinating guidebook for those seriously committed to exploring journal writing as a means of self-discovery. Recommended for academic and large public libraries that don't own copies of the earlier works. - Lucille Boone, San Jose P.L., Cal. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review
Ira Progoff's purpose in creating the Intensive Journal workshops on which this book is based was to give others a language and a process for reflecting on and deepening the meaning of their lives. We have many tools handed to us in At a Journal Workshop-each with a specific shape and function, and each with a full set of instructions on its use. This is a strange, wonderful and complex approach for journey/journal-ing, using methods the author has taught and evolved over the last 40 years. Through multifaceted and interactive reflections on the events that make up our waking and dreaming lives, and on paths not taken, we are led to our deeper beings. Here is an ultimate workbook for teachers and students of the inner journey. -- From The WomanSource Catalog & Review: Tools for Connecting the Community for Women; review by Linda Hewitt Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A major role of the exercises in Dialogue with Events is to enable us to experience the movement of life in so broad a vista that we are not enclosed by the emotions of the moment. We perceive the ambiguity that is inherent in events. They may have not one or two but several levels of meaning, and these disclose themselves not at the time of the happening but only at later points in the course of our experience. It becomes essential, then, that we keep ourselves free from fixed conclusions and have a means of holding ourselves open for the further recognitions of meaning that will come to us with the passage of time. As it brings an inner self-guidance for life's problems, the Intensive Journal approach has also produced an interesting, if unexpected, extra. In the course of its work it deepens the level of experience, and this draws an individual into contact with the profound sources of inner wisdom. Many persons have found that as they involved themselves in the Intensive Journal process to resolve the immediate problems of personal life, they have inadvertently opened awarenesses that are transpersonal in scope. Without intending it, they find that they are drawn beyond themselves in wisdom to levels of experience that have the qualities of poetry and spirit.
Making a Journal Sacred
What appears on the surface to be an inner dialogue between myself and contents of my past is, from the perspective of faith, a dialoguein which I listen to God speaking to me from within my own life/experience. The Intensive Journal structure is a vehicle for such interior dialogue, which is a form of prayer. It might not look like prayer if we're expecting some familiar form of prayer but that's because it's a stylewe're not accustomed to.
The Intensive Journal method is self-regulating if it used properly, that is, by approaching a problem or issue of life from various angles in using the variety of Intensive Journal exercises over a period of time. In addition, it serves as a field in which disparate contents of life can come together in new relationships; things from our past which at first seem to have nothing in common can come together creatively to give us new insights for the present and the future and enable us to discern meaning in our life where we had previously known chaos.
The Intensive Journal Method as it is taught at a basic workshop helps us get experiential answers to four questions:
1. Where am I now in the course of my life?
2. How did I get there?
3. Where do I go from here?
4. How do I get to the next step in my life?
In helping us discern how to get to the next step in life, the Intensive Journal method employs exercises for simultaneously reflecting and stimulating movement in four areas of our past life in which the energy for the future is stirring around in search of creative outlets.
Those four outlets are as follows:
1. Relationships with other people and ancestors.
2. Relationships with meaningful work-projects.
3. Relationships with the physical world.
4. The dimension of meaning or relationships with entities that transcend the individual; ultimately, the relationship with God, or spirituality.
"I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can - in some beautifully bound book," Jung instructed. "It will seem as if you were making the visions banal — but then you need to do that — then you are freed from the power of them… Then when these things are in some precious book you can go to the book & turn over the pages & for you it will be your church — your cathedral — the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal. If anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them — then you will lose your soul — for in that book is your soul." --NY Times Magazine article, The Holy Grail of the Unconscious.
The difference between a good life and a bad life is how well you walk through the fire. ~Carl Jung
"What I call coming to terms with the unconscious the alchemists called "meditation". Cf. Jung, VI....
Suffering tends to isolate you.
However, understanding of it may lift you up somewhat In the case of psychological suffering, which always isolates the individual from the herd of so-called normal people, it is of the greatest importance to understand that the conflict is not a personal failure only, but at the same time a suffering common to all and a problem with which the whole epoch is burdened.
This general point of view lifts the individual out of himself and connects him with humanity. ~Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18 (retitled) "The Tavistock Lectures" P.116
Stiffening and clinging is not all there is to develop throughout life - personality may be developed too.
The nearer we approach to the middle of life, and the better we have succeeded in entrenching ourselves in our personal attitudes and social positions, the more it appears as if we had discovered the right course and the right ideals and principles of behaviour.
For this reason we suppose them to be eternally valid, and make a virtue of unchangeably clinging to them. We overlook the essential fact that the social goal is attained only at the cost of a diminution of personality.
Many - far too many - aspects of life which should also have been experienced lie in the lumber-room among dusty memories; but sometimes, too, they are glowing coals under grey ashes. ~"The Stages of Life" (1930). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 771
Image: The Knight at the Crossroads by Viktor Vasnetsov
THOUGHTS:
I came to the place of the soul:
Humans have an uncanny knack of referring to the thoughts they have as their own possessions but exactly how entitled are we to make statements such as "I thought."
In the Red Book Dr. Jung writes of the nature of "Thoughts."
Through giving my soul all I could give, I came to the place of the soul and found that this place was a hot desert, desolate and unfruitful. No culture of the mind is enough to make a garden out of your soul. I had cultivated my spirit, the spirit of this time in me, but not that spirit of the depths that turns to the things of the soul, the world of the soul. The soul has its own peculiar world. Only the self enters in there, or the man who has completely become his self, he who is neither in events, nor in men, nor in his thoughts. Through the turning of my desire from things and men, I turned my' self away from things and men, but that is precisely how I became the secure prey of my thoughts, yes, I wholly became my thoughts. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
I also had to detach myself from my thoughts through turning my desire away from them. And at once, I noticed that my self became a desert, where only the sun of unquiet desire burned. I was overwhelmed by the endless infertility of this desert. Even if something could have thrived there, the creative power of desire was still absent. Wherever the creative power of desire is, there springs the soil's own seed. But do not forget to wait. Did you not see that when your creative force turned to the world, how the dead things moved under it and through it, how they grew and prospered, and how your thoughts flowed in rich rivers? If your creative force now turns to the place of the soul, you will see how your soul becomes green and how its field bears wonderful fruit. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
I know that everything you say, Oh my soul, is also my thought. But I hardly live according to it. The soul said, "How; tell me, do you then believe that your thoughts should help you?" I would always like to refer to the fact that I am a human being, just a human being who is weak and sometimes does not do his best. But the soul said, "Is this what you think it means to be human?" You are hard, my soul, but you are right. How little we still commit ourselves to living. We should grow like a tree that likewise does not know its law. We tie ourselves up with intentions, not mindful of the fact that intention is the limitation, yes, the exclusion of life. We believe that we can illuminate the darkness with an intention, and in that way aim past the light. How can we presume to want to know in advance, from where the light will come to us? ~Carl Jung, Red Book.
On account of my thoughts, I had left myself; therefore my self became hungry and made God into a selfish thought. If I leave myself my hunger will drive me to find my self in my object, that is, in my thought. Therefore you love reasonable and orderly thoughts, since you could not endure it if your self was in disordered, that is, unsuitable thoughts. Through your selfish wish, you pushed out of your thoughts everything that you do not consider ordered, that is, unfitting. You create order according to what you know, you do not know the thoughts of chaos, and yet they exist. My thoughts are not my self and my I does not embrace the thought. Your thought has this meaning and that, not just one, but many meanings. No one knows how many.
My thoughts are not my self but exactly like the things of the world, alive and dead.199 Just as I am not damaged through living in a partly chaotic world, so too I am not damaged if I live in my partly chaotic thought world. Thoughts are natural events that you do not possess, and whose meaning you only imperfectly recognize. Thoughts grow in me like a forest, populated by many different animals. But man is domineering in his thinking, and therefore he kills the pleasure of the forest and that of the wild animals. Man is violent in his desire, and he himself becomes a forest and a forest animal. Just as I have freedom in the world, I also have freedom in my thoughts. Freedom is conditional. ~Carl Jung, Red Book.
Importance of Dreams
I must learn that the dregs of my thought, my dreams, are the speech of my soul. I must carry them in my heart, and go back and forth over them in my mind, like the words of the person dearest to me. Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. Why should I henceforth not love my dreams and not make their riddling images into objects of my daily consideration? 233
The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language. One would like to learn this language, but who can teach and learn it?
