active imagination

images in dreams

2011-11-15T11:06:00.000-08:00

Either this blog is drifting away from the topic of active imagination or my life is drifting from it. I'll try to refocus by throwing some thoughts about dreams onto this post. (With thanks to the writings of James Hillman for showing me some of these things.)

The dream world is backwards-land. The thing you feel love for in your dream is the thing you may be afraid of in your waking life. The thing you fear in your dream is the thing you must embrace.

The shorter-than-normal figures in my dreams - gnomes, dwarves, tiny dolls - function in the areas of my life that I haven't taken seriously; that I haven't given enough attention. They shrunk!

Giants in my dreams sometimes have an inflated ego! Some of them are figures of such importance and power that they have impressive size.

None of the archetypal figures represent anything. They ARE. They are who they are and they function as they function, and if we said they "represent" we'd be saying that they don't exist as themselves. Does that make sense? And each figure who you meet in your dream has a specific (primal, singular, one-dimensional) function within your psychological makeup.

Yadda yadda yadda. I'm fulla these thoughts.

Love and the Trickster

2011-10-10T01:18:00.001-07:00

Jung and Sartre, different as they were, both wrote that love begins with projection. We project our own ideas of who we want the other person to be onto that person. We project ourselves onto the ones we love. The great archetypal trickster plays his tricks on us by letting us trick ourselves. Love, by beginning with projection becomes the greatest trick to be played on the fool who falls for it by fooling himself; the lucky fool.

narcissism & fairytale beings

2011-10-04T12:45:00.000-07:00

Elemental beings in folk legends and fairytales dwell in water, air, fire, earth, plants and animals. Among them are the nymphs, swan maidens, undines, and fairies. Emma Jung, in an essay titled "The Anima as an Elemental Being" compared the elemental to a man's internal anima.

While I read the essay, I noticed that the qualities Emma Jung described as belonging to the anima and the elemental coincided with qualities describing a narcissist.

I was intrigued and a little excited by this association. If a narcissistic romantic partner is similar in behavior to elemental beings of fairytales, then fairytales can be a guide on how to conduct a relationship with a narcissist in a positive framework instead of a negative one. After all, these elemental beings in fairytales have some very positive, magical qualities, along with their dangers.

Here is a list with some of the qualities of elemental beings which coincide with qualities of narcissists. Emma Jung, by the way, didn't mention narcissists in her essay. That's just my own observation. The list refers to narcissists in the feminine gender because the essay was on the anima, but I suspect the animus and male narcissists fit equally. The quotes are brief references to Emma Jung's essay.

1. The elemental and the narcissist deconstruct the partner in a relationship. "These beings (sirens, the Lorelei, and so on) lure a man into their realm, where he disappears forevermore, or..."

2. The Elemental and the narcissist use charm to captivated - to hold captive emotionally. "...they try to bind a man in love..."

3. The elemental and the narcissist lack a sense of self or "soul," so she adopts the interests of her partner. "...that they may live in this world with him."

4. The elemental and the narcissist are easily hurt in areas of unconscious content. "The nixie's disappearance into her element describes what happens when an unconscious content comes to the surface but is still so little coordinated with the ego consciousness as to sink back at the slightest provocation."

5. The elemental and the narcissist become easily angered because of a touchy inferior function. "There is a taboo connected with them that must not be broken."

6. The elemental and the narcissist take offense even if the offending action is unintentional. "The taboos are not always the same; sometimes the man may not touch his wife with iron, or he may not speak unfriendly words more than three times, and so on. But always the violation of the condition results from heedlessness, or a fateful accident; it is never intentional."

7. The elemental and the narcissist hide their reality, fearful of the partner seeing her true nature. "Purusavas must not be seen naked by Urvasi. ... Human reality is not to her taste."

8. The elemental and the narcissist lack empathy. "He, with human feeling, laments the loss of his beloved, he tries to find her again and wants to speak with her, but her words, when she says that women have the hearts of hyenas, are the expression of a soul-less elemental being passing judgement on itself."

9. The elemental and the narcissist cannot know the self and are largely not conscious of the Self. "We may conclude that the femininity represented by the nymph, Urvasi, is as yet too nebulous and incorporeal to live permanently and realize itself in the human realm, that is, in waking consciousness."

10. The elemental and the narcissist withdraw emotionally to make the other prove his commitment. "The (swan) maidens feel an overwhelming yearning for battle and, by flying away, draws the brothers after them..."

11. The elemental and the narcissist are restless and insecure in a relationship and look for other lovers outside of the relationship. "...In psychological language, this means that the yearning, the desire for new undertakings, makes itself felt first in the unconscious feminine."

12. The elemental and the narcissist desparately seek connections, even against being faithful to a different life, person or ideal. "From this it follows that they woo man, and that they seek him assiduously and in secret."

13. The elemental and the narcissist are cruel and make unreasonable demands. "Often she is cruel, demanding senseless and superhuman feats of her knight as the sign of his subservience."

14. The elemental and the narcissist have a godlike attitude. "The swan maiden's royal descent, shown by her crown, marks her as being from a higher order, and can be related to the superhuman, divine aspect of the anima."

15. The elemental and the narcissist when they lose their masks, and thus their power in a relationship, will end the relationship at the first opportunity. "Swan maidens... for the most part do not seek a relationship of their own accord, but by the theft of their garments fall into the man's power through a ruse. Hence they try to escape at the first opportunity."

16. The elemental and the narcissist are malicious without reason or remorse, just as nature and the weather have no moods. "To be discerned in the anima are the incalculability, mischievousness and frequent malice of these elemental spirits, which constitute the reverse side of their bewitching charm. These beings are simply irrational, good and bad, helpful and harmful, healing and destructive, like nature herself of which they are a part."

17. The elemental and the narcissist are easily projected upon. "It is easy for a man to project the anima image to the more elemental woman; they correspond so exactly to his own unconscious femininity."

