IONA MILLER WEBSITE: VISION 2020
"My works inform my practice & my practice informs my works." --Io
"What you take in by visionary experience you must give out by love and intelligence in daily life." - Aldous Huxley
Continual Mutual Transformation
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY - MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES - FRONTIER SCIENCE - SCIENCE-ART -
POST-JUNGIAN COMMENTARY - ARCHETYPAL PSYCHOLOGY - AESTHETIC APPROACH -
EXPERIENTIAL SPIRITUALITY - NEW MEDIA ARTS - SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY - SYMBOLS - RITUAL
"My works inform my practice & my practice informs my works." --Io
"What you take in by visionary experience you must give out by love and intelligence in daily life." - Aldous Huxley
Continual Mutual Transformation
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY - MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES - FRONTIER SCIENCE - SCIENCE-ART -
POST-JUNGIAN COMMENTARY - ARCHETYPAL PSYCHOLOGY - AESTHETIC APPROACH -
EXPERIENTIAL SPIRITUALITY - NEW MEDIA ARTS - SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY - SYMBOLS - RITUAL
“I can understand myself only in the light of these inner happenings. It is these that make up the singularity of my life.” --C.G. Jung
"I inquire, I do not assert; I do not determine anything with final assurance; I conjecture, try, compare, attempt, ask..." --Motto of Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, alchemist quoted by Jung, CW17
Come with me, Sophia, on the night journey of my soul, please bring forth the Love and Light to transform the blackness into gold.
“The Goddess is the unspeakable wisdom that grows into the very cells of the body. She lives with this sacramental truth at her center: the beauty and the horror of the whole of life are blazing in Her love. She is dancing in the flames.” ― Marion Woodman, Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness
A work of art carries its proof in itself.
"As fiction and music are coming close to reorganizing knowledge, scholarship is becoming closer to art." - William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light, 1981, p.4
Jung on Magic as a way of Living
"It is an error to believe that there are magical practices that one can learn. One cannot understand magic. One can only understand what accords with reason. Magic accords with unreason, which one cannot understand. The world accords not only with reason but also with unreason. But just as one employs reason to make sense of the world, in that what is reasonable about it approaches reason, a lack of understanding also accords with unreason.
This meeting is magical and eludes comprehension. Magical understanding is what one calls noncomprehension. Everything that works magically is incomprehensible, and the incomprehensible often works magically. One calls incomprehensible workings magical. The magical always surrounds me, always involves me.
lt opens spaces that have no doors and leads out into the open where there is no exit. The magical is good and evil and neither good nor evil. Magic is dangerous since what accords with unreason confuses, allures and provokes; and I am always its first victim. Where reason abides, one needs no magic. Hence our time no longer needs magic. Only those without reason needed it to replace their lack of reason. But it is thoroughly unreasonable to bring together what suits reason with magic since they have nothing to do with one another. Both become spoiled through being brought together. Therefore all those lacking reason quite rightly fall into superfluity and disregard. A rational man of this time will therefore never use magic.
But it is another thing for whoever has opened the chaos in himself. We need magic to be able to receive or invoke the messenger and the communication of the incomprehensible. We recognized that the world comprises reason and unreason; and we also understood that our way needs not only reason but also unreason. This distinction is arbitrary and depends upon the level of comprehension. But one can be certain that the greater part of the world eludes our understanding.
We must value the incomprehensible and unreasonable equally, although they are not necessarily equal in themselves; a part of the incomprehensible, however, is only presently incomprehensible and might already concur with reason tomorrow. But as long as one does not understand it, it remains unreasonable. Insofar as the incomprehensible accords with reason, one may try to think it with success; but insofar as it is unreasonable, one needs magical practices to open it up.
The practice of magic consists in making what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner. The magical way is not arbitrary, since that would be understandable, but it arises from incomprehensible grounds. Besides, to speak of grounds is incorrect, since grounds concur with reason. Nor can one speak of the groundless, since hardly anything further can be said about this. The magical way arises by itself If one opens up chaos, magic also arises. One can teach the way that leads to chaos, but one cannot teach magic. One can only remain silent about this, which seems to be the best apprenticeship. This view is confusing, but this is what magic is like. Where reason establishes order and clarity, magic causes disarray and a lack of clarity.
One indeed needs reason for the magical translation of the not-understood into the understandable, since only by means of reason can the understandable be created. No one can say how to use reason, but it does arise if one tries to express only what an opening of chaos means.
Magic is a way of living. If one has done one’s best to steer the chariot, and one then notices that a greater other is actually steering it, then magical operation takes place. One cannot say what the effect of magic will be, since no one can know it in advance because the magical is the lawless, which occurs without rules and by chance, so to speak. But the condition is that one totally accepts it and does not reject it, in order to transfer everything to the growth of the tree. Stupidity too is part of this, which everyone has a great deal of, and also tastelessness, which is possibly the greatest nuisance."
~Carl Jung; Red Book
"It is an error to believe that there are magical practices that one can learn. One cannot understand magic. One can only understand what accords with reason. Magic accords with unreason, which one cannot understand. The world accords not only with reason but also with unreason. But just as one employs reason to make sense of the world, in that what is reasonable about it approaches reason, a lack of understanding also accords with unreason.
This meeting is magical and eludes comprehension. Magical understanding is what one calls noncomprehension. Everything that works magically is incomprehensible, and the incomprehensible often works magically. One calls incomprehensible workings magical. The magical always surrounds me, always involves me.
lt opens spaces that have no doors and leads out into the open where there is no exit. The magical is good and evil and neither good nor evil. Magic is dangerous since what accords with unreason confuses, allures and provokes; and I am always its first victim. Where reason abides, one needs no magic. Hence our time no longer needs magic. Only those without reason needed it to replace their lack of reason. But it is thoroughly unreasonable to bring together what suits reason with magic since they have nothing to do with one another. Both become spoiled through being brought together. Therefore all those lacking reason quite rightly fall into superfluity and disregard. A rational man of this time will therefore never use magic.
But it is another thing for whoever has opened the chaos in himself. We need magic to be able to receive or invoke the messenger and the communication of the incomprehensible. We recognized that the world comprises reason and unreason; and we also understood that our way needs not only reason but also unreason. This distinction is arbitrary and depends upon the level of comprehension. But one can be certain that the greater part of the world eludes our understanding.
We must value the incomprehensible and unreasonable equally, although they are not necessarily equal in themselves; a part of the incomprehensible, however, is only presently incomprehensible and might already concur with reason tomorrow. But as long as one does not understand it, it remains unreasonable. Insofar as the incomprehensible accords with reason, one may try to think it with success; but insofar as it is unreasonable, one needs magical practices to open it up.
The practice of magic consists in making what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner. The magical way is not arbitrary, since that would be understandable, but it arises from incomprehensible grounds. Besides, to speak of grounds is incorrect, since grounds concur with reason. Nor can one speak of the groundless, since hardly anything further can be said about this. The magical way arises by itself If one opens up chaos, magic also arises. One can teach the way that leads to chaos, but one cannot teach magic. One can only remain silent about this, which seems to be the best apprenticeship. This view is confusing, but this is what magic is like. Where reason establishes order and clarity, magic causes disarray and a lack of clarity.
One indeed needs reason for the magical translation of the not-understood into the understandable, since only by means of reason can the understandable be created. No one can say how to use reason, but it does arise if one tries to express only what an opening of chaos means.
Magic is a way of living. If one has done one’s best to steer the chariot, and one then notices that a greater other is actually steering it, then magical operation takes place. One cannot say what the effect of magic will be, since no one can know it in advance because the magical is the lawless, which occurs without rules and by chance, so to speak. But the condition is that one totally accepts it and does not reject it, in order to transfer everything to the growth of the tree. Stupidity too is part of this, which everyone has a great deal of, and also tastelessness, which is possibly the greatest nuisance."
~Carl Jung; Red Book
They call me Io, for short. I can name my predecessors back into the mists of pre-history. I am named after my dad's favorite cousin and the mystic Scottish isle Iona of Druids, Kings, and Culdees. I was born in a year of the Earth Ox. 2021 is a year of the Ox/Cow. That led me into genealogy, where we can squander decades on such an Opus, out of calling or necessity.
But I also always resonated with the Hellenic world, and the Ionian coast, with Ephesus. Greek mythology captured my interests for a lifetime, as a mythologist and archetypal psychology practitioner. I learned the transpersonal forms of personal mythology, magick, and polytheistic celebration of the godforms.
Naturally, Io the nymph (with paramour Zeus) is a favorite figure, so imagine my surprise when she turned up with other Greek gods in my genealogy, in grandmother Hopkins royal gateway line, also related to Oceanus Hopkins, born on the "Mayflower." What! you may say? How can such things be so, that the world of mortals descends from the gods?
Take it with a grain of imaginal salt, but that is conventional best practice in genealogy from its inception. Kings and Queens were invested in promoting their divine origins, so they kept track or made up the gaps with myth, imagination, and plausibilty suited to ancient beliefs.
We welcome the reader into their own journey of self-discovery. We sometimes feel lost, sometimes validated, sometimes illuminated. But, we always once again pick up the connective thread. Ideally, there is a co-creation with readers, listeners, and viewers bringing their own innermost responses, experiences, and perceptions to the reflective process, whether in agreement or disagreement. Then we know how we think and how we feel and internal dialogue begins.
More books and information don't change your soul, but active participation and engagement with psyche can open new vistas. The living stream of psychic material weaves the imaginal journey together into patterns with seasons of agony and grace, the ecstasy of radiant intuition and emergent knowledge.
We long for soul and depth, to find the greater human in us. When we reach a threshold point in our life, it is no longer enough to live unconsciously. Our attempts to become conscious impel us on a long journey. We can be gripped by overwhelming mystery. We feel psyche inside us, but it also reveals itself in the world and as a self-arising cosmos. We experience conscious appreciation of a living universe, co-extensive with our own deepest being.
The proverbial Quest for the Holy Grail is human curiosity and discovery. The unconscious is the Holy Grail of consciousness, the supreme value of life. The Grail is a Mystery and the search for it a Quest for self-actualization. Human consciousness has taken many forms, transcending primitive myth, spirituality, religion, philosophy, and science. Today's quest combines elements of them all. That evokes and challenges our spiritual beliefs and faith, the nature of existence and reality, and our rational materialistic view of self, others, and cosmos. We see more through our closed eyes, than open.
As James Hillman says, "When the gods arrive on stage, everything becomes silent and the eyelids close. Plunged into oblivion by this experience, we re-emerge and without knowing exactly what is happened, we know only that we have been transformed."
Symbols, images and archetypes are the language of the soul, of the collective unconscious -- perceptions of supra-normal comprehension. Thus, we gain knowledge of, and participate in, the domains of matter (senses), mind (reason; language), soul (feeling; nonordinary states), and spirit (intuition; silence; gnosis). Nature is conformal with herself.
Jung suggested that psyche and matter share a common transcendent essence. The psychological and physical features we perceive in the world are dual aspects of one underlying reality. When the deep levels of the unconscious become activated, synchronistic events can occur.
All levels of energies unite in consciousness of soul. Field theory is a way to conceptualize any specific moment, relational systems, latent potentials, and self-states. The paradigm of the emergent field is an energetic metaphor of motion, emotion, and psyche.
More books and information don't change your soul, but active participation and engagement with psyche can open new vistas. The living stream of psychic material weaves the imaginal journey together into patterns with seasons of agony and grace, the ecstasy of radiant intuition and emergent knowledge.
We long for soul and depth, to find the greater human in us. When we reach a threshold point in our life, it is no longer enough to live unconsciously. Our attempts to become conscious impel us on a long journey. We can be gripped by overwhelming mystery. We feel psyche inside us, but it also reveals itself in the world and as a self-arising cosmos. We experience conscious appreciation of a living universe, co-extensive with our own deepest being.
The proverbial Quest for the Holy Grail is human curiosity and discovery. The unconscious is the Holy Grail of consciousness, the supreme value of life. The Grail is a Mystery and the search for it a Quest for self-actualization. Human consciousness has taken many forms, transcending primitive myth, spirituality, religion, philosophy, and science. Today's quest combines elements of them all. That evokes and challenges our spiritual beliefs and faith, the nature of existence and reality, and our rational materialistic view of self, others, and cosmos. We see more through our closed eyes, than open.
As James Hillman says, "When the gods arrive on stage, everything becomes silent and the eyelids close. Plunged into oblivion by this experience, we re-emerge and without knowing exactly what is happened, we know only that we have been transformed."
Symbols, images and archetypes are the language of the soul, of the collective unconscious -- perceptions of supra-normal comprehension. Thus, we gain knowledge of, and participate in, the domains of matter (senses), mind (reason; language), soul (feeling; nonordinary states), and spirit (intuition; silence; gnosis). Nature is conformal with herself.
Jung suggested that psyche and matter share a common transcendent essence. The psychological and physical features we perceive in the world are dual aspects of one underlying reality. When the deep levels of the unconscious become activated, synchronistic events can occur.
All levels of energies unite in consciousness of soul. Field theory is a way to conceptualize any specific moment, relational systems, latent potentials, and self-states. The paradigm of the emergent field is an energetic metaphor of motion, emotion, and psyche.
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Welcome to the Ionasphere
Art, Science, Culture & Consciousness "The inexplicable is always in vogue." |
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SYNTHEMA
Experiences at the Edge of Consciousness
"The unconsciousness is where it has always been, at the edge of consciousness, braided to the conscience, where we don't look or don't want to see. The unconscious surrounds us. We are immersed in psyche. As alchemists insisted, gold of potential lies in the ugly waste of what we have at hand. Working this raw material of the real unconscious was always the job of the artist who didn't just express his personal suffering, but reflected the torment of the world soul, the suffering in the roots. By the artist I mean artifex, the creator, whether it's artist, alchemist or analyst. The one who collects the wood carried by the current, the cacophonic sounds, the pieces of crafting and returns this unconsciousness to its roots. Artifex works with the soul in the world soul." --James Hillman
Experiences at the Edge of Consciousness
"The unconsciousness is where it has always been, at the edge of consciousness, braided to the conscience, where we don't look or don't want to see. The unconscious surrounds us. We are immersed in psyche. As alchemists insisted, gold of potential lies in the ugly waste of what we have at hand. Working this raw material of the real unconscious was always the job of the artist who didn't just express his personal suffering, but reflected the torment of the world soul, the suffering in the roots. By the artist I mean artifex, the creator, whether it's artist, alchemist or analyst. The one who collects the wood carried by the current, the cacophonic sounds, the pieces of crafting and returns this unconsciousness to its roots. Artifex works with the soul in the world soul." --James Hillman
MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES
Through Mythology We Walk Our Ancestral Past
Jungian & Post-Jungian Perspectives
by Iona Miller, 2020
"Myth reveals old and new patterns of thinking and self-reflection and while
there is continuity between old and new, they can be experienced as wholly
different in character and the transition between them is tantamount to
dialoguing with the Other. As mediator of ego consciousness and the
transcendent, myth is in liminal space and is symbolic in status. Myth is a
conscious interpretation of unconscious communication and as such its
nature is both rational and non-rational, archetypal image and ineffable,
numinous `content'. As symbols, myths are clothed with finite images that
are subjectively designed by the ego according to its response to the transcendent
and its own conscious attitude or orientation" (Jung 1951c: 355).
Mythological studies unpacks the issues, concepts, and characteristics of the archetypes in the contemporary world. Soul-making allows us to express that relationship within our daily lives -- a process of continuous remembrance for the sake of tending the soul of the world.
Mythological Studies explores the understanding of human experience revealed in mythology and in the manifold links between myth and ritual, literature, art, culture, and religious experience. Special attention is given to depth psychology and archetypal approaches to the study of myth. Knowledge is reading about it; wisdom is participation.
"I did not know that I was living a myth, and even if I had known it, I would not have known what sort of myth was ordering my life without my knowledge. So, in the most natural way, I took it upon myself to get to know “my” myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks..." -Carl Jung
Mythologists study and help reveal archetypal meaning and transformation in individuals and groups, artworks, and daily life. Archetypes and their images are primary psychic realities, archetypes with psychological, spiritual, and magical impact. We use various stories and interpretive lenses to make sense of our lives, purpose, and the nature of the world to create change in perspectives and individuals. We use the power of archetypes for devotion, remembrance, to create amazing viewpoints, and change lives.
Myth is a dream-like reality, that isn't historical, but is always happening. Autonomous archetypes spontaneously emerge from the psyche as self-revealing realities that structure and guide our lives. We can cultivate relationships with them as metaphorical ways of being and experience. They speak in our narratives, symbols, art, relationships, and personifications whether or not we are aware of them. We can learn to discern them with an archetypal ear and eye turned toward the depth dimension of psyche.
We can find inspiration from psychologists and psychotherapists, to poets, philosophers, comparative mythologists, artists, and religious scholars. They help guide us through the process of revealing the mythic structure of consciousness and self-expression. We may be aware of some of these myths, some not. This is a process of self-discovery -- a journey into the labyrinth of our own psyches, through the archetypal twists and turns of inner and outer experience.
Self-Organizing Routed Dynamics
Emerging from pre-conscious psyche, myths are our deep background and connect us with our instincts. Myth bridges conscious and unconscious cognition with an archaic quality and networks of symbols and imagery. They help us interpret the world. We need myth because it speaks emotionally of and to the soul, giving meaning to loss and suffering. It may be a painful struggle that reminds us we are very much alive.
We find myth not only at the root of our ancient genealogical lines but in each and every life between, in the roles and archetypal patterns that constitute our direct heritage. Jung suggests the dynamic is the same whether we think of them as instincts or gods and goddesses. We can re-enchant our world by saying a prayer to the lords and ladies, by whatever names they wish to be known. In a prayer to all our relations, invisible spirits are made visible. Eternal being lies within each and every one of us.
"It is as though in the course of the millennia slow upheavals took place in the unconscious, each new aeon being as it were ushered in by a new myth...The myth is not new, it is age-old, but a new version, a new edition of it, a new interpretation characterizes the new epoch." --Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking – Interviews and Encounters, Pages 370-373.
"Since the gods are without doubt personifications of psychic forces, to assert their metaphysical existence is as much an intellectual presumption as the opinion that they could ever be invented." ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 387
"When the gods arrive on stage, everything becomes silent and the eyelids close. Plunged into oblivion by this experience, we re-emerge and without knowing exactly what is happened, we know only that we have been transformed." --James Hillman
Gods and goddesses are "Symbiotic Autonomous Systems." The spirit is energy, quest, relationship, and life force. Truth changes sociologically, as well as historically; it often resides in useful fictions and the artistic language of mytho-poetics. We must avoid being impoverished in our self-understanding by stepping outside of conventional academic strictures in our interpretations of ancient Divinities, Myth, and Cult.
Post-postmodern animism is an excavation and revitalizing of the world. How the world is alive and imbued with spirit is re-visioned in Archetypal Psychology and phenomenology. We can't collapse the many streams of a myth into one, including its reception as received truth in today's world. Does prehistoric religion equates to indigenous religion and thus shamanism or have they erroneously become conjectural lenses for scholars looking into the distant human past?
We cannot excavate religion for a primordial source of human spirituality. We often don't know the ritual or mythological significance of an artifact or what sort of ideology it might have conveyed in its original context. Archetypal studies adds another layer to these mysteries.
Both the concept of a universal goddess religion (Gimbutas) and universal shamanism (Eliade) have been 'seen through' as modern conceptual myths. Contemporary groups might give new meaning and projective interpretations to prehistoric sites and artifacts.
Shamanism itself is now considered an academic myth, a fictionalization of 'the primitive other' in Ethnology, Archaeology, and Historiography, contradicting Eliade, Gimbutas, and Wasson, among others. And yet there is ample physical evidence of the use of entheogens in rituals by indigenous Paleo-shamans and their historical successors. 'Primitive mankind' remains an imaginal construction, overgeneralized and superficial, beyond contemporary descriptions of rites.
So, it seems it is the characterization and generalization of shamans by Enlightenment colonial thinkers, ethnographic pioneers, and romantic New Age neo-shamanism that is questionable, rather than their existence as cross-cultural social shapers. Universal or not, legends suggest, like the goddess, they drew on the powers in the natural world, including those of earth and animals, and mediate non-ordinary states, between the world of the living, the spirits, and ancestral spirits of the dead.
We are enmeshed and entangled with invisible entitles. We dissociate with athological manifestations of alterations to the sense of self. Awe is related to a diminished sense of self, flow, and peak-experience. Self-transcendence involves the expansion of personal boundaries, a larger dimension emerging from an innate religious instinct.
An ecstatic specialist, often called a ‘shaman’, confers initiation, rites of passage. As one of humanity’s oldest, most widespread, and continuous experiences, it is a sacramental means of grace and cathartic blessing. Self-transcendence is an innate desire to discover meaning. Spirituality is an innate human capacity to experience transcendence.
Much depends on whether we take a psychological, aesthetic, orthodox, or heterodox approach. A mythologist studies and applies archetypes to reveal meaning and create change in perspectives and individuals. They use the power of archetypes for remembrance, to create amazing viewpoints, provoke transformation, and change lives.
https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/kybele-attis.html
https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/cybele.html
Through Mythology We Walk Our Ancestral Past
Jungian & Post-Jungian Perspectives
by Iona Miller, 2020
"Myth reveals old and new patterns of thinking and self-reflection and while
there is continuity between old and new, they can be experienced as wholly
different in character and the transition between them is tantamount to
dialoguing with the Other. As mediator of ego consciousness and the
transcendent, myth is in liminal space and is symbolic in status. Myth is a
conscious interpretation of unconscious communication and as such its
nature is both rational and non-rational, archetypal image and ineffable,
numinous `content'. As symbols, myths are clothed with finite images that
are subjectively designed by the ego according to its response to the transcendent
and its own conscious attitude or orientation" (Jung 1951c: 355).
Mythological studies unpacks the issues, concepts, and characteristics of the archetypes in the contemporary world. Soul-making allows us to express that relationship within our daily lives -- a process of continuous remembrance for the sake of tending the soul of the world.
Mythological Studies explores the understanding of human experience revealed in mythology and in the manifold links between myth and ritual, literature, art, culture, and religious experience. Special attention is given to depth psychology and archetypal approaches to the study of myth. Knowledge is reading about it; wisdom is participation.
"I did not know that I was living a myth, and even if I had known it, I would not have known what sort of myth was ordering my life without my knowledge. So, in the most natural way, I took it upon myself to get to know “my” myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks..." -Carl Jung
Mythologists study and help reveal archetypal meaning and transformation in individuals and groups, artworks, and daily life. Archetypes and their images are primary psychic realities, archetypes with psychological, spiritual, and magical impact. We use various stories and interpretive lenses to make sense of our lives, purpose, and the nature of the world to create change in perspectives and individuals. We use the power of archetypes for devotion, remembrance, to create amazing viewpoints, and change lives.
Myth is a dream-like reality, that isn't historical, but is always happening. Autonomous archetypes spontaneously emerge from the psyche as self-revealing realities that structure and guide our lives. We can cultivate relationships with them as metaphorical ways of being and experience. They speak in our narratives, symbols, art, relationships, and personifications whether or not we are aware of them. We can learn to discern them with an archetypal ear and eye turned toward the depth dimension of psyche.
We can find inspiration from psychologists and psychotherapists, to poets, philosophers, comparative mythologists, artists, and religious scholars. They help guide us through the process of revealing the mythic structure of consciousness and self-expression. We may be aware of some of these myths, some not. This is a process of self-discovery -- a journey into the labyrinth of our own psyches, through the archetypal twists and turns of inner and outer experience.
Self-Organizing Routed Dynamics
Emerging from pre-conscious psyche, myths are our deep background and connect us with our instincts. Myth bridges conscious and unconscious cognition with an archaic quality and networks of symbols and imagery. They help us interpret the world. We need myth because it speaks emotionally of and to the soul, giving meaning to loss and suffering. It may be a painful struggle that reminds us we are very much alive.
We find myth not only at the root of our ancient genealogical lines but in each and every life between, in the roles and archetypal patterns that constitute our direct heritage. Jung suggests the dynamic is the same whether we think of them as instincts or gods and goddesses. We can re-enchant our world by saying a prayer to the lords and ladies, by whatever names they wish to be known. In a prayer to all our relations, invisible spirits are made visible. Eternal being lies within each and every one of us.
"It is as though in the course of the millennia slow upheavals took place in the unconscious, each new aeon being as it were ushered in by a new myth...The myth is not new, it is age-old, but a new version, a new edition of it, a new interpretation characterizes the new epoch." --Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking – Interviews and Encounters, Pages 370-373.
"Since the gods are without doubt personifications of psychic forces, to assert their metaphysical existence is as much an intellectual presumption as the opinion that they could ever be invented." ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 387
"When the gods arrive on stage, everything becomes silent and the eyelids close. Plunged into oblivion by this experience, we re-emerge and without knowing exactly what is happened, we know only that we have been transformed." --James Hillman
Gods and goddesses are "Symbiotic Autonomous Systems." The spirit is energy, quest, relationship, and life force. Truth changes sociologically, as well as historically; it often resides in useful fictions and the artistic language of mytho-poetics. We must avoid being impoverished in our self-understanding by stepping outside of conventional academic strictures in our interpretations of ancient Divinities, Myth, and Cult.
Post-postmodern animism is an excavation and revitalizing of the world. How the world is alive and imbued with spirit is re-visioned in Archetypal Psychology and phenomenology. We can't collapse the many streams of a myth into one, including its reception as received truth in today's world. Does prehistoric religion equates to indigenous religion and thus shamanism or have they erroneously become conjectural lenses for scholars looking into the distant human past?
We cannot excavate religion for a primordial source of human spirituality. We often don't know the ritual or mythological significance of an artifact or what sort of ideology it might have conveyed in its original context. Archetypal studies adds another layer to these mysteries.
Both the concept of a universal goddess religion (Gimbutas) and universal shamanism (Eliade) have been 'seen through' as modern conceptual myths. Contemporary groups might give new meaning and projective interpretations to prehistoric sites and artifacts.
Shamanism itself is now considered an academic myth, a fictionalization of 'the primitive other' in Ethnology, Archaeology, and Historiography, contradicting Eliade, Gimbutas, and Wasson, among others. And yet there is ample physical evidence of the use of entheogens in rituals by indigenous Paleo-shamans and their historical successors. 'Primitive mankind' remains an imaginal construction, overgeneralized and superficial, beyond contemporary descriptions of rites.
So, it seems it is the characterization and generalization of shamans by Enlightenment colonial thinkers, ethnographic pioneers, and romantic New Age neo-shamanism that is questionable, rather than their existence as cross-cultural social shapers. Universal or not, legends suggest, like the goddess, they drew on the powers in the natural world, including those of earth and animals, and mediate non-ordinary states, between the world of the living, the spirits, and ancestral spirits of the dead.
We are enmeshed and entangled with invisible entitles. We dissociate with athological manifestations of alterations to the sense of self. Awe is related to a diminished sense of self, flow, and peak-experience. Self-transcendence involves the expansion of personal boundaries, a larger dimension emerging from an innate religious instinct.
An ecstatic specialist, often called a ‘shaman’, confers initiation, rites of passage. As one of humanity’s oldest, most widespread, and continuous experiences, it is a sacramental means of grace and cathartic blessing. Self-transcendence is an innate desire to discover meaning. Spirituality is an innate human capacity to experience transcendence.
Much depends on whether we take a psychological, aesthetic, orthodox, or heterodox approach. A mythologist studies and applies archetypes to reveal meaning and create change in perspectives and individuals. They use the power of archetypes for remembrance, to create amazing viewpoints, provoke transformation, and change lives.
https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/kybele-attis.html
https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/cybele.html
Among Satyrs and Nymphs pre-print
Descent from Oceanus and Io
A Genealogical Ritual Exploration
Iona Miller, 2021
ionamiller2020.weebly.com/nymph-io.html
Descent from Oceanus and Io
A Genealogical Ritual Exploration
Iona Miller, 2021
ionamiller2020.weebly.com/nymph-io.html
MYTHOGRAPHY & ART'S MAGIC
Sunset Proved
Beauty awakens the Soul to Act. --Dante
"Why do we think love is a magician? Because the whole power of magic consists in love. The work of magic is the attraction of one thing by another because of a certain affinity of nature." --Marsilio Ficino
“Art is the queen of all sciences, communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world."--Leonardo daVinci
"Genius," said the artist Paul Cézanne,
"is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience."
"And there is a luminous point where all reality is rediscovered, only changed, transformed, by-what ? -a nucleus of the magic use of things. And I believe in mental meteorites, in personal cosmogonies." --Antonin Artaud
Sunset Proved
Beauty awakens the Soul to Act. --Dante
"Why do we think love is a magician? Because the whole power of magic consists in love. The work of magic is the attraction of one thing by another because of a certain affinity of nature." --Marsilio Ficino
“Art is the queen of all sciences, communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world."--Leonardo daVinci
"Genius," said the artist Paul Cézanne,
"is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience."