Scholarliness alone is not enough; there is knowledge of the heart that gives deeper insight. The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth….But how can I attain the knowledge of the heart? You can attain this knowledge only by living your life to the full. You live your life fully if you also live what you have never lived, but have left for others to live and think. 233
We also live in our dreams; we do not live only by day. Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams. 242
What appears on the surface to be an inner dialogue between myself and contents of my past is, from the perspective of faith, a dialoguein which I listen to God speaking to me from within my own life/experience. The Intensive Journal structure is a vehicle for such interior dialogue, which is a form of prayer. It might not look like prayer if we're expecting some familiar form of prayer but that's because it's a stylewe're not accustomed to.
The Intensive Journal method is self-regulating if it used properly, that is, by approaching a problem or issue of life from various angles in using the variety of Intensive Journal exercises over a period of time. In addition, it serves as a field in which disparate contents of life can come together in new relationships; things from our past which at first seem to have nothing in common can come together creatively to give us new insights for the present and the future and enable us to discern meaning in our life where we had previously known chaos.
The Intensive Journal Method as it is taught at a basic workshop helps us get experiential answers to four questions:
1. Where am I now in the course of my life?
2. How did I get there?
3. Where do I go from here?
4. How do I get to the next step in my life?
In helping us discern how to get to the next step in life, the Intensive Journal method employs exercises for simultaneously reflecting and stimulating movement in four areas of our past life in which the energy for the future is stirring around in search of creative outlets.
Those four outlets are as follows:
1. Relationships with other people and ancestors.
2. Relationships with meaningful work-projects.
3. Relationships with the physical world.
4. The dimension of meaning or relationships with entities that transcend the individual; ultimately, the relationship with God, or spirituality.
"I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can - in some beautifully bound book," Jung instructed. "It will seem as if you were making the visions banal — but then you need to do that — then you are freed from the power of them… Then when these things are in some precious book you can go to the book & turn over the pages & for you it will be your church — your cathedral — the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal. If anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them — then you will lose your soul — for in that book is your soul." --NY Times Magazine article, The Holy Grail of the Unconscious.
The difference between a good life and a bad life is how well you walk through the fire. ~Carl Jung
"What I call coming to terms with the unconscious the alchemists called "meditation". Cf. Jung, VI....
Suffering tends to isolate you.
However, understanding of it may lift you up somewhat In the case of psychological suffering, which always isolates the individual from the herd of so-called normal people, it is of the greatest importance to understand that the conflict is not a personal failure only, but at the same time a suffering common to all and a problem with which the whole epoch is burdened.
This general point of view lifts the individual out of himself and connects him with humanity. ~Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18 (retitled) "The Tavistock Lectures" P.116
Stiffening and clinging is not all there is to develop throughout life - personality may be developed too.
The nearer we approach to the middle of life, and the better we have succeeded in entrenching ourselves in our personal attitudes and social positions, the more it appears as if we had discovered the right course and the right ideals and principles of behaviour.
For this reason we suppose them to be eternally valid, and make a virtue of unchangeably clinging to them. We overlook the essential fact that the social goal is attained only at the cost of a diminution of personality.
Many - far too many - aspects of life which should also have been experienced lie in the lumber-room among dusty memories; but sometimes, too, they are glowing coals under grey ashes. ~"The Stages of Life" (1930). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 771
Image: The Knight at the Crossroads by Viktor Vasnetsov
THOUGHTS:
I came to the place of the soul:
Humans have an uncanny knack of referring to the thoughts they have as their own possessions but exactly how entitled are we to make statements such as "I thought."
In the Red Book Dr. Jung writes of the nature of "Thoughts."
Through giving my soul all I could give, I came to the place of the soul and found that this place was a hot desert, desolate and unfruitful. No culture of the mind is enough to make a garden out of your soul. I had cultivated my spirit, the spirit of this time in me, but not that spirit of the depths that turns to the things of the soul, the world of the soul. The soul has its own peculiar world. Only the self enters in there, or the man who has completely become his self, he who is neither in events, nor in men, nor in his thoughts. Through the turning of my desire from things and men, I turned my' self away from things and men, but that is precisely how I became the secure prey of my thoughts, yes, I wholly became my thoughts. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
I also had to detach myself from my thoughts through turning my desire away from them. And at once, I noticed that my self became a desert, where only the sun of unquiet desire burned. I was overwhelmed by the endless infertility of this desert. Even if something could have thrived there, the creative power of desire was still absent. Wherever the creative power of desire is, there springs the soil's own seed. But do not forget to wait. Did you not see that when your creative force turned to the world, how the dead things moved under it and through it, how they grew and prospered, and how your thoughts flowed in rich rivers? If your creative force now turns to the place of the soul, you will see how your soul becomes green and how its field bears wonderful fruit. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
I know that everything you say, Oh my soul, is also my thought. But I hardly live according to it. The soul said, "How; tell me, do you then believe that your thoughts should help you?" I would always like to refer to the fact that I am a human being, just a human being who is weak and sometimes does not do his best. But the soul said, "Is this what you think it means to be human?" You are hard, my soul, but you are right. How little we still commit ourselves to living. We should grow like a tree that likewise does not know its law. We tie ourselves up with intentions, not mindful of the fact that intention is the limitation, yes, the exclusion of life. We believe that we can illuminate the darkness with an intention, and in that way aim past the light. How can we presume to want to know in advance, from where the light will come to us? ~Carl Jung, Red Book.
On account of my thoughts, I had left myself; therefore my self became hungry and made God into a selfish thought. If I leave myself my hunger will drive me to find my self in my object, that is, in my thought. Therefore you love reasonable and orderly thoughts, since you could not endure it if your self was in disordered, that is, unsuitable thoughts. Through your selfish wish, you pushed out of your thoughts everything that you do not consider ordered, that is, unfitting. You create order according to what you know, you do not know the thoughts of chaos, and yet they exist. My thoughts are not my self and my I does not embrace the thought. Your thought has this meaning and that, not just one, but many meanings. No one knows how many.
My thoughts are not my self but exactly like the things of the world, alive and dead.199 Just as I am not damaged through living in a partly chaotic world, so too I am not damaged if I live in my partly chaotic thought world. Thoughts are natural events that you do not possess, and whose meaning you only imperfectly recognize. Thoughts grow in me like a forest, populated by many different animals. But man is domineering in his thinking, and therefore he kills the pleasure of the forest and that of the wild animals. Man is violent in his desire, and he himself becomes a forest and a forest animal. Just as I have freedom in the world, I also have freedom in my thoughts. Freedom is conditional. ~Carl Jung, Red Book.
Importance of Dreams
I must learn that the dregs of my thought, my dreams, are the speech of my soul. I must carry them in my heart, and go back and forth over them in my mind, like the words of the person dearest to me. Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. Why should I henceforth not love my dreams and not make their riddling images into objects of my daily consideration? 233
The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language. One would like to learn this language, but who can teach and learn it?
Scholarliness alone is not enough; there is knowledge of the heart that gives deeper insight. The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth….But how can I attain the knowledge of the heart? You can attain this knowledge only by living your life to the full. You live your life fully if you also live what you have never lived, but have left for others to live and think. 233
We also live in our dreams; we do not live only by day. Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams. 242
Memories, Dreams and Reflections [Prologue]
My life is a story of the self-realization of the unconscious.
Everything in the unconscious seeks outward manifestation, and the personality too desires to evolve out of its unconscious conditions and to experience itself as a whole. I cannot employ the language of science to trace this process of growth in myself, for I cannot experience myself as a scientific problem.
What we are to our inward vision, and what man appears to be sub specie aeternitatis, can only be expressed by way of myth. Myth is more individual and expresses life more precisely than does science. Science works with concepts of averages which are far too general to do justice to the subjective variety of an individual life. Thus it is that I have now undertaken, in my eighty-third year, to tell my personal myth. I can only make direct statements, only "tell stories." Whether or not the stories are "true" is not the problem.
The only question is whether what I tell is my fable, my truth.
An autobiography is so difficult to write because we possess no standards, no objective foundation, from which to judge ourselves. There are really no proper bases for comparison. I know that in many things I am not like others, but I do not know what I really am like. Man cannot compare himself with any other creature; he is not a monkey, not a cow, not a tree. I am a man. But what is it to be that? Like every other being, I am a splinter of the infinite deity, but I cannot contrast myself with any animal, any plant or any stone. Only a mythical being has a range greater than man's. How then can a man form any definite opinions about himself?