18. The elemental and the narcissist find relationships opening when a man pours out his emotional problems. "He came upon three beautiful maidens sitting beside a stream, one of whom was Melusine. He poured out his sorrow to her and she gave him good counsel, whereupon he fell in love with her."

19. The elemental and the narcissist "seek soul" because they lack a sense of self. "Through union with a man they receive a soul and the children, too, of such a union possess souls."

20. The elemental and the narcissist use a mate's soul to compensate lack of self. "Her kind cannot win souls except through a bond of human love."

21. The elmental and the narcissist provoke conflict in order to test a relationship. "What brings about the catastrophe here is the conflict between the anima, that is the nature creature, and the human woman. In the Siegried legend this plays an important part, as the strife between the Valkyrie Brunnehilde and Chriemhilde, and it frequently leads to great difficulties in actual life. Fundamentally, such conflict expresses that opposition between two worlds, the outer and the inner, the conscious and the unconscious, which it seems to be the special task of our time to bridge."

22. The elemental and the narcissist have the power to captivate. "The song ends with the fairy taking her love away on the horse to her kingdom. Being carried away to fairyland is, psychologically, a very important motif." "That the anima rules this realm and leads the way to it is well known. The danger of getting lost there, that is, in the unconscious, seems to have been felt even in early times, for countless stories describe the knight, caught in the bonds of love, who forgets his knightly duties."

23. The elemental and the narcissist have a puer aeternus complex. "It is not a kingdom of the dead but is called 'Land of the Living' or 'Land under the Waves,' and is thought to be composed of 'green islands,' which are inhabited by fair feminine beings adn so sometimes called 'islands of women.' Eternally young and beautiful, these creatures enjoy a life without sorrow, full of music and dancing and joys of love."

24. The elemental and the narcissist bring sudden change into a relationship, moving from love to terror, to love to terror; the beautiful to the sublime.
From the Tannhauser Legend:
"Throughout the week they're fair all day
Decked out with silk and gold,
Rings and beads and crowns of May,
But Sundays they're otters and snakes."

25. The elemental and the narcissist can cause the other, in a relationship, to lose his or her sanity. "As life bestower and goddess of fertility, Cybele ruled the waters; as Mountain Mother and Mistress of Animals, she loved and ruled all that was wild in nature. She bestowed the gift of prophecy, but caused madness also."

26. The elemental and the narcissist with their ability to fascinate, lead partners to danger. "Fascinating all men who come her way with the beauty of Venus, the wisdom of the serpent, and the cruelty of the carnivore, she works irresistible magic upon them and without exception they perish. ... She is a purely destructive anima figure; those whom she enchants lose all of their masculine strength and virtue and finally die."

27. The elemental and the narcissist project themselves into their partner's world, and adopt his interests as her own, in order to "gain soul" or resolve a "lack of self." "When, as happens in so many legends, an elemental creature seeks to unite with a human being and be loved by him in order to acquire a soul, it can only mean that some unconscious and undeveloped component of the personality is seeking to become joined to consciousness and so to be informed with soul."

28. The elemental and the narcissist attach to a man's soul in order to uncover her own unconsciousness - to find herself. Because she does this in fear, she is prone to violence in the process. "The urge toward increase of conscousness in the material discussed above is expressed in the desire of a creature, still bound in nature and only half human, to approach a human being and be accepted by him, that is, by consciousness."

29. The elemental and the narcissist have father issues. "Elemental beings quite often possess a (more or less hidden) father. The Valkyries are Odin's maidens and Odin is a god of wind and spirit. In the tale of the huntsman and the swan maiden, who has to be released from the glass mountain, her father is with her and is released at the same time."

30. The elemental and the narcissist are nature-creatures and end a relationship without remorse or empathy, just as a storm in nature strikes without empathy. "The story comes to a natural conclusion; after they have lived together for a long time, the nymph one day says farewell to her husband, foreseeing that the end of her oak tree can no longer be averted. Then the tree is struck by lightening and she, whose life has remained bound to it despite her human quality, disappears forever."

Edmond Burke's Sublime and Beautiful

2011-09-08T11:44:00.000-07:00

All those posts I wrote about “impressiveness” – I didn’t know that a better word might be “sublime.” I just read A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmond Burke. Oh man, I’m no scholar but I should have known the definition of sublime. I’m terrible at Scrabble.

Burke associates the sublime with “terror,” and I think sublime has a wider meaning than that: awe-inspiring, amazing, astonishing, impressive, maybe terrible… heavy, overwhelming. To walk through life with a sense of the sublime is to carry sense of wonder. Okay – all those things have something to do with terror, and maybe Burke’s definition of terror 260 years ago was wider and different than the definition in my head.

My main thoughts are, 1) “sublime” might be a better word than “impressive” for the ideas I’ve been trying to express, and 2) … something about beauty…

I read Burke's old, difficult book (the writing is archaic!) because I wanted to understand what art-books meant when they talked about beauty. Burke writes that beauty is anything that inspires love and the sublime is anything that causes terror.

I wrote a lot of blog-posts saying that impressiveness is what wakes us up psychologically. The cool thing about Burke’s book is that he showed me there’s something else that wakes us up: the alternative to impressiveness / sublimity, which is beauty / love.

I should have noticed that love wakes us up psychologically, but I’ve been so focused on the painful anguish of the sublime that I lost sight of anything having to do with love. Interesting to suddenly see that again.

Here’s a quote from A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful:

“I have before observed, that whatever is qualified to cause terror, is a foundation capable of the sublime; to which I add, that not only these, but many things from which we cannot probably apprehend any danger have a similar effect, because they operate in a similar manner. I observed too, that whatever produces pleasure, is fit to have beauty engrafted on it.”

Want Wish Will

2011-06-30T07:12:00.001-07:00

Thinking about Nietszche's "will to power" and thinking about a woman I was once involved with. She'd frequently ask, "What do you want?" which I assumed meant, "What do you want in this relationship?" Truth is, at the time I wasn't sure what I wanted.