"And there is a luminous point where all reality is rediscovered, only changed, transformed, by-what ? -a nucleus of the magic use of things. And I believe in mental meteorites, in personal cosmogonies." --Antonin Artaud
The Immortal Hour of Netta Fornario is a true-fiction book about the mysterious historical death of the medium and occultist the isle of Iona, during the era of Dion Fortune and the renown Golden Dawn mystery school. Born in Cairo, she ended her mortal days on the sacred isle. Alone, and prone to visionary trances, she visits the island seeking engagement with the faeries and finds so much more, perhaps more than she bargained for. After disappearing for two days, she was found wearing nothing but her magical robe with no sign of foul play other than her scratched up feet. However, her written works so disturbed everyone that they were promptly burned, destroyed forever.
One of the main characters who aids the protagonist in her quest to ferret out the details of Netta's rough passage to the Western shores is based on Iona Miller, whose occult historical commentaries and psychological insights help carry the story forward. Soror Syrinx does a splendid job of weaving together faery lore, the legends of Iona isle, Druids, the bloodline of the Underground Stream and Dragon families, and so much more. Take an imaginal trip to the sacred isle and find the secrets that await you there.
One of the main characters who aids the protagonist in her quest to ferret out the details of Netta's rough passage to the Western shores is based on Iona Miller, whose occult historical commentaries and psychological insights help carry the story forward. Soror Syrinx does a splendid job of weaving together faery lore, the legends of Iona isle, Druids, the bloodline of the Underground Stream and Dragon families, and so much more. Take an imaginal trip to the sacred isle and find the secrets that await you there.
Welcome to the Brain Forest
"Consciousness is the accumulation of Space Memories." --Io
Therapeutics * Esoterics * Archetypal Psychology * Mixed Media Art *
Ars Electronica * Intelligence * Psychotronics * Psystrat *Paramedia * Spiritual & Transgenerational Integration * Conspirituality * Multimedia * MindBodySpirit * Spiritual Humanism* Science Without Boundaries * Art Without Frames * Healing Without Walls *
Integration Without Tears * Culture Without Borders * Multidisciplinary Explorations,
Social & Scientific Innovations, Now Paradigm Nonfiction, Spy-Fi & Digital Media;
Cutting Edge Science; Bleeding Edge Art; Global Architectronics; Worldview Warfare,
NOW AGE PHYSICS * QUANTUM PHILOSOPHY * CONSCIOUS ACTIVISM *
SOURCE MYSTICISM * SACRED GEOMETRY * DEPTH PSYCHOLOGIES *
Provocative Ideas in the Spirit of Exploration
Experience is colonized by the political forces of explanatory meaning so oppressively embodied in the institutions of formal culture. This notion comes with the caveat that living is formative and anathema to the value-laden inventory of cultural forms.
"Consciousness is the accumulation of Space Memories." --Io
Therapeutics * Esoterics * Archetypal Psychology * Mixed Media Art *
Ars Electronica * Intelligence * Psychotronics * Psystrat *Paramedia * Spiritual & Transgenerational Integration * Conspirituality * Multimedia * MindBodySpirit * Spiritual Humanism* Science Without Boundaries * Art Without Frames * Healing Without Walls *
Integration Without Tears * Culture Without Borders * Multidisciplinary Explorations,
Social & Scientific Innovations, Now Paradigm Nonfiction, Spy-Fi & Digital Media;
Cutting Edge Science; Bleeding Edge Art; Global Architectronics; Worldview Warfare,
NOW AGE PHYSICS * QUANTUM PHILOSOPHY * CONSCIOUS ACTIVISM *
SOURCE MYSTICISM * SACRED GEOMETRY * DEPTH PSYCHOLOGIES *
Provocative Ideas in the Spirit of Exploration
Experience is colonized by the political forces of explanatory meaning so oppressively embodied in the institutions of formal culture. This notion comes with the caveat that living is formative and anathema to the value-laden inventory of cultural forms.
Entangled Hearts - Iona Miller
"Since psyche and matter are contained in one and the same world… it is not only possible but fairly probable…that psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing." (C. G. Jung CW vol VIII P. 215),
“The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer. They think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.” - Ken Kesey
I-MAGICK: The Path to the Self:
A work of art carries its proof in itself. Artificial, strained concepts do not withstand the image-test; all such concepts crumble, they are revealed as puny and colorless, they convince nobody. But works which have drawn on truth and presented it to us in live, concentrated form, grip us and communicate themselves to us compellingly - and nobody, even centuries later, will ever be able to refute them.
The same is true of the authentically lived spiritual life in any of its formats: Any artist who imagines they are the creator of an independent spiritual world, burdens their self with the act of creating and peopling this world, accepts complete responsibility for it. But they break down, because no mortal genius is capable of withstanding such a burden.
Those who declare themselves as the center of existence are unable to create a balanced spiritual system. Overwhelmed by failure, they lay the blame on the eternal disharmony of the world, on the complexity of the distraught contemporary soul, or on the lack of comprehension of the public.
Another artist knows there is a higher power and will work joyfully as a small apprentice under God's heaven, although responsibility for everything they paint and draw, and for the souls who apprehend it, is even greater. But on the other hand this world was not created nor ruled by them, there are no doubts about its fundamental principles.
This artist has only the gift of perceiving more acutely than others the harmony of the world and the beauty and ugliness of man's contribution to it, and the gift of acutely conveying this to others. In failure and even in the lowest depths of existence - in destitution, in prison, in sickness, the consciousness of this steadfast harmony cannot forsake them.
However, the whole irrationality of Art, its dazzling convolutions, its unpredictable discoveries, its shattering influence on people are too magical to be plumbed by an artist's philosophy or scheme of things or by the labor of unworthy hands. This is the way of no meta-narrative, standing in the Mystery of Naked Awareness.
"This center is also, as we heard before, called the sapientia (wisdom), that is Sophia; in fact the prima materia is born from Sophia. Mylius calls it “substantia media”, the central substance of the world thought of as the mediator, the savior, who unites and overcomes the opposites, and the same author says it is “in centro terrae” (in the centre of the earth)." ~Carl Jung, ETH, Pages 206-214
"Since psyche and matter are contained in one and the same world… it is not only possible but fairly probable…that psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing." (C. G. Jung CW vol VIII P. 215),
“The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer. They think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.” - Ken Kesey
I-MAGICK: The Path to the Self:
A work of art carries its proof in itself. Artificial, strained concepts do not withstand the image-test; all such concepts crumble, they are revealed as puny and colorless, they convince nobody. But works which have drawn on truth and presented it to us in live, concentrated form, grip us and communicate themselves to us compellingly - and nobody, even centuries later, will ever be able to refute them.
The same is true of the authentically lived spiritual life in any of its formats: Any artist who imagines they are the creator of an independent spiritual world, burdens their self with the act of creating and peopling this world, accepts complete responsibility for it. But they break down, because no mortal genius is capable of withstanding such a burden.
Those who declare themselves as the center of existence are unable to create a balanced spiritual system. Overwhelmed by failure, they lay the blame on the eternal disharmony of the world, on the complexity of the distraught contemporary soul, or on the lack of comprehension of the public.
Another artist knows there is a higher power and will work joyfully as a small apprentice under God's heaven, although responsibility for everything they paint and draw, and for the souls who apprehend it, is even greater. But on the other hand this world was not created nor ruled by them, there are no doubts about its fundamental principles.
This artist has only the gift of perceiving more acutely than others the harmony of the world and the beauty and ugliness of man's contribution to it, and the gift of acutely conveying this to others. In failure and even in the lowest depths of existence - in destitution, in prison, in sickness, the consciousness of this steadfast harmony cannot forsake them.
However, the whole irrationality of Art, its dazzling convolutions, its unpredictable discoveries, its shattering influence on people are too magical to be plumbed by an artist's philosophy or scheme of things or by the labor of unworthy hands. This is the way of no meta-narrative, standing in the Mystery of Naked Awareness.
"This center is also, as we heard before, called the sapientia (wisdom), that is Sophia; in fact the prima materia is born from Sophia. Mylius calls it “substantia media”, the central substance of the world thought of as the mediator, the savior, who unites and overcomes the opposites, and the same author says it is “in centro terrae” (in the centre of the earth)." ~Carl Jung, ETH, Pages 206-214
THE BODY OF IMAGES
Archetypal Alchemy: After the Gold Rush
"It is our task to seek art, for without seeking it we shall never learn
the secrets of the world." --Paracelsus
“A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.” --Paul Cézanne
"There is a power in everything; it is the job of the artist to determine it and express it." (Mencius, 372-289BC, follower of Confucius, 551-479BC)
"The goal of individuation is not narcissistic self-absorption, as some might believe, but rather the manifestation of the larger purposes of nature through the incarnation of the individual. Each person, however insignificant in geopolitical terms, is the carrier of some small part of the telos of nature, the origin of which is shrouded in mystery but whose goal is conceivably dependent upon the enlargement of consciousness. If that be true, and I believe it is, then the task of individuation is wholeness, not goodness, not purity, not happiness. And wholeness includes the descent which the psyche frequently imposes upon the unwilling ego.". – Swamplands of the Soul, James Hollis, from the introduction.
The process of Individuation is what Jung called initiation by the Self as the totality of psychic processes. Such initiates can divest their persona for authenticity and were less dominated by archetypal complexes. Symbols are the currency of consciousness and attention is spacetime currency -- the process of being storied.
Maslow found that people with more self-actualizating characteristics were higher in curiosity, life-satisfaction, self-acceptance, personal growth, autonomy, independence, freshness of appreciation, equanimity, purpose, creative spirit, moral intuition, humanitarianism, efficient reality perception, peak experiences, and other factors.
Self-actualizing individuals are more motivated by growth and exploration than by fulfilling deficiencies in basic needs. They paradoxically merge with a common humanity while maintaining a strong identity and sense of self. The proper obsession is with the dragon of the abyss. Every night in sleep we sink back into that source of all mythological imagery.
The soul calls for such expanded experiences and can function as a guide without gurus, priests, or psychologists for support. Hillman's imaginal soul-making suggests the daimon enables us throughout the necessities of our inherent unfolding, our fate.
Great art involves masculine and feminine aesthetics. Works of art take impressionistic images and make implied assertions about reality, morality and values. What really exists, and what is its nature? What constitutes right and wrong behavior? What really matters, and what matters most and least? Art constructs realities that prevail in human life.
"I think the soul wants to be made. After all, why so much worry over our dreams, our poems, and our paintings, getting them right, making them “work,” fussing over how they fit into our lives, other lives, the world. Isn’t the psyche itself causing this obsessiveness, urging us to articulate our images for its sake, as if the psyche desires to fit in somewhere, find a context for its continuous production of fantasies, thoughts, feelings, and baroque inventions? The psyche seems to want the mind to suppose and speculate, the hands to craft, and so it gives with each image some significant detail to catch our notice and draw us in. And that’s the job of our art, whether artists, scientists, or therapists— to pick up on the significant detail.
But now I better conclude: By context I mean the psychological entanglement within a mood and scene. I could call this entanglement “resonance,” “implication,” or “depth.” Whatever the term, I mean something more than just tying bits of mood and parts of scene or even their full interrelation as a unity. Entangled in an image is its implication whose depth amplifies into the wide world. Hidden, obscure, suggested only, nonetheless these implications suppose that the ultimate context of an image is the anima mundi, the soul of the world." (James Hillman, From Types to Images)
We ourselves are the medium of the most difficult art, how we create ourselves with psychic and emotive engagement. Our works of art are not objects but expressive inner experiences satisfying our aesthetic desires and increasing aesthetic energy or inspiration. Rather than outside the artistic tradition, this is the center of it. Naturally, we inhabit our own creation and it inhabits us.
Then again was heard the voice of Poimandres, but His form was not revealed: "I Thy God am the Light and the Mind which were before substance was divided from spirit and darkness from Light. And the Word which appeared as a pillar of flame out of the darkness is the Son of God, born of the mystery of the Mind. The name of that Word is Reason. Reason is the offspring of Thought and Reason shall divide the Light from the darkness and establish Truth in the midst of the waters. Understand, O Hermes, and meditate deeply upon the mystery. That which in you sees and hears is not of the earth, but is the Word of God incarnate. So it is said that Divine Light dwells in the midst of mortal darkness, and ignorance cannot divide them. The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life. As the darkness without you is divided against itself, so the darkness within you is likewise divided. The Light and the fire which rise are the divine man, ascending in the path of the Word, and that which fails to ascend is the mortal man, which may not partake of immortality. Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality."
"The image amplifies itself without the act of amplification; that is, its volume increases through what Berry calls “restatement.” [7] In alchemical terms, what we have been doing is an iteratio of the prima materia: going over and over again the same opaque “unpsychological” stuff, giving more and more possibility for connections to appear and psychic patterns to emerge. Psyche emerges, but not in straight messages given by interpretative meanings. Rather, psyche emerges as we merge with or get lost in the labyrinth of the image.
Restatement and iteratio are also a mode of admitting one’s lostness in front of the image, which in turn heightens the value of the image. If this had been your dream in therapy, one analogy after another would have struck home in regard to your fantasies and behaviors, your ambitions, your styles of reflection and sexuality, attitudes toward yourself, life, old women, boys, growth, and shit. The dream would have gathered value, that all-encompassing sense of importance we tend to call archetypal.
“Archetypal” now is the result of an operation, given not with the image but with what happens with the image—a function of making rather than a function of being. The image grows in worth, becomes more profound and involving, that is, it becomes more archetypal as its patterning is elaborated.
We are following Jung here quite strictly: Image and meaning are identical; and as the first takes shape, the latter becomes clear. Actually the pattern needs no interpretation: it portrays its own meaning (CW 8: 402). It portrays. It makes a picture of its own meaning—not one supposed by interpretation. As shape emerges, meaning emerges. Image-making = meaning. And all this without our usual interpretative moves."
(James Hillman, From Types to Images)
Archetypal Alchemy: After the Gold Rush
"It is our task to seek art, for without seeking it we shall never learn
the secrets of the world." --Paracelsus
“A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.” --Paul Cézanne
"There is a power in everything; it is the job of the artist to determine it and express it." (Mencius, 372-289BC, follower of Confucius, 551-479BC)
"The goal of individuation is not narcissistic self-absorption, as some might believe, but rather the manifestation of the larger purposes of nature through the incarnation of the individual. Each person, however insignificant in geopolitical terms, is the carrier of some small part of the telos of nature, the origin of which is shrouded in mystery but whose goal is conceivably dependent upon the enlargement of consciousness. If that be true, and I believe it is, then the task of individuation is wholeness, not goodness, not purity, not happiness. And wholeness includes the descent which the psyche frequently imposes upon the unwilling ego.". – Swamplands of the Soul, James Hollis, from the introduction.
The process of Individuation is what Jung called initiation by the Self as the totality of psychic processes. Such initiates can divest their persona for authenticity and were less dominated by archetypal complexes. Symbols are the currency of consciousness and attention is spacetime currency -- the process of being storied.
Maslow found that people with more self-actualizating characteristics were higher in curiosity, life-satisfaction, self-acceptance, personal growth, autonomy, independence, freshness of appreciation, equanimity, purpose, creative spirit, moral intuition, humanitarianism, efficient reality perception, peak experiences, and other factors.
Self-actualizing individuals are more motivated by growth and exploration than by fulfilling deficiencies in basic needs. They paradoxically merge with a common humanity while maintaining a strong identity and sense of self. The proper obsession is with the dragon of the abyss. Every night in sleep we sink back into that source of all mythological imagery.
The soul calls for such expanded experiences and can function as a guide without gurus, priests, or psychologists for support. Hillman's imaginal soul-making suggests the daimon enables us throughout the necessities of our inherent unfolding, our fate.
Great art involves masculine and feminine aesthetics. Works of art take impressionistic images and make implied assertions about reality, morality and values. What really exists, and what is its nature? What constitutes right and wrong behavior? What really matters, and what matters most and least? Art constructs realities that prevail in human life.
"I think the soul wants to be made. After all, why so much worry over our dreams, our poems, and our paintings, getting them right, making them “work,” fussing over how they fit into our lives, other lives, the world. Isn’t the psyche itself causing this obsessiveness, urging us to articulate our images for its sake, as if the psyche desires to fit in somewhere, find a context for its continuous production of fantasies, thoughts, feelings, and baroque inventions? The psyche seems to want the mind to suppose and speculate, the hands to craft, and so it gives with each image some significant detail to catch our notice and draw us in. And that’s the job of our art, whether artists, scientists, or therapists— to pick up on the significant detail.
But now I better conclude: By context I mean the psychological entanglement within a mood and scene. I could call this entanglement “resonance,” “implication,” or “depth.” Whatever the term, I mean something more than just tying bits of mood and parts of scene or even their full interrelation as a unity. Entangled in an image is its implication whose depth amplifies into the wide world. Hidden, obscure, suggested only, nonetheless these implications suppose that the ultimate context of an image is the anima mundi, the soul of the world." (James Hillman, From Types to Images)
We ourselves are the medium of the most difficult art, how we create ourselves with psychic and emotive engagement. Our works of art are not objects but expressive inner experiences satisfying our aesthetic desires and increasing aesthetic energy or inspiration. Rather than outside the artistic tradition, this is the center of it. Naturally, we inhabit our own creation and it inhabits us.
Then again was heard the voice of Poimandres, but His form was not revealed: "I Thy God am the Light and the Mind which were before substance was divided from spirit and darkness from Light. And the Word which appeared as a pillar of flame out of the darkness is the Son of God, born of the mystery of the Mind. The name of that Word is Reason. Reason is the offspring of Thought and Reason shall divide the Light from the darkness and establish Truth in the midst of the waters. Understand, O Hermes, and meditate deeply upon the mystery. That which in you sees and hears is not of the earth, but is the Word of God incarnate. So it is said that Divine Light dwells in the midst of mortal darkness, and ignorance cannot divide them. The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life. As the darkness without you is divided against itself, so the darkness within you is likewise divided. The Light and the fire which rise are the divine man, ascending in the path of the Word, and that which fails to ascend is the mortal man, which may not partake of immortality. Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality."
"The image amplifies itself without the act of amplification; that is, its volume increases through what Berry calls “restatement.” [7] In alchemical terms, what we have been doing is an iteratio of the prima materia: going over and over again the same opaque “unpsychological” stuff, giving more and more possibility for connections to appear and psychic patterns to emerge. Psyche emerges, but not in straight messages given by interpretative meanings. Rather, psyche emerges as we merge with or get lost in the labyrinth of the image.
Restatement and iteratio are also a mode of admitting one’s lostness in front of the image, which in turn heightens the value of the image. If this had been your dream in therapy, one analogy after another would have struck home in regard to your fantasies and behaviors, your ambitions, your styles of reflection and sexuality, attitudes toward yourself, life, old women, boys, growth, and shit. The dream would have gathered value, that all-encompassing sense of importance we tend to call archetypal.
“Archetypal” now is the result of an operation, given not with the image but with what happens with the image—a function of making rather than a function of being. The image grows in worth, becomes more profound and involving, that is, it becomes more archetypal as its patterning is elaborated.
We are following Jung here quite strictly: Image and meaning are identical; and as the first takes shape, the latter becomes clear. Actually the pattern needs no interpretation: it portrays its own meaning (CW 8: 402). It portrays. It makes a picture of its own meaning—not one supposed by interpretation. As shape emerges, meaning emerges. Image-making = meaning. And all this without our usual interpretative moves."
(James Hillman, From Types to Images)
Archetypal Overview
James Hillman & Archetypal Psychology
https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/archetypal-overview.html
https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/archetypal-psychology.html
As we wrestle with an author, we come to know where we agree, where we are challenged, and where we cannot agree. James Hillman is such a controversial author. He changed classical Jungian assumptions, terms, and practice. Archetypal psychology is about the imaginative life, soul --not ego -- and healing. The underworld gives life and psyche depth.
Hillman did not claim to found a school of thought. His desire was to recover psyche through myth, image, and language. Soul is his central trope. Our calling in life is inborn and our mission in life is to realize its imperatives, exploring our invisible selves and the possibilities of our scars not as symbols but as pieces of our consciousness.
In The Soul's Code (1996), Hillman's "acorn theory" describes a force shaping personality and character. Our unique individuality gives meaning and purpose to life -- our habits and mannerisms, loves and hates, predilections and passions, our irreducible essence. Hillman claims, "what must be recovered [is] a sense of personal calling, that there is a reason I am alive."
He starts in the processes of the imagination. His primary concern is for soul, the secret siren calling us into life. Hillman suggests that soul itself is an archetype. He considers archetypes “as the deepest patterns of psychic functioning” (1975, p. xix). Our teacher is life.
To study the soul, we go deep. "The logos of the soul, psychology, implies the act of traveling the soul’s labyrinth in which we can never go deep enough” (1979, p. 25). He echoed Campbell's (1991) metaphorical motifs of 'life as life' and 'life as death.'
Hillman suggests, "Follow the lead of your symptoms, for there’s usually a myth in the mess, and a mess is an expression of soul." He writes, “Depth means death and demons and dirt and darkness and disorder and a lot of other industrial strength d words familiar to therapy…Therapy has to be sublime. Terror has to be included in its beauty” (1992).
He transformed Archetypal Psychology, the exploration of unending, mysterious images of inexhaustible depth, cultivating mythic imagination. The world alive is animated and divine -- ensouled with aesthetic imagination.
"Soul-making has as its goal a resurrection in beauty and pleasure," he said. "To love is to create in beauty, both in the body and in the soul", says Plato. Hillman cautions, it can only value if it is meant to be true to its daimon."
For Hillman, "soul" is about multiplicity and ambiguity, and about being polytheistic; it belongs to the night-world of dreams. The crises of cosmological, mythological and psychological disconnection from nature and from each other may drive us to places of darkness and suffering. Darkness as a human psychological component has been pushed to the chthonic hinterlands of the psyche.
Soul pathologizes: "it gets us into trouble," Thomas Moore wrote, "it interferes with the smooth running of life, it obstructs attempts to understand, and it seems to make relationships impossible." Denial of darkness doesn't stop it. But there is great potential in that darkness to interact with creative energy. The darkness is the nature of the universe.
The vast phenomenology of soul, psychic archaeology, goes back and down into older history and deeper thought. Hillman realized "there is a trove of occult knowledge buried here." His passion incites us to plumb the depths of our own soul.
Hillman found insight by turning psychological assumptions on their heads, by reversing and deconstructing them as erroneous concepts. Innate psychic aspects of emotions disclose soul's organic nature through time and trace back to their archetypal sources, the inherent nature of Reality.
We now know, just like the brain the gut sends and receives nerve impulses, records experiences, and respond to emotions. From Hillman's archetypal perspective, emotions are primary and irreducible, valuable, transhuman and ubiquitous. Forcing "unconsciousness" on us, "emotions are the theme of earthly life." "As much as they lead us into ourselves, they lead us away from ourselves and back to the Gods."
Alterations in the soul -- "autochthonous depressions, deepenings of grief, manic increases of energy, oceanic expansions of love, or flaring, all-consuming rages" -- increase its capacity, the "inner
space" of the subjective soul.
Emotions lead to a source that is "beyond human." Hillman distinguishes "between emotions signifying the world and offering information about it, and those that seem wholly interior—that is, those movements of the Heart or Heaven—neither sort of emotions is mine, subjective."
"To be in the grips of an emotion makes us instantly intelligible and commonly human—and beyond human, too." Therefore, his method sometimes "uses the expressive arts because their focus is mainly on emotion, rather than cognition, family systems, insight, recall, dream analysis, hypnosis, and so on."
The Passions of the Soul
Hillman's focus is "what actually goes on when a patient begins to dance, to choreograph or paint his or her state of soul, to speak aloud freely in a dramatic tirade or a poetic soliloquy, to sculpt it in clay or lay it out in a collage. And I want to ask about the "it" that is being presented, expressed, shown, or formed by means of these various arts."
"Clearly, the "it" is an emotion, an emotionally tinged state of soul. For even if it is said to be a trauma, a memory, a dream scene, or a present confusion and helplessness, what we like to call a "problem," with a lover, an employer, a parent—the emotion is the content that brings the person to therapy. Only when a"problem"—a relationship, a memory, a dream—becomes suffering, when we are affected by the problem, does it enter us and we enter therapy." http://www.pantheatre.com/pdf/2-MT09-JH.pdf
Hillman's archetypal psychology is an inquiry into the poetic, mythical, and divine logos of the soul. Psychological soul provides a transitional space, a liminal or in-between aspect that creates the creative space for entry of the divine into this world, decoupled from human will. "Primary is the disordered imagination, its incapacity to encompass the past and its traumas. Restrictions of imagination appear as excessive emotion."
Imagination drove Hillman to "engage in art therapy neither directly for art, nor directly for the patient, nor directly for the emotion. ...Since art therapy activates imagination and allows it to materialize—that is, enter the world via the emotions ... therapy by means of the arts must take precedence over all other kinds." "Each gesture is made for the sake of the gesture and not for anything external to the gesture itself."
Entering the mysterious Labyrinth is a classic image of Descent. The ways of soul are labyrinthine, Hillman says. So is his method, following the meanderings and leaps of imagination rather than the rational grid of a plan. Hillman addresses the importance of the “unrest” of passion: “We hunger for that."
"Certainly, emotion is inside the skin, deep inside the hippocampus, the hormonal system,the animal body, residing in the core of our inmost being." "A principle intention of an emotion is to connect our animal nature with the world in which it is embedded. Emotions respond immediately to the truth of things. They are the most alert form of attention. Disgust turns away from decay, fear warns of danger, desire recognizes beauty, and pity responds to need.Unfortunately, therapy sometimes forgets this primary aspect of emotion."
Hillman contends, "that though they be felt deeply, and we suffer emotions physically and inwardly, this fact does not make them "ours." Rather, I believe that emotions are there to make us theirs. They want to possess us, rule us, win us over completely to their vision. ...William Blake said, "Some good we may do when the man is in a passion, but no good when the passion is in the man." To have a passion in me is demonic; to be in a passion, in the world of the emotion and grasped by the way it signifies all things with a specific vision or insight, may move the psyche to a deeper and epiphanic connection with the world." (Chapters XI and XV).
''We would save the phenomena just as they are, untreated, uncured.'' If memory fixates on intense moments of discomfort and joy, over time memory and fantasy meld together. Blake called emotions "divine influxes," suggesting that "they are the way the Gods flow into the soul, moving it to a more-than-human condition of excitement and fury, of sorrow and mourning, of folly and ecstatic desire."
"The divine influxes ...are more than feeling states, affective tones, and physical alterations. They are always, as well, imaginations... of behavior, imaginations of fantasy, imaginations of process and intention and desire."
So each emotional condition asks, "what does the emotion want?" In Hillman's view, the soul doesn't need to be straightened out but looked deeper into, ''seen through'' to the mythic, impersonal ground of its most intimate complaints.
"Outside and inside, life and soul…we have to see the inner necessity of historical events out there, in the events themselves, where ‘inner’ no longer means private and owned by a self or a soul or an ego, where inner is not a literalized place inside a subject, but the subjectivity in events and that attitude which interiorizes those events, goes into them in search of psychological depths." (Healing, 24-25).
“...put it my way, what we are really, and the reality we live, is our psychic reality, which is nothing but...the poetic imagination going on day and night.” --James Hillman, We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World Is Getting Worse, p. 62
What is reality, what can we know about it, and how do we attain that knowledge? Archetypal psychology answers Imagination (psyche, soul), Archetypes, and Images. This is a new image of the psyche with deep connections to Neo-Platonism, the Renaissance, and Romanticism. Mythic archetypes are active and present in our lives and the world today.
Polytheistic myths can provide psychological insight. Archetypal psychology is an introduction to polytheism, Greek mythology, the soul-spirit distinction, anima mundi, psychopathology, soul-making, imagination, and therapeutic practice. We cannot escape myth, only live it consciously or unconsciously.
Soul is a root metaphor for multiple perspectives: psychological, ethical, political, poetic. To find soul, we search for the images it is made of, through which psyche introduces itself. Rumi knew, "The soul has been given its own ears / To hear things that the mind doesn’t understand."
Soul communicates through a metaphorical and mythical language. Working with psychic images is the theoretical base of archetypal psychology. Mythical images, unseen worlds in this one, are the psyche. When we study the gods and goddesses, we are studying psyche itself, the life behind our personalities it uses as masks.
