Monday, August 11, 2008
(Edward Edinger, Ego and Archetype p. 23)
Etymology of fantasy
(Robert Johnson, Inner Work)
Your neuroses as a low-grade religious experience
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
(Jung, CW 7, par 218)
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
But every new beginning of consciousness, every essential process of consciousness must first arise from such a state; only then is the human being open enough to let the new element in and let things happen. Many creative people start their creativity with a terrific depression. They have such a well-constructed and strong ego consciousness that the unconscious must use very strong means - send them a hellish depression - before they can loosen up enough to let things happen. I have noticed that people who tend to have those creative depressions, if they can anticipate them by playing in some way, the state of depression is lifted at once, for the secret final intention of that kind of depression is, as the word says, to depress, to lower the level of consciousness so that these processes can come into action.
(M.L. von Franz, Creation Myths, par 37.)
(Jung, CW 8, par 507)
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
The Snow Man
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Wallace Stevens
Of Old Sat Freedom
The thunders breaking at her feet:
Above her shook the starry lights:
She heard the torrents meet.
There in her place she did rejoice,
Self-gather'd in her prophet-mind,
But fragments of her mighty voice
Came rolling on the wind.
Then stept she down thro' town and field
To mingle with the human race,
And part by part to men reveal'd
The fullness of her face --
Grave mother of majestic works,
From her isle-alter gazing down,
Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks,
And, King-like, wears the crown:
Her open eyes desire the truth.
The wisdom of a thousand years
Is in them. May perpetual youth
Keep dry their light from tears;
That her fair form may stand and shine
Make bright our days and light our dreams,
Turning to scorn with lips divine
The falsehood of extremes!
Tennyson
Monday, July 28, 2008
James Hollis (Is Something Mything)
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
(Jung, CW 8, par 507)
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
(Jung, 9-1 CW, par 177)
Sunday, June 15, 2008
An Ancient Chinese Story
The story concerns a carpenter and his apprentice as they observed a large oak tree growing near an earth-altar (a simple round or square structure upon which people make sacrifices to the local god who “ owned” this piece of land.)
A wandering carpenter, called Stone, saw on his travels a gigantic old oak tree standing in a field near an earth-altar. The carpenter said to his apprentice, who was admiring the oak: “this is a useless tree. If you wanted to make a ship, it would soon rot; if you wanted to make tools, they would soon break. You can’t do anything useful with this tree, and that’s why it has become so old.”
But in an inn, that same evening, when the carpenter went to sleep, the old oak tree appeared to him in a dream and said: “Why do you compare me to your cultivated trees such as white-thorn, pear, orange and apple trees, and all the others that bear fruit? Even before they can ripen their fruit, people attack and violate them. Their branches are broken, their twigs are torn. Their own gifts bring harm to them, and they cannot live out their natural span. That is what happens everywhere, and that is why I have long since tried to become completely useless. You poor mortal! Imagine if I had been useful in any way, would I have reached this size? Furthermore, you and I are both creatures, and how can one creature set himself so high as to judge another creature? You useless mortal man, what do you know about useless trees?”
The carpenter woke up and meditated upon his dream, and later, when his apprentice asked him why just this one tree served to protect the earth altar, he answered, “Keep your mouth shut! Let’s hear no more about it! The tree grew here on purpose because anywhere else people would have ill-treated it. If it were not the tree of the earth altar, it might have been chopped down”
- Chuang-Tzu. (Source- Man and His Symbols, edited by Carl G. Jung, Arkana, 1990, ` P. 163)