I eventually realized, however, that she shouldn't ask "what do you want?" A better question would have been, "Do you know yourself?" I know now, a man who knows himself knows what he wants, but a man who has no self-knowledge has no sense of his wants.

I'm weary of wanting and wishing. The last time a person asked me what I want I answered "I don't wan't." The Psalmist wrote "I shall not want." Wishing and wanting are connected with powerlessness, childishness and dreaming. Nietszche's concept of "will to power" puts things in a new perspective - of taking hold of personal power. I don't want, I will: I will to do these things that I once wished for and wanted.

Strikes me as a good idea, at least.

A Nietzsche Quote

2011-05-14T05:10:00.000-07:00

"My suffering and my pity - what of them! For do I aspire after happiness? I aspire after my work!"
Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche

Freedom and Loneliness

2011-04-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

Last night I talked to a friend who was envious of my freedom. She has a relationship with a guy and, in fact, they're very happy together. But, she said, "It's so much work trying to understand him all the time and wanting him to understand me, and having to do things together when I just want to be left alone!"

I started laughing as she said this - I mean really laughing, more than I've laughed in a long time, because I know those feelings. She said that I should appreciate my freedom, and appreciate how because I'm alone no one puts any expectations on me.

I agreed, "The freedom is a trade off for the loneliness, but for now I'd rather have the freedom and live with the loneliness." The freedom to not be expected to understand a partner's thoughts and feelings all the time! Yes! Give me that for just a little longer!

Some day, though, I'd like to experience the work again of trying to communicate in a romantic relationship. There's nothing quite like it.

Here's a quote on the topic from Emma Jung:

"It happens only too frequently that instead of understanding a situation - or another person - through feeling and acting accordingly, we think something about the situation or the person and offer an opinion in place of a human reaction. This may be quite correct, well-intentioned, and clever, but it has no effect, or the wrong effect, because it is right only in an objective, factual way. Subjectively, humanly speaking, it is wrong because in that moment the partner, or the relationship, is best served not by discernment or objectivity but in sympathetic feeling."

It strikes me that freedom and aloneness go well together, and unlimited freedom means infinite aloneness. Maybe I'm wrong about this. We humans certainly crave the loss of our aloneness.

Another Quote on Animals

2011-04-05T14:09:00.000-07:00

"Suppressed and wounded instincts are the dangers threatening civilized man; uninhibited drives are the dangers threatening primitive man. In both cases the 'animal' is alienated from it's true nature; and for both, acceptance of the animal soul is the condition for wholeness and a fully lived life. Primitive man must tame the animal in himself and make it his helpful companion; civilized man must heal the animal in himself and make it his friend." - Aniela Jaffe

I think Jaffe considered this to mean the primitive and the civilized part of an individual as well as what we might label as a civilized or primitive culture. Those words bother me, but I don't want it to distract from the message which I like alot.

Animal instincts

2011-03-31T09:44:00.000-07:00

The previous post, a quote about animals in dreams, points out that animals in dreams are expressions of our instincts. Jungians typically see dream figures as archetypes, and archetypes as instincts ... And I agree, even though I don't wish to be labeled as Jungian, although I mostly agree with those views and I turn to Jungian writers for understanding about ... everything. Omigosh, I might be Jungian.

Anyway, if frightening animals in dreams are instincts that need to be reintegrated, then the animals that we are on friendly terms with are conversely the animal-instincts that we have incorporated as part of our psychological make-up, which sounds almost academic but is actually really cool ~ ! To be friends with the primal animal instinct is to befriend one's self.

Animals in Dreams

2011-03-27T22:21:00.000-07:00

"The familiar dream in which the dreamer is pursued by an animal nearly always indicates that an instinct has been split off from the consciousness and ought to be (or is trying to be) readmitted and integrated into life. The more dangerous the behavior of the animal in the dream, the more unconscious is the primitive and instinctual soul of the dreamer, and the more imperative is it's integration into his life if irreparable evil is to be forestalled." - Aniela Jaffe

Impressiveness #6

2011-03-27T21:32:00.000-07:00

This is my final post on impressiveness.

In the quote I posted earlier - Quote C - Jung discussed an ancient text, The Shepherd of Hermas. In the text, a woman makes such a strong impression on Hermas that when a feminine spirit appears to him later, the spirit takes on the appearance - the image - of that woman.

This also occures when a man's inner-feminine nature, the anima, or a woman's inner-masculine nature, the animus, takes on the image of another person. Jung calls this projection - projecting your own psyche onto another person, making that person and your own anima or animus (or whatever inner-figure it happens to be) indistinguishable from that external other. Jung, Sartre and others have written that love isn't possible without a degree of projection, and that the realization of projection can end love.

My interest here is in impressiveness and it's connection to images. The image alive in your unconscious psyche is able to break through the barrier into your conscious awareness when it causes you to become impressed by an external object with matching qualities.

I wrote in an earlier post about a tree that made an impression on me. In reality it wasn't the tree that impressed. It was an internal image trying to make me consciously aware of it by projecting itself onto the tree. This is why I consider it important to watch for moments of impresssiveness, because in those moments we learn most about ourselves. This is also why the connection between impressiveness and images, especially in dreams and in art, becomes important to understand.

Impressiveness #5

2011-03-25T04:55:00.000-07:00

The following quote from Aniela Jaffe shows impressiveness - having an impact on a person's psyche - in art:
"French painter, Marcel Duchamp set up an object chosen at random (a bottle rack) on a pedestal and exhibited it. Jean Bazaine wrote of it: 'This bottle rack, torn from it's utilitarian context and washed up on the beach has been invested with the lonely dignity of the derelict.'"
Jaffe continues to describe the bottle rack using the words "disturbing," "exalted," and "magical."
The quality of being magical wasn't in the bottle rack itself. The magical quality was imbued when viewers became disturbed and questioned whether the object qualified as art. This reaction shows that art makes an impression - has impressiveness - and has the power to move us psychologically.