The gods and goddesses and the dramatic narratives of their lives thus portray the life of the psyche—its way of living (Rossi, 2019). Psyche's mysterious and fathomless surrounding space is dynamic and alive with amorphous numinous entities. Psychological energy patterns— entanglement, uncertainty, gravitational waves -- pulsate rhythmically with life, cycles of creation, death, and rebirth.
Psychological polytheism is not identical with Neo-paganism. Soul happens where spirit is embodied. Archetypes are soul's many voices, the thoughts that think themselves within us, that arise personified in our dreams, and inform ordinary life--our creative and destructive urges.
Hillman notes, "soul comes in fantasies, not in meanings." In psychological polytheism, the gods infuse personality, politics, economics, science, aesthetics, metaphysics, and other expressions of culture confirmed at an experiential and symbolic level. The gods remind us of our humanity; they help us tolerate uncertainty.
The psychologist is a mythologist, revising life-story narratives or personal mythology. Psychologists are comparative mythologists unraveling the psychological and spiritual wisdom woven into ancient and traditional myths. As mythic researchers, we use Greek myths to study personal identity, incorporating mythologies and their meanings.
A preference for certain gods leaves others unconscious. The innumerable metaphorical possibilities of the soul are respected. Every archetype is a mode of perception. A polytheistic style of consciousness is a more deeply immersed and subjective experience of the world as animated and alive. Animation is the heart of soul tending.
Hillman notes ..."[t]he plurality of archetypal forms reflects the pagan level of things and what might be called a polytheistic psychology." Transformation is psychic movement that awakens the potentials of the immobilized psyche. Healing emerges from dynamic living energies.
This hybrid science-art form rejects scientific materialism, its mechanical universe, and conventional devaluation of nature. It finds hierarchical structures of power distasteful. Hillman clarifies his approach: "In our metaphysics we declare our fantasies about the physical and its transcendence. A metaphysical statement can be seen as a psychological fancy about the relationship between 'matter and spirit'."
This Metamodern view is deconstructive, aesthetic, poetic, and Romantic. This radical pluralism of a polytheistic metapsychology theorizes about the structure of psychological theorizing itself. Overlapping different identities only empowers all of them. Rilke admonishes us to "go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within..."
Hillman says, “To be sane, we must recognize our beliefs as fictions.” Mystery, as living presence and the movement toward favoring the irrational, becomes 'my story.' Narration is a root metaphor. The metaphor is superseded by the holographic blur of a possibilities of form--form overcome by formlessness--finally free from groping around using inadequate analogies.
Ginette Paris notes, "A myth is a fantasy, a preferred lie, a foundational story, a hypnotic trance, an identity game, a virtual reality, one that can be either inspirational or despairing. It is a story in which I cast myself; it is my inner cinema, the motion picture of my inner reality - one that moves all the time. No diagnosis can fix the myth, no cure can settle it, because our inner life is precisely what, in us, will not lie still." ("How Is Psychology A Mythology?")
Mythical figures are eternal metaphors of the imagination, the autonomous dynamics of psychic reality. Jung suggested myth is a revelation of the divine life in humanity, our unconscious grasp of the history of the world, the wild energies of creation, and our sense of embodiment. We can bridge the gap between symbols and the world, learn to speak the language and see the sights with clarity.
The psychological value and insights of polytheistic myth is a major theorem of archetypal psychology. Neo-pagan religions are usually polytheistic, nature-oriented, non dogmatic. They facilitate relationship and direct engagement with the Gods and Goddesses. Pagans, poets and artists use mythic characters and tropes to express contemporary metaphors and images found in every dream, drama, ceremony, gesture, and passionate act.
"Humans are made in the images of the gods, and our abnormalities image the original abnormalities of the gods which come before ours, making possible ours. We can only do in time what gods do in eternity. Our infirmities will therefore have to have their ground in primordial infirmity, and their infirmities are enacted in our psychopathologies.” (Hillman, Mythic Figures)
Archetypal psychology moved us into metaphor, from concepts to engagement. Archetypes are universal prototypes. Soul makes fantasy images we embody. Soul-making means to be “in soul,” immersed in both an internal and external process of transmutation, developing the metaphoric quality of image into ontological ground.
Our nature is plural. The human psyche seems to be a collective of selves--a multimind in a multiverse. Independent and autonomous, they relate with one another mostly unknown to the outer awareness.
"there must be something unalterably necessary about images so that psychic reality, which first of all consists in images, cannot be mere afterimages of sense impressions. Images are primordial, archetypal, in themselves ultimate reals, the only direct reality that the psyche experiences. As such they are the shaped presences of necessity.” (Hillman, Mythic Images)
Based on a plurality of perspectives, a plurality of consciousness, a plurality of worlds, this notion means giving breath to many voices. We construct fictional virtual realities as imaginal conversations. There is no central belief system in a pluralistic society. We substitute "story" for Truth, reflecting that sense of movement, change, flow.
Archetypal psychology takes us beyond the conventional systematized cognitive categories. It invites us into the realm of the gods, living presences which shape and inform our behavior, feelings, thoughts, and aspirations.
It reconciles us with necessity, with Ananke, primordial mother of chaos. "To think of our greatest anxiety as an insignificant event, not only in the life of the universe but also in the life of our own soul, is the beginning of wisdom." (Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (426)
Any direct and immediate knowledge can only be acquired through the acknowledgment of the psychic images. Hillman suggests, “You know, people come to therapy really for a blessing. Not so much to fix what's broken, but to get what's broken blessed.” Let the angels touch your hair and bless you.
Psyche is “a polycentric realm of nonverbal, nonspatial images” (Re-VisioningPsychology, p. 33). Soul is the dimension of psychological experience, much like the body is the seat of sensory and mental perception. Hillman notes, “man was created as an image, in an image and by means of his images” (Egalitarian Typologies versus the Perception of the Unique, p.44).
Soul is revealed in images, depth, genuineness, authenticity, attachment, love, embodiment, and community. In relationships with mythic dominants, articulation of images can be considered soul-making, advocating for the unheard voices of the psychic “many.” Jung thought, "For the alchemist, the one primarily in need of redemption is not man, but the deity who is lost and sleeping in matter."
Hillman says, "in soul-making the method is extended beyond the special circumstances of self-reflection, dreaming and active imagination into all aspects of life that generate imaginative sparks of a certain magnitude." Marion Woodman suggests, "Without the true masculine spirit and the true feminine love within, no inner life exists…. To be free is to break the stone images and allow life and love to flow.” (Addiction to Perfection)
Images are the self-referential phenomenon of psychic life; “image is psyche,” (CW 13, para. 75) “in the poetic sense, considering images to be the basic givens of psychic life, self-originating, inventive, spontaneous, complete, and organized in archetypal patterns...[they] are both raw materials and finished products of psyche” (Re-Visioning Psychology, p.xvii).
There is no predetermined code of meanings or concepts for the unlimited field of imaginative possibilities. Images are not signs, representations, symbols or allegories. The experience of the image and through the experience triggered by it is soul-making.
The absolute primacy of image allows Hillman to shift Jung’s emphasis from the archetype per se to the archetypal image. While he acknowledges that archetypes are the deepest patterns of psychic functioning, we can experience only images arranging themselves in these archetypal patterns, which we imagine as underlying universal principles, or envision in personified forms as gods. (ARAS)
An 'antidote to literalism,' psychological experience requires participation to registered the event as experientially meaningful. Psychical states and psychological experience, expressed through the mind, the body, or the private psychoid world, are analogous to the distinction between physical objects and sense data.
Images are the soul’s “native language.” Soul-tending is giving attention to the soul through each autonomous image in its unique specificity: “the soul is precisely the eachness of everywhere at any instant in anything in its display as a phenomenon. And only in this eachness does soul exist and cosmos show” (“Cosmology for the Soul”).
James Hillman & Archetypal Psychology
https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/archetypal-overview.html
https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/archetypal-psychology.html
As we wrestle with an author, we come to know where we agree, where we are challenged, and where we cannot agree. James Hillman is such a controversial author. He changed classical Jungian assumptions, terms, and practice. Archetypal psychology is about the imaginative life, soul --not ego -- and healing. The underworld gives life and psyche depth.
Hillman did not claim to found a school of thought. His desire was to recover psyche through myth, image, and language. Soul is his central trope. Our calling in life is inborn and our mission in life is to realize its imperatives, exploring our invisible selves and the possibilities of our scars not as symbols but as pieces of our consciousness.
In The Soul's Code (1996), Hillman's "acorn theory" describes a force shaping personality and character. Our unique individuality gives meaning and purpose to life -- our habits and mannerisms, loves and hates, predilections and passions, our irreducible essence. Hillman claims, "what must be recovered [is] a sense of personal calling, that there is a reason I am alive."
He starts in the processes of the imagination. His primary concern is for soul, the secret siren calling us into life. Hillman suggests that soul itself is an archetype. He considers archetypes “as the deepest patterns of psychic functioning” (1975, p. xix). Our teacher is life.
To study the soul, we go deep. "The logos of the soul, psychology, implies the act of traveling the soul’s labyrinth in which we can never go deep enough” (1979, p. 25). He echoed Campbell's (1991) metaphorical motifs of 'life as life' and 'life as death.'
Hillman suggests, "Follow the lead of your symptoms, for there’s usually a myth in the mess, and a mess is an expression of soul." He writes, “Depth means death and demons and dirt and darkness and disorder and a lot of other industrial strength d words familiar to therapy…Therapy has to be sublime. Terror has to be included in its beauty” (1992).
He transformed Archetypal Psychology, the exploration of unending, mysterious images of inexhaustible depth, cultivating mythic imagination. The world alive is animated and divine -- ensouled with aesthetic imagination.
"Soul-making has as its goal a resurrection in beauty and pleasure," he said. "To love is to create in beauty, both in the body and in the soul", says Plato. Hillman cautions, it can only value if it is meant to be true to its daimon."
For Hillman, "soul" is about multiplicity and ambiguity, and about being polytheistic; it belongs to the night-world of dreams. The crises of cosmological, mythological and psychological disconnection from nature and from each other may drive us to places of darkness and suffering. Darkness as a human psychological component has been pushed to the chthonic hinterlands of the psyche.
Soul pathologizes: "it gets us into trouble," Thomas Moore wrote, "it interferes with the smooth running of life, it obstructs attempts to understand, and it seems to make relationships impossible." Denial of darkness doesn't stop it. But there is great potential in that darkness to interact with creative energy. The darkness is the nature of the universe.
The vast phenomenology of soul, psychic archaeology, goes back and down into older history and deeper thought. Hillman realized "there is a trove of occult knowledge buried here." His passion incites us to plumb the depths of our own soul.
Hillman found insight by turning psychological assumptions on their heads, by reversing and deconstructing them as erroneous concepts. Innate psychic aspects of emotions disclose soul's organic nature through time and trace back to their archetypal sources, the inherent nature of Reality.
We now know, just like the brain the gut sends and receives nerve impulses, records experiences, and respond to emotions. From Hillman's archetypal perspective, emotions are primary and irreducible, valuable, transhuman and ubiquitous. Forcing "unconsciousness" on us, "emotions are the theme of earthly life." "As much as they lead us into ourselves, they lead us away from ourselves and back to the Gods."
Alterations in the soul -- "autochthonous depressions, deepenings of grief, manic increases of energy, oceanic expansions of love, or flaring, all-consuming rages" -- increase its capacity, the "inner
space" of the subjective soul.
Emotions lead to a source that is "beyond human." Hillman distinguishes "between emotions signifying the world and offering information about it, and those that seem wholly interior—that is, those movements of the Heart or Heaven—neither sort of emotions is mine, subjective."
"To be in the grips of an emotion makes us instantly intelligible and commonly human—and beyond human, too." Therefore, his method sometimes "uses the expressive arts because their focus is mainly on emotion, rather than cognition, family systems, insight, recall, dream analysis, hypnosis, and so on."
The Passions of the Soul
Hillman's focus is "what actually goes on when a patient begins to dance, to choreograph or paint his or her state of soul, to speak aloud freely in a dramatic tirade or a poetic soliloquy, to sculpt it in clay or lay it out in a collage. And I want to ask about the "it" that is being presented, expressed, shown, or formed by means of these various arts."
"Clearly, the "it" is an emotion, an emotionally tinged state of soul. For even if it is said to be a trauma, a memory, a dream scene, or a present confusion and helplessness, what we like to call a "problem," with a lover, an employer, a parent—the emotion is the content that brings the person to therapy. Only when a"problem"—a relationship, a memory, a dream—becomes suffering, when we are affected by the problem, does it enter us and we enter therapy." http://www.pantheatre.com/pdf/2-MT09-JH.pdf
Hillman's archetypal psychology is an inquiry into the poetic, mythical, and divine logos of the soul. Psychological soul provides a transitional space, a liminal or in-between aspect that creates the creative space for entry of the divine into this world, decoupled from human will. "Primary is the disordered imagination, its incapacity to encompass the past and its traumas. Restrictions of imagination appear as excessive emotion."
Imagination drove Hillman to "engage in art therapy neither directly for art, nor directly for the patient, nor directly for the emotion. ...Since art therapy activates imagination and allows it to materialize—that is, enter the world via the emotions ... therapy by means of the arts must take precedence over all other kinds." "Each gesture is made for the sake of the gesture and not for anything external to the gesture itself."
Entering the mysterious Labyrinth is a classic image of Descent. The ways of soul are labyrinthine, Hillman says. So is his method, following the meanderings and leaps of imagination rather than the rational grid of a plan. Hillman addresses the importance of the “unrest” of passion: “We hunger for that."
"Certainly, emotion is inside the skin, deep inside the hippocampus, the hormonal system,the animal body, residing in the core of our inmost being." "A principle intention of an emotion is to connect our animal nature with the world in which it is embedded. Emotions respond immediately to the truth of things. They are the most alert form of attention. Disgust turns away from decay, fear warns of danger, desire recognizes beauty, and pity responds to need.Unfortunately, therapy sometimes forgets this primary aspect of emotion."
Hillman contends, "that though they be felt deeply, and we suffer emotions physically and inwardly, this fact does not make them "ours." Rather, I believe that emotions are there to make us theirs. They want to possess us, rule us, win us over completely to their vision. ...William Blake said, "Some good we may do when the man is in a passion, but no good when the passion is in the man." To have a passion in me is demonic; to be in a passion, in the world of the emotion and grasped by the way it signifies all things with a specific vision or insight, may move the psyche to a deeper and epiphanic connection with the world." (Chapters XI and XV).
''We would save the phenomena just as they are, untreated, uncured.'' If memory fixates on intense moments of discomfort and joy, over time memory and fantasy meld together. Blake called emotions "divine influxes," suggesting that "they are the way the Gods flow into the soul, moving it to a more-than-human condition of excitement and fury, of sorrow and mourning, of folly and ecstatic desire."
"The divine influxes ...are more than feeling states, affective tones, and physical alterations. They are always, as well, imaginations... of behavior, imaginations of fantasy, imaginations of process and intention and desire."
So each emotional condition asks, "what does the emotion want?" In Hillman's view, the soul doesn't need to be straightened out but looked deeper into, ''seen through'' to the mythic, impersonal ground of its most intimate complaints.
"Outside and inside, life and soul…we have to see the inner necessity of historical events out there, in the events themselves, where ‘inner’ no longer means private and owned by a self or a soul or an ego, where inner is not a literalized place inside a subject, but the subjectivity in events and that attitude which interiorizes those events, goes into them in search of psychological depths." (Healing, 24-25).
“...put it my way, what we are really, and the reality we live, is our psychic reality, which is nothing but...the poetic imagination going on day and night.” --James Hillman, We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World Is Getting Worse, p. 62
What is reality, what can we know about it, and how do we attain that knowledge? Archetypal psychology answers Imagination (psyche, soul), Archetypes, and Images. This is a new image of the psyche with deep connections to Neo-Platonism, the Renaissance, and Romanticism. Mythic archetypes are active and present in our lives and the world today.
Polytheistic myths can provide psychological insight. Archetypal psychology is an introduction to polytheism, Greek mythology, the soul-spirit distinction, anima mundi, psychopathology, soul-making, imagination, and therapeutic practice. We cannot escape myth, only live it consciously or unconsciously.
Soul is a root metaphor for multiple perspectives: psychological, ethical, political, poetic. To find soul, we search for the images it is made of, through which psyche introduces itself. Rumi knew, "The soul has been given its own ears / To hear things that the mind doesn’t understand."
Soul communicates through a metaphorical and mythical language. Working with psychic images is the theoretical base of archetypal psychology. Mythical images, unseen worlds in this one, are the psyche. When we study the gods and goddesses, we are studying psyche itself, the life behind our personalities it uses as masks.
The gods and goddesses and the dramatic narratives of their lives thus portray the life of the psyche—its way of living (Rossi, 2019). Psyche's mysterious and fathomless surrounding space is dynamic and alive with amorphous numinous entities. Psychological energy patterns— entanglement, uncertainty, gravitational waves -- pulsate rhythmically with life, cycles of creation, death, and rebirth.
Psychological polytheism is not identical with Neo-paganism. Soul happens where spirit is embodied. Archetypes are soul's many voices, the thoughts that think themselves within us, that arise personified in our dreams, and inform ordinary life--our creative and destructive urges.
Hillman notes, "soul comes in fantasies, not in meanings." In psychological polytheism, the gods infuse personality, politics, economics, science, aesthetics, metaphysics, and other expressions of culture confirmed at an experiential and symbolic level. The gods remind us of our humanity; they help us tolerate uncertainty.
The psychologist is a mythologist, revising life-story narratives or personal mythology. Psychologists are comparative mythologists unraveling the psychological and spiritual wisdom woven into ancient and traditional myths. As mythic researchers, we use Greek myths to study personal identity, incorporating mythologies and their meanings.
A preference for certain gods leaves others unconscious. The innumerable metaphorical possibilities of the soul are respected. Every archetype is a mode of perception. A polytheistic style of consciousness is a more deeply immersed and subjective experience of the world as animated and alive. Animation is the heart of soul tending.
Hillman notes ..."[t]he plurality of archetypal forms reflects the pagan level of things and what might be called a polytheistic psychology." Transformation is psychic movement that awakens the potentials of the immobilized psyche. Healing emerges from dynamic living energies.
This hybrid science-art form rejects scientific materialism, its mechanical universe, and conventional devaluation of nature. It finds hierarchical structures of power distasteful. Hillman clarifies his approach: "In our metaphysics we declare our fantasies about the physical and its transcendence. A metaphysical statement can be seen as a psychological fancy about the relationship between 'matter and spirit'."
This Metamodern view is deconstructive, aesthetic, poetic, and Romantic. This radical pluralism of a polytheistic metapsychology theorizes about the structure of psychological theorizing itself. Overlapping different identities only empowers all of them. Rilke admonishes us to "go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within..."
Hillman says, “To be sane, we must recognize our beliefs as fictions.” Mystery, as living presence and the movement toward favoring the irrational, becomes 'my story.' Narration is a root metaphor. The metaphor is superseded by the holographic blur of a possibilities of form--form overcome by formlessness--finally free from groping around using inadequate analogies.
Ginette Paris notes, "A myth is a fantasy, a preferred lie, a foundational story, a hypnotic trance, an identity game, a virtual reality, one that can be either inspirational or despairing. It is a story in which I cast myself; it is my inner cinema, the motion picture of my inner reality - one that moves all the time. No diagnosis can fix the myth, no cure can settle it, because our inner life is precisely what, in us, will not lie still." ("How Is Psychology A Mythology?")
Mythical figures are eternal metaphors of the imagination, the autonomous dynamics of psychic reality. Jung suggested myth is a revelation of the divine life in humanity, our unconscious grasp of the history of the world, the wild energies of creation, and our sense of embodiment. We can bridge the gap between symbols and the world, learn to speak the language and see the sights with clarity.
The psychological value and insights of polytheistic myth is a major theorem of archetypal psychology. Neo-pagan religions are usually polytheistic, nature-oriented, non dogmatic. They facilitate relationship and direct engagement with the Gods and Goddesses. Pagans, poets and artists use mythic characters and tropes to express contemporary metaphors and images found in every dream, drama, ceremony, gesture, and passionate act.
"Humans are made in the images of the gods, and our abnormalities image the original abnormalities of the gods which come before ours, making possible ours. We can only do in time what gods do in eternity. Our infirmities will therefore have to have their ground in primordial infirmity, and their infirmities are enacted in our psychopathologies.” (Hillman, Mythic Figures)
Archetypal psychology moved us into metaphor, from concepts to engagement. Archetypes are universal prototypes. Soul makes fantasy images we embody. Soul-making means to be “in soul,” immersed in both an internal and external process of transmutation, developing the metaphoric quality of image into ontological ground.
Our nature is plural. The human psyche seems to be a collective of selves--a multimind in a multiverse. Independent and autonomous, they relate with one another mostly unknown to the outer awareness.
"there must be something unalterably necessary about images so that psychic reality, which first of all consists in images, cannot be mere afterimages of sense impressions. Images are primordial, archetypal, in themselves ultimate reals, the only direct reality that the psyche experiences. As such they are the shaped presences of necessity.” (Hillman, Mythic Images)
Based on a plurality of perspectives, a plurality of consciousness, a plurality of worlds, this notion means giving breath to many voices. We construct fictional virtual realities as imaginal conversations. There is no central belief system in a pluralistic society. We substitute "story" for Truth, reflecting that sense of movement, change, flow.
Archetypal psychology takes us beyond the conventional systematized cognitive categories. It invites us into the realm of the gods, living presences which shape and inform our behavior, feelings, thoughts, and aspirations.
It reconciles us with necessity, with Ananke, primordial mother of chaos. "To think of our greatest anxiety as an insignificant event, not only in the life of the universe but also in the life of our own soul, is the beginning of wisdom." (Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (426)
Any direct and immediate knowledge can only be acquired through the acknowledgment of the psychic images. Hillman suggests, “You know, people come to therapy really for a blessing. Not so much to fix what's broken, but to get what's broken blessed.” Let the angels touch your hair and bless you.
Psyche is “a polycentric realm of nonverbal, nonspatial images” (Re-VisioningPsychology, p. 33). Soul is the dimension of psychological experience, much like the body is the seat of sensory and mental perception. Hillman notes, “man was created as an image, in an image and by means of his images” (Egalitarian Typologies versus the Perception of the Unique, p.44).
Soul is revealed in images, depth, genuineness, authenticity, attachment, love, embodiment, and community. In relationships with mythic dominants, articulation of images can be considered soul-making, advocating for the unheard voices of the psychic “many.” Jung thought, "For the alchemist, the one primarily in need of redemption is not man, but the deity who is lost and sleeping in matter."
Hillman says, "in soul-making the method is extended beyond the special circumstances of self-reflection, dreaming and active imagination into all aspects of life that generate imaginative sparks of a certain magnitude." Marion Woodman suggests, "Without the true masculine spirit and the true feminine love within, no inner life exists…. To be free is to break the stone images and allow life and love to flow.” (Addiction to Perfection)
Images are the self-referential phenomenon of psychic life; “image is psyche,” (CW 13, para. 75) “in the poetic sense, considering images to be the basic givens of psychic life, self-originating, inventive, spontaneous, complete, and organized in archetypal patterns...[they] are both raw materials and finished products of psyche” (Re-Visioning Psychology, p.xvii).
There is no predetermined code of meanings or concepts for the unlimited field of imaginative possibilities. Images are not signs, representations, symbols or allegories. The experience of the image and through the experience triggered by it is soul-making.
The absolute primacy of image allows Hillman to shift Jung’s emphasis from the archetype per se to the archetypal image. While he acknowledges that archetypes are the deepest patterns of psychic functioning, we can experience only images arranging themselves in these archetypal patterns, which we imagine as underlying universal principles, or envision in personified forms as gods. (ARAS)
An 'antidote to literalism,' psychological experience requires participation to registered the event as experientially meaningful. Psychical states and psychological experience, expressed through the mind, the body, or the private psychoid world, are analogous to the distinction between physical objects and sense data.
Images are the soul’s “native language.” Soul-tending is giving attention to the soul through each autonomous image in its unique specificity: “the soul is precisely the eachness of everywhere at any instant in anything in its display as a phenomenon. And only in this eachness does soul exist and cosmos show” (“Cosmology for the Soul”).
Socrates and the Daimonic
In the Symposium, Socrates tells us that “only through the daimonic is there intercourse and conversations between men and Gods, whether in the waking state or during sleep. And the man who is an expert in such things is a daimonic man...” Socrates could speak with such authority because his personal daimon was the most famous in antiquity. Apuleius, of Eros and Psyche fame, wrote a book about it, explaining that Socrates’s daimon was responsible for mediating between him and the Gods. Daimons, claimed Apuleius, inhabit the air and have bodies of so transparent a kind that we cannot see them, only hear them. This was the case with Socrates whose daimon was famous for simply saying “No” whenever he is about to encounter danger or do anything displeasing to the Gods. It was not just Apuleius who believed that daimons are as much material as spiritual, despite what later Catholic apologists like Aquinas claimed. To say they inhabit the air is a metaphor for the middle realm they inhabit bejewel the material and spiritual realms- as it were, participating in both. It is this realm that the great scholar of Sufism, Henri Corbin, calls “the imaginal world” in which different, daimonic reality prevails. It is the middle realm described by C. G. Jung, who called it “psychic reality.” Above all, of course, it is the Soul of the World. -Patrick Harpur, The Secret Tradition of the Soul
In the Symposium, Socrates tells us that “only through the daimonic is there intercourse and conversations between men and Gods, whether in the waking state or during sleep. And the man who is an expert in such things is a daimonic man...” Socrates could speak with such authority because his personal daimon was the most famous in antiquity. Apuleius, of Eros and Psyche fame, wrote a book about it, explaining that Socrates’s daimon was responsible for mediating between him and the Gods. Daimons, claimed Apuleius, inhabit the air and have bodies of so transparent a kind that we cannot see them, only hear them. This was the case with Socrates whose daimon was famous for simply saying “No” whenever he is about to encounter danger or do anything displeasing to the Gods. It was not just Apuleius who believed that daimons are as much material as spiritual, despite what later Catholic apologists like Aquinas claimed. To say they inhabit the air is a metaphor for the middle realm they inhabit bejewel the material and spiritual realms- as it were, participating in both. It is this realm that the great scholar of Sufism, Henri Corbin, calls “the imaginal world” in which different, daimonic reality prevails. It is the middle realm described by C. G. Jung, who called it “psychic reality.” Above all, of course, it is the Soul of the World. -Patrick Harpur, The Secret Tradition of the Soul
Art too is just a way of living:
“Art too is just a way of living, and however one lives, one can, without knowing, prepare for it; in everything real one is closer to it, more its neighbor, than in the unreal half-artistic professions, which, while they pretend to be close to art, in practice deny and attack the existence of all art. Come close to Nature.
Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose
‘love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away, you write, and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast. And if what is near you is faraway, then your vastness is already among the stars and is very great; be happy about your growth, in which of course you can’t take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don’t torment them with your doubts and don’t frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn’t be able to comprehend.”
“I can’t give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist.” ... “If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty” --Rainer Maria Rilke
"It is the mythmaking artist, says Jung, who discovers the compensatory archetypal image that the age and the culture require for greater balance: “the artist seizes on this image, and in raising it from deepest unconsciousness he brings it into relation with conscious values, thereby transforming it until it can be accepted by the minds of his contemporaries according to their powers.” (Walker, Jung 20)
“Art too is just a way of living, and however one lives, one can, without knowing, prepare for it; in everything real one is closer to it, more its neighbor, than in the unreal half-artistic professions, which, while they pretend to be close to art, in practice deny and attack the existence of all art. Come close to Nature.
Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose
‘love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away, you write, and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast. And if what is near you is faraway, then your vastness is already among the stars and is very great; be happy about your growth, in which of course you can’t take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don’t torment them with your doubts and don’t frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn’t be able to comprehend.”
“I can’t give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist.” ... “If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty” --Rainer Maria Rilke
"It is the mythmaking artist, says Jung, who discovers the compensatory archetypal image that the age and the culture require for greater balance: “the artist seizes on this image, and in raising it from deepest unconsciousness he brings it into relation with conscious values, thereby transforming it until it can be accepted by the minds of his contemporaries according to their powers.” (Walker, Jung 20)
On fear:
"The relation with the implacable givens, the gods, was not love but humility, staying within mortal bounds, drawing back, that primordial physical motion which initiates reflection (reflectere, to bend back). Let us say: fear is primordial prudence, the wisdom of animal foresight at a cellular level.
Shrinking of the perimeter equals staying within limits, and this primordial prudence is given with life, as are its implacable facts. The instinctive, wordless counsel of fear acts like a guardian angel. Jewish legend says, [11] as there are angels of grace and angels of love, so too there are angels of fear and dread.