We are a psychic process which we do not control, or only partly direct. Consequently, we cannot have any final judgment about ourselves or our lives. If we had, we would know everything--but at most that is only a pretense. At bottom we never know how it has all come about. The story of a life begins somewhere, at some particular point we happen to remember; and even then it was already highly complex. We do not know how life is going to turn out. Therefore the story has no beginning, and the end can only be vaguely hinted at.
The life of man is a dubious experiment. It is a tremendous phenomenon only in numerical terms. Individually, it is so fleeting, so insufficient, that it is literally a miracle that anything can exist and develop at all. I was impressed by that fact long ago, as a young medical student, and it seemed to me miraculous that I should not have been prematurely annihilated.
Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away—an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.
In the end the only events in my life worth telling are those when the imperishable world irrupted into this transitory one. That is why I speak chiefly of inner experiences, amongst which I include my dreams and visions. These form the prima materia of my scientific work. They were the fiery magma out of which the stone that had to be worked was crystallized.
All other memories of travels, people and my surroundings have paled beside these interior happenings. Many people have participated in the story of our times and written about it; if the reader wants an account of that, let him turn to them or get somebody to tell it to him. Recollection of the outward events of my life has largely faded or disappeared. But my encounters with the "other" reality, my bouts with the unconscious, are indelibly engraved upon my memory. In that realm there has always been wealth in abundance, and everything else has lost importance by comparison.
Similarly, other people are established inalienably in my memories only if their names were entered in the scrolls of my destiny from the beginning, so that encountering them was at the same time a kind of recollection.
Inner experiences also set their seal on the outward events that came my way and assumed importance for me in youth or later on. I early arrived at the insight that when no answer comes from within to the problems and complexities of life, they ultimately mean very little. Outward circumstances are no substitute for inner experience. Therefore my life has been singularly poor in outward happenings. I cannot tell much about them, for it would strike me as hollow and insubstantial. I can understand myself only in the light of inner happenings. It is these that make up the singularity of my life, and with these my autobiography deals. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Prologue
My life is a story of the self-realization of the unconscious.
Everything in the unconscious seeks outward manifestation, and the personality too desires to evolve out of its unconscious conditions and to experience itself as a whole. I cannot employ the language of science to trace this process of growth in myself, for I cannot experience myself as a scientific problem.
What we are to our inward vision, and what man appears to be sub specie aeternitatis, can only be expressed by way of myth. Myth is more individual and expresses life more precisely than does science. Science works with concepts of averages which are far too general to do justice to the subjective variety of an individual life. Thus it is that I have now undertaken, in my eighty-third year, to tell my personal myth. I can only make direct statements, only "tell stories." Whether or not the stories are "true" is not the problem.
The only question is whether what I tell is my fable, my truth.
An autobiography is so difficult to write because we possess no standards, no objective foundation, from which to judge ourselves. There are really no proper bases for comparison. I know that in many things I am not like others, but I do not know what I really am like. Man cannot compare himself with any other creature; he is not a monkey, not a cow, not a tree. I am a man. But what is it to be that? Like every other being, I am a splinter of the infinite deity, but I cannot contrast myself with any animal, any plant or any stone. Only a mythical being has a range greater than man's. How then can a man form any definite opinions about himself?
We are a psychic process which we do not control, or only partly direct. Consequently, we cannot have any final judgment about ourselves or our lives. If we had, we would know everything--but at most that is only a pretense. At bottom we never know how it has all come about. The story of a life begins somewhere, at some particular point we happen to remember; and even then it was already highly complex. We do not know how life is going to turn out. Therefore the story has no beginning, and the end can only be vaguely hinted at.
The life of man is a dubious experiment. It is a tremendous phenomenon only in numerical terms. Individually, it is so fleeting, so insufficient, that it is literally a miracle that anything can exist and develop at all. I was impressed by that fact long ago, as a young medical student, and it seemed to me miraculous that I should not have been prematurely annihilated.
Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away—an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.
In the end the only events in my life worth telling are those when the imperishable world irrupted into this transitory one. That is why I speak chiefly of inner experiences, amongst which I include my dreams and visions. These form the prima materia of my scientific work. They were the fiery magma out of which the stone that had to be worked was crystallized.
All other memories of travels, people and my surroundings have paled beside these interior happenings. Many people have participated in the story of our times and written about it; if the reader wants an account of that, let him turn to them or get somebody to tell it to him. Recollection of the outward events of my life has largely faded or disappeared. But my encounters with the "other" reality, my bouts with the unconscious, are indelibly engraved upon my memory. In that realm there has always been wealth in abundance, and everything else has lost importance by comparison.
Similarly, other people are established inalienably in my memories only if their names were entered in the scrolls of my destiny from the beginning, so that encountering them was at the same time a kind of recollection.
Inner experiences also set their seal on the outward events that came my way and assumed importance for me in youth or later on. I early arrived at the insight that when no answer comes from within to the problems and complexities of life, they ultimately mean very little. Outward circumstances are no substitute for inner experience. Therefore my life has been singularly poor in outward happenings. I cannot tell much about them, for it would strike me as hollow and insubstantial. I can understand myself only in the light of inner happenings. It is these that make up the singularity of my life, and with these my autobiography deals. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Prologue
The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. --Jung, Red Book
Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language.
One would like to learn this language, but who can teach and learn it? Scholarliness alone is not enough; there is a knowledge of the heart that gives deeper insight.
The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth.
Scholarliness belongs to the spirit of this time, but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not. ~ Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 233.
The prospective function, on the other hand, is an anticipation in the unconscious of future conscious achievements, something like a preliminary exercise or sketch, or a plan roughed out in advance. . . . The occurrence of prospective dreams cannot be denied. It would be wrong to call them prophetic, because at bottom they are no more prophetic than a medical diagnosis or a weather forecast.
They are merely an anticipatory combination of probabilities which may coincide with the actual behavior of things but need not necessarily agree in every detail. Only in the latter case can we speak of "prophecy."
That the prospective function of dreams is sometimes greatly superior to the combinations we can consciously foresee is not surprising, since a dream results from the fusion of subliminal elements and is thus a combination of all the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings which consciousness has not registered because of their feeble accentuation.
In addition, dreams can rely on subliminal memory traces that are no longer able to influence consciousness effectively. With regard to prognosis, therefore, dreams are often in a much more favorable position than consciousness.~Carl Jung, "General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 493
A dream is nothing but a lucky idea that comes to us from the dark, all-unifying world of the psyche. What would be more natural, when we have lost ourselves amid the endless particulars and isolated details of the world's surface, than to knock at the door of dreams and inquire of them the bearings which would bring us closer to the basic facts of human existence?
Here we encounter the obstinate prejudice that dreams are so much froth, they are not real, they lie, they are mere wish-fulfillments. All this is but an excuse not to take dreams seriously, for that would be uncomfortable. Our intellectual hubris of consciousness loves isolation despite all its inconveniences, and for this reason people will do anything rather than admit that dreams are real and speak the truth. There are some saints who had very rude dreams.