Impressiveness #4

2011-03-20T16:53:00.000-07:00

I visited a friend and as I walked through her yard to her front door I passed a tree covered in moss or lichen. She said, as a passing comment, "When the lichen falls off the tree it gives nutrients to the soil."

She then changed the subject and talked on something else. I'd been trying to condition myself to watch for moments that made an impression on my psyche - impressiveness. This was the moment but the conversation moved on.

That night I had a dream about that tree where I could see the lichen falling to the lawn. Later, I talked with my dream-mentor about it. She pointed out that the lichen falling from the tree was synonymous with unconscious understanding coming into consciousness. For me the encounter was an example of the benefit of watching for impressive moments.

Impressiveness #3

2011-03-20T16:08:00.000-07:00

In my meditation, glimpses of the future would come to me, precognitive images.

I didn't think of this as a psychic ability. It seemed more a byproduct of a great deal of time spent in a very intense introspection.

These flashes of precognition were puzzling because they were mundane, such as a vision of a coin falling to the floor. Nothing special - but they were little events I would see later in the day.

The question I asked myself was, why did my unconscious focus on these specific occurrences among the various happenings of the day?

The answer, although I have no evidence for proof, seems to be that the cause of those precognitive visions is that they had some level of impressiveness. When I saw the coin drop to the floor it made an impression on me so strongly that it passed precognitively into my meditation.

As von Franz points out (quote A) impressiveness is synonymous with energy, and as the literal meaning shows, the encounter of being impressed is to have the experience "forced in."

With that in mind, I realized the importance of watching for anything during my day that made an impression. Going through life as if asleep, not even noticing the most impressive events is all too easy. But if I can watch and see what it is that makes the coin dropping to the floor so important maybe I can live in a way as someone fully awake.

Impressiveness Quote C

2011-03-20T12:21:00.000-07:00

“It is, in fact expressed quite clearly in the thought that he would have liked Rhoda for a wife, though, as Hermas is at pains to emphasize, it is confined to this simple statement since anything more explicit and more direct instantly fell under a moral ban and was repressed. It is abundantly clear from what follows that this repressed libido wrought a powerful transformation in his unconscious, for it imbued the soul-image with life and brought about a spontaneous manifestation.” Carl Jung, Psychological Types

From the 2nd century text, The Shepherd of Hermas:
Hermas 1:1 The master, who reared me, had sold me to one Rhoda in Rome. After many years, I met her again, and began to love her as a sister.
Hermas 1:2 After a certain time I saw her bathing in the river Tiber; and I gave her my hand, and led her out of the river. So, seeing her beauty, I reasoned in my heart, saying, "Happy were I, if I had such an one to wife both in beauty and in character." I merely reflected on this and nothing more.
Hermas 1:3 After a certain time, as I was journeying to Cumae, and glorifying God's creatures for their greatness and splendor and power, as I walked I fell asleep. And a Spirit took me, and bore me away through a pathless tract, through which no man could pass: for the place was precipitous, and broken into clefts by reason of the waters. When then I had crossed the river, I came into the level country, and knelt down, and began to pray to the Lord and to confess my sins.
Hermas 1:4 Now, while I prayed, the heaven was opened, and I see the lady, whom I had desired, greeting me from heaven, saying, "Good morrow, Hermas."
Hermas 1:5 And, looking at her, I said to her, "Lady, what doest thou here?" Then she answered me, "I was taken up, that I might convict thee of thy sins before the Lord."

Impresssiveness Quote B

2011-03-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

“The erotic impression has evidently become united in the collective unconscious with archaic residues which have preserved from time immemorial the imprint of vivid impressions of the nature of woman – woman as mother and woman as desirable maid. Such impressions have immense power, as they release forces, both in the child and in the adult man, which fully merit the attribute ‘divine’ i.e., something irresistible and absolutely compelling. The recognition of these forces as daemonic powers can hardly be due to moral repression, but rather to a self-regulation of the psychic organism which weeks by this change of front to guard against loss of equilibrium. For if, in face of the overwhelming might of passion, which puts one human being wholly at the mercy of another, the psyche succeeds in building up a counterposition so that, at the height of passion, the boundlessly desired object is unveiled as an idol and man is forced to his knees before the divine image, then the psyche has delivered him from the curse of the object’s spell. He is restored to himself again and, flung back on himself, finds himself once more between gods and men, following his own path and subject to his own laws. The awful fear that haunts the primitive, his terror of everything impressive, which he at once senses as magic, as though it were charged with magical power, protects him in a purposive way against that most dreaded of all possibilities, loss of soul, with its inevitable sequel of sickness and death.” Carl Jung, Psychological Types

Impressiveness Quote A.

2011-03-20T11:56:00.000-07:00

“As Jung points out at the end of ‘On the Nature of the Psyche,’ the concept of energy is originally derived from the primitive concept of energeia or mana, which simply means the extreme impressiveness of something. Whenever something is enormously or intensely impressive and therefore affects one psychologically, i.e., makes a psychological impact, then primitives say it is mana, or mugu. Therefore the original concept of energy was more the idea of psychological intensity.” Marie-Louise von Franz, Synchronicity and Divination

Impressiveness #2

2011-03-19T20:55:00.000-07:00

Before I post thoughts on "impressiveness" I'll post some quotes on the topic so I can refer back to them. Before those quotes, however, here are some words to consider:

Impress - force in
Depress - force down
Express - force out
Repress - force back

Impressiveness #1

2011-03-18T22:07:00.000-07:00

This is the first of several posts I'll make on the topic of "impressiveness" which seems to be the key to staying alive and awake psychologically. I'll write more about that in future posts. I'm posting with my i-phone, so I'll keep the posts short but more frequent. I don't think anyone reads these posts, at least not yet. Oh well, I write them for myself I suppose.

Changing your personality type.