Fear as an instructive angel has been elaborated by Kemp-Smith in a sort of summation by this modern philosopher soon before his death. This angel seems to offer understanding of life in the world, or what I am calling fear’s cosmic legitimacy. This understanding presents itself most clearly, perhaps, in Buddhism and its disciples of ritual gesture of the hands, or Mudra, one of which, most widely recognized, is called “Fear Not,” enacted because, as a Japanese practitioner explains,
fear is innate, not only in man, but in everything which exists. The birds, animals of every sort, men, the sun, the moon, the worlds are continually in dread … It is this that one [the Buddhist] calls “World filled with fear and dread.” [12]
If fear is a potential given with the facts of the cosmos, then it is latently present anywhere, everywhere, “worlds are continually in dread.” When you or I or any creature suddenly feel the presence of fear, we are placed in unmediated connection with the cosmos, engaged by the truth of reality, the truth that all things change, all things pass away, and the reliability of nothing can be assured. The keys to security lie less in calculated predictability than in the small omens of fear. For we are consumers of and consumed by the great conflagration of existence, Heraclitus’s fire, riding the slow imperceptible tremors of a quaking earth. Consequently, platforms of security, appeals to moral courage, repressive combativeness to hold fear at bay sheer our wits away from the actual protective angel who keeps us, in Kierkegaard’s phrase, in “fear and trembling” — and in freedom!"
James Hillman, Philosophical Intimations
"Fruit of the Tree of Life", Iona Miller
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS
POST-JUNGIAN &
ARCHETYPAL MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES
The Art of Inquiry
“The future enters into us, in order
to transform itself in us, long before it happens.” -Rilke
“In the end we shall have had enough
of cynicism, skepticism and humbug,
and we shall want to live more musically.”
~Vincent Van Gogh
"If our life lacks a constant magic, it is because we choose to observe our acts and lose ourselves in consideration of their imagined form instead of being impelled by their force. No matter how loudly we clamor for magic in our lives, we are really afraid of pursuing an existence entirely under its influence and sign." --Antonin Artaud
"It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it." --Seneca
“Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may remember this “something” as a signal moment in childhood when an urge out of nowhere, a fascination, a peculiar turn of events struck like an annunciation: This is what I must do, this is what I’ve got to have. This is who I am.” --James Hillman, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling
"Before the visible universe was formed its mold was cast. This mold was called the Archetype, and this Archetype was in the Supreme [universal] Mind long before the process of creation began. Beholding the Archetypes, the Supreme Mind became enamored with Its own thought; so, taking the Word as a mighty hammer, It gouged out caverns in primordial space and cast the form of the spheres in the Archetypal mold, at the same time sowing in the newly fashioned bodies the seeds of living things." --Poimandres, the Vision of Hermes
POST-JUNGIAN &
ARCHETYPAL MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES
The Art of Inquiry
“The future enters into us, in order
to transform itself in us, long before it happens.” -Rilke
“In the end we shall have had enough
of cynicism, skepticism and humbug,
and we shall want to live more musically.”
~Vincent Van Gogh
"If our life lacks a constant magic, it is because we choose to observe our acts and lose ourselves in consideration of their imagined form instead of being impelled by their force. No matter how loudly we clamor for magic in our lives, we are really afraid of pursuing an existence entirely under its influence and sign." --Antonin Artaud
"It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it." --Seneca
“Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may remember this “something” as a signal moment in childhood when an urge out of nowhere, a fascination, a peculiar turn of events struck like an annunciation: This is what I must do, this is what I’ve got to have. This is who I am.” --James Hillman, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling
"Before the visible universe was formed its mold was cast. This mold was called the Archetype, and this Archetype was in the Supreme [universal] Mind long before the process of creation began. Beholding the Archetypes, the Supreme Mind became enamored with Its own thought; so, taking the Word as a mighty hammer, It gouged out caverns in primordial space and cast the form of the spheres in the Archetypal mold, at the same time sowing in the newly fashioned bodies the seeds of living things." --Poimandres, the Vision of Hermes
For thousands of years the mind of man has worried about the sick soul, perhaps even earlier than it did about the sick body.
The propitiation of gods, the perils of the soul and its salvation, these are not yesterday's problems.
Religions are psychotherapeutic systems in the truest sense of the word, and on the grandest scale.
They express the whole range of the psychic problem in mighty images; they are the avowal and recognition of the soul, and at the same time the revelatio of the soul's nature.
From this universal foundation no human soul is cut off; only the individual consciousness that has lost its connection with the psychic totality remains caught in the illusion that the soul is a small circumscribed area, a fit subject for "scientific" theorizing.
The loss of this great relationship is the prime evil of neurosis.
~Carl Jung, CW 10 Para 367
The propitiation of gods, the perils of the soul and its salvation, these are not yesterday's problems.
Religions are psychotherapeutic systems in the truest sense of the word, and on the grandest scale.
They express the whole range of the psychic problem in mighty images; they are the avowal and recognition of the soul, and at the same time the revelatio of the soul's nature.
From this universal foundation no human soul is cut off; only the individual consciousness that has lost its connection with the psychic totality remains caught in the illusion that the soul is a small circumscribed area, a fit subject for "scientific" theorizing.
The loss of this great relationship is the prime evil of neurosis.
~Carl Jung, CW 10 Para 367
M
Doubt the default and
look for look for better options with fresh eyes
‘Holistic Psychology explores not only the physical and mental dimensions of life, but also the spiritual, ecological, relational , somatic, mythological and transpersonal aspects of the psyche. The separation of these dimensions of the whole person can be seen as contributing to the personal, cultural and planetary crises and pathologies of our time.’ Aspects of holistic psychology include Jungian work with myth and dreams, to humanistic and transpersonal psychologies, eco-psychology, holistic sexuality, the psychology of the body, and the psychology of place.
The paradoxical partner of 'Know Thyself' is 'Reveal Thyself,'which we do in our works, in our art, in love, and in the specifics of basic human pursuits. Transdisciplinarity is not a metatheory. It’s not a theory at all. It’s both science and art. In fact, it is neither science nor art. It’s a new knowledge you cannot reduce to old knowledge. Psyche participates in reading or writing, and experience.
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY
We explore the world, inside and out, as generalists. Like Galileo, we have to move the ego from the center of our universe and recognize the organizing principle of the universe -- consciousness. Like pandisciplinarian research, natural philosophy explores the cosmos by any means necessary to understand the ourselves and universe. Our artistic life is as important to culture as food, air, and water.
To have integrity, to have integrity in qualitative research, the outer world of inquiry must interact with the objective inner world of subjectivity -- psyche, soul, or the imaginal. There are so many things that we want to be true, beautiful and aspirational and how we imagine the world. But, some things are just not true and that is where science comes in with unforgiving rigor. There are many theories but only a few describe reality.
How can we bridge the chasm between who we truly are in our essence and how we are actually living our lives? We narrow the gap when we look within for the answers and make shifts. Inherent wisdom guides and nurtures that self-inquiry practice, closing the gap between who you are and how you are living.
The consistent practice of self-inquiry, self-study, and intention-setting can help you deconstruct negative habits and limiting beliefs. If we cultivate more inner wisdom, our self-compassion grows while relationships with others shift. Life is informed with a quality of knowing that comes from deep with within the catacombs of the unconscious — the soul-guide (psychopomp) or inner teacher that guides toward ultimate destiny.
Earnestness of Inquiry
This is not developmental psychology of a manic or heroic, over-achieving ego but more akin to Romantic aesthetics, an artform of soul-making and imagination. We avoid the pitfalls of one-sidedness, fundamentalism, concreteness, and literalism in favor of a metaphorical perspective. If we have no beliefs, we can embrace all narratives as they are, as mythologies and phenomenological images, not dogmas.
A strategic model retains usefulness for comprehending our own nature in the environment, beyond yet integrated with the models of science. Transgressing the fortified boundary between natural science and the humanities, the hidden language of the archetypes of nature helps us translate the dynamics of our Being and Becoming. Events are only probabilistic until they occur. The Corpus Hermeticum suggests that fate and necessity compel our destinies.
A multidisciplinary approach can present and explore a variety of theories without advocating them, ideally leading toward best practice. Complexity demonstrates a science of surprise that supersedes the boundaries of nature and culture, transcendental theorizing or unreflexive presumption. How can we understand the various cooperative effects of systems, whether they belong to physics, physiology, psychology, biology, etc.?
Up to today, most experiments have tested entanglement over spatial gaps. Has our rush for time contracted our perception of a much vaster domain of time our ancestors knew? The assumption is that the ‘nonlocal’ part of quantum nonlocality refers to the entanglement of properties across space. But what if entanglement also occurs across time? Is there such a thing as temporal nonlocality? Yes, through entangled photons that never coexisted.
Previous experiments involving a technique called ‘entanglement." Like synchronicity, the key to avoiding strange causal behavior (steering the future or rewriting the past) in instances of temporal separation is to accept that calling events ‘simultaneous’ carries little metaphysical weight. It is only a frame-specific property. In this approach everywhere becomes sacred, a temenos.
In contrast to analytic reductionism, systems philosophy integrates theory and philosophy to foster reorganization of thinking and knowing perceived reality. Systemics sees things together, rather than separately. Rather than explaining what things are, we explore and describe how things work. Meta-narratives bind society and cultures together, integrating events and actions into meaningful patterns. The world of experience remains one of perceived reality and worldview. We can improve the quality of our critical and imaginal thinking by skillfully analyzing, assessing, and reconstructing it.
Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. Self-inquiry is the art of asking a spiritually powerful question. And a question that is spiritually powerful always points us back to ourselves. It is more than the technique of investigating our inner self so that we can advance in our personal growth and self-development to embrace authenticity.
https://www.teachthought.com/critical-thinking/the-cognitive-bias-codex-a-visual-of-180-cognitive-biases/
FRONTIER SCIENCE
Blue Sky research is the seedbed of new ideas, future science. Characteristics of frontier research include: 1) it usually addresses controversial issues in the scientific community where they are being explored; (2) it deals with questions that are hard to answer, at least by applying the normal methodological approaches; (3) it employs atypical methodologies and concepts; (4) it starts with unexpected findings that challenge the dominant paradigm; (5) it focuses on issues whose resolution is key to confirming (or rebutting) the prevailing paradigm; and (6) it involves research with a high uncertainty of success.
It has the potential to transform and put our understanding on a new footing. It has the ability to yield results which represent a significant step forward in our knowledge. It generates new paradigms, new approaches and ways of thinking, new questions and issues. Such approaches are not possible in the so-called standard framework of science. Also, frontier research tends to involve high costs, low funding, and faces a high risk of failure.
Research is pursued in an area which is intrinsically difficult to investigate, with little background, atypical approaches, and in many cases with relatively few researchers and experts working on it. The results are often unpredictable, rejected or ignored. These researchers are explorers, blazing trails without knowing where they will end up...the wild blue yonder. Basic “blue-sky” research is distinct from applied research, which is targeted toward developing or advancing technologies not serendipitous output. The voidless void of the abyss contains the potential of all values.
"The light we actually see in the mind are the photon/axions of the
higher frequency order hyperspace fields whose high energy density
particles are located in the Planck volume close to the Zero-Point of
pure unconditioned awareness. For our visual consciousness, this point
is at the exact center of the brain's EM field and its higher frequency
phase order harmonic mind-memory fields in hyperspace."-L Maurer
https://photonichuman.weebly.com/
Blue Sky Research
In The Origins of Order, Stuart Kaufmann cites physicist Wolfgang Pauli as saying that the deepest pleasure in science comes from finding an instantiation, a home, for some deeply felt, deeply held image. Jung and Blavatsky agreed there is an immense body of images in the collective unconscious or Akasha which inform our existence. Art and science can either accurately reflect or mutilate these images.
https://mankindresearchunlimited.weebly.com/
Consciousness Studies, Holographic Approach, Zero Point, Genetic Genealogy, Neurological Correlates of Spiritual Experience, Schumann Resonance. Parapsychology * Paraphysics * Psychotronics * Psychic Healing * Biophysics * Scalar Physics * UFO * EMF * Holism * Noetics * Remote Viewing * Synthetic Telepathy * EVP * Biocybernetics * Dowsing * ESP Hypnosis * Psi R&D * Kirlian Photography * Bioluminescence * PsyOp * Spirit Comm * Dream Telepathy Biofeedback *Esoterics * Superlearning * Alternative Energy * Radionics * Alternative Health * Creativity * Extraordinary Human Potential * Future Science * Edge Science * R&D Thinktank
MYTHICAL KNOWING
MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES
https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/mythic-forms.html
Mythological Studies explores the understanding of human experience revealed in mythology and in the manifold links between myth and ritual, literature, art, culture, and religious experience. Myths are not tales of happenings of a remote past but eternal dramas that are alive in our personal lives and the world. Special attention is given to depth psychology and archetypal approaches to the study of myth.
Myth is not fiction: it consists of facts that are continually repeated and can be observed over and over ... The strength of our soul is our own mythological being, animating our own inner voice and transcendent potential. The mythical world of the old gods is not the product of poetry; mankind is the product of the gods, as shown in our lines of descent.Ours is the myth of self-search.
Mythological and archetypal perspectives take us into deeper dimensions. They play out in our lives and leave impressions with natural consequences in the real world. Myths are worldviews with multiple meanings —ways of seeing the world. Mythology is a way of seeing how we see or understand what we see. Understanding myth is a means of seeing through the stories that both shape and distort our experience of ourselves and others.
Mythology has both creative and deconstructive power. Mythology is a deeper ocean of being, providing a mythic perspective on our current situation. Finding meaning leads into mythology. Mythic thinking helps us frame “what is comprehensible.” Mythology describes four dimensions of our existence:
The veil has lifted on the thin veneer of civilization in “collapse renewal”. We can be overwhelmed with waves of cultural chaos, violence, and animosity. We need to stay connected to depth of soul and our dreams for a better world. Long ago Homer said, “So they decreed the gods. That, in getting lost, everyone can find themselves.”
Mythical figures are eternal metaphors of the imagination, the dynamics of psychic reality. Jung suggested myth is a revelation of the divine life in humanity, our unconscious grasp of the history of the world, the wild energies of creation, and our sense of embodiment.
There are interdependent unconscious neural, phenomenological, and cognitive levels of embodiment. Mind is not separate from bodily experience, but is naturally more than our conceptual experience. It is irrational. nonlinear, and entangled. There are no consistent level-independent truths. Even embodied truth is not absolute, objective truth, nor does it need to be but it allows us self-reflection.
Tension, catastrophe, and overwhelming disturbance can occur without warning– disturbing waves of chaos, violence, and and animosity. We need to connect to the depth of the soul, the values of our instincts. our own value, and to reconnect with the deep self and the dream of our lives. We each make a unique contribution, perhaps not by saving the world, but becoming more of who we are. Beauty, wisdom, and grace may be the only antidotes for despair.
POST-JUNGIAN COMMENTARY
https://ancestorsandarchetypes.weebly.com/
"Jungian therapy can help improve the lives of those with depression, anxiety, grief, phobias, relationship or trauma issues, low self-esteem, or other emotional problems. It is also appropriate for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of themselves and is willing to make a commitment to the work involved in acquiring that knowledge." --Psychology Today
"I have been compelled, in my investigations into the structure of the unconscious, to make a conceptual distinction between soul and psyche. By psyche I understand the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious. By soul, on the other hand, I understand a clearly demarcated functional complex that can best be described as a “personality.” [Jung, “Definitions,” CW 6, par. 797]
JUNG ON INDIVIDUATION
"Individuation means becoming an 'in-dividual'...embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one's own self...'coming to selfhood' or 'self-realization'...Self-alienation in favour of the collective corresponds to a social ideal...duty and virtue...misused for egotistical purposes. Egoist's are called 'selfish'...nothing to do with the concept of self...distinguish between individualism and individuation, the latter a more complete fulfillment of the collective qualities...fulfilling the peculiarities of one's own nature...composed of purely universal factors, one is wholly collective...a living-co-operation of all factors...to divest the self of the false wrappings of the persona in favour of the suggestive power of primordial images...the influence of the collective unconscious...moving in a dark interior world more difficult to understand than the psychology of the persona...creative intuitions...religious conversions....of being subliminal...the moment of irruption can be very sudden, so that consciousness is instantaneously flooded with extremely strange...unsuspected contents...In reality the irruption has been preparing for many years, often for half a lifetime, and already in childhood all sorts of remarkable signs could have been detected...in symbolic fashion, hinted at abnormal future developments...the unconscious never rests...even when asleep we dream...stand in a compensatory relation to the conscious mind...conscious and unconscious form a unitive totality, which is the self" (Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 173)
The Quest for Wholeness is a necessary journey of self-exploration into our own unconscious and unrealized potential, soul’s journey from the material world towards its source. Symptoms may arise as we try to figure out our own way of being in the world. This research approach is analytical and hermeneutic, characterized by holistic and archetypal as well as alchemical associations.
Jungians relish “symbology” by amplifying the emergence of inner images. a narrative of becoming conscious during individuation, through dreams, alchemy, myth, and fairy tales. Archetypal Psychology considers this a archetypal fantasy, preferring an ever-becoming and transcending process over a goal-oriented notion. Transformation is psychic movement that awakens the potentials of the immobilized psyche.
We can intentionally build a soulful relationship between our conscious and unconscious being. In Jung’s view, ego represents the conscious mind comprised of thoughts, memories, and emotions we are aware of. The ego is largely responsible for feelings of identity and continuity. But it has blind-spots, denial, and projections.
Archetypes are "shared truths," fundamental conceptual categories containing numerous facets, but their autonomy makes them more than our formal symbol system. To be 'realistic' we conceptually imagine their reality on the imaginal level, inferring their presence through our conceptual metaphors, which may be magical, mythic, rational, or transcendent.
There is no final or rigid corresponding fit, but an on-going dialogue of developing understanding, even love and devotion. We see our self-conscious reflections in the categories we create or imagine. Theories and intentions abound so we have to look to the real-world effects.
Commentaries explore our undeniable needs for order, pattern, search for meaning, creative source, and a presiding myth, using C.G. Jung's Analytical Psychology, symbolism, and theory of archetypes, as well as following generations, applying, criticizing, and evolving Jungian thought and Jung's map of the internal terrain of the collective unconscious, archetypal process, individuation, complexes, and numinous Self. Post-Jungian thought is about personal empowerment, destiny, and soul's purpose.
Mythical figures are eternal metaphors of the imagination, the dynamics of psychic reality. Jung suggested myth is a revelation of the divine life in humanity, our unconscious grasp of the history of the world, the wild energies of creation, and our sense of embodiment.
There are interdependent unconscious neural, phenomenological, and cognitive levels of embodiment. Mind is not separate from bodily experience, but is naturally more than our conceptual experience. It is irrational. nonlinear, and entangled. There are no consistent level-independent truths. Even embodied truth is not absolute, objective truth, nor does it need to be but it allows us self-reflection.
We have to bridge the gap between symbols and the world, learn to speak the language and see the sights with clarity. The phenomenological level can be brought into consciousness, but the unconscious cognitive remains below awareness in sensory, motor, visceral, and mental processing.
Human life is all symbols, visible signs of invisible reality, intuitive ideas that cannot yet be formulated in any other or better way. We live in a mind soup of psychoconfabulation. Symbols wield the power of pattern recognition and association. Few objectively gain distance from the archetypal content of mind and emotions. 'Archetypal' means fundamental intrapsychic organizing principles, or the deepest levels of psychological structure, holographic embedding and resonant fields, common to the human psyche in general. Information results and arises from innate structure.
Applications of Jung's classical model and developmental method are based in dream and myth interpretation, the meaning and metaphor of alchemy, including Creation, the Hero, and Transcendence. Dreamwork, divination, and synchronicity. We are connected to a “universal information matrix.” Meijer describes how this “dynamic holographic boundary” collects information from inside the brain as well as from the “information fields in which our brain is permanently embedded.” He said: “In this manner, it is implicitly connected to a universal information matrix.”
https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/article/a-new-theory-of-consciousness-the-mind-exists-as-a-field-connected-to-the-brain
JUNG ON THE PARANORMAL
"By heightened unconscious performance we mean that peculiar automatic process whose results are not available for the conscious psychic activity of the individual...In this field we meet with a not unjustifiable scepticism on the part of the scientific pundits...occultism has claimed a special right to this field" (Jung, Psychiatric Studies, Vol 1, 80).
"One of the most important influences on Jung's theory of synchronicity was his frequent experiencing of seemingly paranormal events and the lifelong interest in spiritualistic speculations...that matter is animated by a life force that is unconscious, intelligent, and beyond space and time...The medium's (Jung's cousin) ability when in the trance state to manifest a variety of seemingly autonomous personalities provided evidence for the dissociability and unconscious functioning of the psyche...eventually lead to the formulation first of complexes and later archetypes...did not dismiss the psychic dissociation as simply pathological...could also be therapeutic, representing 'attempts of the future character to break through'...foreshadows later ideas of compensation and individuation, while the practice of consciously interacting with fantasy images prefigures his method of active imagination" (R. Main, The Rupture of Time, 68).
ARCHETYPAL PSYCHOLOGY
Archetypal psychology is a switch from science to metaphor, from concepts to engagement. Archetypes are universal prototypes. Soul makes fantasy images we embody, consciously or unconsciously. Soul-making approximates what it means to be “in soul,” esse in anima, immersed in both an internal and external process of transmutation. It is about the process of developing the metaphoric quality of the image into the ontological ground.
Archetypal psychology takes us beyond the conventional systematized categories of cognitive and even Jungian psychology and beckons us toward more open, less ossified thinking, to following out uncertainty which opens a new way, an emergent way. It invites us into the realm of the gods, living presences which shape and inform our behavior, feelings, thoughts, and aspirations, beyond the buzzword categories of cognitive psychologies.
It asks us to see-through conventional categories such as 'dysfunction' to these informing roots to develop an engaged relationship with what informs the phenomena - conditioning spacetime, memory, and consciousness. Rather than staying concerned with what is conceptually wrong, judging it, and trying to fix, bypass, or transcend it. This inclusive aesthetic approach is naturally enriching and inherent, not contrived nor interpretive meaning flows through it as self-generative images.
"If in individuation the method is to attend to what comes to us from the unconscious, in soul-making the method is extended beyond the special circumstances of self-reflection, dreaming and active imagination into all aspects of life that generate imaginative sparks of a certain magnitude."says Hillman.
Psyche is an interaction and communication with images and symbols that deeply affect us. Images reveal our depth perception. Global emphasis on urgent ecological awareness implies a reflowering of the Neo-Platonic and alchemical notion of ANIMA MUNDI the Soul of the World. Anima Mundi is not an archetype, but an archetypal way of seeing--seeing through the world. Emphasizes soul and Anima Mundi, with a mythopoetic approach that prioritizes imagery and soul-making.
Our obstinate problems provide deeper communication with the psyche. This is engagement with self-arising inherent impulses of the psyche, even chance, surprise, accident, or illness. "The world and the gods are dead or alive according to the condition of our souls." -James Hillman
It is the process of making psyche matter, of making the World Soul – the Anima Mundi – through image, phenomena and pathologizing. It is not limited to so-called spiritual matters, but spiritualizes the whole sociopolitical field of human endeavors so that it all “matters.” Imagination is stimulated by mythical fiction, which generates mythological imagination and speculative freedom of the soul. Wisdom transcends theoretical fixations and collective parroting.
Meaning is inherent so interpretation is not required. “To propose a psychology of Anima Mundi is to invite oneself to a relationship of intimacy with the soul of the world and its objects…From this point of view, the psychic reality of the world’s soul becomes available from the images."
Archetypal psychology relativizes and deliteralizes the notion of ego with multiple perspectives and focuses on what it calls the psyche, or soul, and the deepest patterns of psychic functioning, "the fundamental fantasies that animate all life" (Moore, in Hillman, 1991).
Self is not the main archetype of the collective unconscious as Jung thought; each polysemous archetype is of equal value, even if the Self contains or is suffused by all other archetypes, each giving life to the other. There is no way to engage in soul-making if we keep ourselves attached exclusively to the Self. Process work stresses awareness of the many-voiced "unconscious" as an ongoing flow of experience. This approach expands Jung's work beyond verbal individual therapy to include body experience, an ensouled world, altered states as well as multicultural approaches.
AESTHETIC APPROACH
https://ionamiller.weebly.com/artists-statement-2016.html
https://ionamiller.weebly.com/science-art-2015.html
Art is a liminal space of self-transformation. Works with a trans- quality go beyond mundane time, space, logic and personal taste or aesthetic preference. They connect with our essential Being at the core, reflected in nature and art, piercing time to find eternity. Transcending content, they open a new dimension...an invisible initiatory dimension. From here the artist gives birth to the secret space of the image itself which comes alive by giving shape to that secret.
Mythopoetics, self exploration, Know Thyself, relies more on recognizing the way in which ideas have to fit together to reveal hidden or divine patterns. An art-centered paradigm that is all about what is happening. All these threads together may not produce a coherent and true narrative. This ideal eternal history is one in which truth is attained by imaginatively linking different elements together to reveal the hidden order, the metaphysical truth to history. Rather than adding art to the environment, it creates its own environment.
The ethic is one of engagement, participation, and co-creation. moving deeper into love. There may be a missing dimension in our worldview. We need to uncover collaborations with new spaces and the healing power of narrative history. All reality has rhythmic, musical, and artistic correspondences. Perceived through the heart, the beauty and ugliness of the world resets our moral compass. Images with coherent resonance can be dynamically structured with drama, narrative, compensation, contextuality, and self-organization. Process philosophy is characterized by an attempt to reconcile the diverse intuitions found in human experience (such as religious, scientific, and aesthetic) into a coherent holistic scheme.
Process philosophy seeks a return to a neo-classical realism that avoids subjectivism. This mystery is rooted in a synthesis of philosophy and aesthetics in spoken and unspoken languages. It is the self-organizing creation and participatory engagement of a new myth -- a mythical domain, sharing symbolic meaning, fantasy, and rituals. Things are never literally what they seem in a world of wonders. This challenges our mundane positions, habits, and defenses.
The archaic mind mirrors the modern, exposing the subtext if life. There is no artificial distinction between the pursuit of knowledge and self-knowledge and aesthetics. Beauty is beyond aesthetic because it is more than skin deep and touches something in us. Beauty is an affair of the heart but speaks to our whole being.
The epic journey is a search for soul, a search for self, a challenge or mission to find what cannot be found in the ordinary world. When the soul becomes our central trope, we find our opus, the hidden agenda of being. Life itself is initiating us. It seeks and sometimes embodies a new way of being, an ethic and aesthetic that is open and psychophysically transformational -- morphogenic. The art of survival equals the survival of art. Ideally, it is the harmonization of cognitive awareness with empathic and compassionate emotional sensitivity to the zeitgeist of the day. It implies a global conscious awareness, "getting” the Big Picture, and perhaps doing something about it.
Doubt the default and
look for look for better options with fresh eyes
‘Holistic Psychology explores not only the physical and mental dimensions of life, but also the spiritual, ecological, relational , somatic, mythological and transpersonal aspects of the psyche. The separation of these dimensions of the whole person can be seen as contributing to the personal, cultural and planetary crises and pathologies of our time.’ Aspects of holistic psychology include Jungian work with myth and dreams, to humanistic and transpersonal psychologies, eco-psychology, holistic sexuality, the psychology of the body, and the psychology of place.
The paradoxical partner of 'Know Thyself' is 'Reveal Thyself,'which we do in our works, in our art, in love, and in the specifics of basic human pursuits. Transdisciplinarity is not a metatheory. It’s not a theory at all. It’s both science and art. In fact, it is neither science nor art. It’s a new knowledge you cannot reduce to old knowledge. Psyche participates in reading or writing, and experience.
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY
We explore the world, inside and out, as generalists. Like Galileo, we have to move the ego from the center of our universe and recognize the organizing principle of the universe -- consciousness. Like pandisciplinarian research, natural philosophy explores the cosmos by any means necessary to understand the ourselves and universe. Our artistic life is as important to culture as food, air, and water.
To have integrity, to have integrity in qualitative research, the outer world of inquiry must interact with the objective inner world of subjectivity -- psyche, soul, or the imaginal. There are so many things that we want to be true, beautiful and aspirational and how we imagine the world. But, some things are just not true and that is where science comes in with unforgiving rigor. There are many theories but only a few describe reality.
How can we bridge the chasm between who we truly are in our essence and how we are actually living our lives? We narrow the gap when we look within for the answers and make shifts. Inherent wisdom guides and nurtures that self-inquiry practice, closing the gap between who you are and how you are living.