Where would their saintliness be, the very thing that exalts them above the vulgar rabble, if the obscenity of a dream were a real truth? But it is just the most squalid dreams that emphasize our blood-kinship with the rest of mankind, and most effectively damp down the arrogance born of an atrophy of the instincts. Even if the whole world were to fall to pieces, the unity of the psyche would never be shattered. And the wider and more numerous the fissures on the surface, the more this unity is strengthened in the depths. ~"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. pg. 305
The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends. For all ego-consciousness is isolated; because it separates and discriminates, it knows only particulars, and it sees only those that can be related to the ego. Its essence is limitation, even though it reaches to the farthest nebulae among the stars. All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood. It is from these all-uniting depths that the dream arises, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral. ~"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.304
No amount of skepticism and criticism has yet enabled me to regard dreams as negligible occurrences. Often enough they appear senseless, but it is obviously we who lack the sense and ingenuity to read the enigmatic message from the nocturnal realm of the psyche. Seeing that at least half our psychic existence is passed in that realm, and that consciousness acts upon our nightly life just as much as the unconscious overshadows our daily life, it would seem all the more incumbent on medical psychology to sharpen its senses by a systematic study of dreams. Nobody doubts the importance of conscious experience; why then should we doubt the significance of unconscious happenings? They also are part of our life, and sometimes more truly a part of it for weal or woe than any happenings of the day.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.325
The dream has for the primitive an incomparably higher value than it has for civilized man. Not only does he talk a great deal about his dreams, he also attributes an extraordinary importance to them, so that it often seems as though he were unable to distinguish between them and reality. To the civilized man dreams as a rule appear valueless, though there are some people who attach great significance to certain dreams on account of their weird and impressive character. This peculiarity lends plausibility to the view that dreams are inspirations. ~"The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.574
Dream psychology opens the way to a general comparative psychology from which we may hope to gain the same understanding of the development and structure of the human psyche as comparative anatomy has given us concerning the human body.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 476
A dream, like every element in the psychic structure, is a product of the total psyche. Hence we may expect to find in dreams everything that has ever been of significance in the life of humanity. just as human life is not limited to this or that fundamental instinct, but builds itself up from a multiplicity of instincts, needs, desires, and physical and psychic conditions, etc., so the dream cannot be explained by this or that element in it,’ however beguilingly simple such an explanation may appear to be. We can be certain that it is incorrect, because no simple theory of instinct will ever be capable of grasping the human psyche, that mighty and mysterious thing, nor, consequently, its exponent, the dream. In order to do anything like justice to dreams, we need interpretive equipment that must be laboriously fitted together from all branches of the humane sciences.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 527
The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details, thus producing an impression of absurdity, or else it is on the surface so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered. Hence we always have to overcome a certain resistance before we can seriously set about disentangling the intricate web through patient work. But when at last we penetrate to its real meaning, we find ourselves deep in the dreamer's secrets and discover with astonishment that an apparently quite senseless dream is in the highest degree significant, and that in reality it speaks only of important and serious matters. This discovery compels rather more respect for the so-called superstition that dreams have a meaning, to which the rationalistic temper of our age has hitherto given short shrift.
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.24
Dreams that form logically, morally, or aesthetically satisfying wholes are exceptional. Usually a dream is a strange and disconcerting product distinguished by many "bad" qualities, such as lack of logic, questionable morality, uncouth form, and apparent absurdity or nonsense. People are therefore only too glad to dismiss it as stupid, meaningless, and worthless.
"On the Nature of Dreams" (1945). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 532
Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.317
As in our waking state, real people and things enter our field of vision, so the dream-images enter like another kind of reality into the field of consciousness of the dream-ego. We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws. They are obviously autonomous psychic complexes which form themselves out of their own material. We do not know the source of their motives, and we therefore say that dreams come from the unconscious. In saying this, we assume that there are independent psychic complexes which elude our conscious control and come and go according to their own laws.
"The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.580
In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes.
"Problems of Modern Psychotherapy" (1929). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.125
The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we call consciousness, so also it has a nocturnal side: the unconscious psychic activity which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317
The dream shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.304
The view that dreams are merely the imaginary fulfillments of repressed wishes is hopelessly out of date. There are, it is true, dreams which manifestly represent wishes or fears, but what about all the other things? Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317
As against Freud's view that the dream is essentially a wish-fulfillment, I hold that the dream is a spontaneous self-portrayal, in symbolic form, of the actual situation in the unconscious.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 505
The primitives I observed in East Africa took it for granted that "big" dreams are dreamed only by "big" men - medicine-men, magicians, chiefs, etc. This may be true on a primitive level. But with us these dreams are dreamed also by simple people, more particularly when they have got themselves, mentally or spiritually, in a fix.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324
Never apply any theory, but always ask the patient how he feels about his dream images. For dreams are always about a particular problem of the individual about which he has a wrong conscious judgment. The dreams are the reaction to our conscious attitude in the same way that the body reacts when we overeat or do not eat enough or when we ill-treat it in some other way. Dreams are the natural reaction of the self-regulating psychic system.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 123
Though dreams contribute to the self-regulation of the psyche by automatically bringing up everything that is repressed or neglected or unknown, their compensatory significance is often not immediately apparent because we still have only a very incomplete knowledge of the nature and the needs of the human psyche. There are psychological compensations that seem to be very remote from the problem on hand. In these cases one must always remember that every man, in a sense, represents the whole of humanity and its history. What was possible in the history of mankind at large is also possible on a small scale in every individual. What mankind has needed may eventually be needed by the individual too. It is therefore not surprising that religious compensations play a great role in dreams. That this is increasingly so in our time is a natural consequence of the prevailing materialism of our outlook.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 483
I would not deny the possibility of parallel dreams, i.e., dreams whose meaning coincides with or supports the conscious attitude, but in my experience, at least, these are rather rare.
Psychology and Alchemy (1944). CW 12: P. 48
To interpret the dream-process as compensatory is in my view entirely consistent with the nature of the biological process in general. Freud's view tends in the same direction, since he too ascribes a compensatory role to dreams in so far as they preserve sleep. . . . As against this, we should not overlook the fact that the very dreams which disturb sleep most-and these are not uncommon-have a dramatic structure which aims logically at creating a highly affective situation, and builds it up so efficiently that it unquestionably wakes the dreamer. Freud explains these dreams by saying that the censor was no longer able to suppress the painful affect. It seems to me that this explanation fails to do justice to the facts. Dreams which concern themselves in a very disagreeable manner with the painful experiences and activities of daily life and expose just the most disturbing thoughts with the most painful distinctness are known to everyone. It would, in my opinion, be unjustified to speak here of the dream's sleep-preserving, affect-disguising function. One would have to stand reality on its head to see in these dreams a confirmation of Freud's view.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 485
Much may be said for Freud's view as a scientific explanation of dream psychology. But I must dispute its completeness, for the psyche cannot be conceived merely in causal terms but requires also a final view. Only a combination of points of view-which has not yet been achieved in a scientifically satisfactory manner, owing to the enormous difficulties, both practical and theoretical, that still remain to be overcome-can give us a more complete conception of the nature of dreams.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 473
Dreams are often anticipatory and would lose their specific meaning on a purely causalistic view. They afford unmistakable information about the analytical situation, the correct understanding of which is of the greatest therapeutic importance.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.312
It is only in exceptional cases that somatic stimuli are the determining factor. Usually they coalesce completely with the symbolical expression of the unconscious dream content; in other words, they are used as a means of expression. Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears as a direct mimetic expression of the psychic situation.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 502
Considering a dream from the standpoint of finality, which I contrast with the causal standpoint of Freud, does not - as I would expressly like to emphasize-involve a denial of the dream's causes, but rather a different interpretation of the associative material gathered round the dream. The material facts remain the same, but the criterion by which they are judged is different. The question may be formulated simply as follows: What is the purpose of this dream? What effect is it meant to have? These questions are not arbitrary inasmuch as they can be applied to every psychic activity. Everywhere the question of the why" and the "wherefore" may be raised, because every organic structure consists of a complicated network of purposive functions, and each of these functions can be resolved into a series of individual facts with a purposive orientation.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 465
The prospective function, on the other hand, is anticipation in the unconscious of future conscious achievements, something like a preliminary exercise or sketch, or a plan roughed out in advance. . . . The occurrence of prospective dreams cannot be denied. It would be wrong to call them prophetic, because at bottom they are no more prophetic than a medical diagnosis or a weather forecast. They are merely an anticipatory combination of probabilities which may coincide with the actual behavior of things but need not necessarily agree in every detail. Only in the latter case can we speak of "prophecy." That the prospective function of dreams is sometimes greatly superior to the combinations we can consciously foresee is not surprising, since a dream results from the fusion of subliminal elements and is thus a combination of all the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings which consciousness has not registered because of their feeble accentuation. In addition, dreams can rely on subliminal memory traces that are no longer able to influence consciousness effectively. With regard to prognosis, therefore, dreams are often in a much more favorable position than consciousness.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 493
Another dream-determinant that deserves mention is telepathy. The authenticity of this phenomenon can no longer be disputed today. It is; of course, very simple to deny its existence without examining the evidence, but that is an unscientific procedure which is unworthy of notice. I have found by experience that telepathy does in fact influence dreams, as has been asserted since ancient times. Certain people are particularly sensitive in this respect and often have telepathically influenced dreams. But in acknowledging the phenomenon of telepathy I am not giving unqualified assent to the popular theory of action at a distance. The phenomenon undoubtedly exists, but the theory of it does not seem to me so simple.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.503
Anyone who wishes to interpret a dream must himself be on approximately the same level as the dream, for nowhere can he see anything more than what he is himself.