2011-01-23T15:16:00.001-08:00

Can a person consciously, as an act of the will, choose to become an introvert or an extrovert? Can I change my personality type, purposely and consciously? Joseph Campbell, in a quote I’ll include in this post, wrote that it’s possible. I’m not sure I agree. I think that a powerful experience can drive a person inside, into an introversion, or outside to an extroverted behavior. But this isn’t a conscious act of the will.

If a lost love or a financial crisis drives a person from extroversion to introversion, or visa-versa, this isn’t an act of free will. It is, however, a change in personality type.

I’m really intrigued by the idea that we can change. I’d like to be more extroverted – to be able to put my attention outside of myself instead of internalizing all my feelings and observations. I can’t remember where I read it, but I seem to remember that Jung felt that our personality types can be altered by the influence of our circle of friends. For example, an introvert who is surrounded by extroverts can be influenced into becoming more extroverted. Can we really? Maybe, maybe maybe. I’d like to think so. I’m feeling ready to get out of my own head.

Here’s that quote from The Hero With a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell:

“Willed introversion, in fact, is one of the classic implements of creative genius and can be employed as a deliberate device. It drives the psychic energies into depth and activates the lost continent of unconscious infantile and archetypal images. The result, of course, may be a disintegration of consciousness more or less complete (neurosis, psychosis: the plight of spellbound Daphne); but on the other hand, if the personality is able to absorb and integrate the new forces, there will be experienced an almost superhuman degree of self-consciousness and masterful control. This is a basic principle of the Indian disciples of yoga. It has been the way, also of many creative spirits of the West.”

Thinking about the Bodhisattva.

2011-01-17T09:51:00.000-08:00

Joseph Campbell explained, more eloquently than I could, that the Bodhisattva is in us and we are in the Bodhisattva, and the Bodhisattva is us and we are the Bodhisattva. What a crazy thing to declare, because I know I’m not perfect.

Campbell explained that the qualities that we perceive as positive and negative personality traits are all aspects of the Bodhisattva. The wide range of emotions and feelings that I’ve tried to recognize in myself are all human qualities that the Bodhisattva knows completely.

This made me laugh out loud when I thought about it during my work day. I’m a letter carrier for the postal service. I was delivering mail in the rain, and water had soaked my shoes and my socks, and two layers of jackets through to my shirt. Half-way through the day I became so frustrated, I stood in the rain with my arms full of soggy letters and catalogs, ready to cuss at the clouds. Instead I found myself laughing, and I said, “This is an example of the Bodhisattva feeling upset.”

Through the remainder of the day I laughed again every time I recognized an emotion rising up in me, and I would say, “This is the Bodhisattva feeling amused,” or “This is the Bodhisattva feeling hurried,” "This is the Bodhisattva feeling angry," or happy or… etc.

Of course, I am sooo far from being a Bodhisattva, and that’s what made me laugh: the reality that these feelings I recognize in myself are shared with one so far ahead of me on the path that he's made the return trip.

I feel somewhat insecure about sharing these thoughts. Maybe that’s why, until now, I’ve only posted quotes from books and I’ve avoided sharing what I feel about the quotes. This is the Bodhisattva feeling insecure.

Here are a couple of quotes from Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell on the topic:

“If the God is a tribal, racial, national, or sectarian archetype, we are the warriors of his cause; but if he is a lord of the universe itself, we then go forth as knowers to whom all men are brothers. And in either case, the childhood parent images and ideas of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ have been surpassed. We no longer desire and fear; we are what was desired and feared. All the gods, Bodhisattvas, and Buddhas have been subsumed in us, as in the halo of the mighty holder of the lotus of the world.”

“This is the sense of the first wonder of the Bodhisattva: the androgynous character of the presence. Therewith the two apparently opposite mythological adventures come together: the Meeting with the Goddess, and the Atonement with the Father. For in the first the initiate learns that males and female are (as phrased in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad) ‘two halves of a split pea’; whereas in the second, the Father is found to be antecedent to the division of sex: the pronoun ‘He’ was a manner of speech, the myth of Sonship a guiding line to be erased. And in both cases it is found (or rather, recollected,) that the hero himself is that which he had come to find.”

love and projection

2010-11-13T19:03:00.000-08:00

“Has anyone ever learned to love? We can withdraw our projection certainly, and by so doing we can learn to understand one another. But I do not believe anyone ever learned to love.
“Love happens. It is a miracle that happens by grace. We have no control over it. It happens. It comes, it lights our lives, and very often it departs. We can never make it happen nor make it stay.” Pg. 116

“The miracle of being in love is too overwhelming an experience ever to be dismissed as a projection. I do not believe for one moment that a projection can in itself light up the whole world. It is the love which goes with it that lights the world.” Pg. 118

- Irene Claremont de Castillejo, Knowing Woman: A Feminine Psychology

Negative Animus

2010-11-10T15:04:00.000-08:00

“It is the woman who is not using the animus creatively who is at his mercy for he must throw his light somewhere. So he attracts he attention by throwing his light on one formula or slogan after another quite regardless of their exact relevance. She falls into the trap and accepts what he shows her as gospel truth.
“A metallic note in a woman’s voice or some physical rigidity will announce his presence; it may be a stiffening of the shoulders; a slight twist of the lips or rigidity of the whole body. Words are powerless to remove him. Only action can do so – an affectionate gesture, a playful shake or even a cup of tea!
“Irrelevance is, I believe, the unmistakable hallmark of a negative animus statement. If looked at in isolation, animus generalizations are mostly sound remarks in themselves, for they are the fruit of experience garnered through the ages and they express the moral code of the place and time in history in which we live. But they happen to be irrelevant to the living moment.
“So we come to this: the animus is a woman’s greatest friend when he shines his light on what is relevant, and turns foe the moment he lapses into irrelevance.”- - Irene Claremont de Castillejo, Knowing Woman: A Feminine Psychology, Pg. 80