The consistent practice of self-inquiry, self-study, and intention-setting can help you deconstruct negative habits and limiting beliefs. If we cultivate more inner wisdom, our self-compassion grows while relationships with others shift. Life is informed with a quality of knowing that comes from deep with within the catacombs of the unconscious — the soul-guide (psychopomp) or inner teacher that guides toward ultimate destiny.
Earnestness of Inquiry
This is not developmental psychology of a manic or heroic, over-achieving ego but more akin to Romantic aesthetics, an artform of soul-making and imagination. We avoid the pitfalls of one-sidedness, fundamentalism, concreteness, and literalism in favor of a metaphorical perspective. If we have no beliefs, we can embrace all narratives as they are, as mythologies and phenomenological images, not dogmas.
A strategic model retains usefulness for comprehending our own nature in the environment, beyond yet integrated with the models of science. Transgressing the fortified boundary between natural science and the humanities, the hidden language of the archetypes of nature helps us translate the dynamics of our Being and Becoming. Events are only probabilistic until they occur. The Corpus Hermeticum suggests that fate and necessity compel our destinies.
A multidisciplinary approach can present and explore a variety of theories without advocating them, ideally leading toward best practice. Complexity demonstrates a science of surprise that supersedes the boundaries of nature and culture, transcendental theorizing or unreflexive presumption. How can we understand the various cooperative effects of systems, whether they belong to physics, physiology, psychology, biology, etc.?
Up to today, most experiments have tested entanglement over spatial gaps. Has our rush for time contracted our perception of a much vaster domain of time our ancestors knew? The assumption is that the ‘nonlocal’ part of quantum nonlocality refers to the entanglement of properties across space. But what if entanglement also occurs across time? Is there such a thing as temporal nonlocality? Yes, through entangled photons that never coexisted.
Previous experiments involving a technique called ‘entanglement." Like synchronicity, the key to avoiding strange causal behavior (steering the future or rewriting the past) in instances of temporal separation is to accept that calling events ‘simultaneous’ carries little metaphysical weight. It is only a frame-specific property. In this approach everywhere becomes sacred, a temenos.
In contrast to analytic reductionism, systems philosophy integrates theory and philosophy to foster reorganization of thinking and knowing perceived reality. Systemics sees things together, rather than separately. Rather than explaining what things are, we explore and describe how things work. Meta-narratives bind society and cultures together, integrating events and actions into meaningful patterns. The world of experience remains one of perceived reality and worldview. We can improve the quality of our critical and imaginal thinking by skillfully analyzing, assessing, and reconstructing it.
Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. Self-inquiry is the art of asking a spiritually powerful question. And a question that is spiritually powerful always points us back to ourselves. It is more than the technique of investigating our inner self so that we can advance in our personal growth and self-development to embrace authenticity.
https://www.teachthought.com/critical-thinking/the-cognitive-bias-codex-a-visual-of-180-cognitive-biases/
FRONTIER SCIENCE
Blue Sky research is the seedbed of new ideas, future science. Characteristics of frontier research include: 1) it usually addresses controversial issues in the scientific community where they are being explored; (2) it deals with questions that are hard to answer, at least by applying the normal methodological approaches; (3) it employs atypical methodologies and concepts; (4) it starts with unexpected findings that challenge the dominant paradigm; (5) it focuses on issues whose resolution is key to confirming (or rebutting) the prevailing paradigm; and (6) it involves research with a high uncertainty of success.
It has the potential to transform and put our understanding on a new footing. It has the ability to yield results which represent a significant step forward in our knowledge. It generates new paradigms, new approaches and ways of thinking, new questions and issues. Such approaches are not possible in the so-called standard framework of science. Also, frontier research tends to involve high costs, low funding, and faces a high risk of failure.
Research is pursued in an area which is intrinsically difficult to investigate, with little background, atypical approaches, and in many cases with relatively few researchers and experts working on it. The results are often unpredictable, rejected or ignored. These researchers are explorers, blazing trails without knowing where they will end up...the wild blue yonder. Basic “blue-sky” research is distinct from applied research, which is targeted toward developing or advancing technologies not serendipitous output. The voidless void of the abyss contains the potential of all values.
"The light we actually see in the mind are the photon/axions of the
higher frequency order hyperspace fields whose high energy density
particles are located in the Planck volume close to the Zero-Point of
pure unconditioned awareness. For our visual consciousness, this point
is at the exact center of the brain's EM field and its higher frequency
phase order harmonic mind-memory fields in hyperspace."-L Maurer
https://photonichuman.weebly.com/
Blue Sky Research
In The Origins of Order, Stuart Kaufmann cites physicist Wolfgang Pauli as saying that the deepest pleasure in science comes from finding an instantiation, a home, for some deeply felt, deeply held image. Jung and Blavatsky agreed there is an immense body of images in the collective unconscious or Akasha which inform our existence. Art and science can either accurately reflect or mutilate these images.
https://mankindresearchunlimited.weebly.com/
Consciousness Studies, Holographic Approach, Zero Point, Genetic Genealogy, Neurological Correlates of Spiritual Experience, Schumann Resonance. Parapsychology * Paraphysics * Psychotronics * Psychic Healing * Biophysics * Scalar Physics * UFO * EMF * Holism * Noetics * Remote Viewing * Synthetic Telepathy * EVP * Biocybernetics * Dowsing * ESP Hypnosis * Psi R&D * Kirlian Photography * Bioluminescence * PsyOp * Spirit Comm * Dream Telepathy Biofeedback *Esoterics * Superlearning * Alternative Energy * Radionics * Alternative Health * Creativity * Extraordinary Human Potential * Future Science * Edge Science * R&D Thinktank
MYTHICAL KNOWING
MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES
https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/mythic-forms.html
Mythological Studies explores the understanding of human experience revealed in mythology and in the manifold links between myth and ritual, literature, art, culture, and religious experience. Myths are not tales of happenings of a remote past but eternal dramas that are alive in our personal lives and the world. Special attention is given to depth psychology and archetypal approaches to the study of myth.
Myth is not fiction: it consists of facts that are continually repeated and can be observed over and over ... The strength of our soul is our own mythological being, animating our own inner voice and transcendent potential. The mythical world of the old gods is not the product of poetry; mankind is the product of the gods, as shown in our lines of descent.Ours is the myth of self-search.
Mythological and archetypal perspectives take us into deeper dimensions. They play out in our lives and leave impressions with natural consequences in the real world. Myths are worldviews with multiple meanings —ways of seeing the world. Mythology is a way of seeing how we see or understand what we see. Understanding myth is a means of seeing through the stories that both shape and distort our experience of ourselves and others.
Mythology has both creative and deconstructive power. Mythology is a deeper ocean of being, providing a mythic perspective on our current situation. Finding meaning leads into mythology. Mythic thinking helps us frame “what is comprehensible.” Mythology describes four dimensions of our existence:
- The transcendent mystery of life that cannot be expressed adequately in language.
- An cosmological image of the universe that is our environmental habitat.
- The psychosocial context or matrix that scripts and encodes our roles and relationships.
- The inner story that gives our personal lives purpose, coherence, and meaning.
The veil has lifted on the thin veneer of civilization in “collapse renewal”. We can be overwhelmed with waves of cultural chaos, violence, and animosity. We need to stay connected to depth of soul and our dreams for a better world. Long ago Homer said, “So they decreed the gods. That, in getting lost, everyone can find themselves.”
Mythical figures are eternal metaphors of the imagination, the dynamics of psychic reality. Jung suggested myth is a revelation of the divine life in humanity, our unconscious grasp of the history of the world, the wild energies of creation, and our sense of embodiment.
There are interdependent unconscious neural, phenomenological, and cognitive levels of embodiment. Mind is not separate from bodily experience, but is naturally more than our conceptual experience. It is irrational. nonlinear, and entangled. There are no consistent level-independent truths. Even embodied truth is not absolute, objective truth, nor does it need to be but it allows us self-reflection.
Tension, catastrophe, and overwhelming disturbance can occur without warning– disturbing waves of chaos, violence, and and animosity. We need to connect to the depth of the soul, the values of our instincts. our own value, and to reconnect with the deep self and the dream of our lives. We each make a unique contribution, perhaps not by saving the world, but becoming more of who we are. Beauty, wisdom, and grace may be the only antidotes for despair.
POST-JUNGIAN COMMENTARY
https://ancestorsandarchetypes.weebly.com/
"Jungian therapy can help improve the lives of those with depression, anxiety, grief, phobias, relationship or trauma issues, low self-esteem, or other emotional problems. It is also appropriate for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of themselves and is willing to make a commitment to the work involved in acquiring that knowledge." --Psychology Today
"I have been compelled, in my investigations into the structure of the unconscious, to make a conceptual distinction between soul and psyche. By psyche I understand the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious. By soul, on the other hand, I understand a clearly demarcated functional complex that can best be described as a “personality.” [Jung, “Definitions,” CW 6, par. 797]
JUNG ON INDIVIDUATION
"Individuation means becoming an 'in-dividual'...embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one's own self...'coming to selfhood' or 'self-realization'...Self-alienation in favour of the collective corresponds to a social ideal...duty and virtue...misused for egotistical purposes. Egoist's are called 'selfish'...nothing to do with the concept of self...distinguish between individualism and individuation, the latter a more complete fulfillment of the collective qualities...fulfilling the peculiarities of one's own nature...composed of purely universal factors, one is wholly collective...a living-co-operation of all factors...to divest the self of the false wrappings of the persona in favour of the suggestive power of primordial images...the influence of the collective unconscious...moving in a dark interior world more difficult to understand than the psychology of the persona...creative intuitions...religious conversions....of being subliminal...the moment of irruption can be very sudden, so that consciousness is instantaneously flooded with extremely strange...unsuspected contents...In reality the irruption has been preparing for many years, often for half a lifetime, and already in childhood all sorts of remarkable signs could have been detected...in symbolic fashion, hinted at abnormal future developments...the unconscious never rests...even when asleep we dream...stand in a compensatory relation to the conscious mind...conscious and unconscious form a unitive totality, which is the self" (Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 173)
The Quest for Wholeness is a necessary journey of self-exploration into our own unconscious and unrealized potential, soul’s journey from the material world towards its source. Symptoms may arise as we try to figure out our own way of being in the world. This research approach is analytical and hermeneutic, characterized by holistic and archetypal as well as alchemical associations.
Jungians relish “symbology” by amplifying the emergence of inner images. a narrative of becoming conscious during individuation, through dreams, alchemy, myth, and fairy tales. Archetypal Psychology considers this a archetypal fantasy, preferring an ever-becoming and transcending process over a goal-oriented notion. Transformation is psychic movement that awakens the potentials of the immobilized psyche.
We can intentionally build a soulful relationship between our conscious and unconscious being. In Jung’s view, ego represents the conscious mind comprised of thoughts, memories, and emotions we are aware of. The ego is largely responsible for feelings of identity and continuity. But it has blind-spots, denial, and projections.
Archetypes are "shared truths," fundamental conceptual categories containing numerous facets, but their autonomy makes them more than our formal symbol system. To be 'realistic' we conceptually imagine their reality on the imaginal level, inferring their presence through our conceptual metaphors, which may be magical, mythic, rational, or transcendent.
There is no final or rigid corresponding fit, but an on-going dialogue of developing understanding, even love and devotion. We see our self-conscious reflections in the categories we create or imagine. Theories and intentions abound so we have to look to the real-world effects.
Commentaries explore our undeniable needs for order, pattern, search for meaning, creative source, and a presiding myth, using C.G. Jung's Analytical Psychology, symbolism, and theory of archetypes, as well as following generations, applying, criticizing, and evolving Jungian thought and Jung's map of the internal terrain of the collective unconscious, archetypal process, individuation, complexes, and numinous Self. Post-Jungian thought is about personal empowerment, destiny, and soul's purpose.
Mythical figures are eternal metaphors of the imagination, the dynamics of psychic reality. Jung suggested myth is a revelation of the divine life in humanity, our unconscious grasp of the history of the world, the wild energies of creation, and our sense of embodiment.
There are interdependent unconscious neural, phenomenological, and cognitive levels of embodiment. Mind is not separate from bodily experience, but is naturally more than our conceptual experience. It is irrational. nonlinear, and entangled. There are no consistent level-independent truths. Even embodied truth is not absolute, objective truth, nor does it need to be but it allows us self-reflection.
We have to bridge the gap between symbols and the world, learn to speak the language and see the sights with clarity. The phenomenological level can be brought into consciousness, but the unconscious cognitive remains below awareness in sensory, motor, visceral, and mental processing.
Human life is all symbols, visible signs of invisible reality, intuitive ideas that cannot yet be formulated in any other or better way. We live in a mind soup of psychoconfabulation. Symbols wield the power of pattern recognition and association. Few objectively gain distance from the archetypal content of mind and emotions. 'Archetypal' means fundamental intrapsychic organizing principles, or the deepest levels of psychological structure, holographic embedding and resonant fields, common to the human psyche in general. Information results and arises from innate structure.
Applications of Jung's classical model and developmental method are based in dream and myth interpretation, the meaning and metaphor of alchemy, including Creation, the Hero, and Transcendence. Dreamwork, divination, and synchronicity. We are connected to a “universal information matrix.” Meijer describes how this “dynamic holographic boundary” collects information from inside the brain as well as from the “information fields in which our brain is permanently embedded.” He said: “In this manner, it is implicitly connected to a universal information matrix.”
https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/article/a-new-theory-of-consciousness-the-mind-exists-as-a-field-connected-to-the-brain
JUNG ON THE PARANORMAL
"By heightened unconscious performance we mean that peculiar automatic process whose results are not available for the conscious psychic activity of the individual...In this field we meet with a not unjustifiable scepticism on the part of the scientific pundits...occultism has claimed a special right to this field" (Jung, Psychiatric Studies, Vol 1, 80).
"One of the most important influences on Jung's theory of synchronicity was his frequent experiencing of seemingly paranormal events and the lifelong interest in spiritualistic speculations...that matter is animated by a life force that is unconscious, intelligent, and beyond space and time...The medium's (Jung's cousin) ability when in the trance state to manifest a variety of seemingly autonomous personalities provided evidence for the dissociability and unconscious functioning of the psyche...eventually lead to the formulation first of complexes and later archetypes...did not dismiss the psychic dissociation as simply pathological...could also be therapeutic, representing 'attempts of the future character to break through'...foreshadows later ideas of compensation and individuation, while the practice of consciously interacting with fantasy images prefigures his method of active imagination" (R. Main, The Rupture of Time, 68).
ARCHETYPAL PSYCHOLOGY
Archetypal psychology is a switch from science to metaphor, from concepts to engagement. Archetypes are universal prototypes. Soul makes fantasy images we embody, consciously or unconsciously. Soul-making approximates what it means to be “in soul,” esse in anima, immersed in both an internal and external process of transmutation. It is about the process of developing the metaphoric quality of the image into the ontological ground.
Archetypal psychology takes us beyond the conventional systematized categories of cognitive and even Jungian psychology and beckons us toward more open, less ossified thinking, to following out uncertainty which opens a new way, an emergent way. It invites us into the realm of the gods, living presences which shape and inform our behavior, feelings, thoughts, and aspirations, beyond the buzzword categories of cognitive psychologies.
It asks us to see-through conventional categories such as 'dysfunction' to these informing roots to develop an engaged relationship with what informs the phenomena - conditioning spacetime, memory, and consciousness. Rather than staying concerned with what is conceptually wrong, judging it, and trying to fix, bypass, or transcend it. This inclusive aesthetic approach is naturally enriching and inherent, not contrived nor interpretive meaning flows through it as self-generative images.
"If in individuation the method is to attend to what comes to us from the unconscious, in soul-making the method is extended beyond the special circumstances of self-reflection, dreaming and active imagination into all aspects of life that generate imaginative sparks of a certain magnitude."says Hillman.
Psyche is an interaction and communication with images and symbols that deeply affect us. Images reveal our depth perception. Global emphasis on urgent ecological awareness implies a reflowering of the Neo-Platonic and alchemical notion of ANIMA MUNDI the Soul of the World. Anima Mundi is not an archetype, but an archetypal way of seeing--seeing through the world. Emphasizes soul and Anima Mundi, with a mythopoetic approach that prioritizes imagery and soul-making.
Our obstinate problems provide deeper communication with the psyche. This is engagement with self-arising inherent impulses of the psyche, even chance, surprise, accident, or illness. "The world and the gods are dead or alive according to the condition of our souls." -James Hillman
It is the process of making psyche matter, of making the World Soul – the Anima Mundi – through image, phenomena and pathologizing. It is not limited to so-called spiritual matters, but spiritualizes the whole sociopolitical field of human endeavors so that it all “matters.” Imagination is stimulated by mythical fiction, which generates mythological imagination and speculative freedom of the soul. Wisdom transcends theoretical fixations and collective parroting.
Meaning is inherent so interpretation is not required. “To propose a psychology of Anima Mundi is to invite oneself to a relationship of intimacy with the soul of the world and its objects…From this point of view, the psychic reality of the world’s soul becomes available from the images."
Archetypal psychology relativizes and deliteralizes the notion of ego with multiple perspectives and focuses on what it calls the psyche, or soul, and the deepest patterns of psychic functioning, "the fundamental fantasies that animate all life" (Moore, in Hillman, 1991).
Self is not the main archetype of the collective unconscious as Jung thought; each polysemous archetype is of equal value, even if the Self contains or is suffused by all other archetypes, each giving life to the other. There is no way to engage in soul-making if we keep ourselves attached exclusively to the Self. Process work stresses awareness of the many-voiced "unconscious" as an ongoing flow of experience. This approach expands Jung's work beyond verbal individual therapy to include body experience, an ensouled world, altered states as well as multicultural approaches.
AESTHETIC APPROACH
https://ionamiller.weebly.com/artists-statement-2016.html
https://ionamiller.weebly.com/science-art-2015.html
Art is a liminal space of self-transformation. Works with a trans- quality go beyond mundane time, space, logic and personal taste or aesthetic preference. They connect with our essential Being at the core, reflected in nature and art, piercing time to find eternity. Transcending content, they open a new dimension...an invisible initiatory dimension. From here the artist gives birth to the secret space of the image itself which comes alive by giving shape to that secret.
Mythopoetics, self exploration, Know Thyself, relies more on recognizing the way in which ideas have to fit together to reveal hidden or divine patterns. An art-centered paradigm that is all about what is happening. All these threads together may not produce a coherent and true narrative. This ideal eternal history is one in which truth is attained by imaginatively linking different elements together to reveal the hidden order, the metaphysical truth to history. Rather than adding art to the environment, it creates its own environment.
The ethic is one of engagement, participation, and co-creation. moving deeper into love. There may be a missing dimension in our worldview. We need to uncover collaborations with new spaces and the healing power of narrative history. All reality has rhythmic, musical, and artistic correspondences. Perceived through the heart, the beauty and ugliness of the world resets our moral compass. Images with coherent resonance can be dynamically structured with drama, narrative, compensation, contextuality, and self-organization. Process philosophy is characterized by an attempt to reconcile the diverse intuitions found in human experience (such as religious, scientific, and aesthetic) into a coherent holistic scheme.
Process philosophy seeks a return to a neo-classical realism that avoids subjectivism. This mystery is rooted in a synthesis of philosophy and aesthetics in spoken and unspoken languages. It is the self-organizing creation and participatory engagement of a new myth -- a mythical domain, sharing symbolic meaning, fantasy, and rituals. Things are never literally what they seem in a world of wonders. This challenges our mundane positions, habits, and defenses.
The archaic mind mirrors the modern, exposing the subtext if life. There is no artificial distinction between the pursuit of knowledge and self-knowledge and aesthetics. Beauty is beyond aesthetic because it is more than skin deep and touches something in us. Beauty is an affair of the heart but speaks to our whole being.
The epic journey is a search for soul, a search for self, a challenge or mission to find what cannot be found in the ordinary world. When the soul becomes our central trope, we find our opus, the hidden agenda of being. Life itself is initiating us. It seeks and sometimes embodies a new way of being, an ethic and aesthetic that is open and psychophysically transformational -- morphogenic. The art of survival equals the survival of art. Ideally, it is the harmonization of cognitive awareness with empathic and compassionate emotional sensitivity to the zeitgeist of the day. It implies a global conscious awareness, "getting” the Big Picture, and perhaps doing something about it.
“I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, that every symbol and combination of symbol led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with truly a meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang holiness is forever being created.”
(Hesse, Magister Ludi)
The womb of the mother is the psyche or soul, including the animate natural world, millions of years of instinctive animal life, the dwelling place of the dead, and transformer of life cycles. For us, it is a shift to ecological imagination, inclusive biospheric awareness, and empathizing with nature as an imperative to keep the world habitable and humane.
Connecting the local and global, the past and future, the organism and the environment, place and the biosphere requires an ability to move through ecological and evolutionary space and time. This is the ability to identify with and internalize biospheric processes, and to finally understand that human reflective awareness is a manifestation of the biosphere.
We cannot imagine ourselves apart from the planet. Human behavior originates in experiences of environment. Connectedness positively relates to environmental behaviors. In this time of ecological collapse we cannot shield our souls from the psychological effects of the destruction. We exist in the midst of psyche which is beyond human nature.
The killing off of the world has killed off a part of ourselves. Imagination is not bound by the rational assumption that any psychic life discovered in the world was put there by us. Psyche and matter are two aspects of the same essence.
Imaginal vision is a way of being in the world, the act by which things take on meaning and become symbol and metaphor through imaginal integration of perceiver and landscape. The intuitive experience of soul in the world cannot be collapsed into five senses. It is only possible when the human barriers that separate us from nature dissolve.
We cannot neglect the soul of the world to focus only on the soul of the individual. The mythopoetic dimension exists everywhere in animate and inanimate things and a dynamic relatedness to land as a basis for transformative living. We suffer from that lost connection, the worldly dimension of our souls.
With mythopoetic perception we don't just describe the land but participate in it. We can awaken to our own interiority and and attune our imaginal depths to those of nature. Something divine awakens in us when we can respond to the divinity of the world.
Soul is in the world not just humans. We must extend the clinical into the environmental reanimation of nature, not for ego development but soul expression of deep primal levels of psyche, which we have not left behind. We must move beyond the clinic and even devotional chamber into the animated world of anima mundi with a sense of agency.
Our panpsychic environmental space and the psychic interior of the world is naturally therapeutic and sacred. Panpsychism is the philosophical view that consciousness or a mind-like aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. Destruction of the natural world and our relationship with the natural environment is the most pressing issue we confront today.
(Hesse, Magister Ludi)
The womb of the mother is the psyche or soul, including the animate natural world, millions of years of instinctive animal life, the dwelling place of the dead, and transformer of life cycles. For us, it is a shift to ecological imagination, inclusive biospheric awareness, and empathizing with nature as an imperative to keep the world habitable and humane.
Connecting the local and global, the past and future, the organism and the environment, place and the biosphere requires an ability to move through ecological and evolutionary space and time. This is the ability to identify with and internalize biospheric processes, and to finally understand that human reflective awareness is a manifestation of the biosphere.
We cannot imagine ourselves apart from the planet. Human behavior originates in experiences of environment. Connectedness positively relates to environmental behaviors. In this time of ecological collapse we cannot shield our souls from the psychological effects of the destruction. We exist in the midst of psyche which is beyond human nature.
The killing off of the world has killed off a part of ourselves. Imagination is not bound by the rational assumption that any psychic life discovered in the world was put there by us. Psyche and matter are two aspects of the same essence.
Imaginal vision is a way of being in the world, the act by which things take on meaning and become symbol and metaphor through imaginal integration of perceiver and landscape. The intuitive experience of soul in the world cannot be collapsed into five senses. It is only possible when the human barriers that separate us from nature dissolve.
We cannot neglect the soul of the world to focus only on the soul of the individual. The mythopoetic dimension exists everywhere in animate and inanimate things and a dynamic relatedness to land as a basis for transformative living. We suffer from that lost connection, the worldly dimension of our souls.
With mythopoetic perception we don't just describe the land but participate in it. We can awaken to our own interiority and and attune our imaginal depths to those of nature. Something divine awakens in us when we can respond to the divinity of the world.
Soul is in the world not just humans. We must extend the clinical into the environmental reanimation of nature, not for ego development but soul expression of deep primal levels of psyche, which we have not left behind. We must move beyond the clinic and even devotional chamber into the animated world of anima mundi with a sense of agency.
Our panpsychic environmental space and the psychic interior of the world is naturally therapeutic and sacred. Panpsychism is the philosophical view that consciousness or a mind-like aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. Destruction of the natural world and our relationship with the natural environment is the most pressing issue we confront today.
"The deepest core of life is poetry and symbol." - Dane Rudhyar
Symbolically Modelling the Internal Landscape
Metaphor is a connective pattern. The whole range of affect is bound up with embedded tissue memory and coherent metaphor -- how we know what we know about self, world, and cosmos. Such reactions are inherently linked to the human nervous system. Dysfunction has the potential to cause effects in the physical body and unusual states in the mind but unconscious skill also resides in the parasympathetic nervous system.
Metaphor in Language, Thought, & Action
Body and culture can be the source domain for metaphors. The body is our most important object of knowledge. One kind of experience is understood in terms of another. Many idiomatic phrases and ideomotor responses use body parts metaphorically.
Metaphors function as conduits and spatial or temporal orientations. Imagination has tangible effects on the body; changing attitudes has physical, emotional, and behavior effects. Attending to such body language can be grounding and calming to the nervous system. Your body may be a wonderland, but it is also an underland.
Our 'physical presence', large or small is an embodiment of our ancestors and our experience. We bury not only relatives, but our feelings; we stuff them down. Different 'parts' of ourselves go through changes in physiology and function. We can despise our behaviors by dissociating, attempts to vacate the body, saying we were 'beside ourselves.'
Ideomotor responses can be used to by-pass the conscious mind and access the emotional body and unconscious mind.Touch, kinesthesia, and proprioception help us sense the dark body, as do magnetoreception, thermal sensing, haptics (pressure), balance, thirst, hunger and 'skin talk'. Metaphor pervades everyday language. We can act out such sensory metaphors, as the 'thirst' for knowledge, 'hunger' for affection, feelings of vertigo when triggered by issues, blowing hot or cold, getting 'chills' being on or off balance, grounded or ungrounded feelings.
Metaphors give meaning to form, helping us move from the known to the unknown. We talk about others being 'a thorn in the side,' 'a pain in the neck,' or elsewhere. Anger 'chaps my hide,' we grind our teeth and clench our jaws, and a variety of other descriptions of our reactions, that sometimes become literal or pathological as they are so unconscious. Even reason is not disembodied. Our ideas, concepts, and worldviews have a genealogy of their own development. Metaphors function within the worldview of the individual.
Emotions 'touch' us. All kinds of conflicting ways of knowing abide within us. Recognizing our pain leads us toward wisdom and self-knowledge, and how our immediate and ancestral family might be embodied in more or less meaningful ways. This leads us toward transgenerational integration, new insights and self-healing.
Processes below the threshold of sensory awareness are associated with the autonomic nervous system. There is a cycle of meaning and understanding that plays out in symbols, mythology, rituals, and physical experience. Recurrent patterns are embodied in form and functionality.
Linguistic, cognitive, sensory-affective, and neuropsychological processes play a role in therapeutic changes resulting from self-generated metaphors. Over time we learn what such experiences feel like in our particular body. With internal scrutiny, subjective insights can be useful or productive sources of knowledge.
Lakoff & Johnson describe experiential gestalts rooted in our bodies, and interactions with the physical environment and interactions with others. Cultures are grounded in conceptual metaphors.
In the reciprocal relationship of mind-body we also apply a broad range of metaphysical and philosophical notions that have no ontological reality to ourselves. Metaphors inform human awareness through reinforcement of the power of enacted symbols that take us deeper into the mind. The primordial serpent bites its tail.
Our unconscious is surely located in the body, and you mustn't think this a contradiction to the statement I usually make, that the collective unconscious is everywhere; for if you could put yourself into your sympathetic system, you would know what sympathy is-you would understand why the nervous system is called sympathetic. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 749-751.
--Iona Miller, http://ancestorsandarchetypes.weebly.com/
Symbolically Modelling the Internal Landscape
Metaphor is a connective pattern. The whole range of affect is bound up with embedded tissue memory and coherent metaphor -- how we know what we know about self, world, and cosmos. Such reactions are inherently linked to the human nervous system. Dysfunction has the potential to cause effects in the physical body and unusual states in the mind but unconscious skill also resides in the parasympathetic nervous system.
Metaphor in Language, Thought, & Action
Body and culture can be the source domain for metaphors. The body is our most important object of knowledge. One kind of experience is understood in terms of another. Many idiomatic phrases and ideomotor responses use body parts metaphorically.