"Marriage as a Psychological Relationship" (1925) In CW 17: The Development of the Personality. P. 324
Dreams are as simple or as complicated as the dreamer is himself, only they are always a little bit ahead of the dreamer's consciousness. I do not understand my own dreams any better than any of you, for they are always somewhat beyond my grasp and I have the same trouble with them as anyone who knows nothing about dream interpretation. Knowledge is no advantage when it is a matter of one's own dreams.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 122
On paper the interpretation of a dream may look arbitrary, muddled, and spurious; but the same thing in reality can be a little drama of unsurpassed realism. To experience a dream and its interpretation is very different from having a tepid rehash set before you on paper. Everything about this psychology is, in the deepest sense, experience; the entire theory, even where it puts on the most abstract airs, is the direct outcome of something experienced.
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.199
The art of interpreting dreams cannot be learnt from books. Methods and rules are good only when we can get along without them. Only the man who can do it anyway has real skill, only the man of understanding really understands.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.327
It is obvious that in handling "big" dreams intuitive guesswork will lead nowhere. Wide knowledge is required, such as a specialist ought to possess.' But no dream can be interpreted with knowledge alone. This knowledge, furthermore, should not be dead material that has been memorized; it must possess a living quality, and be infused with the experience of the person who uses it. Of what use is philosophical knowledge in the head, if one is not also a philosopher at heart?
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324
Wholeness
In everything regarding your salvation and the attainment of mercy, you are dependent on your soul. Thus no sacrifice can be too great for you. If your virtues hinder you from salvation, discard them, since they have become evil to you.
The slave to virtue finds the way as little as the slave to vices. 235
Madness
To the extent that the Christianity of this time lacks madness, it lacks divine life. Take note of what the ancients taught us in images: madness is divine. 238
Reality
…mustn't it be a peculiarly beautiful feeling to hit bottom in reality at least once, where there is no going down any further, but only upward beckons at best? Where for once one stands before the whole height of reality? 265
Importance of Low Point
I therefore need the bottommost for my renewal. If I am always on the heights, I wear them out and the best becomes atrocious to me….At your low point you are no longer distinct from your fellow beings. You are not ashamed and do not regret it, since insofar as you live the life of your fellow beings and descend to their lowliness you also climb into the holy stream of common life, where you are no longer an individual on a high mountain, but a fish among fish, a frog among frogs. 266
Realness of Imaginal Beings
This I learned in the Mysterium: to take seriously every unknown wanderer who personally inhabits the inner world, since they are real because they are effectual. 260
You may call us symbols….But we are just as real as your fellow men. You invalidate nothing and solve nothing by calling us symbols. 249
We are real and not symbols. 246
Living Your Own Life
But one thing you must know: the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life. 232
But how can I attain the knowledge of the heart? You can attain this knowledge only by living your life to the full. You live your life fully if you also live what you have never yet lived, but have left for others to live or to think. 233
But fundamentally you are terrified of yourself, and therefore you prefer to run to all others rather than to yourself. 254
You are Christians and run after heroes, and wait for redeemers who should take the agony on themselves fro you, and totally spare you Golgotha. 254
It is no small matter to acknowledge one's yearning. For this many need to make a particular effort at honesty. All too many do not want to know where their yearning is, because it would seem to them impossible or too distressing. And yet yearning is the way of life. If you do not acknowledge your yearning, then you do not follow yourself, but go on foreign ways that others have indicated to you. So you do not live your life but an alien one. But who should live your life if you do not live it? It is not only stupid to exchange your own life for an alien one, but also a hypocritical game, because you can never really live the life of others, you can only pretend to do it, deceiving the other and yourself, since you can only life your own life. 249
To live oneself means: to be one's own task. Never say that it is a pleasure to live oneself. It will be no joy but a long suffering, since you must become your own creator. If you want to create yourself, then you do not begin with the best and the highest, but with the worst and the deepest. Therefore say that you are reluctant to live yourself. The flowing together of the stream of life is not joy but pain, since it is power against power, guilt, and shatters the sanctified. 249-50
Shadow
If you are aggravated against your brother, think that you are aggravated against the brother in you, that is, against what in you is similar to your brother. 251
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 material 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… 246-47
Serpent
The serpent is the earthly essence of man of which he is not conscious….it is the mystery that flows to him from the nourishing earth-mother. 247
The way of life writhes like the serpent from right to left and from left to right, from thinking to pleasure and from pleasure to thinking. Thus the serpent is an adversary and a symbol of enmity, but also a wise bridge that connects right and lift through longing, much needed by our life. 247
Man and Woman
You, man, should not seek the feminine in women, but seek and recognize it in yourself, as you… You, woman, should not seek the masculine in men, but assume the masculine in yourself, since you possess it from the beginning. But it amuses you and is easy to play at femininity, consequently man despises you since he despises his femininity…But if you pay attention you will see that the most masculine man has a feminine soul, and the most feminine woman has a masculine soul. The more manly you are the more remote from you is what woman really is, since the feminine in yourself is alien and contemptuous.
But if you remain with yourself, as a man who is himself…then you will remember your humanity. You will not behave toward woman per se as a man, but as a human being, that is to say, as if you were of the same sex as her. You will recall your femininity…It is bitter for the most masculine man to accept his femininity…
You are a slave of what you need in your soul. The most masculine man needs women, and he is consequently their slave. Become a woman yourself, and you will be saved from slavery to woman….It is good for you once to put on women's clothes: people will laugh at you, but through becoming a woman you attain freedom from women and their tyranny. The acceptance of femininity leads to completion. The same is valid for the woman who accepts her masculinity. 263-64
http://lenworleyphd.com/writings/rb_quotes.html
How hard is fate! If you take a step toward your soul, you will at first miss the meaning. You will believe that you have sunk into meaninglessness, into eternal disorder. You will be right! Nothing will deliver you from disorder and meaninglessness, since this is the other half of the world.
Your God is a child, so long as you are not childlike. Is the child order, meaning or disorder, caprice? Disorder and meaninglessness are the mother of order and meaning. Order and meaning are things that have become and are no longer becoming.
You open the gates of the soul to let the dark flood of chaos flow into your order and meaning. If you marry the ordered to the chaos you produce the divine child, the supreme meaning beyond meaning and meaninglessness.
You are afraid to open the door. I too was afraid, since we had forgotten that God is terrible. Christ taught: God is love. But you should know that love is also terrible.
I spoke to a loving soul and as I drew nearer to her, I was overcome by horror, and I heaped up a wall of doubt, and did not anticipate that I thus wanted to protect myself from my faithful soul.
You dread the depths; it should horrify you, since the way of what is to come leads through it. You must endure the temptation of fear and doubt, and at the same time acknowledge to the bone that your fear is justified and your doubt is reasonable. How otherwise / could it be a true temptation and a true overcoming.
Christ totally overcomes the temptation of the devil, but not the temptation of God to good and reason. Christ thus succumbs to cursing.
You still have to learn this, to succumb to no temptation, but to do everything of your own will; then you will be free and beyond Christianity.
I have had to recognize that I must submit to what I fear; yes, even more, that I must even love what horrifies me. We must learn such from that saint who was disgusted by the plague infections; she drank the pus of plague boils and became aware that it smelled like roses. The acts of the saint were not in vain.
In everything regarding your salvation and the attainment of mercy, you are dependent on your soul. Thus no sacrifice can be too( great for you. If your virtues hinder you from salvation, discard them, since they have become evil to you. The slave to virtue finds the way as little as the slave to vices.
If you believe that you are the master of your soul, then become her servant. If you were her servant, make master, since she needs to be ruled. These should be your first steps.~Carl Jung; Red Book
Your God is a child, so long as you are not childlike. Is the child order, meaning or disorder, caprice? Disorder and meaninglessness are the mother of order and meaning. Order and meaning are things that have become and are no longer becoming.
You open the gates of the soul to let the dark flood of chaos flow into your order and meaning. If you marry the ordered to the chaos you produce the divine child, the supreme meaning beyond meaning and meaninglessness.
You are afraid to open the door. I too was afraid, since we had forgotten that God is terrible. Christ taught: God is love. But you should know that love is also terrible.