Anxiety

2010-11-10T14:55:00.000-08:00

“If power is the most poisonous of the false attitudes we can adopt, anxiety is the most useless. Our worry never helps anyone. It is a most destructive form of idle fantasy. We surround the person we wish to protect with a mist of anxiety which only befuddles his possibility of clear thinking or clear action. Who knows whether it may not even bring about the disasters we are trying to avoid.
“To have a deep concern for anyone is to keep him in one’s heart without the interference of wishing, or still worse willing, any particular goal or outcome for him; yet with faith in the purposefulness of life and the belief in the need for that individual to fulfil his own unknown destiny.
“Concern is a leaving free with the utmost readiness to help if asked, and in the meantime a knowing that being on one’s own thread is true tending of the soil which will provide the surest ground for the right outcome; for it will help to keep clear the channels between what is and what will be, and blow away the confusing mists between our muddled existence and the ultimate purpose of our lives.” - Irene Claremont de Castillejo, Knowing Woman: A Feminine Psychology, Pg. 144

Horror in Dreams

2010-11-02T15:12:00.000-07:00

A little late for Halloween, here are some quotes on the topic of horror from Hermes and His Children, by Rafael Lopez-Pedraza:

“An image of horror in dreams can be especially upsetting for a therapist without the background or attitude for dealing with it, believing with the faith of all believers that the patient is in a bad mental condition because of the horror images brought with him into psychotherapy; that the therapist’s office is to cure the patient’s illness by getting rid of the images of horror. There is no awareness that these very images arise, firstly, to compensate the patient’s nature and, secondly, to be recognized as an expression of the need for initiation through horror. Furthermore, I would suggest our aim should be to detect the horror image in the complex, not for diagnostic purposes, but to provide a view more suited to the patient’s nature. If, basically speaking, psychotherapy is to compensate, then we have to stick to the images of horror, for, even though we can neither understand them nor make much sense of them, it is these images which can compensate. All we can do is to withstand these images of horror, even when they appear profusely, until nature begins to metamorphose them into a more understandable psychic expression; for example, into a more commodious depression or individual view of life.” Pp. 166-167

“This evaluation of horror images offers a suggestion for psychotherapy, namely to conceive of them in terms of psychic-movers, contained in the memory (the main instrument of psychotherapy), and part of what is probably the psychotherapeutic virtue par excellence – Prudence. With the help of Prudence we can evaluate more accurately the image of horror in relation to the personality of the patient. It is Prudence that moves us into the art of dosage: dosing the image carefully and then leaving it to be assimilated.” Pg. 167

“Ziegler centers his therapy of some morbidities in the reflection on and connection to death, and has chosen the traditional medieval image of the Todeshochzeit, the wedding of death, for this purpose. I would add that the image of marriage with death is valid for the therapy of any kind of illness. How to deal with and reflect the constellation of Todeshochzeit, especially in dreams, requires, however, all the therapist’s art, as does the imagery of rape, which is implicitly a wedding with death.” Pp. 170-171

“The appearance of an imagery of death in psychotherapy is always welcome to a psychotherapist who knows how essential it is for the psyche’s life.” Pg. 202

Being Normal

2010-10-23T16:12:00.000-07:00

“The psychologists’ method of making individuals deal with the shadow within themselves, is making many intelligent citizens turn their backs on the problems of the outside world.

Discouragement of natural rebels is no service to a democracy.

But psychologists are so scared of allowing anyone to foster anything resembling a savior complex, that the dynamism that goes with a reforming zeal is being damped down and lost to the world. Great deeds can only be achieved when we are more than our little selves. When we are lent wings we should not reject them.

Today the normal appears to be the modern goal. The normal? Could anything be more uninspiring?

If a man can be got back into the labour market, able to carry out some dull little job, be some insignificant cog in the great anonymous machine of industry or civil service, the psychiatrist considers he has ably done his job; though he plunges the man back into the very society and the very work which had made him ill. Psychologists have inadvertently side-slipped into this dreary passion for normality. But

I am not so sure that to be balanced is necessarily a virtue.

Some urgent inner problem or some imbalance may actually provide the impetus for dealing with outer wrongs. The rebel who is stirred to action by injustice or cruelty to others may well have himself suffered from an inner tyrant which bullies him. Most geniuses in whatever field are, to ordinary eyes, more than a little mad. The heavy price some artists have to pay for their unusual insight may be lack of balance. The world would have been a poorer place without Van Gogh. The trouble is that psychologists believe they can see and explain patterns of behaviour. On certain levels maybe they can, but

let us never forget the unique unknowableness of every individual soul.”

- Irene Claremont de Castillejo, Knowing Woman: A Feminine Psychology

Dreams of Being Chased by Animals

2010-08-25T15:38:00.000-07:00

“The familiar dream in which the dreamer is pursued by an animal nearly always indicates that an instinct has been split off from the consciousness and ought to be (or is trying to be) readmitted and integrated into life. The more dangerous the behavior of the animal in the dream, the more unconscious is the primitive and instinctual soul of the dreamer, and the more imperative is its integration into his life if some irreparable evil is to be forestalled.

“Suppressed and wounded instincts are the dangers threatening civilized man; uninhibited drives are the dangers threatening primitive man. In both cases the ‘animal’ is alienated from its true nature; and for both, the acceptance of the animal soul is the condition for wholeness and a fully lived life. Primitive man must tame the animal in himself and make it his helpful companion; civilized man must heal the animal in himself and make it his friend.”

- Aniela Jaffe, Man and His Symbols

Interpreting Right & Left in Art & Dreams

2010-08-22T10:37:00.000-07:00

If you think about this quote while viewing some paintings, you might find possible insight about the artist's conscious attitude on the right side of the painting and the artist's unconscious attitude to the left:

“Among other things ‘right’ often means, psychologically, the side of consciousness, of adaptation, of being ‘right,’ while the left signifies the sphere of unadapted, unconscious reactions or sometimes even something ‘sinister.’” - Marie-Louise von Franz, Man and His Symbols

Another quote applies this right/left observation to dream work:

(Examining a subject’s dream.) “Henry is a ‘lonely wanderer’ on the narrow path. But (perhaps thanks to the analysis) he is already on his way down from inhospitable heights. To the left, on the side of the unconscious, his road is bordered by the terrifying depths of the abyss. On the right side, the side of consciousness, the way is blocked by the rigid caves (which might represent, so to speak, unconscious areas in Henry’s field of consciousness) there are places where refuge can be found when bad weather comes – in other words, when outside tensions become too threatening.” - Aniela Jaffe, Man and His Symbols

Dreams having meaning for both inner and outer life.