Metaphors function as conduits and spatial or temporal orientations. Imagination has tangible effects on the body; changing attitudes has physical, emotional, and behavior effects. Attending to such body language can be grounding and calming to the nervous system. Your body may be a wonderland, but it is also an underland.
Our 'physical presence', large or small is an embodiment of our ancestors and our experience. We bury not only relatives, but our feelings; we stuff them down. Different 'parts' of ourselves go through changes in physiology and function. We can despise our behaviors by dissociating, attempts to vacate the body, saying we were 'beside ourselves.'
Ideomotor responses can be used to by-pass the conscious mind and access the emotional body and unconscious mind.Touch, kinesthesia, and proprioception help us sense the dark body, as do magnetoreception, thermal sensing, haptics (pressure), balance, thirst, hunger and 'skin talk'. Metaphor pervades everyday language. We can act out such sensory metaphors, as the 'thirst' for knowledge, 'hunger' for affection, feelings of vertigo when triggered by issues, blowing hot or cold, getting 'chills' being on or off balance, grounded or ungrounded feelings.
Metaphors give meaning to form, helping us move from the known to the unknown. We talk about others being 'a thorn in the side,' 'a pain in the neck,' or elsewhere. Anger 'chaps my hide,' we grind our teeth and clench our jaws, and a variety of other descriptions of our reactions, that sometimes become literal or pathological as they are so unconscious. Even reason is not disembodied. Our ideas, concepts, and worldviews have a genealogy of their own development. Metaphors function within the worldview of the individual.
Emotions 'touch' us. All kinds of conflicting ways of knowing abide within us. Recognizing our pain leads us toward wisdom and self-knowledge, and how our immediate and ancestral family might be embodied in more or less meaningful ways. This leads us toward transgenerational integration, new insights and self-healing.
Processes below the threshold of sensory awareness are associated with the autonomic nervous system. There is a cycle of meaning and understanding that plays out in symbols, mythology, rituals, and physical experience. Recurrent patterns are embodied in form and functionality.
Linguistic, cognitive, sensory-affective, and neuropsychological processes play a role in therapeutic changes resulting from self-generated metaphors. Over time we learn what such experiences feel like in our particular body. With internal scrutiny, subjective insights can be useful or productive sources of knowledge.
Lakoff & Johnson describe experiential gestalts rooted in our bodies, and interactions with the physical environment and interactions with others. Cultures are grounded in conceptual metaphors.
In the reciprocal relationship of mind-body we also apply a broad range of metaphysical and philosophical notions that have no ontological reality to ourselves. Metaphors inform human awareness through reinforcement of the power of enacted symbols that take us deeper into the mind. The primordial serpent bites its tail.
Our unconscious is surely located in the body, and you mustn't think this a contradiction to the statement I usually make, that the collective unconscious is everywhere; for if you could put yourself into your sympathetic system, you would know what sympathy is-you would understand why the nervous system is called sympathetic. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 749-751.
--Iona Miller, http://ancestorsandarchetypes.weebly.com/
We tend to think with awareness of our thoughts. We analyze and logically assess our thoughts. We decide if the thought/idea/belief is right, true, and correct, for us, or not. We either give it subconscious access or we reject it, in effect bounce it out. When subconscious access is allowed, we amplify it in our imagination. We locate memories to justify, validate, and defend it. We feel it. We do it. Our emotions drive our behaviors because we tend to behave the way we feel.
When we waken from one of these philosophical dreams into another, we find the crumbling 'truths' were simulations or simulacra all along. What felt authentic, even sacred, at the time is revealed as a sham. A change of heart correlates with the revisioning. The belief's charge of divinity came from the believer's attribution, not its inherent qualities. It is now revealed as a projection. We tend to 'worship' the dynamics of our understanding, divinize the presumed truth of a numinosum -- ontologically, historically, and personally.
There is a pre-physical, unobservable domain of potentiality in quantum theory. It is the basis of fundamental interconnectedness and wholeness of Reality. Nonlocal consciousness is not confined to specific points in space, including brains or bodies nor the present moment. It is an ordering principle that can inject information into disorganized or random systems. It can operate beyond mere awareness, unconsciously, drawing on individual and collective consciousness, as well as the world or environment.
Coherence or resonance may be expressed as compassion, empathy, love, unity, oneness, and connectedness. Consciousness affects or informs human and nonhuman or inanimate forms alike. Consciousness is present everywhere in spacetime, so has no need to "go" or "be sent" via a medium or carrier. Synchronous events, including intentional or directed healing, may work via coherence, an entanglement or resonance effect, but we should be careful not to mistake this field effect for the mind itself, which permeates and undergirds all. Still none of us has any idea how anything material could be conscious, so we must simply stand in that Mystery. We share its essential nature; it is the cosmos within us. We are that.
When we waken from one of these philosophical dreams into another, we find the crumbling 'truths' were simulations or simulacra all along. What felt authentic, even sacred, at the time is revealed as a sham. A change of heart correlates with the revisioning. The belief's charge of divinity came from the believer's attribution, not its inherent qualities. It is now revealed as a projection. We tend to 'worship' the dynamics of our understanding, divinize the presumed truth of a numinosum -- ontologically, historically, and personally.
There is a pre-physical, unobservable domain of potentiality in quantum theory. It is the basis of fundamental interconnectedness and wholeness of Reality. Nonlocal consciousness is not confined to specific points in space, including brains or bodies nor the present moment. It is an ordering principle that can inject information into disorganized or random systems. It can operate beyond mere awareness, unconsciously, drawing on individual and collective consciousness, as well as the world or environment.
Coherence or resonance may be expressed as compassion, empathy, love, unity, oneness, and connectedness. Consciousness affects or informs human and nonhuman or inanimate forms alike. Consciousness is present everywhere in spacetime, so has no need to "go" or "be sent" via a medium or carrier. Synchronous events, including intentional or directed healing, may work via coherence, an entanglement or resonance effect, but we should be careful not to mistake this field effect for the mind itself, which permeates and undergirds all. Still none of us has any idea how anything material could be conscious, so we must simply stand in that Mystery. We share its essential nature; it is the cosmos within us. We are that.
MYTHOGRAPHY
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ECOLOGUE
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ARCHETYPAL PSYCHOLOGY
Philosophical, Cultural, Mythological, & Scientific Studies
at the Threshold of Psyche & Substance
Philosophical, Cultural, Mythological, & Scientific Studies
at the Threshold of Psyche & Substance
The Daimon
Thomas Moore offered the following during a recent Spirituality & Practice e-course on Fairy Tales.He warned against being too literal about where the daimon is leading.
"I'd like to say something about finding the power (daimon) that will reveal to you the key to your life and identity. Jung wrote a great deal about individuation, becoming an individual through many trials and transformations. Hillman doesn't use this language, but once he commented on individuation, meaning that each person and thing in the world has to be seen in its individuality. He says that this revelation of the particular is especially the work of Aphrodite, showing how an individual is fully present and beautiful. We tend to search for identity, health and success. But a beautiful person is truly something to appreciate and aim for.
"I would add that we don't have to individuate in a way that sets us apart from others. We might individuate by being a good partner or member of a community or a fine human being. We certainly don't need to be free of neurosis to be a decent and creative human being. The quest for identity doesn't ever have to end. That satisfaction is not what it means to individuate. A daimonic life is not one in which we have reached the goal or have a chiseled identity. It's one where we respond well to invitations for deeper and more meaningful living. It's a process. As the great philosopher of soul Plotinus said, we are always sculpting our soul. The sculptor is forever making us an individual" (© Thomas Moore and Spirituality & Practice 2019).
Plato, in his Myth of Er, said our soul chooses a purpose for us to fulfill on earth. Prior to birth we pass through the forget the fate our soul had chosen for us. But our daimon, a spiritual companion, acts as a “carrier of our destiny” and ensures we fulfill the fate our soul had chosen before birth.Heraclitus, prior to Plato, stated that “a man’s daimon is his fate”, as a sort of force or indwelling law which determines the course of one’s life - our vocation.
James Hillman used the daimon to account for the urge we all feel to discover and align our life with a personal calling, unique to our individuality and interests, and to which we can passionately devote our life.It is a psychological complex or force existing in everyone, that helps us find our personal calling, and provide us with the motivation to follow it. Many geniuses have spoken of a daimon, or inner voice, who accompanied them throughout life.
“Among his various possible beings each man always finds one which is his genuine and authentic being. The voice which calls him to that authentic being is what we call “vocation.” But the majority of men devote themselves to silencing that voice of the vocation and refusing to hear it. They manage to make a noise within themselves…to distract their own attention in order not to hear it; and they defraud themselves by substituting for their genuine selves a false course of life.” (Jose Ortega Y Gasset)
“For the daimon surprises. It crosses my intentions with its interventions, sometimes with a little twinge of hesitation, sometimes with a quick crush on someone or something. These surprises feel small and irrational; you can brush them aside; yet they also convey a sense of importance, which can make you say afterward: “Fate.” “A calling may be postponed, avoided, intermittently missed. It may also possess you completely. Whatever; eventually it will out. It makes its claim. The daimon does not go away.”
“Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may remember this “something” as a signal moment in childhood when an urge out of nowhere, a fascination, a peculiar turn of events struck like an annunciation: This is what I must do, this is what I’ve got to have. This is who I am.” (The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, James Hillman)
https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/daimon.html
"The human soul being regarded as the offspring or emanation of the Deity, the whole scope of the Philalethean system was directed to the development and perfecting of its divine faculties. Plotinus taught that there was in the soul a returning impulse, love, which attracted it inward toward its origin and center, the Eternal Good. While the person who does not understand how the soul contains the Beautiful within itself will seek by laborious effort to realize beauty without, the wise man recognizes it within himself, develops the idea by withdrawal into himself, concentrating his attention, and so floating upward toward the divine fountain, the stream of which flows within him. The Infinite is not known through the reason, which distinguishes and defines, but by a faculty superior to reason, by entering upon a state in which the individual, so to speak, ceases to be his finite self, in which state divine essence is communicated to him. This is ecstasy, which Plotinus defines to be the liberation of the mind from its finite consciousness, becoming one and identified with the Infinite." (Alexander Wilder)
Thomas Moore offered the following during a recent Spirituality & Practice e-course on Fairy Tales.He warned against being too literal about where the daimon is leading.
"I'd like to say something about finding the power (daimon) that will reveal to you the key to your life and identity. Jung wrote a great deal about individuation, becoming an individual through many trials and transformations. Hillman doesn't use this language, but once he commented on individuation, meaning that each person and thing in the world has to be seen in its individuality. He says that this revelation of the particular is especially the work of Aphrodite, showing how an individual is fully present and beautiful. We tend to search for identity, health and success. But a beautiful person is truly something to appreciate and aim for.
"I would add that we don't have to individuate in a way that sets us apart from others. We might individuate by being a good partner or member of a community or a fine human being. We certainly don't need to be free of neurosis to be a decent and creative human being. The quest for identity doesn't ever have to end. That satisfaction is not what it means to individuate. A daimonic life is not one in which we have reached the goal or have a chiseled identity. It's one where we respond well to invitations for deeper and more meaningful living. It's a process. As the great philosopher of soul Plotinus said, we are always sculpting our soul. The sculptor is forever making us an individual" (© Thomas Moore and Spirituality & Practice 2019).
Plato, in his Myth of Er, said our soul chooses a purpose for us to fulfill on earth. Prior to birth we pass through the forget the fate our soul had chosen for us. But our daimon, a spiritual companion, acts as a “carrier of our destiny” and ensures we fulfill the fate our soul had chosen before birth.Heraclitus, prior to Plato, stated that “a man’s daimon is his fate”, as a sort of force or indwelling law which determines the course of one’s life - our vocation.
James Hillman used the daimon to account for the urge we all feel to discover and align our life with a personal calling, unique to our individuality and interests, and to which we can passionately devote our life.It is a psychological complex or force existing in everyone, that helps us find our personal calling, and provide us with the motivation to follow it. Many geniuses have spoken of a daimon, or inner voice, who accompanied them throughout life.
“Among his various possible beings each man always finds one which is his genuine and authentic being. The voice which calls him to that authentic being is what we call “vocation.” But the majority of men devote themselves to silencing that voice of the vocation and refusing to hear it. They manage to make a noise within themselves…to distract their own attention in order not to hear it; and they defraud themselves by substituting for their genuine selves a false course of life.” (Jose Ortega Y Gasset)
“For the daimon surprises. It crosses my intentions with its interventions, sometimes with a little twinge of hesitation, sometimes with a quick crush on someone or something. These surprises feel small and irrational; you can brush them aside; yet they also convey a sense of importance, which can make you say afterward: “Fate.” “A calling may be postponed, avoided, intermittently missed. It may also possess you completely. Whatever; eventually it will out. It makes its claim. The daimon does not go away.”
“Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may remember this “something” as a signal moment in childhood when an urge out of nowhere, a fascination, a peculiar turn of events struck like an annunciation: This is what I must do, this is what I’ve got to have. This is who I am.” (The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, James Hillman)
https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/daimon.html
"The human soul being regarded as the offspring or emanation of the Deity, the whole scope of the Philalethean system was directed to the development and perfecting of its divine faculties. Plotinus taught that there was in the soul a returning impulse, love, which attracted it inward toward its origin and center, the Eternal Good. While the person who does not understand how the soul contains the Beautiful within itself will seek by laborious effort to realize beauty without, the wise man recognizes it within himself, develops the idea by withdrawal into himself, concentrating his attention, and so floating upward toward the divine fountain, the stream of which flows within him. The Infinite is not known through the reason, which distinguishes and defines, but by a faculty superior to reason, by entering upon a state in which the individual, so to speak, ceases to be his finite self, in which state divine essence is communicated to him. This is ecstasy, which Plotinus defines to be the liberation of the mind from its finite consciousness, becoming one and identified with the Infinite." (Alexander Wilder)
A Scourge of Our Times
Ego Inflation, Narcissism,
Personal & Collective Shadow
Ego inflation is paradoxically a regression into unconsciousness and leads to emotional flooding and an invasion of the unconscious. The unexplained incorporates the subjective experience. In Jungian psychology, inflation can be defined as: An over-expansion of the personality through identification with an archetype or, in pathological cases, with a historical or religious figure, which exceeds individual limitations. (ref Definitions of Jungian Terms).
Imaginal Superiority
The expansion of the soul is experienced as inflation of the ego -- ego superficiality with no concept of psychological 'digestion' or integration. It is both a psychological and spiritual phenomenon. This inflation or distancing creates a greater disconnect from the spirit/body. The problem of inflation occurs whether the ego is drowned in the larger self or the larger self is pretentiously assimilated to the ego.
We are, once aware of this problem, invited to do two things. One is watch ourselves for evidence of this imbalance. The other is to take with a grain of salt anyone's assertion that they have just presented you with "the truth" or the most perfect or best representation of a certain idea or question.
Rather than an altruistic quest, it becomes a regressive tendency, one of self-gratification, a self-consoling fantasy for what is not happening in the daily life. We think we are bigger than we really are. Inflation justifies the motivations of anger to prevail and dominate. In many cases the ego inflation and grandiosity has swept away the individual ego's idea of it own importance, and seeks to draw others into its sphere of confusion.
The ego seeks reinforcement for its views, and often will believe it is entertaining its listeners or readers. Even the sincere get ego inflated by their experiences, but some really try to fill up a balloon and fly away. And some seem to succeed to the awe and amazement of many. But they are not the air, the breath, the spirit that fills the balloon--they are dead weight that is trying to contain it, thinking by doing so they are in control, when in fact they are now at the mercy of the winds.
Ego-inflation is a potential pitfall—Jung would call it a “shadow”—for anyone practicing a “spiritual path.” Indeed, without the prerequisite humor, honesty and humility, the danger only increases as one’s practice advances into the “higher” stages. Where the personal is denied, archetypal inflation can overwhelm the ego with an exaggerated persona. Minimally, the consequence of inflation is excessive pride in the presumed uniqueness -- the mask of bald ambition, a House of Cards, not a noble house. Pride goes before a fall. Jung's main injunction was a warning against inflation.
Merton reminds us, ego inflated people can be very sincere, very appealing, and very dangerous. Who are these people? Sometimes, we are, it is a part of the spiritual path and we must learn to recognize it. But there are also those who seem to be addicted to ego inflation, to the spiritual high it brings. They equate it with spirituality, with progress on the path. If there is no one to aid them, or if they make themselves impervious to aid, they can become lost. Just as in the balloon analogy, the inflated ego becomes a puppet for larger forces.
History is riddled with such claimants, with only the wise understanding that their kingdom is not of this world. Thus, to do so is immature "acting out". It is identification with a false ego state, rationalized by a paper trail which only takes on meaning when matched by lived reality. They hold on to every scrap of validation for dear life, often seeking publicity for themselves -- a self-augmenting experience. Self-evaluation is distorted.
This is a failure of self-regulation, the very self-sovereignty which is claimed. The unbalanced fancy themselves possessing a social or spiritual status that in fact they do not really have. The distortion is a living out that demonstrates just the opposite of the claim. The ego cannot distinguish what belongs to itself and what is simply universal. Perhaps some books or person has "blown air in their raft" to corroborate and validate their own view. Thus, the blind lead the blind. The ego sets itself up as the center of the psyche.
The Narcissist does not go beyond the ordinary egoic identification at the level of the basic surface consciousness (even if they believe they do). The Inflationist has, but has attained a sort of psychotic identification with an Attractor or archetype. They have in other words lost touch with common-sense reality. The Narcissist lacks empathy. The inflationist lacks any sense of perspective at all.
Inflation, as defined here, is not the same as narcissism. Narcissism is an extreme form of egotism, which is associated (in the case of so-called gurus as well as ordinary people) with gross emotional immaturity, lack of empathy, and even child-like behavior (not child-like in the sense of innocence, but in the sense of selfish, wanton, unrestrained, uncaring). It pertains to lack of development of the affective body and when excessive results in the narcissistic personality disorder.
Over-Valuing Oneself
Inflation may occur even in a partially enlightened individual, for example, or a person on a drug trip, or having a psychotic experience. They connect with something much vaster than their small human personality and are swallowed up by it. They identify with it and confuse their little human personalities with this much larger power.
The ego is potentially engulfed and disintegrated by the archetype. Over-valuation is usually over-compensation for someone who lacks personal achievement and stability in their own right, who attempt of idealize themselves as 'The One', however they imagine that.
We can call these big vast things "attractors". In the olden days they were called "gods" (this term is retained by contemporary hermeticists). Jung calls them "archetypes". It really doesn't matter what name we use, or what conceptuual framework. What does matter is the dynamic autonomous reality of these forces.
The danger of retreating into a persona of fatuous, unfounded, “noble character” at the same time wreaks havoc on all those around such posers, irregardless of pedigree. No one is fooled by such collusion except those who remain in the dark maintained by the contamination of Persona with Shadow.
The largely emotional over-reaction substitutes an egoic grandiose fantasy, a delusional self-hypnotic trance of control for the Great Work of a lifetime. Most spiritual disciplines and communities exert pressure on persons who have become too grandly public in their virtues or presumed status.
M.-L. von Franz considered that "the dark side of the Self is the most dangerous thing of all, precisely because the Self is the greatest power in the psyche. It can cause people to 'spin' megalomanic or other delusionary fantasies that catch them up", so that the victim "thinks with mounting excitement that he has grasped the great cosmic riddles; he therefore loses all touch with human reality. M-L von Franz, "The Process of Individuation" in Jung ed.
In everyday life, the Self may be projected onto such powerful figures as the state, God, the universe or fate. Anthony Stevens, On Jung (London 1990) p. 41
When such projections are withdrawn, there can be a destructive inflation of the personality. One potential counterbalance to this is however the social or collective aspects of the Self. Even if they have authentic transcendent enlightenment experiences of the Intermediate Zone, it can be distorted with side effects such as paranoia, and secondary mental and emotional self-deception.
Where both narcissism and inflation is present, the delusional will have tied up a lot of egotism and ego-defense mechanisms in this belief, and when their claims are challenged they become extremely defenisive and hostile and engage in rampant shadow projection on the wicked person or people who would dare imply such a thing. They may also encourage others to behave in similar ways, too.
Over-Identification
Contrary to Jung's injunctions, such identifications are taken literally, and may be fed and reinforced by the delusions of others in the same boat. Negative inflation means to be over—identified with too great an absorption in the deeper self. This blocks rather than facilitates the transformative process. Anyone who immediately reacts to such suggestions is clearly a stakeholder in their own stalled process. This is the opposite of individuation which is freedom from grossly collective response and complexes. Supporting such allegations with metaphysical claims is another dodge.
What this means in practice is complete capitulation to the objective powers of the psyche, with all that this entails; a kind of figurative death, corresponding to the Judgment of the Dead in the Sidpa Bardo. It means the end of all conscious, rational, morally responsible conduct of life, and voluntary surrender to what the Bardo Thödol calls “karmic illusion.” Karmic illusion springs from belief in a visionary world of an extremely irrational nature, which neither accords with nor derives from our rational judgments but is the exclusive product of uninhibited imagination. It is sheer dream or “fantasy,” and every well-meaning person will instantly caution us against it; nor indeed can one see at first sight what is the difference between the fantasies of this kind and phantasmagoria of a lunatic.
(Jung 1964,11:846)
Lying or confabulating does not make the delusion so, nor does becoming incensed about it. In fact, it reveals the discrepancy. The collective is pretentiously assimilated by the ego. The over-identification is the opposite of the healthy psychological move. At the very least, it puts the cart before the horse. Such an ungrounded position poses an inherent psychological danger. It is a projection of exaggerated self-importance which ignores the dynamics of unconscious autonomous complexes.
Jung describes his remedy: assimilation of contents of the collective unconscious, not through identification, but through confrontation, avoiding equation with either the lowest or highest aspects of one’s own psyche.
Jung’s warning that inflation means identifying oneself with an archetypal motif is completely applicable to self-styled "royal" claimants. To do so means one is in the very first stage of initiation, utterly unconscious that the Persona or social mask is confounded with your Shadow self. It is a fallacious attempt to prop up a weak ego, not the claim of a "noble" ego or a valid claim of anything. As psychologists well know, the moral conflict is not to be settled merely by a declaration of superiority bordering on inhumanity, nor a declaration one is better than or fit to rule others in any way.
Afflicted pride is a version of ego-inflation which Jung sought to avoid by advising against identifying with assimilated contents. But people will defend their self-deluded self image to the grave, even when profoundly misconceived. It is an assurance of later problems and is an avoidance of the work of individuation. Jung's cautions are profound and highlight the enormity of the task we are attempting. Jung frequently warns against the inflation that comes with assimilation of autonomous complexes and identification with their content.
It will be remembered that in the analysis of the personal unconscious the first things to be added to consciousness are the personal contents and I suggested that these contents which have been repressed, but are capable of becoming conscious, should be called the personal unconscious. I also showed that to annex the deeper layers of the unconscious, which I have called the collective unconscious, produces an extension of the personality leading to the state of inflation. (Jung 1953)
Such an inflation can arise with the discovery of one's ancestral lines. Misperception and misapplication of genealogy findings leads to positive and negative inflation and all their attendant ills:
In projection, he vacillates between an extravagant and pathological deification of the doctor, and a contempt bristling with hatred. In introjection, he gets involved in a ridiculous self-deification, or else a moral self-laceration. The mistake he makes in both cases comes from attributing to a person the contents of the collective unconscious. In this way he makes himself or his partner either god or devil.
Here we see the characteristic effect of the archetype: it seizes hold of the psyche with a kind of primeval force and compels it to transgress the bounds of humanity. It causes exaggeration, a puffed-up attitude (inflation), loss of free will, delusion, and enthusiasm in good and evil alike (Jung 1953, 7:110).
Positive inflation of the religious or megalomaniacal sort can lead to assumptions of grandeur, viewing oneself as having the universal panacea:
The second possible mode of reaction is identification with the collective psyche. This
would be equivalent to acceptance of the inflation, but now exalted into a system. In other words, one would be the fortunate possessor of the great truth that was only waiting to be discovered, of the eschatological knowledge that means the healing of the nations. This attitude does not necessarily signify megalomania in direct form, but megalomania in the milder and more familiar form it takes in the reformer, the prophet, and the martyr. (Jung 1953, 7:260)
The prophet is convinced that he/she has the final truth but is merely inflated through identification with the forces of deep contents. The humble disciple affects the posture of only following the master’s dictums:
But besides the possibility of becoming a prophet, there is another alluring joy, subtler and apparently more legitimate: the joy of becoming a prophet’s disciple.…The disciple is unworthy; modestly he sits at the Master’s feet and guards against having ideas of his own. Mental laziness becomes a virtue; one can at least bask in the sun of a semidivine being.… Naturally the disciples always stick together, not out of love, but for the very understandable purpose of effortlessly confirming their own convictions by engendering an air of collective agreement.…[J]ust as the prophet is a primordial image from the collective psyche, so also is the disciple of the prophet. (Jung 1953, 7:263-265)
In both cases inflation is brought about by the collective unconscious, and the independence
of the individuality suffers injury. In a similar vein:
These few examples may suffice to show what kind of spirit animated these movements. They were made up of people who identified themselves (or were identified) with God, who deemed themselves supermen, had a critical approach to the gospels, followed the promptings of the inner man, and understood the kingdom of heaven to be within. In a sense, therefore, they were modern in their outlook, but they had a religious inflation instead of the rationalistic and political psychosis that is the affliction of our day. (Jung 1969, 9:140)
Jung advises against identifying with offices and titles since such excludes the richness of our situation:
A very common instance is the humorless way in which many men identify themselves with their business or their titles. The office I hold is certainly my special activity; but it is also a collective factor that has come into existence historically through the cooperation of many people and whose dignity rests solely on collective approval. When, therefore, I identify myself with my office or title, I behave as though I myself were the whole complex of social factors of which that office consists, or as though I were not only the bearer of the office, but also and at the same time the approval of society. I have made an extraordinary extension of myself and have usurped qualities which are not in me but outside me. (Jung 1953, 7:227)
Ego inflation is an over-compensation for an otherwise non-illustrious personality, which is the opposite of self-realization or self-actualization. And:
There is, however, yet another thing to be learnt from this example, namely that these
transpersonal contents are not just inert or dead matter that can be annexed at will. Rather they are living entities which exert an attractive force upon the conscious mind. Identification with one’s office or one’s title is very attractive indeed, which is precisely why so many men are nothing more than the decorum accorded to them by society. In vain would one look for a personality behind the husk. Underneath all the padding one would find a very pitiable little creature. That is why the office—or whatever their outer husk may be—is so attractive: it offers easy compensation for personal deficiencies. (Jung 1953, 7:230)
The basic problem is that one has lost a healthy respect for the need to mediate between the
conscious and the unconscious, thereby (in one version) inflating the importance of the ego:
To the extent that the integrated contents are parts of the self, we can expect this influence [of assimilation] to be considerable. Their assimilation augments not only the area of the field of consciousness but also the importance of the ego, especially when, as usually happens, the ego lacks any critical approach to the unconscious. In that case it is easily overpowered and becomes identical with the contents that have been assimilated.…I should only like to mention that the more numerous and the more significant the unconscious contents which are assimilated to the ego, the closer the approximation of the ego to the self, even though this approximation must be a never-ending process. This inevitably produces an inflation of the ego, unless a critical line of demarcation is drawn between it and the unconscious figures. (Jung 1969, 9:43-44)
The work of recovery is to adjust what Jung called the Ego/Self Axis; as he conceptualized it, life begins in a state of inflation, with the ego submerged in the Self. In healthy development, the ego and the Self separate, such that the ego is able to differentiate reality from fantasy, but is also able to transform the enchanted energies of the Self into actualization in the world. [Big egos attempt] to inflate identity on the royalty of the timeless Self. This results in a vacillation between alienation and inflation, in which the missing link is re-acceptance after a fall from grandiosity.
In the inflated state, with the bewitchment of the unconscious amplified through the use of alcohol or drugs, the personality becomes a fractured pantheon of the demi-gods, or archetypes: the tragic Artist, the Hero, the Scholar, the Rebel, the divine Victim. By identifying God or the Higher Power as other than the ego, the personality becomes "right sized," and learns to live "life on life's terms," bounded by space and temporality, by the body and the limitations of reality. At the same time, through daily prayer and meditation, the connection to this other remains, such that reality is neither the barren desert of alienation, nor the engulfing allure of the siren's song, but is both connected to, and separate from, the Other of the Self.
http://jungian12steps.org/12steps.html
An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding
contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it dead. Paradoxically enough, inflation is a regression of
consciousness into unconsciousness. This always happens when consciousness takes too many unconscious contents upon itself and loses the faculty of discrimination, the sine qua non of all consciousness.…It seems to me of some importance, therefore, that a few individuals, or people individually, should begin to understand that there are contents which do not belong to the ego-personality, but must be ascribed to a psychic non-ego. This mental operation has to be undertaken if we want to avoid a threatening inflation. (Jung 1968, 12:563)
Jung’s view is that certain contents, although associated with the ego merely by the fact of
being in the collective unconscious, are definitely non-ego and must be left so. Otherwise,
one is swallowed up and destroyed by them:
…they are meant to fulfill their earthly existence with conviction and not allow themselves any spiritual inflation, otherwise they will end up in the belly of the spider. In other words, they should not set the ego in the highest place and make it the ultimate authority, but should ever be mindful of the fact that it is not sole master in its own house and is surrounded on all sides by the and shut out too much life. As always, life is a voyage between Scylla and Charybdis.
