Thea Euryphaessa

Reading about Jungian psychology is not the 𝘷𝘪𝘢 𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘢 to the unconscious; one has to experience the unconscious directly and, as it were, fly by the seat of one's pants.

— Kate Danson, Leaving My Father's House [Marion Woodman]

When we awaken to a new possibility in our lives, we often see it first in another person. A part of us that has been hidden is about to emerge, but it doesn't go in a straight line from our unconscious to becoming conscious. It travels by way of an intermediary, a host. We project our gold onto someone, and suddenly we're consumed with that person. The first inkling of this is when the other person appears to be so luminous that he (or she) glows in the dark. That's a sure sign that something is changing in us and we are projecting our gold onto the other person. When we observe the things we attribute to the other person, we see our own depth and meaning. Our gold goes first from us to them. Eventually it will come back to us. Projecting our inner gold offers us the best chance for an advance in consciousness. By Robert A. Johnson from, 'Inner Gold: Understanding APsychological Projection'.

Jungian, Robert Johnson on projecting our inner gold.

Do not cringe and make yourself small if you are called the black sheep, the maverick, the lone wolf. Those with slow seeing say a non-conformist is a blight on society. But it has been proven over the centuries, that being different means standing at the edge, means one is practically guaranteed to make an original contribution, a useful and stunning contribution to her culture. When seeking guidance, don't ever listen to the tiny-hearted. Be kind to them, heap them with blessing, cajole them, but do not follow their advice. If you have ever been called defiant, incorrigible, forward, cunning, insurgent, unruly, rebellious, you're on the right track. By Clarissa Pinkola Estés from, 'Women Who Run with the Wolves'.

One for the nonconformists and outsiders.

[Don't get hung up on his terminology. The divine/sacred/Self/deep or higher self/psyche—whatever works for you.]

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of-throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself. By C. S. Lewis from his book, 'Mere Christianity'.

One of my favourite passages, from C.S. Lewis, on the growing pains of psychospiritual transformation.

[W]e have become more cerebral, and retreated more and more from the senses—especially from smell, touch and taste—as if repelled by the body; and sight, the coolest of the senses, and the one most capable of detachment, has come to dominate all.

— Iain McGilchrist

A genuine odyssey is not about piling up experiences. It is a deeply felt, risky, unpredictable tour of the soul.

— Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul

In the end, our work with our personal Shadow largely defines our engagement with the Shadow at all the other levels. What we have ignored within ourselves will sooner or later arrive from outside . . . like a truck headed toward us in the wrong lane. Those who do not consider the implications of the divided human soul remain unconscious and are therefore dangerous to self and others. Those who do bother to stop and look, and ask why, become more and more attuned to the complexity of their own psychological processes; their lives grow more interesting to them; and they become less dangerous to themselves and others. By Jungian, James Hollis from his book, 'Why Good People Do Bad Things: Understanding Our Darker Selves'.

On the importance of Shadow work.

If you can then understand the secret hints which are contained in a dream, your eyes are opened and you rediscover life and find it on a new level. Only the guidance of the unconscious can help at such a moment.

— Marie-Louise von Franz, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales

Individuation means being yourself, becoming yourself. Nowadays one always uses the cheap word 'self-realisation', but what one really means is ego-realisation. Jung means something quite different. He means the realisation of one's own predestined development. That does not always suit the ego, but it is what one intrinsically feels could or should be. We are neurotic when we are not what God meant us to be. Basically, that's what individuation is all about. One lives one's destiny. Then usually one is more humane, less criminal, less destructive to one's environment. By Marie-Louise von Franz from, 'The Geography of Athe Soul' [interview in 'In Touch', Summer 1993]

Marie-Louise von Franz on what Carl Jung meant by 'individuation'.

When we domesticate our minds and hearts, we reduce our lives. We disinherit ourselves as children of the universe. Almost without knowing it, we slip inside ready-made roles and routines which then set the frames of our possibilities and permissions. Our longing becomes streamlined. We acquire sets of convictions in relation to politics, religion and work. We parrot these back and forth at each other as if they were absolute insights. Yet for the most part these frames of belief can be viewed as self-constructed barriers, fragile clichés built around our lives to keep out the mystery. The game of society helps us to forget the unknown and subversive presence of the human person. By John O'Donohue from his book, 'Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Hunger to Belong'.

On how we box ourselves into ever smaller and ever more clichéd lives.

Right? It's only with hindsight and many, many years experience that I've come to know this as truth. The way it's upped the ante in the past several years is really quite something. It can be bloody relentless at times.

She does have a way with words though, doesn't she? ha ha 🤭

[I]n practice one sees that the longer people work on this road, the more subtle the indications of the unconscious become and the worse one gets punished or thrown off if one makes a slight mistake. In the beginning stages, people can commit the most horrible sins of unconsciousness and stupidity without having to pay much for it. Nature does not take revenge. But when the work progresses over the years, even a slight deviation, a hint of the wrong word, or a fleeting wrong thought can have the worst psychosomatic consequences. It is as though it became ever more subtle, moving on the razor's edge. Any faux pas is an abysmal catastrophe, while previously one could plod kilometres off the path without one's own unconscious giving one a slap or taking its revenge in any way. By Jungian, Marie-Louise von Franz from her book, 'Alchemical Active Imagination'.