2010-08-09T05:33:00.000-07:00

Guidance from dreams for both inner and outer life:

“But this specific help from the unconscious is not given to primitive man alone. Jung discovered that dreams can also give civilized man the guidance he needs in finding his way through the problems of both his inner and his outer life. Indeed, many of our dreams are concerned with details of our outer life and our surroundings. Such things as the tree in front of the window, one’s bicycle or car, or a stone picked up during a walk may be raised to the level of symbolism through our dream life and become meaningful. If we pay attention to our dreams, instead of living in a cold, impersonal world of meaningless chance, we may begin to emerge into a world of our own, full of important and secretly ordered events.

“Our dreams, however, are not as a rule primarily concerned with our adaptation to outer life. In our civilized world, most dreams have to do with the development (by the ego) of the ‘right’ inner attitude toward the Self, for this relationship is far more disturbed in us by modern ways of thinking and behaving than is the case with primitive people. They generally live directly from the inner center, but we, with our uprooted consciousness, are so entangled with external, completely foreign matters that it is very difficult for the messages of the Self to get through to us.” – Man and His Symbols, Marie-Louise von Franz

The meaning of dream symbols being relative to the individual.

2010-08-08T15:05:00.000-07:00

“When we attempt to understand symbols, we are not only confronted with the symbol itself, but we are brought up against the wholeness of the symbol-producing individual. This includes a study of his background, and in the process one fills in many gaps in one’s own education. I have made it a rule myself to consider every case as an entirely new proposition about which I do not even know the ABC. Routine responses may be practical and useful while one is dealing with the surface, but as soon as one gets in touch with the vital problems, life itself takes over and even the most brilliant theoretical premises become theoretical words.” Man and His Symbols, C.G. Jung

a little Taoist thought can help

2010-08-03T16:26:00.000-07:00

"In learning, we always pick up more. In Taoism, we drop things. Since our infancy, we have learned many things that separate us from the universe. We worry about trivial matters like wealth and prestige. Now we want to return to our origins, to be more like a baby and forget these distractions. We want to do nothing. This is Wu Wei (doing nothing).

“By choosing nonaction, we choose to empty ourselves and go with the flow rather than fight the current. Nonaction does not mean not doing, stopping the natural progression of events; instead, nonaction means to follow nature’s course without fighting, striving, or resisting change. We are like water, like the empty vessel, formless and nameless; and in so being, we cannot act: we must accept what challenges the universe throws at us. At the same time, by fulfilling our purpose and allowing ourselves to be empty, we are doing all that we need to do. We do nothing and, in so doing, accomplish everything.

“Wu wei is an act of spontaneity and effortlessness. Zhuangzi refers to this type of existence as xiao yao, or “purposeless wandering.” It should not be considered laziness or mere passivity. Instead, it is the practice of going with nature, or swimming with the current. The Chinese expression “ting qi zi ran,” “let nature take its course,” and the English axiom “Go with the flow” are close approximations of this fundamental principle.”

- Qiguang Zhao, Do Nothing and Do Everything

A complex you got before childhood - not from your parents

2010-08-01T06:08:00.000-07:00

“Yet it seems that what we call the unconscious has preserve primitive characteristics that formed part of the original mind. It is to these characteristics that the symbols of dreams constantly refer, as if the unconscious sought to bring back all the old things from which the mind freed itself as it evolved – illusions fantasies, archaic thought forms, fundamental instincts, and so on.

“This is what explains the resistance, even fear, that people often experience in approaching unconscious matters. These relict contents are not merely neutral or indifferent. On the contrary, they are so highly charged that they are often more than merely uncomfortable. They can cause real fear. The more they are repressed, the more they spread through the whole personality in the form of a neurosis.

“It is this psychic energy that gives them such vital importance. It is just as if a man who has lived through a period of unconsciousness should suddenly realize that there is a gap in his memory – that important events seem to have taken place that he cannot remember. In so far as he assumes that the psyche is an exclusively personal affair (and this is the usual assumption), he will try to retrieve the apparently lost infantile memories. But the gaps in his childhood memory are merely the symptoms of a much greater loss -–the loss of the primitive psyche.”

Nietzsche and Intuitives and Zarathustra

2010-07-29T17:02:00.000-07:00

“Nietzsche made far greater use of the intuitive source and in so doing freed himself from the bonds of the intellect in shaping his philosophical ideas – so much so that his intuition carried him outside the bounds of a purely philosophical system and led to the creation of a work of art which is largely inaccessible to philosophical criticism. I am speaking, of course, of Zarathustra… If one may speak of an intuitive method at all, Zarathustra is in my view the best example of it, and at the same time a vivid illustration of how the problem can be grasped in a non-intellectual and yet philosophical way.”
- Carl Jung, Psychological Types

“Many introverted intuitives are to be found among artists and poets. They generally are artists of the type which produces very archetypal and fantastic material, as in Nietzsche’s The Spake Zarathustra or in Gustav Meyrinck’s The Golem and Kubin’s The Other Side. This kind of visionary art, as one could call it, is generally only understood by later generations as a realization of what was going on in the collective unconscious at that time.”
- Marie-Louise von Franz, Psychotherapy

“It was his masterpiece and he knew it… Yet Nietzsche had a bitter time getting it into print; the first part was delayed because the publisher’s presses were busy with an order for 500,000 hymn-books, and then by a stream of anti-Semitic pamphlets; and the publisher refused to print the last part at all, as quite worthless from the point of view of shekels; so that the author had to pay for its publication himself. Forty copies of the book were sold; seven were given away; one acknowledged it; no one praised it. Never was a man so much alone.”
- Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy

Hermes and the Guide in Active Imagination

2010-07-23T14:08:00.000-07:00

I read this passage from von Franz three days after the Wizard archetype in my active-imagination meditations told me that his name was Herman:

"An important motif in the dream is the guide, who instructs the dreamer. Such a figure only appears if the analyst does not take its place. Hermes, the soul guide of the alchemists, called himself 'the friend of every solitary' (cuiusque segregati - each one who is separated from the herd). The most important result of active imagination according to Jung is getting the analysand to become independent of his analyst. For that reason, we ought not to interfere in it (with the exception of making corrections in the method). When an analysand reads me an active imagination, I often think, 'I would never have done or said that!' This shows in what an individual way the actions of the ego arise in relation to the unconscious in active imagination - and this is what determines what course the inner events will take."

Hillman on friends and relatives we see in dreams

2010-07-22T18:41:00.000-07:00

The Dream and the Underworld is one of my favorite books on dreams. Hillman points out, the people you see in dreams who you recognize as friends or relatives are not representations of those people nor are they even aspects of yourself. They are archetypal, and for the dream to work its affect they must remain in the "underworld" and not be brought up into a recognizable "dayworld" position. Here’s a quote from Hillman:

"We associate my dream-brother and dream-father to my day-brother and day-father and, by this association, return the dream to the day. Jung’s method of interpretation on the subjective level takes the dream persons into the subject of the dreamer. They become expressions of my psychic traits. They are introjected into my personality. In neither method do we ever truly leave the personal aspect of the dream persons, and thus they remain in the upperworld. Dare I say it loud and clear? The persons I engage with in dreams are neither representations (simulacra) of their living selves nor parts of myself. They are shadow images that fill archetypal roles; they are personae, masks, in the hollow of which is numen." James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld

The Warrior Archetype

2010-07-20T15:03:00.000-07:00

"The warriors inside American men have become weak in recent years, and their weakness contributes to a lack of boundaries, a condition which earlier in this book we spoke of as naivete. A grown man six feet tall will allow another person to cross his boundaries, enter his psychic house, verbally abuse him, carry away his treasures, and slam the door behind; the invaded man will stand there with an ingratiating, confused smile on his face." Robert Bly, Iron John

"Warriorship inside, then, amounts to a soul alertness that helps protect a human being from being turned into copper wire, and protects us from shamers, unconscious swordsmen, hostile people, and greedy interior beings." Robert Bly, Iron John

on dreams

2010-07-19T20:48:00.000-07:00

"It has often happened that I have been profoundly shaken by a patient’s dream that he himself is recounting in a very cool and matter-of-fact way. I have learned in such cases not to hide my own feelings, not to hide how deeply touched I am emotionally, but to express it. In my experience this has always had a positive effect. Jung himself always had strong emotional reactions to dreams. He reacted to the dreams people brought to him with laughter, outcries of fear, ill humor, or excitement, and often his reaction would trigger in a patient a realization of what the dream was really about." Marie-Louise von Franz, Psychotherapy

still more quotes on active imagination

2010-07-19T20:46:00.000-07:00

"However, beyond that and far more important is that active imagination makes the autonomy of the analysand possible altogether. Indeed Jung referred to acceptance and practice of this form of meditation as the criteria of whether an analysand was willing to take responsibility for himself or would seek to continue forever living as a parasite on his analyst." Marie-Louise von Franz, Psychotherapy

"Active imagination is produced entirely from within and is looked at in the same way, though it has sometimes an outer effect; indeed, one should only do it for one’s own inner sake. Jung has experienced that if it is done with living people, the other person is actually affected, though he could not explain how it works, but that is why it is dangerous, and we try to keep away from it. You can talk to your projection on the living person, but not directly to the living person." Marie-Louise von Franz, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales

If we are upset about something, a discussion goes on all the time within us, but that is passive imagination and completely different from the difficult art of sitting apart and disidentifying and looking at something objectively. If it is done rightly, one is exhausted after ten minutes, for it is a real effort and not a ‘letting go.’" Marie-Louise von Franz, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales

the meaning of vampires in dreams

2010-07-18T16:16:00.000-07:00

"Like vampires, the anima and the mountain spirit love the blood of their victims. The vampire motif is worldwide. Vampires are the spirits of the dead in Hades to whom Odysseus must first sacrifice blood. Their lust for blood is the craving or impulse of the unconscious contents to break into consciousness. If they are denied they begin to drain energy from consciousness, leaving the individual fatigued and listless. This story indicates an attempt on the part of unconscious contents to attract the attention of consciousness, to obtain recognition of their reality and their needs and to impart something to consciousness." Marie-Louise von Franz, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales

more quotes on active imagination

2010-07-18T15:56:00.000-07:00

"Jung performed an important service, however, by showing that it is possible to relate to these contents, instead of repressing them, thus neutralizing their negative effects quite considerably. This can be done through the technique of meditation that is called active imagination. In this method the conscious ego permits the unconscious contents to come into the field of consciousness as fantasy images, as objectively as possible, and then enters into dialogue with them as with an autonomous vis-à-vis." Marie-Louise von Franz, Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology.

"Jung found that active imagination was practically the only possibility for assimilating the fourth function. He discovered that after having assimilated three functions, he couldn’t get on with his inferior function, and he began to play – to give his inferior function an expression through symbolic play." Marie-Louise von Franz, Psychotherapy

First Post

2010-07-10T21:41:00.000-07:00

My very own blogger site... what will I do with this? I think I'll use this site to post quotes from Jungian authors on the topics of dream images and archetypes. I'll get to that sometime soon. In the meantime, here's a link to the web site where I chronicle the archetypal journeys of Aulden Schlief: http://www.willapabay.org/~js/