(Jung 1966,16:502)
He identifies the two perils eloquently:
Even when the conscious mind does not identify itself with the inclinations of the
unconscious, it still has to face them and somehow take account of them in order
that they may play their part in the life of the individual, however difficult this may
be. For if the unconscious is not allowed to express itself through word and deed,
through worry and suffering, through our consideration of its claims and resistance to
them, then the earlier, divided state will return with all the incalculable consequences
which disregard of the unconscious may entail. If, on the other hand, we give in to the
unconscious too much, it leads to a positive or negative inflation of the personality.
(Jung 1966, 16:522)
Without such care, a person is subject to psychological disaster, primarily the loss of the
powers of discrimination:
An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its
own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding
contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It
is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself
to calamities that must strike it dead. Paradoxically enough, inflation is a regression of
consciousness into unconsciousness. This always happens when consciousness takes
too many unconscious contents upon itself and loses the faculty of discrimination, the
sine qua non of all consciousness.…It seems to me of some importance, therefore,
that a few individuals, or people individually, should begin to understand that there
are contents which do not belong to the ego-personality, but must be ascribed to a
psychic non-ego. This mental operation has to be undertaken if we want to avoid a
threatening inflation. (Jung 1968, 12:563)
Jung’s view is that certain contents, although associated with the ego merely by the fact of
being in the collective unconscious, are definitely non-ego and must be left so. Otherwise,
one is swallowed up and destroyed by them:
…they are meant to fulfill their earthly existence with conviction and not allow
themselves any spiritual inflation, otherwise they will end up in the belly of the
spider. In other words, they should not set the ego in the highest place and make it
the ultimate authority, but should ever be mindful of the fact that it is not sole master
in its own house and is surrounded on all sides by the factor we call the unconscious.
(Jung 1959, 10:673)
One can approach only with caution:
The victory over the collective psyche alone yields the true value, the capture of the
hoard, the invincible weapon, the magic talisman, or whatever it be that the myth
in terms of the myth, lets himself be devoured by the monster—and vanishes in it, is
near to the treasure that the dragon guards, but he is there by extreme constraint and
to his own greatest harm. (Jung 1954, 7:261)
From this, it can be seen that there is no question that, for Jung, identification with the
ultimate deity would be an horrendous mistake. In his introduction to the Tibetan Book of the
Dead he suggests that it is only Westerners who would take literally an injunction to identify
with the clear light:
The soul is assuredly not small, but the radiant Godhead itself. The West finds this
statement either very dangerous, if not downright blasphemous, or else accepts it
unthinkingly and then suffers from a theosophical inflation. Somehow we always
have a wrong attitude to these things. But if we can master ourselves far enough to
refrain from our chief error of always wanting to do something with things and put
them to practical use, we may perhaps succeed in learning an important lesson from
these teachings, or at least in appreciating the greatness of the Bardo Thödol, which
vouchsafes to the dead man the ultimate and highest truth, that even the gods are the
radiance and reflection of our own souls. (Jung 1964, 11:840)
The problems with identification—loss of essential rationality and perspective—are so great
that even the alchemical model of a successful union, in which Jung invested much interest, is
for him only suggestive, far from the truth. Although he says:
…the alchemist’s endeavour to unite the corpus mundum, the purified body, with the
soul is also the endeavour of the psychologist once he has succeeded in freeing the
ego-conscious from contamination with the unconscious. (Jung 1966, 16:503)
He also holds that the aim of such grand transmutation of the collective unconscious is
partly an illusion:
I hold the view that the alchemist’s hope of conjuring out of matter the philosophical
gold, or the panacea, or the wonderful stone, was only in part an illusion, an effect
of projection; for the rest it corresponded to certain psychic facts that are of great
importance in the psychology of the unconscious. As is shown by the texts and their
symbolism, the alchemist projected what I have called the process of individuation
into the phenomena of chemical change. (Jung 1968, 12:564)
https://jungiangenealogy.weebly.com/royal-ego-trips.html
Ego Inflation, Narcissism,
Personal & Collective Shadow
Ego inflation is paradoxically a regression into unconsciousness and leads to emotional flooding and an invasion of the unconscious. The unexplained incorporates the subjective experience. In Jungian psychology, inflation can be defined as: An over-expansion of the personality through identification with an archetype or, in pathological cases, with a historical or religious figure, which exceeds individual limitations. (ref Definitions of Jungian Terms).
Imaginal Superiority
The expansion of the soul is experienced as inflation of the ego -- ego superficiality with no concept of psychological 'digestion' or integration. It is both a psychological and spiritual phenomenon. This inflation or distancing creates a greater disconnect from the spirit/body. The problem of inflation occurs whether the ego is drowned in the larger self or the larger self is pretentiously assimilated to the ego.
We are, once aware of this problem, invited to do two things. One is watch ourselves for evidence of this imbalance. The other is to take with a grain of salt anyone's assertion that they have just presented you with "the truth" or the most perfect or best representation of a certain idea or question.
Rather than an altruistic quest, it becomes a regressive tendency, one of self-gratification, a self-consoling fantasy for what is not happening in the daily life. We think we are bigger than we really are. Inflation justifies the motivations of anger to prevail and dominate. In many cases the ego inflation and grandiosity has swept away the individual ego's idea of it own importance, and seeks to draw others into its sphere of confusion.
The ego seeks reinforcement for its views, and often will believe it is entertaining its listeners or readers. Even the sincere get ego inflated by their experiences, but some really try to fill up a balloon and fly away. And some seem to succeed to the awe and amazement of many. But they are not the air, the breath, the spirit that fills the balloon--they are dead weight that is trying to contain it, thinking by doing so they are in control, when in fact they are now at the mercy of the winds.
Ego-inflation is a potential pitfall—Jung would call it a “shadow”—for anyone practicing a “spiritual path.” Indeed, without the prerequisite humor, honesty and humility, the danger only increases as one’s practice advances into the “higher” stages. Where the personal is denied, archetypal inflation can overwhelm the ego with an exaggerated persona. Minimally, the consequence of inflation is excessive pride in the presumed uniqueness -- the mask of bald ambition, a House of Cards, not a noble house. Pride goes before a fall. Jung's main injunction was a warning against inflation.
Merton reminds us, ego inflated people can be very sincere, very appealing, and very dangerous. Who are these people? Sometimes, we are, it is a part of the spiritual path and we must learn to recognize it. But there are also those who seem to be addicted to ego inflation, to the spiritual high it brings. They equate it with spirituality, with progress on the path. If there is no one to aid them, or if they make themselves impervious to aid, they can become lost. Just as in the balloon analogy, the inflated ego becomes a puppet for larger forces.
History is riddled with such claimants, with only the wise understanding that their kingdom is not of this world. Thus, to do so is immature "acting out". It is identification with a false ego state, rationalized by a paper trail which only takes on meaning when matched by lived reality. They hold on to every scrap of validation for dear life, often seeking publicity for themselves -- a self-augmenting experience. Self-evaluation is distorted.
This is a failure of self-regulation, the very self-sovereignty which is claimed. The unbalanced fancy themselves possessing a social or spiritual status that in fact they do not really have. The distortion is a living out that demonstrates just the opposite of the claim. The ego cannot distinguish what belongs to itself and what is simply universal. Perhaps some books or person has "blown air in their raft" to corroborate and validate their own view. Thus, the blind lead the blind. The ego sets itself up as the center of the psyche.
The Narcissist does not go beyond the ordinary egoic identification at the level of the basic surface consciousness (even if they believe they do). The Inflationist has, but has attained a sort of psychotic identification with an Attractor or archetype. They have in other words lost touch with common-sense reality. The Narcissist lacks empathy. The inflationist lacks any sense of perspective at all.
Inflation, as defined here, is not the same as narcissism. Narcissism is an extreme form of egotism, which is associated (in the case of so-called gurus as well as ordinary people) with gross emotional immaturity, lack of empathy, and even child-like behavior (not child-like in the sense of innocence, but in the sense of selfish, wanton, unrestrained, uncaring). It pertains to lack of development of the affective body and when excessive results in the narcissistic personality disorder.
Over-Valuing Oneself
Inflation may occur even in a partially enlightened individual, for example, or a person on a drug trip, or having a psychotic experience. They connect with something much vaster than their small human personality and are swallowed up by it. They identify with it and confuse their little human personalities with this much larger power.
The ego is potentially engulfed and disintegrated by the archetype. Over-valuation is usually over-compensation for someone who lacks personal achievement and stability in their own right, who attempt of idealize themselves as 'The One', however they imagine that.
We can call these big vast things "attractors". In the olden days they were called "gods" (this term is retained by contemporary hermeticists). Jung calls them "archetypes". It really doesn't matter what name we use, or what conceptuual framework. What does matter is the dynamic autonomous reality of these forces.
The danger of retreating into a persona of fatuous, unfounded, “noble character” at the same time wreaks havoc on all those around such posers, irregardless of pedigree. No one is fooled by such collusion except those who remain in the dark maintained by the contamination of Persona with Shadow.
The largely emotional over-reaction substitutes an egoic grandiose fantasy, a delusional self-hypnotic trance of control for the Great Work of a lifetime. Most spiritual disciplines and communities exert pressure on persons who have become too grandly public in their virtues or presumed status.
M.-L. von Franz considered that "the dark side of the Self is the most dangerous thing of all, precisely because the Self is the greatest power in the psyche. It can cause people to 'spin' megalomanic or other delusionary fantasies that catch them up", so that the victim "thinks with mounting excitement that he has grasped the great cosmic riddles; he therefore loses all touch with human reality. M-L von Franz, "The Process of Individuation" in Jung ed.
In everyday life, the Self may be projected onto such powerful figures as the state, God, the universe or fate. Anthony Stevens, On Jung (London 1990) p. 41
When such projections are withdrawn, there can be a destructive inflation of the personality. One potential counterbalance to this is however the social or collective aspects of the Self. Even if they have authentic transcendent enlightenment experiences of the Intermediate Zone, it can be distorted with side effects such as paranoia, and secondary mental and emotional self-deception.
Where both narcissism and inflation is present, the delusional will have tied up a lot of egotism and ego-defense mechanisms in this belief, and when their claims are challenged they become extremely defenisive and hostile and engage in rampant shadow projection on the wicked person or people who would dare imply such a thing. They may also encourage others to behave in similar ways, too.
Over-Identification
Contrary to Jung's injunctions, such identifications are taken literally, and may be fed and reinforced by the delusions of others in the same boat. Negative inflation means to be over—identified with too great an absorption in the deeper self. This blocks rather than facilitates the transformative process. Anyone who immediately reacts to such suggestions is clearly a stakeholder in their own stalled process. This is the opposite of individuation which is freedom from grossly collective response and complexes. Supporting such allegations with metaphysical claims is another dodge.
What this means in practice is complete capitulation to the objective powers of the psyche, with all that this entails; a kind of figurative death, corresponding to the Judgment of the Dead in the Sidpa Bardo. It means the end of all conscious, rational, morally responsible conduct of life, and voluntary surrender to what the Bardo Thödol calls “karmic illusion.” Karmic illusion springs from belief in a visionary world of an extremely irrational nature, which neither accords with nor derives from our rational judgments but is the exclusive product of uninhibited imagination. It is sheer dream or “fantasy,” and every well-meaning person will instantly caution us against it; nor indeed can one see at first sight what is the difference between the fantasies of this kind and phantasmagoria of a lunatic.
(Jung 1964,11:846)
Lying or confabulating does not make the delusion so, nor does becoming incensed about it. In fact, it reveals the discrepancy. The collective is pretentiously assimilated by the ego. The over-identification is the opposite of the healthy psychological move. At the very least, it puts the cart before the horse. Such an ungrounded position poses an inherent psychological danger. It is a projection of exaggerated self-importance which ignores the dynamics of unconscious autonomous complexes.
Jung describes his remedy: assimilation of contents of the collective unconscious, not through identification, but through confrontation, avoiding equation with either the lowest or highest aspects of one’s own psyche.
Jung’s warning that inflation means identifying oneself with an archetypal motif is completely applicable to self-styled "royal" claimants. To do so means one is in the very first stage of initiation, utterly unconscious that the Persona or social mask is confounded with your Shadow self. It is a fallacious attempt to prop up a weak ego, not the claim of a "noble" ego or a valid claim of anything. As psychologists well know, the moral conflict is not to be settled merely by a declaration of superiority bordering on inhumanity, nor a declaration one is better than or fit to rule others in any way.
Afflicted pride is a version of ego-inflation which Jung sought to avoid by advising against identifying with assimilated contents. But people will defend their self-deluded self image to the grave, even when profoundly misconceived. It is an assurance of later problems and is an avoidance of the work of individuation. Jung's cautions are profound and highlight the enormity of the task we are attempting. Jung frequently warns against the inflation that comes with assimilation of autonomous complexes and identification with their content.
It will be remembered that in the analysis of the personal unconscious the first things to be added to consciousness are the personal contents and I suggested that these contents which have been repressed, but are capable of becoming conscious, should be called the personal unconscious. I also showed that to annex the deeper layers of the unconscious, which I have called the collective unconscious, produces an extension of the personality leading to the state of inflation. (Jung 1953)
Such an inflation can arise with the discovery of one's ancestral lines. Misperception and misapplication of genealogy findings leads to positive and negative inflation and all their attendant ills:
In projection, he vacillates between an extravagant and pathological deification of the doctor, and a contempt bristling with hatred. In introjection, he gets involved in a ridiculous self-deification, or else a moral self-laceration. The mistake he makes in both cases comes from attributing to a person the contents of the collective unconscious. In this way he makes himself or his partner either god or devil.
Here we see the characteristic effect of the archetype: it seizes hold of the psyche with a kind of primeval force and compels it to transgress the bounds of humanity. It causes exaggeration, a puffed-up attitude (inflation), loss of free will, delusion, and enthusiasm in good and evil alike (Jung 1953, 7:110).
Positive inflation of the religious or megalomaniacal sort can lead to assumptions of grandeur, viewing oneself as having the universal panacea:
The second possible mode of reaction is identification with the collective psyche. This
would be equivalent to acceptance of the inflation, but now exalted into a system. In other words, one would be the fortunate possessor of the great truth that was only waiting to be discovered, of the eschatological knowledge that means the healing of the nations. This attitude does not necessarily signify megalomania in direct form, but megalomania in the milder and more familiar form it takes in the reformer, the prophet, and the martyr. (Jung 1953, 7:260)
The prophet is convinced that he/she has the final truth but is merely inflated through identification with the forces of deep contents. The humble disciple affects the posture of only following the master’s dictums:
But besides the possibility of becoming a prophet, there is another alluring joy, subtler and apparently more legitimate: the joy of becoming a prophet’s disciple.…The disciple is unworthy; modestly he sits at the Master’s feet and guards against having ideas of his own. Mental laziness becomes a virtue; one can at least bask in the sun of a semidivine being.… Naturally the disciples always stick together, not out of love, but for the very understandable purpose of effortlessly confirming their own convictions by engendering an air of collective agreement.…[J]ust as the prophet is a primordial image from the collective psyche, so also is the disciple of the prophet. (Jung 1953, 7:263-265)
In both cases inflation is brought about by the collective unconscious, and the independence
of the individuality suffers injury. In a similar vein:
These few examples may suffice to show what kind of spirit animated these movements. They were made up of people who identified themselves (or were identified) with God, who deemed themselves supermen, had a critical approach to the gospels, followed the promptings of the inner man, and understood the kingdom of heaven to be within. In a sense, therefore, they were modern in their outlook, but they had a religious inflation instead of the rationalistic and political psychosis that is the affliction of our day. (Jung 1969, 9:140)
Jung advises against identifying with offices and titles since such excludes the richness of our situation:
A very common instance is the humorless way in which many men identify themselves with their business or their titles. The office I hold is certainly my special activity; but it is also a collective factor that has come into existence historically through the cooperation of many people and whose dignity rests solely on collective approval. When, therefore, I identify myself with my office or title, I behave as though I myself were the whole complex of social factors of which that office consists, or as though I were not only the bearer of the office, but also and at the same time the approval of society. I have made an extraordinary extension of myself and have usurped qualities which are not in me but outside me. (Jung 1953, 7:227)
Ego inflation is an over-compensation for an otherwise non-illustrious personality, which is the opposite of self-realization or self-actualization. And:
There is, however, yet another thing to be learnt from this example, namely that these
transpersonal contents are not just inert or dead matter that can be annexed at will. Rather they are living entities which exert an attractive force upon the conscious mind. Identification with one’s office or one’s title is very attractive indeed, which is precisely why so many men are nothing more than the decorum accorded to them by society. In vain would one look for a personality behind the husk. Underneath all the padding one would find a very pitiable little creature. That is why the office—or whatever their outer husk may be—is so attractive: it offers easy compensation for personal deficiencies. (Jung 1953, 7:230)
The basic problem is that one has lost a healthy respect for the need to mediate between the
conscious and the unconscious, thereby (in one version) inflating the importance of the ego:
To the extent that the integrated contents are parts of the self, we can expect this influence [of assimilation] to be considerable. Their assimilation augments not only the area of the field of consciousness but also the importance of the ego, especially when, as usually happens, the ego lacks any critical approach to the unconscious. In that case it is easily overpowered and becomes identical with the contents that have been assimilated.…I should only like to mention that the more numerous and the more significant the unconscious contents which are assimilated to the ego, the closer the approximation of the ego to the self, even though this approximation must be a never-ending process. This inevitably produces an inflation of the ego, unless a critical line of demarcation is drawn between it and the unconscious figures. (Jung 1969, 9:43-44)
The work of recovery is to adjust what Jung called the Ego/Self Axis; as he conceptualized it, life begins in a state of inflation, with the ego submerged in the Self. In healthy development, the ego and the Self separate, such that the ego is able to differentiate reality from fantasy, but is also able to transform the enchanted energies of the Self into actualization in the world. [Big egos attempt] to inflate identity on the royalty of the timeless Self. This results in a vacillation between alienation and inflation, in which the missing link is re-acceptance after a fall from grandiosity.
In the inflated state, with the bewitchment of the unconscious amplified through the use of alcohol or drugs, the personality becomes a fractured pantheon of the demi-gods, or archetypes: the tragic Artist, the Hero, the Scholar, the Rebel, the divine Victim. By identifying God or the Higher Power as other than the ego, the personality becomes "right sized," and learns to live "life on life's terms," bounded by space and temporality, by the body and the limitations of reality. At the same time, through daily prayer and meditation, the connection to this other remains, such that reality is neither the barren desert of alienation, nor the engulfing allure of the siren's song, but is both connected to, and separate from, the Other of the Self.
http://jungian12steps.org/12steps.html
An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding
contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it dead. Paradoxically enough, inflation is a regression of
consciousness into unconsciousness. This always happens when consciousness takes too many unconscious contents upon itself and loses the faculty of discrimination, the sine qua non of all consciousness.…It seems to me of some importance, therefore, that a few individuals, or people individually, should begin to understand that there are contents which do not belong to the ego-personality, but must be ascribed to a psychic non-ego. This mental operation has to be undertaken if we want to avoid a threatening inflation. (Jung 1968, 12:563)
Jung’s view is that certain contents, although associated with the ego merely by the fact of
being in the collective unconscious, are definitely non-ego and must be left so. Otherwise,
one is swallowed up and destroyed by them:
…they are meant to fulfill their earthly existence with conviction and not allow themselves any spiritual inflation, otherwise they will end up in the belly of the spider. In other words, they should not set the ego in the highest place and make it the ultimate authority, but should ever be mindful of the fact that it is not sole master in its own house and is surrounded on all sides by the and shut out too much life. As always, life is a voyage between Scylla and Charybdis.
(Jung 1966,16:502)
He identifies the two perils eloquently:
Even when the conscious mind does not identify itself with the inclinations of the
unconscious, it still has to face them and somehow take account of them in order
that they may play their part in the life of the individual, however difficult this may
be. For if the unconscious is not allowed to express itself through word and deed,
through worry and suffering, through our consideration of its claims and resistance to
them, then the earlier, divided state will return with all the incalculable consequences
which disregard of the unconscious may entail. If, on the other hand, we give in to the
unconscious too much, it leads to a positive or negative inflation of the personality.
(Jung 1966, 16:522)
Without such care, a person is subject to psychological disaster, primarily the loss of the
powers of discrimination:
An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its
own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding
contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It
is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself
to calamities that must strike it dead. Paradoxically enough, inflation is a regression of
consciousness into unconsciousness. This always happens when consciousness takes
too many unconscious contents upon itself and loses the faculty of discrimination, the
sine qua non of all consciousness.…It seems to me of some importance, therefore,
that a few individuals, or people individually, should begin to understand that there
are contents which do not belong to the ego-personality, but must be ascribed to a
psychic non-ego. This mental operation has to be undertaken if we want to avoid a
threatening inflation. (Jung 1968, 12:563)
Jung’s view is that certain contents, although associated with the ego merely by the fact of
being in the collective unconscious, are definitely non-ego and must be left so. Otherwise,
one is swallowed up and destroyed by them:
…they are meant to fulfill their earthly existence with conviction and not allow
themselves any spiritual inflation, otherwise they will end up in the belly of the
spider. In other words, they should not set the ego in the highest place and make it
the ultimate authority, but should ever be mindful of the fact that it is not sole master
in its own house and is surrounded on all sides by the factor we call the unconscious.
(Jung 1959, 10:673)
One can approach only with caution:
The victory over the collective psyche alone yields the true value, the capture of the
hoard, the invincible weapon, the magic talisman, or whatever it be that the myth
in terms of the myth, lets himself be devoured by the monster—and vanishes in it, is
near to the treasure that the dragon guards, but he is there by extreme constraint and
to his own greatest harm. (Jung 1954, 7:261)
From this, it can be seen that there is no question that, for Jung, identification with the
ultimate deity would be an horrendous mistake. In his introduction to the Tibetan Book of the
Dead he suggests that it is only Westerners who would take literally an injunction to identify
with the clear light:
The soul is assuredly not small, but the radiant Godhead itself. The West finds this
statement either very dangerous, if not downright blasphemous, or else accepts it
unthinkingly and then suffers from a theosophical inflation. Somehow we always
have a wrong attitude to these things. But if we can master ourselves far enough to
refrain from our chief error of always wanting to do something with things and put
them to practical use, we may perhaps succeed in learning an important lesson from
these teachings, or at least in appreciating the greatness of the Bardo Thödol, which
vouchsafes to the dead man the ultimate and highest truth, that even the gods are the
radiance and reflection of our own souls. (Jung 1964, 11:840)
The problems with identification—loss of essential rationality and perspective—are so great
that even the alchemical model of a successful union, in which Jung invested much interest, is
for him only suggestive, far from the truth. Although he says:
…the alchemist’s endeavour to unite the corpus mundum, the purified body, with the
soul is also the endeavour of the psychologist once he has succeeded in freeing the
ego-conscious from contamination with the unconscious. (Jung 1966, 16:503)
He also holds that the aim of such grand transmutation of the collective unconscious is
partly an illusion:
I hold the view that the alchemist’s hope of conjuring out of matter the philosophical
gold, or the panacea, or the wonderful stone, was only in part an illusion, an effect
of projection; for the rest it corresponded to certain psychic facts that are of great
importance in the psychology of the unconscious. As is shown by the texts and their
symbolism, the alchemist projected what I have called the process of individuation
into the phenomena of chemical change. (Jung 1968, 12:564)
https://jungiangenealogy.weebly.com/royal-ego-trips.html
Polytheistic Psychology & Neopaganism:
iMages
"So you want to learn about Archetypes."
by Iona Miller, ©2020
https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/polytheism.html
Polytheistic myths can provide psychological insight. Archetypal psychology is an introduction to polytheism, Greek mythology, the soul-spirit distinction, anima mundi, psychopathology, soul-making, imagination, and therapeutic practice.
In psychological polytheism, the gods infuse personality, politics, economics, science, aesthetics, metaphysics, and other expressions of culture confirmed at an experiential and symbolic level. Hillman notes ..."[t]he plurality of archetypal forms reflects the pagan level of things and what might be called a polytheistic psychology."
This hybrid form rejects scientific materialism, its mechanical universe, and conventional devaluation of nature. It finds hierarchical structures of power distasteful. Hillman clarifies his approach: "In our metaphysics we declare our fantasies about the physical and its transcendence. A metaphysical statement can be seen as a psychological fancy about the relationship between 'matter and spirit'."
This Metamodern view is deconstructive, aesthetic, and Romantic. This radical pluralism of a polytheistic metapsychology theorizes about the structure of psychological theorizing itself. They share reconstruction, collaboration, interdisciplinary, transmedia work, generative paradox and ambiguity, simultaneity, and engagement rather than exhibitionism. Overlapping different identities only empowers all of them. Mystery, as living presence and the movement toward favoring the irrational, becomes 'my story.'
The psychological value and insights of polytheistic myth is a major theorem of archetypal psychology. Neopagan religions are usually polytheistic, nature-oriented, non dogmatic. They facilitate relationship and direct engagement with the Gods and Goddesses. Pagans, poets and artists use mythic characters and tropes to express contemporary metaphors and images found in every dream, drama, ceremony, gesture, and passionate act.
iMages
"So you want to learn about Archetypes."
by Iona Miller, ©2020
https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/polytheism.html
Polytheistic myths can provide psychological insight. Archetypal psychology is an introduction to polytheism, Greek mythology, the soul-spirit distinction, anima mundi, psychopathology, soul-making, imagination, and therapeutic practice.
In psychological polytheism, the gods infuse personality, politics, economics, science, aesthetics, metaphysics, and other expressions of culture confirmed at an experiential and symbolic level. Hillman notes ..."[t]he plurality of archetypal forms reflects the pagan level of things and what might be called a polytheistic psychology."
This hybrid form rejects scientific materialism, its mechanical universe, and conventional devaluation of nature. It finds hierarchical structures of power distasteful. Hillman clarifies his approach: "In our metaphysics we declare our fantasies about the physical and its transcendence. A metaphysical statement can be seen as a psychological fancy about the relationship between 'matter and spirit'."
This Metamodern view is deconstructive, aesthetic, and Romantic. This radical pluralism of a polytheistic metapsychology theorizes about the structure of psychological theorizing itself. They share reconstruction, collaboration, interdisciplinary, transmedia work, generative paradox and ambiguity, simultaneity, and engagement rather than exhibitionism. Overlapping different identities only empowers all of them. Mystery, as living presence and the movement toward favoring the irrational, becomes 'my story.'
The psychological value and insights of polytheistic myth is a major theorem of archetypal psychology. Neopagan religions are usually polytheistic, nature-oriented, non dogmatic. They facilitate relationship and direct engagement with the Gods and Goddesses. Pagans, poets and artists use mythic characters and tropes to express contemporary metaphors and images found in every dream, drama, ceremony, gesture, and passionate act.
The Asklepia Foundation: “Journey to the Healing Heart of Your Dreams”
AS ABOVE; SO BELOW
The Mysteries of Quantum Metaphysics
by Iona Miller, ©2001
Abstract: Our place in cosmic history depends on the delicate interplay between the very big and the very small. Chaos and complexity theory show us that patterns tend to reiterate and persist (like fractals) at all levels of observation: “As Above; So Below.” There are a few competing theories for describing the subquantal nature of Reality in both quantum cosmology and quantum physics. The field patterns of the finest organization of energy and matter also affect the evolution of the cosmos. The various models include a non-zero cosmological constant, quintessence, tracker fields, Bohm’s implicate order, and the varying-speed-of-light (VSL) theory.
Similar mechanisms also describe the mind/matter interface--the holistic organism--the holographic mindbody. They describe how infinite pure potential becomes actualized as human consciousness--how the superposed quantum potentials collapse into a single tangible wavefunction--how mind becomes matter. Here again, there is competition for the process which describes the source or virtual groundstate of our consciousness. Can the constant fluctuation of quantum foam perturb the orbits of electrons in our neurons and bootstrap macro-canges in consciousness states? Strictly statistical and mechanical views of consciousness have failed to account for the richness of inner and outer human experience.