Marie-Louise von Franz on how the unconscious is far more forgiving of the ego's blunders in the beginning stages of psychospiritual transformation, but becomes increasingly less so as the years pass.

Out of the unconscious flows the well of life, and what you don't accept in yourself naturally falls back into that well and poisons it; when you don't recognise certain facts, they form a layer in the unconscious through which the water of life must come up, and it will be poisoned by all those things you have left down below. If they are accepted in your conscious life, then they are mixed with other more valuable and cleaner substances, and the odious qualities of the lower functions disappear more or less. They only form little shadows here and there, sort of spice for the good things. But by excluding them, you cause them to heap up and they become entirely evil substances; for a thing to become poisonous, you only need to repress it. By Carl Gustav Jung from, 'Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939, Vol. 2'. [Quote share by Thea Euryphaessa.]

Fabulous quote from Jung.

When it comes down to it, all addiction's incentives can be summed up as an escape from the confines of the self, by which I mean the mundane, lived-in experience of being uncomfortable and isolated in one's own skin. Underneath however many surface layers of 'normal' functioning, that alienated discomfort can be disturbing to the point of torment: a persistent sense of being abnormal, unworthy, and deficient. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, perhaps the world's best-known former heroin addict, crystallises this escape strategy in his autobiography, Life : "It was a search for oblivion, I suppose . . . the convolutions you go through just not to be you for a few hours". 1/2

Why would the self need to be escaped? We long for escape when we are imprisoned, when we are suffering. Addiction calls to us when waking life amounts to being trapped in inner turmoil, doubt, loss of meaning, isolation, unworthiness; feeling cold in our belly, devoid of hope; lacking faith in the possibility of liberation, missing succour; unable to endure external challenges or the inner chaos or emptiness; incapable of regulating our distressing mind conditions, finding our emotions unendurable; and most of all, desperate to soothe the pain all these states represent. Pain, then, is the central theme. No wonder people so often speak about the benign numbing effect of their addictions: only a person in pain craves anaesthesia. By Gabor Maté and Daniel Maté from their book, 'The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture'. 2/2

Gabor Maté on addiction.

A genuine odyssey is not about piling up experiences. It is a deeply felt, risky, unpredictable tour of the soul.

— Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul

The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is. Self-knowledge has no end—you don’t achieve, you don’t come to a conclusion. It is an endless river.

— Krishnamurti

The I that I know does not know enough to know that it does not know enough. It thinks itself luminescent crystal, when it is mostly greys, mostly vague, oblique shapes, and sometimes stark, opaque obsidian. Who I think I am is only the ego talking, a fragile wafer cast upon an immense inner sea. Our language betrays us. When I say I, which I is speaking? Which part of the whole is, for the moment, dominant? When I say myself, which self is speaking? How can I say I know myself, in every . . . or any moment? By Jungian psychotherapist, James Hollis from his book, 'Why Good People Do Bad Things: Understanding Our Darker Selves'.

"Each person is a world, peopled
by blind creatures in dim revolt
against the I, the king, who rules them".

— Gunnar Ekelöf

I want to know
if you are prepared to live in a world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand.

— David Whyte, 'Self-Portrait' [from 𝘍𝘪𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘩]

😍

On the psychological level, transformation and sacrifice imply a giving up of some aspect of 'I am', 'I have' or 'I can', claims and habits, a renouncing of some cherished needs, convictions or illusions. It may call for a relativisation of one's superior psychological function in favour of the less developed 'inferior' function. A thinking type may have to renounce exclusive reliance upon the intellect in favour of feeling and emotion. A feeling type may have to learn to subordinate or at least coordinate emotional responses with thought and reason. An overly active, driving and controlling person may have to learn a degree of receptivity, yielding and surrender which, to her or him, may feel like passivity; a passive person may have to become more actively responsible for his or her own life or therapeutic management. By Jungian, Edward C. Whitmont from his book, 'The Alchemy of Healing: Psyche and Soma'.

On the necessity of sacrifice in psychospiritual transformation:

'To make the new energy available, sacrifice and surrender, a destructuring of the old resistant patterns, is called for'.

When a woman is identified exclusively with the role of mother, then her individual personality—symbolically, the body—is diminished and one sees only the role. In addition, when the mother role dominates, other people and even objects become children to be cared for. The individuality of the woman and that of the other person suffer because of the limitation of vision within the role: everyone and everything that is not mother becomes child. From Donald Lee Williams' book, 'Border Crossings: Carlos Castaneda's Path of Knowledge'.

On the smothering mother.