I spoke to a loving soul and as I drew nearer to her, I was overcome by horror, and I heaped up a wall of doubt, and did not anticipate that I thus wanted to protect myself from my faithful soul.
You dread the depths; it should horrify you, since the way of what is to come leads through it. You must endure the temptation of fear and doubt, and at the same time acknowledge to the bone that your fear is justified and your doubt is reasonable. How otherwise / could it be a true temptation and a true overcoming.
Christ totally overcomes the temptation of the devil, but not the temptation of God to good and reason. Christ thus succumbs to cursing.
You still have to learn this, to succumb to no temptation, but to do everything of your own will; then you will be free and beyond Christianity.
I have had to recognize that I must submit to what I fear; yes, even more, that I must even love what horrifies me. We must learn such from that saint who was disgusted by the plague infections; she drank the pus of plague boils and became aware that it smelled like roses. The acts of the saint were not in vain.
In everything regarding your salvation and the attainment of mercy, you are dependent on your soul. Thus no sacrifice can be too( great for you. If your virtues hinder you from salvation, discard them, since they have become evil to you. The slave to virtue finds the way as little as the slave to vices.
If you believe that you are the master of your soul, then become her servant. If you were her servant, make master, since she needs to be ruled. These should be your first steps.~Carl Jung; Red Book
The Uroboros carved on the tomb of the Italy's writer Giacomo Leopardi, at the Parco Virgiliano near Naples. In a megalithic scenery, the poet, living in the '800, is celebrating with many patent cross and this fantastic symbolism: The Uroboros surround the lamp and the fire, symbol of the Sophia, the Knowledge, and the owl, emblem of Goddess Athena.
2:15am Jun 13 Carl Gustav Jung on Individuation:
In my naturally limited experience there are, among people of maturer age, very many for whom the development of individuality is an indispensable requirement. Hence I am privately of the opinion that it is just the mature person who, in our times, has the greatest need of some further education in individual culture after his youthful education in school or university has molded him on exclusively collective lines and thoroughly imbued him with the collective mentality.
"On Psychic Energy" (1928). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 112
Alienation has outside aspects and also takes place within:
He who is rooted in the soil endures. Alienation from the unconscious and from its historical conditions spells rootlessness. That is the danger that lies in wait for the conqueror of foreign lands, and for every individual who, through one-sided allegiance to any kind of -ism, loses touch with the dark, maternal, earthy ground of his being.
"Mind and Earth" (1927). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P. 103
The outer conflicts and the inner ones tend to be related:
It even seems as if young people who have had a hard struggle for existence are spared inner problems, while those who for some reason or other have no difficulty with adaptation run into problems of sex or conflicts arising from a sense of inferiority.
"The Stages of Life" (1930). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 762
To remain infantile makes one's future regrettable:
Infantilism, however, is something extremely ambiguous. First, it can be either genuine or purely symptomatic; and second, it can be either residuary or embryonic. There is an enormous difference between something that has remained infantile and something that is in the process of growth. Both can take an infantile or embryonic form, and more often than not it is impossible to tell at first glance whether we are dealing with a regrettably persistent fragment of infantile life or with a vitally important creative beginning. To deride these possibilities is to act like a dullard who does not know that the future is more important than the past.
"The State of Psychotherapy Today" (1934). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.345
Social responsibility that is devoid of self-reflection, may be all too hypocritical:
Every individual needs revolution, inner division, overthrow of the existing order, and renewal, but not by forcing these things upon his neighbors under the hypocritical cloak of Christian love or the sense of social responsibility or any of the other beautiful euphemisms for unconscious urges to personal power. Individual self-reflection, return of the individual to the ground of human nature, to his own deepest being with its individual and social destiny here is the beginning of a cure for that blindness which reigns at the present hour.
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology P. 5
The creative impulse may not get wholly depleted throughout one's life. It is possible to conduct it wisely and replenish it too:
A person must pay dearly for the divine gift of creative fire. It is as though each of us was born with a limited store of energy. In the artist, the strongest force in his make-up, that is, his creativeness, will seize and all but monopolize this energy, leaving so little over that nothing of value can come of it. The creative impulse can drain him of his humanity to such a degree that the personal ego can exist only on a primitive or inferior level and is driven to develop all sorts of defects-ruthlessness, selfishness ("autoeroticism"), vanity, and other infantile traits. These inferiorities are the only means by which it can maintain its vitality and prevent itself from being wholly depleted.
"Psychology and Literature" (1930). In CW 15: The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature. P. 158
Stiffening and clinging is not all there is to develop throughout life - personality may be developed too:
The nearer we approach to the middle of life, and the better we have succeeded in entrenching ourselves in our personal attitudes and social positions, the more it appears as if we had discovered the right course and the right ideals and principles of behavior. For this reason we suppose them to be eternally valid, and make a virtue of unchangeably clinging to them. We overlook the essential fact that the social goal is attained only at the cost of a diminution of personality. Many - far too many - aspects of life which should also have been experienced lie in the lumber-room among dusty memories; but sometimes, too, they are glowing coals under grey ashes.
"The Stages of Life" (1930). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 771
It should be worthy of praise to consolidate our former great attainments, as long as it does not make draining inroads into the soul life and make us sinister:
If we wish to stay on the heights we have reached, we must struggle all the time to consolidate our consciousness and its attitude. But we soon discover that this praiseworthy and apparently unavoidable battle with the years leads to stagnation and desiccation of soul. Our convictions become platitudes ground out on a barrel-organ, our ideals become starchy habits, enthusiasm stiffens into automatic gestures. The source of the water of life seeps away. We ourselves may not notice it, but everybody else does, and that is even more painful. If we should risk a little introspection, coupled perhaps with an energetic attempt to be honest for once with ourselves, we may get a dim idea of all the wants, longings, and fears that have accumulated down there-a repulsive and sinister sight. The mind shies away, but life wants to flow down into the depths. Fate itself seems to preserve us from this, for each of us has a tendency to become an immovable pillar of the past.
Symbols of Transformation (1952). CW 5: P. 553
It should help to get well unified and develop realization:
Since the aims of the second half of life are different from those of the first, to linger too long in the youthful attitude produces a division of the will. Consciousness still presses forward in obedience, as it were, to its own inertia, but the unconscious lags behind, because the strength and inner resolve needed for further expansion have been sapped. This disunity with oneself begets discontent, and since one is not conscious of the real state of things one generally projects the reasons for it upon one's partner. A critical atmosphere thus develops, the necessary prelude to conscious realization.
"Marriage as a Psychological Relationship" (1925). In CW 17: The Development of the Personality. P. 331
Adult life has several stages too; each with its own peculiar challenges and possible outcomes or good or bad - or mixed:
It is not possible to live too long amid infantile surroundings, or in the bosom of the family, without endangering one's psychic health. Life calls us forth to independence, and anyone who does not heed this call because of childish laziness or timidity is threatened with neurosis. And once this has broken out, it becomes an increasingly valid reason for running away from life and remaining forever in the morally poisonous atmosphere of infancy.
Symbols of Transformation (1952). CW 5: P. 461
The afternoon of human life naturally forms part of the growth of human life.:
A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life's morning. The significance of the morning undoubtedly lies in the development of the individual, our entrenchment in the outer world, the propagation of our kind, and the care of our children. This is the obvious purpose of nature. But when this purpose has been attained - and more than attained - shall the earning of money, the extension of conquests, and the expansion of life go steadily on beyond the bounds of all reason and sense? Whoever carries over into the afternoon the law of the morning, or the natural aim, must pay for it with damage to his soul, just as surely as a growing youth who tries to carry over his childish egoism into adult life must pay for this mistake with social failure.
"The Stages of Life" (1930). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 787
Suffering tends to isolate you. However, understanding of it may lift you up somewhat
In the case of psychological suffering, which always isolates the individual from the herd of so-called normal people, it is of the greatest importance to understand that the conflict is not a personal failure only, but at the same time a suffering common to all and a problem with which the whole epoch is burdened. This general point of view lifts the individual out of himself and connects him with humanity.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18 (retitled) "The Tavistock Lectures" P.116
Often-repeated dream-series talk for a developmental process that is needed:
If, as happens in long and difficult treatments, the analyst observes a series of dreams often running into hundreds, there gradually forces itself upon him a phenomenon which, in an isolated dream, would remain hidden behind the compensation of the moment. This phenomenon is a kind of developmental process in the personality itself. At first it seems that each compensation is a momentary adjustment of one-sidedness or an equalization of disturbed balance. But with deeper insight and experience, these apparently separate acts of compensation arrange themselves into a kind of plan. They seem to hang together and in the deepest sense to be subordinated to a common goal, so that a long dream-series no longer appears as a senseless string of incoherent and isolated happenings, but resembles the successive steps in a planned and orderly process of development. I have called this unconscious process spontaneously expressing itself in the symbolism of a long dream-series the individuation process.