Knowledge is the gathering of information. It consists in knowing about 'the ten thousand things', as the Buddhists poetically call it. It involves 'having the facts straight'. This is beneficial to have. But all the information in the world does not of itself accumulate into wisdom. In fact, as the Franciscan St. Bonaventure noted, "Wisdom is confusing to the proud and often evident to the lowly". If you observe wise people, you see that they actually lose a certain interest in gathering more and more information, books, and news. These can clutter what is already a clear field, open sight, and simple presence to the moment. When I return from my Lenten hermitage, for about two or three months I have no interest in reading, and then I slowly fall back into it. We already know far more than Jesus or Buddha ever knew, but the great difference is that they knew what they did know from a different level and in a different way. The same powerful Scripture text that brings a loving person to even greater love will be mangled and misused by a fearful or egocentric person. By Richard Rohr from his book, 'The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See'.

'All the information in the world does not of itself accumulate into wisdom'.

If having is the basis of my sense of identity because 'I am what I have', the wish to have must lead to the desire to have much, to have more, to have most. In other words, greed is the natural outcome of the having orientation. It can be the greed of the miser or the greed of the profit hunter or the greed of the womaniser or the man chaser. Whatever constitutes their greed, the greedy can never have enough, can never be 'satisfied'. In contrast to physiological needs, such as hunger, that have definite satiation points due to the physiology of the body, mental greed—and all greed is mental, even if it is satisfied via the body—has no satiation point, since its consummation does not fill the inner emptiness, boredom, loneliness, and depression it is meant to overcome. By Erich Fromm from his book, 'To Have or To Be?'

On the bottomless pit of greed.

'... the whole cabal'

🤣

We generally have rather strict and ideal requirements in mind and seldom allow much consideration for that side of ourselves which springs more from nature and instinct than from the need to perform and conform. This other, apparently 'inferior' side has its own needs, requirements, and agenda, which are necessary for our health and well-being. We would do well to make our peace with this part, not by giving in to crudely impulsive and primitive-emotional behaviour, but by consciously and deliberately giving up our inflated insistence on being so perfect and honourable. Such perfectionism itself springs from the childish need to please authority figures whom we either fear or admire. We want desperately to belong and fit in with a collective type of self-respect in society. But from the shadow's point of view, 'good behaviour' seems to be a form of cruelest punishment, and a heavy price is paid within ourselves. By Jungian psychotherapist, John Perkins from his book, 'The Forbidden Self'.

For anyone who insists on maintaining a 'nice' persona at all costs, know that there's a price to pay:

'We are constantly mistreating our shadow selves, insisting on one sort of perfection or another, and it usually has something to do with an impeccable self-image or persona'.

[C]omplying reflexively with the will of others, without genuine reflectivity, leads to a loss of integrity in our dealings with them. If I am repeatedly nice and compliant, rather than authentic, then I have ceased to be a person with values.

— James Hollis, Why Good People Do Bad Things

The idea conveyed here, to put it simply, is that you have to let go of the lesser to receive the greater. You have to relinquish the little world of the ego in which you were master and ruler in order to enter the larger world of the greater psyche in which you are a rank novice, knowing nothing, stumbling from one misfortune to another, one difficult psychological state to another. This is a humbling experience. "Many who are first shall be last" (Matthew 19:30), to put this reversal in the familiar words of the Bible. — Keiron Le Grice, The Rebirth of the Hero

Le Grice continues:

In this new world, you have to deal with potent energies, archetypal images, and powerful instincts that need to be recognised and controlled. You are up against the tyranny of your own ego. You find yourself in a difficult psychological landscape where you must pass through all kinds of trials and hazards. There is little wonder, then, that part of us would like to avoid all of this and remain in the sleepy comfortable world of childhood with its known horizons, familiar patterns, and securities. The ordinary, personal part of us does not want the extra level of suffering and intensity—this is the personal 'little world' not letting you go to begin your transpersonal adventure. In the New Testament (Luke 13:28), Jesus declares that at the end of the world there will be much "weeping and gnashing of teeth", which conveys the same idea. By Keiron Le Grice from his book, 'The Rebirth of the Hero: Mythology as a Guide to Spiritual Transformation'.

Keiron Le Grice on how "it is a painful transition from the ordinary personal world of the ego to the transpersonal dimension of life and an encounter with the ominous powers of the unconscious".

The self, in its efforts at self-realisation, reaches out beyond the ego-personality on all sides; because of its all-encompassing nature it is brighter and darker than the ego, and accordingly confronts it with problems which it would like to avoid. Either one's moral courage fails, or one's insight, or both, until in the end fate decides. The ego never lacks moral and rational counterarguments, which one cannot and should not set aside so long as it is possible to hold on to them. For you only feel yourself on the right road when the conflicts of duty seem to have resolved themselves, and you have become the victim of a decision made over your head or in defiance of the heart. From this we can see the numinous power of the self, which can hardly be experienced in any other way. For this reason the experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego. By Carl G. Jung, 'Mysterium Coniunctionis, Collected Work's 14'.

Carl Jung on how the experience of the Self is always a defeat for the ego.