"On the Nature of Dreams" (1945). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.550
Sexuality that is neurotically repressed, means unsuitable sacrifice, and possibly descent from what is truly proper:
Obviously it is in the youthful period of life that we have most to gain from a thorough recognition of the instinctual side. A timely recognition of sexuality, for instance, can prevent that neurotic suppression of it which keeps a man unduly withdrawn from life, or else forces him into a wretched and unsuitable way of living with which he is bound to come into conflict. Proper recognition and appreciation of normal instincts leads the young person into life and entangles him with fate, thus involving him in life's necessities and the consequent sacrifices and efforts through which his character is developed and his experience matured. For the mature person, however, the continued expansion of life is obviously not the right principle, because the descent towards life's afternoon demands simplification, limitation, and intensification - in other words, individual culture.
"On Psychic Energy" (1928). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 113
The youth phase is far from all there is to life well lived:
An inexperienced youth thinks one can let the old people go, because not much more can happen to them anyway: they have their lives behind them and are no better than petrified pillars of the past. But it is a great mistake to suppose that the meaning of life is exhausted with the period of youth and expansion; that, for example, a woman who has passed the menopause is "finished." The afternoon of life is just as full of meaning as the morning; only, its meaning and purpose are different.
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology P. 114
Many slowly find out to indulge less in egoistic, childish cravings through some fit involvement in the world:
If we try to extract the common and essential factors from the almost inexhaustible variety of individual problems found in the period of youth, we meet in all cases with one particular feature: a more or less patent clinging to the childhood level of consciousness, a resistance to the fateful forces in and around us which would involve us in the world. Something in us wishes to remain a child, to be unconscious or, at most, conscious only of the ego; to reject everything strange, or else subject it to our will; to do nothing, or else indulge our own craving for pleasure or power. In all this there is something of the inertia of matter; it is a persistence in the previous state whose range of consciousness is smaller, narrower, and more egoistic than that of the dualistic phase. For here the individual is faced with the necessity of recognizing and accepting what is different and strange as a part of his own life, as a kind of "also-I."
"The Stages of Life" (1930). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 764
The young neurotic cowardly shrinks back from some cultural values:
The discovery of the value of human personality is reserved for a riper age. For young people the search for personality values is very often a pretext for evading their biological duty. Conversely, the exaggerated longing of an older person for the sexual values of youth is a short-sighted and often cowardly evasion of a duty which demands recognition of the value of personality and submission to the hierarchy of cultural values. The young neurotic shrinks back in terror from the expansion of life's duties, the old one from the dwindling of the treasures he has attained.
CW 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis. P. 664
At whatever cost assert yourself well, says Jung:
There would appear to be a sort of conscience in mankind which severely punishes every one who does not somehow and at some time, at whatever cost to his virtuous pride, cease to defend and assert himself, and instead confess himself fallible and human. Until he can do this, an impenetrable wall shuts him off from the vital feeling that he is a man among other men.
"Problems of Modern Psychotherapy" (1929). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.132
Reflect and carry what is within yourself, and the future may get better or worse for it. Choose the former upon reflection:
After attaining the greatest possible height, a descent may begin
Take for comparison the daily course of the sun - but a sun that is endowed with human feeling and man's limited consciousness. In the morning it rises from the nocturnal sea of unconsciousness and looks upon the wide, bright world which lies before it in an expanse that steadily widens the higher it climbs in the firmament. In this extension of its field of action caused by its own rising, the sun will discover its significance; it will see the attainment of the greatest possible height, and the widest possible dissemination of its blessings, as its goal. In this conviction the sun pursues its course to the unforeseen zenith-unforeseen, because its career is unique and individual, and the culminating point could not be calculated in advance. At the stroke of noon the descent begins. And the descent means the reversal of all the ideals and values that were cherished in the morning.
"The Stages of Life" (1930). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 778
One is to reflect well to find out what is individual:
To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality in fact is.
"The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious" (1928). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P. 242
What good and evil folks carry within themselves!
Our personality develops in the course of our life from germs that are hard or impossible to discern, and it is only our deeds that reveal who we are. We are like the sun, which nourishes the life of the earth and brings forth every kind of strange, wonderful, and evil thing; we are like the mothers who bear in their wombs untold happiness and suffering. At first we do not know what deeds or misdeeds, what destiny, what good and evil we have in us, and only the autumn can show what the spring has engendered, only in the evening will it be seen what the morning began.
"The Development of the Personality" (1934). In CW 17: The Development of the Personality. P.290
Individual sides to us should not be all overshadowed by so-called individual psychology, but instead nourished well by such as attention:
On closer examination one is always astonished to see how much of our so-called individual psychology is really collective. So much, indeed, that the individual traits are completely overshadowed by it. Since, however, individuation is an ineluctable psychological necessity, we can see from the ascendancy of the collective what very special attention must be paid to this delicate plant "individuality" if it is not to be completely smothered.
"The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious" (1928). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P. 241
Future generations may benefit a whole lot from attentive individuals of yesterday and today:
It is the duty of one who goes his own way to inform society of what he finds on his voyage of discovery, be it cooling water for the thirsty or the sandy wastes of unfruitful error. The one helps, the other warns. Not the criticism of individual contemporaries will decide the truth or falsity of his discoveries, but future generations. There are things that are not yet true today, perhaps we dare not find them true, but tomorrow they may be. So every man whose fate it is to go his individual way must proceed with hopefulness and watchfulness, ever conscious of his loneliness and its dangers. ◊
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology P. 201
Personal power is far from ideal, but may assist social achievements all the same:
You may adapt to the larger world as your internalized smaller world dictate. Eric Berne's life scripts serve as examples:
The small world of the child, the family milieu, is the model for the big world. The more intensely the family sets its stamp on the child, the more he will be emotionally inclined, as an adult, to see in the great world his former small world. Of course this must not be taken as a conscious intellectual process. On the contrary, the patient feels and sees the difference between now and then, and tries as well as he can to adapt himself. Perhaps he will even believe himself perfectly adapted, since he may be able to grasp the situation intellectually, but that does not prevent his emotions from lagging far behind his intellectual insight.
"The Theory of Psychoanalysis" (1913). In CW 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis. P. 312
Outer concerns may grow and multiply and overcrowd personal power and propriety till they become intolerable burdens:
The middle period of life is a time of enormous psychological importance. The child begins its psychological life within very narrow limits, inside the magic circle of the mother and the family. With progressive maturation it widens its horizon and its own sphere of influence; its hopes and intentions are directed to extending the scope of personal power and possessions; desire reaches out to the world in ever-widening range; the will of the individual becomes more and more identical with the natural goals pursued by unconscious motivations. Thus man breathes his own life into things, until finally they begin to live of themselves and to multiply; and imperceptibly he is overgrown by them. Mothers are overtaken by their children, men by their own creations, and what was originally brought into being only with labour and the greatest effort can no longer be held in check. First it was passion, then it became duty, and finally an intolerable burden, a vampire that fattens on the life of its creator.
"Marriage as a Psychological Relationship" (1925). In CW 17: The Development of the Personality. P. 331
You had better solve a problem before it ties you down somehow or fragments you too:
Neurosis is intimately bound up with the problem of our time and really represents an unsuccessful attempt on the part of the individual to solve the general problem in his own person. Neurosis is self-division.
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology P. 18
The bed of Procrustes is not ideal for rest and recuperation:
To be "normal" is the ideal aim for the unsuccessful, for all those who are still below the general level of adaptation. But for people of more than average ability, people who never found it difficult to gain successes and to accomplish their share of the world's work - for them the moral compulsion to be nothing but normal signifies the bed of Procrustes - deadly and insupportable boredom, a hell of sterility and hopelessness.
"The Principles of Practical Psychology" (1935). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.161
Much unprepared most people embark on the afternoon of life:
Wholly unprepared, we embark upon the second half of life. Or are there perhaps colleges for forty-year-olds which prepare them for their coming life and its demands as the ordinary colleges introduce our young people to a knowledge of the world? No, thoroughly unprepared we take the step into the afternoon of life; worse still, we take this step with the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.
"The Stages of Life" (1930). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 784
Handling of persons is of course age-related:
Our life is like the course of the sun. In the morning it gains continually in strength until it reaches the zenith heat of high noon. Then comes the enantiodromia: the steady forward movement no longer denotes an increase, but a decrease, in strength. Thus our task in handling a young person is different from the task of handling an older person. In the former case, it is enough to clear away all the obstacles that hinder expansion and ascent; in the latter, we must nurture everything that assists the descent. ◊
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology P. 114
Progress of culture begins with individuals and their attainments, including individuation:
Every advance in culture is, psychologically, an extension of consciousness, a coming to consciousness that can take place only through discrimination. Therefore an advance always begins with individuation, that is to say with the individual, conscious of his isolation, cutting a new path through hitherto untrodden territory. To do this he must first return to the fundamental facts of his own being, irrespective of all authority and tradition, and allow himself to become conscious of his distinctiveness. If he succeeds in giving collective validity to his widened consciousness, he creates a tension of opposites that provides the stimulation which culture needs for its further progress. ◊◊
"On Psychic Energy" (1928). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 111
Individuation is not had by massive, unsound and wicked suppression:
We do not sufficiently distinguish between Individualism and individuation. Individualism means deliberately stressing and giving prominence to some supposed peculiarity, rather than to collective considerations and obligations. But individuation means precisely the better and more complete fulfillment of the collective qualities of the human being, since adequate consideration of the peculiarity of the individual is more conducive to better social achievement than when the peculiarity is neglected or suppressed.
"The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious" (1928). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P. 267
http://oaks.nvg.org/individuation.html
The myth commences, the one that need only be lived:
The myth commences, the one that need only be lived, not sung, the one that sings itself I subject myself to the son, the one engendered by sorcery, the unnaturally born, the son of the frogs, who stands at the waterside and speaks with his fathers and listens to their nocturnal singing. Truly he is full of mysteries and superior in strength to all men. No man has produced him, and no woman has given birth to him. The absurd has entered the age-old mother, and the son has grown in the deepest ground. He sprang up and was put to death. He rose again, was produced anew in the way of sorcery; and grew more swiftly than before. I gave him the crown that unites the separated. And so he unites the separated for me. I gave him the power and thus he commands, since he is superior in strength and cleverness to all others.
I did not give way to him willingly, but out of insight. No man binds Above and Below together. But he who did not grow like a man, and yet has the form of a man, is capable of binding them. My power is paralyzed, but I survive in my son. I set aside my concern that he may master the people. I am solitary; the people rejoice at him. I was powerful, now I am powerless. I was strong, now I am weak.
Since then he has taken all the strength into himself. Everything has turned itself upside down for me. I loved the beauty of the beautiful, the spirit of those rich in spirit, the strength of the strong; I laughed at the stupidity of the stupid, I despised the weakness of the weak, the meanness of the mean, and hated the badness of the bad. But now I must love the beauty of the ugly, the spirit of the foolish, and the strength of the weak. I must admire the stupidity of the clever, must respect the weakness of the strong and the meanness of the generous, and honor the goodness of the bad. Where does that leave mockery; contempt, and hatred?
They went over to the son as a token of power. His mockery is bloody, and how contemptuously his eyes flash! His hatred is a singing fire! Enviable one, you son of the Gods, how can one fail to obey you? He broke me in two, he cut me up. He yokes the separated. Without him I would fall apart, but my life went on with him. My love remained with me.
Thus I entered solitude with a black look on my face, full of resentment and outrage at my son's dominion. How could my son arrogate my power? I went into my gardens and sat down in a lonely spot on rocks by the water, and brooded darkly: I called the serpent, my nocturnal companion, who lay with me on the rocks through many twilights, imparting her serpent wisdom. But then my son emerged from the water, great and powerful, the crown on his head, with a swirling lion's mane, shimmering serpent skin covering his body; he said to me:
"I come to you and demand your life."
I: "What do you mean? Have you even become a God?"
He: "I rise again, I had become flesh, now I return to eternal glitter and shimmer, to the eternal embers of the sun, and leave you your earthliness. You will remain with men. You have been in immortal company long enough. Your work belongs to the earth."
I: "What a speech! Weren't you wallowing in the earth and the under-earth?"
He: "I had become man and beast, and now ascend again to my own country:"
I: "Where is your country?"
He: "In the light, in the egg, in the sun, in what is innermost and compressed, in the eternal longing embers. So rises the sun in your heart and streams out into the cold world."
I: "How you transfigure yourself!"
He: "I want to vanish from your sight. You ought to live in darkest solitude, men-not Gods-should illumine your darkness."
I: "How hard and solemn you are! I'd like to bathe your feet with my tears, dry them with my hair-I'm raving, am I a woman?"
He: "Also a woman, also a mother, pregnant. Giving birth awaits you."
I: "Oh holy spirit, grant me a spark of your eternal light!"
He: "You are with child."
I: "I feel the torment and the fear and the desolation of pregnant woman. Do you go from me, my God?"
He: "You have the child."
I: "My soul, do you still exist? You serpent, you frog, you magically produced boy whom my hands buried; you ridiculed, despised, hated who appeared to me in a foolish form? Woe betide those who have seen their soul and felt it with hands. I am powerless in your hand, my God!"
He: "The pregnant woman belongs to fate. Release me, I rise to the eternal realm."
I: "Will I never hear your voice again? Oh damned deception! What am I asking? You'll talk to me again tomorrow, you'll chat over and over in the mirror."
He: "Do not rail. I will be present and not present. You will hear and not hear me. I will be and not be."
I: "You utter gruesome riddles."
He: "Such is my language and to you I leave the understanding. No one besides you has your God. He is always with you, yet you see him in others, and thus he is never with you. You strive to draw to yourself those who seem to possess your God. You will come to see that they do not possess him, and that you alone have him. Thus you are alone among men-in the crowd and yet alone. Solitude in multitude-ponder this."
I: "I suppose I ought to remain silent after what you have said, but I cannot; my heart bleeds when I see you go from me."
He: "Let me go. I shall return to you in renewed form. Do you see the sun, how it sinks red into the mountains? This day's work is accomplished, and a new sun returns. Why are you mourning the sun of today?"
I: "Must night fall?"
He: "Is it not mother of the day?"
I: "Because of this night I want to despair."
He: "Why lament? It is fate. Let me go, my wings grow and the longing toward eternal light swells up powerfully in me. You can no longer stop me. Stop your tears and let me ascend with cries of joy: You are a man of the fields, think of your crops. I become light, like the bird that rises up into the skies of morning. Do not stop me, do not complain; already I hover, the cry of life escapes from me, I can no longer hold back my supreme pleasure. I must go up-it has happened, the last cord tears away, my wings bear me up. I dive up' into the sea of light. You who are down there, you distant, twilight being-you fade from me."
I: "Where have you gone? Something has happened. I am lamed. Has the God not left my sight?"
Where is the God? What has happened? How empty, utterly empty! Should I proclaim to men how you vanished? Should I preach the gospel of godforsaken solitude? Should we all go into the desert and strew ashes on our heads, since the God has left us? I believe and accept that the God is something different from me. He swung high with jubilant joy I remain in the night of pain. No longer with the God, but alone with myself Now shut, you bronze doors I opened to the flood of devastation and murder brooding over the peoples, opened so as to midwife the God. Shut, may mountains bury you and seas flow over YOU. I came to myself a giddy and pitiful figure. My I! I didn't want this fellow as my companion. I found myself with him. I'd prefer a bad woman or a wayward hound, but one's own I –this horrifies me.
An opus is needed, that one can squander decades on, and do it out of necessity I must catch up with a piece of the Middle Ages-within myself We have only finished the Middle Ages of-others. I must begin early, in that period when the hermits died out. Asceticism, inquisition, torture are close at hand and impose themselves. The barbarian requires barbaric means of education. My I, you are a barbarian. I want to live with you, therefore I will carry you through an utterly medieval Hell, until you are capable of making living with you bearable. You should be the vessel and womb of life, therefore I shall purify you.
The touchstone is being alone with oneself. This is the way. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Pages 312-330.