How are waves of possibility transduced into classical or macrocosmic forms? The models presented include Stapp’s cations, Walker’s synaptic tunneling, Penrose’s quantum gravity, Marshall’s Bose-Einstein condensate, and Goertzel’s Ons algebra, and Hammeroff’s microtubules.
Introduction
A revolution occurred during the 20th century in our understanding of the nature of the physical universe. This change is extremely important to religion, for it eliminates a basic conflict between science and religious belief.
Prior to this change, our scientific beliefs were based on an approach that was initiated in the 17th century: "We live in a mechanical universe, and we are simply complex machines." This scientific notion that man was purely a mechanical system contradicts what is probably the core of religious belief, namely the idea that mind-like or spirit-like factors can make a difference in human behavior.
The religious outlook assumes that a human being, acting on basis of conscious choices, is NOT equivalent to a mechanical system, whose every action is completely determined by direct interaction between tiny neighboring bits of matter. 20th century science, however, has shown that the earlier mechanical concept of reality to be incompatible with empirical facts.
To cope with this failure of earlier ideas, physicist made a breakthrough change. Physical theory was converted from a theory about the physical world itself into a theory of WHAT ONE COULD KNOW about the physical world. Human experience was introduced into the theory and made fundamental.
This was to be later known as the Copenhagen interpretation. It had drawbacks.For example, while it brought human knowledge into physical theory, it also renounced the possibility of understanding the underlying physical reality. It set our limits of understanding.
It was the eminent mathematician John von Neumann and Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner to reincorporate physical reality. They did this by casting the new physics into a theory of the interaction between our conscious thoughts and our physical brains. This was known as von Neumann-Wigner formation of quantum theory, and rationally incorporated conscious thoughts into the basic dynamics.
Physics was not yet ready to tackle the problem of interaction between our thoughts and our brain. It was some time before this was scientifically feasible for this kind of proof. Now however, there is a huge and rapidly growing field of experimental data on this question of the connection between minds and brains.
This shift in science is important significance to religion. It removes the basic contradiction between the older scientific claim that human beings are essentially mechanical robots, while religion maintains than man is not ruled by matter alone. The new physics now dynamically entangles our conscious thoughts with the quantum representation of the physical world.
There is a plethora of competing theories arising from many disciplines to account for the psychophysical expressions of consciousness in function and structure. The only comprehensive theory must be one that is based in nondualism, and accounts for such self-organizing mindbody manifestations as spontaneous healing or self-recovery, or even the placebo effect.
The mind-matter connection is intimately linked to any speculations we can make about alleged mind-over-matter phenomena. In fact all psi phenomena, including such nonlocality demonstrations as the “simple connections” of telepathy, ESP, or synchronicity in general are related to this problem of an underlying or connecting field through which information exchange is instantaneous and unimpeded.
The leading contender for such a field, vacuum fluctuation or quantum foam, was proposed by David Bohm. Turbulent motion in this highly excited, subquantal field leads to the emergence from virtuality into actuality of quantum entities which just as quickly dissolve back into the subquantal sea. This same ocean of virtual or metaphysical “stuff” has the property of containing, storing, and transmitting information about the nature of matter and even thought.
The observables of nonlocality and psi cry out for some form of interconnection between phenomenon separated in space and/or time. The concept most generally used in physics to account for spatial and temporal interconnection is that of a field. Fields themselves cannot be observed, and so can be considered meta- or beyond physical. Yet the influences propagating through them are observable, eventually. Mind, memory, and consciousness may be such phenomena.
Is there one massive holographic field that actually exists in nature in the sense of Bohm’s holomovement? And if so, how does this relate to our consciousness and our relationship to the cosmos. And what is the mechanism by which this universal force interfaces within our organism? When we recognize that we really are that, that nature lies within our deepest structure and function, we come to understand that we are not separate from the whole of creation. We recognize that “I AM THAT I AM.” Everything including ourselves, is deeply connected in one holy movement.
The quantum vacuum, the energy-field that characterizes the ground state of the universe, possibly furnishes the indicated ‘fifth field,’ the hidden variables of chaotic yet deterministic micromotion that bootstraps all energy/matter into existence. This plenum could transmit as-yet-unknown effects. This quantum foam, which Wheeler called superspace, consists of a pure massless charge-flux.
We argue, along with Laszlo that, “The conclusion to be derived from the considerations presented here is that the four-demnsional manifold Einstein described as spacetime is likely to be more than a geometrical abstraction. As the energetically superdense quantum vacuum, it may be a physically real field, limiting the velocity of light and other matter-particles and transmittingg a variety of effects, including, but not limited to, gravitation and electromangetism. We may well ask, then, whether the field would also transmit the kind of effects associated with psi.”
Waves of this purely informational (scalar) force could create a potential gradient where quantal motion triggers scalar waves in the vacuum, and these propagate by alternately compressing and rarefying its virtual-particle gas. Scalars are neither ‘light’ nor ‘matter’, but longitudinally propoagating fluctuations below the energy-threshold of particle pair-creation.This produces a self-generating cosmological feedback cycle which translates into interference patterns created by the motion of charged particles modifying the local topology of the vacuum. The modified vacuum field modifies in turn the motion of the particles, (Laszlo, 1993, 1994).
Fourier show that any three-dimensional pattern can be analyzed into a set of regular, periodic oscillations that differ only in frequency, amplitude, and phase. Specific waveforms can be exact representations of spatiotemporal objects--thus we have a “Holographic Universe.”
Analysis shows that the signals transmitted through the vacuum field are precisely of the psi variety, because information in that field is holographic, and because the propagation of the holographic interference patterns is quasi-instantaneous. Therefore, this virttual field might provide a metaphysical foundation for a broad range of psi phenomena and psychophysical interaction, including self-organization and healing.
The quantum vaccum is a highly anomlous universal energy realm of pure potential. It is both the source and destination of all matter in the universe, and thus of any form of consciousness which may emerge through its autopoeitic process. The human brain, with its pronounced and constant state of chaos, could receive and amplify such signals, expressed both consciously and unconsciously in our biophsyical self and our ephemeral thoughts and intuitions.
The von Neumann-Wigner formulation The von-Neumann-Wigner formulation provides the basic logical principles that govern the interaction between thoughts and the brain. It provides prima facie evidence that human thoughts are linked to nature by nonlocal connections. What a person chooses to do in one region seems immediately to effect what is true elsewhere in the universe.
This nonlocal aspect can be understood by conceiving the universe to be not a collection of tiny bits of matter, but rather a growing compendium of "bits of information." This profound shift about the nature of reality has not yet sunk in culturally. It will happen by the promotion of understanding of the radical shifts wrought by quantum theory.
Most quantum physicists are interested more in applications of quantum theory than in its deep implications. Most now agree that a conception of physical reality is informational in character, not material. Our conscious thoughts ought eventually to be understood within science and that when properly understood, our thoughts will be seen to DO something; they will be efficacious.
From what most quantum physicists now understand, certain ontological claims can now be made.
1. The "physical world," as understood in quantum theory, is a store of information, and this information is NOT imbedded in hordes of tiny particles (as they were in classical theory). The information is stored in a mathematically described structure that specifies propensities for certain events to occur. This events (paradigms) include the acquision of information by human agents.
2. Conscious events should eventually be understood in science, and these events should be efficacious. They should have a real effect on our actions.
The von Neumann-Wigner formulation of quantum theory achieves these ends. It has never been seriously broached in science, not because it was considered unimportant, but because it was deemed too difficult. Pertinent data seemed insufficient and restrictive. This has changed because science has changed.
AS ABOVE; SO BELOW
The Mysteries of Quantum Metaphysics
by Iona Miller, ©2001
Abstract: Our place in cosmic history depends on the delicate interplay between the very big and the very small. Chaos and complexity theory show us that patterns tend to reiterate and persist (like fractals) at all levels of observation: “As Above; So Below.” There are a few competing theories for describing the subquantal nature of Reality in both quantum cosmology and quantum physics. The field patterns of the finest organization of energy and matter also affect the evolution of the cosmos. The various models include a non-zero cosmological constant, quintessence, tracker fields, Bohm’s implicate order, and the varying-speed-of-light (VSL) theory.
Similar mechanisms also describe the mind/matter interface--the holistic organism--the holographic mindbody. They describe how infinite pure potential becomes actualized as human consciousness--how the superposed quantum potentials collapse into a single tangible wavefunction--how mind becomes matter. Here again, there is competition for the process which describes the source or virtual groundstate of our consciousness. Can the constant fluctuation of quantum foam perturb the orbits of electrons in our neurons and bootstrap macro-canges in consciousness states? Strictly statistical and mechanical views of consciousness have failed to account for the richness of inner and outer human experience.
How are waves of possibility transduced into classical or macrocosmic forms? The models presented include Stapp’s cations, Walker’s synaptic tunneling, Penrose’s quantum gravity, Marshall’s Bose-Einstein condensate, and Goertzel’s Ons algebra, and Hammeroff’s microtubules.
Introduction
A revolution occurred during the 20th century in our understanding of the nature of the physical universe. This change is extremely important to religion, for it eliminates a basic conflict between science and religious belief.
Prior to this change, our scientific beliefs were based on an approach that was initiated in the 17th century: "We live in a mechanical universe, and we are simply complex machines." This scientific notion that man was purely a mechanical system contradicts what is probably the core of religious belief, namely the idea that mind-like or spirit-like factors can make a difference in human behavior.
The religious outlook assumes that a human being, acting on basis of conscious choices, is NOT equivalent to a mechanical system, whose every action is completely determined by direct interaction between tiny neighboring bits of matter. 20th century science, however, has shown that the earlier mechanical concept of reality to be incompatible with empirical facts.
To cope with this failure of earlier ideas, physicist made a breakthrough change. Physical theory was converted from a theory about the physical world itself into a theory of WHAT ONE COULD KNOW about the physical world. Human experience was introduced into the theory and made fundamental.
This was to be later known as the Copenhagen interpretation. It had drawbacks.For example, while it brought human knowledge into physical theory, it also renounced the possibility of understanding the underlying physical reality. It set our limits of understanding.
It was the eminent mathematician John von Neumann and Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner to reincorporate physical reality. They did this by casting the new physics into a theory of the interaction between our conscious thoughts and our physical brains. This was known as von Neumann-Wigner formation of quantum theory, and rationally incorporated conscious thoughts into the basic dynamics.
Physics was not yet ready to tackle the problem of interaction between our thoughts and our brain. It was some time before this was scientifically feasible for this kind of proof. Now however, there is a huge and rapidly growing field of experimental data on this question of the connection between minds and brains.
This shift in science is important significance to religion. It removes the basic contradiction between the older scientific claim that human beings are essentially mechanical robots, while religion maintains than man is not ruled by matter alone. The new physics now dynamically entangles our conscious thoughts with the quantum representation of the physical world.
There is a plethora of competing theories arising from many disciplines to account for the psychophysical expressions of consciousness in function and structure. The only comprehensive theory must be one that is based in nondualism, and accounts for such self-organizing mindbody manifestations as spontaneous healing or self-recovery, or even the placebo effect.
The mind-matter connection is intimately linked to any speculations we can make about alleged mind-over-matter phenomena. In fact all psi phenomena, including such nonlocality demonstrations as the “simple connections” of telepathy, ESP, or synchronicity in general are related to this problem of an underlying or connecting field through which information exchange is instantaneous and unimpeded.
The leading contender for such a field, vacuum fluctuation or quantum foam, was proposed by David Bohm. Turbulent motion in this highly excited, subquantal field leads to the emergence from virtuality into actuality of quantum entities which just as quickly dissolve back into the subquantal sea. This same ocean of virtual or metaphysical “stuff” has the property of containing, storing, and transmitting information about the nature of matter and even thought.
The observables of nonlocality and psi cry out for some form of interconnection between phenomenon separated in space and/or time. The concept most generally used in physics to account for spatial and temporal interconnection is that of a field. Fields themselves cannot be observed, and so can be considered meta- or beyond physical. Yet the influences propagating through them are observable, eventually. Mind, memory, and consciousness may be such phenomena.
Is there one massive holographic field that actually exists in nature in the sense of Bohm’s holomovement? And if so, how does this relate to our consciousness and our relationship to the cosmos. And what is the mechanism by which this universal force interfaces within our organism? When we recognize that we really are that, that nature lies within our deepest structure and function, we come to understand that we are not separate from the whole of creation. We recognize that “I AM THAT I AM.” Everything including ourselves, is deeply connected in one holy movement.
The quantum vacuum, the energy-field that characterizes the ground state of the universe, possibly furnishes the indicated ‘fifth field,’ the hidden variables of chaotic yet deterministic micromotion that bootstraps all energy/matter into existence. This plenum could transmit as-yet-unknown effects. This quantum foam, which Wheeler called superspace, consists of a pure massless charge-flux.
We argue, along with Laszlo that, “The conclusion to be derived from the considerations presented here is that the four-demnsional manifold Einstein described as spacetime is likely to be more than a geometrical abstraction. As the energetically superdense quantum vacuum, it may be a physically real field, limiting the velocity of light and other matter-particles and transmittingg a variety of effects, including, but not limited to, gravitation and electromangetism. We may well ask, then, whether the field would also transmit the kind of effects associated with psi.”
Waves of this purely informational (scalar) force could create a potential gradient where quantal motion triggers scalar waves in the vacuum, and these propagate by alternately compressing and rarefying its virtual-particle gas. Scalars are neither ‘light’ nor ‘matter’, but longitudinally propoagating fluctuations below the energy-threshold of particle pair-creation.This produces a self-generating cosmological feedback cycle which translates into interference patterns created by the motion of charged particles modifying the local topology of the vacuum. The modified vacuum field modifies in turn the motion of the particles, (Laszlo, 1993, 1994).
Fourier show that any three-dimensional pattern can be analyzed into a set of regular, periodic oscillations that differ only in frequency, amplitude, and phase. Specific waveforms can be exact representations of spatiotemporal objects--thus we have a “Holographic Universe.”
Analysis shows that the signals transmitted through the vacuum field are precisely of the psi variety, because information in that field is holographic, and because the propagation of the holographic interference patterns is quasi-instantaneous. Therefore, this virttual field might provide a metaphysical foundation for a broad range of psi phenomena and psychophysical interaction, including self-organization and healing.
The quantum vaccum is a highly anomlous universal energy realm of pure potential. It is both the source and destination of all matter in the universe, and thus of any form of consciousness which may emerge through its autopoeitic process. The human brain, with its pronounced and constant state of chaos, could receive and amplify such signals, expressed both consciously and unconsciously in our biophsyical self and our ephemeral thoughts and intuitions.
The von Neumann-Wigner formulation The von-Neumann-Wigner formulation provides the basic logical principles that govern the interaction between thoughts and the brain. It provides prima facie evidence that human thoughts are linked to nature by nonlocal connections. What a person chooses to do in one region seems immediately to effect what is true elsewhere in the universe.
This nonlocal aspect can be understood by conceiving the universe to be not a collection of tiny bits of matter, but rather a growing compendium of "bits of information." This profound shift about the nature of reality has not yet sunk in culturally. It will happen by the promotion of understanding of the radical shifts wrought by quantum theory.
Most quantum physicists are interested more in applications of quantum theory than in its deep implications. Most now agree that a conception of physical reality is informational in character, not material. Our conscious thoughts ought eventually to be understood within science and that when properly understood, our thoughts will be seen to DO something; they will be efficacious.
From what most quantum physicists now understand, certain ontological claims can now be made.
1. The "physical world," as understood in quantum theory, is a store of information, and this information is NOT imbedded in hordes of tiny particles (as they were in classical theory). The information is stored in a mathematically described structure that specifies propensities for certain events to occur. This events (paradigms) include the acquision of information by human agents.
2. Conscious events should eventually be understood in science, and these events should be efficacious. They should have a real effect on our actions.
The von Neumann-Wigner formulation of quantum theory achieves these ends. It has never been seriously broached in science, not because it was considered unimportant, but because it was deemed too difficult. Pertinent data seemed insufficient and restrictive. This has changed because science has changed.
2020 VISION
2019: REFLECTIONS
Chronesthesia
is the technical term for the brain's ability to maintain
simultaneous awareness of past, present and future
and to "travel" back and forth between them.
“I have noticed that 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.”
[Jung, CW 18, para. 244]
2019: REFLECTIONS
Chronesthesia
is the technical term for the brain's ability to maintain
simultaneous awareness of past, present and future
and to "travel" back and forth between them.
“I have noticed that 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.”
[Jung, CW 18, para. 244]
YOU REPRESENT; THEY RECOGNIZE
"Association with pupils keeps one's work youthful. Critiquing others keeps one's point of view clear." (William Merritt Chase, 1849-1916)
MENTORING is the art of giving and receiving wisdom; guiding, nurturing and enabling others to realize and develop their full potential with respect for their own journey. It celebrates an extension of self-cultivation with kindred spirits in soulful relationships.
Mentoring is a means of expressing and receiving feedback from many points of view (POV). It is a mode of knowing and learning with. We find our identities in “mirroring”, empathy, mind-sharing and the struggle with different points of view.
Mentoring is individualized and tailored. Instructables means sharing what you make and how others can make it: step-by-step collaboration and nouveau niche opportunities - status skills. Once you find your niche, phreak it!
Now, consumers and "trysumers" can acquire as many skills as they want, but equally important is showing-off what you've learned and created. Don’t forget: without ‘the others’ seeing, tasting, hearing or smelling your skills, without the inevitable story-telling, there is no status coming your way!
The anti-trend to status skills is LACK OF TIME, balancing skill time and consumption time. Where on earth will consumers find the time to actively acquire these new skills? Infolust drives status skill-building and trend immersion.
The intergenerational "group leader" is a very busy and observant character, anticipating and even creating trends. While alternately bombarding the viewers and leaving them in pregnant silence, her approach is nevertheless anticipatory and dependent on the will of individuals within the group. This goes a long way toward avoiding the toxicity of recipes, the flapdoodle of stating the obvious.
The mentor must be able to think on her feet, with fluid concepts and creative analogies, and thus make it a learning experience for herself as well. Her job is to inspire, encourage and validate, to give authoritative crits, tips, demos, as well as input from Leonardo, Andy, Vincent, Georgia and others. It's good to instill and cultivate a feeling of the historic brotherhood and sisterhood. Newbies benefit when they keep their pride and lose their inhibitions.
Teaching can stealthily eviscerate your own need for art-making. Of course, there are those who find teaching a stimulus. Because many of us have a hard-wired need to share--and teaching is an obvious vehicle--we need to find ways of satisfying this need. Teaching art and hypermedia is not like teaching accounting. In the first place, individuals in an art community are likely to have vastly different expectations, potentials, aesthetics, icon repertoires, and prior experiences.
Because everybody is on a different page, you need to adjust your methodology. A feeling of "We're all friends here" must be established. In a game-like environment and an urgent atmosphere, all the participants start by going to work on current projects at their own level of proficiency. When the mentor feels that some direction can be reasonably offered, she engages on a one-to-one basis.
Students, collaborators and colleagues may gather or disperse. On occasion the mentor may pontificate for the whole group. She may quickly demonstrate her own or another's work for whoever may be interested. Examples of work, good and bad, finished or not, are held up for quick discussion. There's an ongoing interactive crit, a celebration of individuality within the joy of the group.
Attentional Processes: Beyond the Consumer Dream
Attention shuttling is self-soothing - a positive coping mechanism of resilient individuals, shifting attentional focus between the cognitive and emotional regulatory process. It is more akin to multitasking than the pathology of ADHD. It allows us to correct imbalances in our immediate environment by finding wider frames of reference that meet our needs better. It stimulates inner dialogue that often can’t be reduced to a single viewpoint from different perspectives.
Based on his work in creativity and with gifted children, John Curtis Gowan developed a model of development, which bootstrapped off Piaget and Erikson, but included adult development beyond the ordinary or "normal" adult successes of career and family building, extending into the emergence and stabilization of extraordinary development and mystical states of consciousness.
Gowan described the entire spectrum of available states in his classic Trance, Art, & Creativity (1975), with its different modalities of spiritual and aesthetic expression. He devised a test for Self-Actualization, called the Northridge Developmental Scale.
Gowan outlines a developmental theory whereby we may tap our latent creative potential and self-actualization, organically growing toward the psychedelic or soul-revealing and illuminative states. He describes these states most fully in Development of the Psychedelic Individual (1974) and in Operations of Increasing Order. His use of the term 'psychedelic' does not connote drug use; quite the contrary he is strongly opposed to the developmental forcing and disintegration drug-use brings.
He describes how dyplasias between cognitive and affective growth can bleed off developmental energies, resulting in dysphoria and displacements, leaving us feeling unintegrated, blocked or stuck. He carries developmental theory past the concept of a strong coping ego. Fearing the loss-of-control by our egos, we may be reluctant to enter the soul-revealing stage of psychedelia and remain content to re-experience successes at our familiar or comfortable level of experience--usually expressed by the metaphor of "the American Dream,"--a cultural myth.
Gowan considers plateauing out before these upper stages to be akin to lack of sexual maturation in an adolescent. Clearly, resilience is the ability to continually redefine oneself and experience are fundamental to this life-long process of connecting with Source and Spirit. One of these means is finding more resilient ways of processing information through emotional and spiritual intelligence.
http://ionamiller.weebly.com/paramedia-ecology.html
"Association with pupils keeps one's work youthful. Critiquing others keeps one's point of view clear." (William Merritt Chase, 1849-1916)
MENTORING is the art of giving and receiving wisdom; guiding, nurturing and enabling others to realize and develop their full potential with respect for their own journey. It celebrates an extension of self-cultivation with kindred spirits in soulful relationships.
Mentoring is a means of expressing and receiving feedback from many points of view (POV). It is a mode of knowing and learning with. We find our identities in “mirroring”, empathy, mind-sharing and the struggle with different points of view.
Mentoring is individualized and tailored. Instructables means sharing what you make and how others can make it: step-by-step collaboration and nouveau niche opportunities - status skills. Once you find your niche, phreak it!
Now, consumers and "trysumers" can acquire as many skills as they want, but equally important is showing-off what you've learned and created. Don’t forget: without ‘the others’ seeing, tasting, hearing or smelling your skills, without the inevitable story-telling, there is no status coming your way!
The anti-trend to status skills is LACK OF TIME, balancing skill time and consumption time. Where on earth will consumers find the time to actively acquire these new skills? Infolust drives status skill-building and trend immersion.
The intergenerational "group leader" is a very busy and observant character, anticipating and even creating trends. While alternately bombarding the viewers and leaving them in pregnant silence, her approach is nevertheless anticipatory and dependent on the will of individuals within the group. This goes a long way toward avoiding the toxicity of recipes, the flapdoodle of stating the obvious.
The mentor must be able to think on her feet, with fluid concepts and creative analogies, and thus make it a learning experience for herself as well. Her job is to inspire, encourage and validate, to give authoritative crits, tips, demos, as well as input from Leonardo, Andy, Vincent, Georgia and others. It's good to instill and cultivate a feeling of the historic brotherhood and sisterhood. Newbies benefit when they keep their pride and lose their inhibitions.
Teaching can stealthily eviscerate your own need for art-making. Of course, there are those who find teaching a stimulus. Because many of us have a hard-wired need to share--and teaching is an obvious vehicle--we need to find ways of satisfying this need. Teaching art and hypermedia is not like teaching accounting. In the first place, individuals in an art community are likely to have vastly different expectations, potentials, aesthetics, icon repertoires, and prior experiences.
Because everybody is on a different page, you need to adjust your methodology. A feeling of "We're all friends here" must be established. In a game-like environment and an urgent atmosphere, all the participants start by going to work on current projects at their own level of proficiency. When the mentor feels that some direction can be reasonably offered, she engages on a one-to-one basis.
Students, collaborators and colleagues may gather or disperse. On occasion the mentor may pontificate for the whole group. She may quickly demonstrate her own or another's work for whoever may be interested. Examples of work, good and bad, finished or not, are held up for quick discussion. There's an ongoing interactive crit, a celebration of individuality within the joy of the group.
Attentional Processes: Beyond the Consumer Dream
Attention shuttling is self-soothing - a positive coping mechanism of resilient individuals, shifting attentional focus between the cognitive and emotional regulatory process. It is more akin to multitasking than the pathology of ADHD. It allows us to correct imbalances in our immediate environment by finding wider frames of reference that meet our needs better. It stimulates inner dialogue that often can’t be reduced to a single viewpoint from different perspectives.
Based on his work in creativity and with gifted children, John Curtis Gowan developed a model of development, which bootstrapped off Piaget and Erikson, but included adult development beyond the ordinary or "normal" adult successes of career and family building, extending into the emergence and stabilization of extraordinary development and mystical states of consciousness.
Gowan described the entire spectrum of available states in his classic Trance, Art, & Creativity (1975), with its different modalities of spiritual and aesthetic expression. He devised a test for Self-Actualization, called the Northridge Developmental Scale.
Gowan outlines a developmental theory whereby we may tap our latent creative potential and self-actualization, organically growing toward the psychedelic or soul-revealing and illuminative states. He describes these states most fully in Development of the Psychedelic Individual (1974) and in Operations of Increasing Order. His use of the term 'psychedelic' does not connote drug use; quite the contrary he is strongly opposed to the developmental forcing and disintegration drug-use brings.
He describes how dyplasias between cognitive and affective growth can bleed off developmental energies, resulting in dysphoria and displacements, leaving us feeling unintegrated, blocked or stuck. He carries developmental theory past the concept of a strong coping ego. Fearing the loss-of-control by our egos, we may be reluctant to enter the soul-revealing stage of psychedelia and remain content to re-experience successes at our familiar or comfortable level of experience--usually expressed by the metaphor of "the American Dream,"--a cultural myth.
Gowan considers plateauing out before these upper stages to be akin to lack of sexual maturation in an adolescent. Clearly, resilience is the ability to continually redefine oneself and experience are fundamental to this life-long process of connecting with Source and Spirit. One of these means is finding more resilient ways of processing information through emotional and spiritual intelligence.
http://ionamiller.weebly.com/paramedia-ecology.html
ARCANE CINEMA
Image, Film, & the Predictive Arts
Post-Jungian Video Collaborations of Iona Miller & Nate Drendel
Cryptoporticus Productions
by Iona Miller, (c)2019
-----------
We are making our video series on the Major Arcana: Paths of Individuation & Soul-Making, available [below] for educational purposes. Our effort is to advance understanding of common themes in the collective art, heart, and soul of humanity.
We present a distilled visual alchemy of the The Fool's Journey in each encrypted card, each a retinal poem. A continuous narrative emerges through a discontinuous montage of film, documentary, and music video imagery and iconography.
Metaphors of the underlying order in chaos connect our departures from the ordinary world through impressionistic leaps of imagination with fiery hearts and luminous hair. The heart is the secret of the source of the perceptual eye. Names and latent symbols become omens. The characters of the soul help us see in the dark.
TEXT:
https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/arcane-cinema.html
https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/major-arcana.html
Archetypes as the core components of the human psyche. What does it mean if a soul is composed of archetypes as proposed by Hillman?
One more word we need to introduce is archetype. The curious difficulty of explaining just what archetypes are suggests something specific to them. That is, they tend to be metaphors rather than things. We find ourselves less able to say what an archetype is literally and more inclined to describe them in images. We can't seem to touch one or point to one, and rather speak of what they are like.
Archetypes throw us into an imaginative style of discourse. In fact, it is precisely as metaphors that Jung—who reintroduced the ancient idea of archetype into modern psychology—writes of them, insisting upon their indefinability. To take an archetypal perspective in psychology leads us, therefore, to envision the basic nature and structure of the soul in an imaginative way and to approach the basic questions of psychology first of all by means of the imagination.
Let us then imagine archetypes as the deepest patterns of psychic functioning, the roots of the soul governing the perspectives we have of ourselves and the world. They are the axiomatic, self-evident images to which psychic life and our theories about it ever return.
They are similar to other axiomatic first principles, the models or paradigms, that we find in other fields. For “matter,” “God,” “energy,” “life,” “health,” “society,” “art” are also fundamental metaphors, archetypes perhaps themselves, which hold whole worlds together and yet can never be pointed to, accounted for, or even adequately circumscribed. All ways of speaking of archetypes are translations from one metaphor to another.
"Even sober operational definitions in the language of science or logic are no less metaphorical than an image which presents the archetypes as root ideas, psychic organs, figures of myth, typical styles of existence, or dominant fantasies that govern consciousness. There are many other metaphors for describing them: immaterial potentials of structure, like invisible crystals in solution or form in plants that suddenly show forth under certain conditions; patterns of instinctual behavior like those in animals that direct actions along unswerving paths; the genres and topoi in literature; the recurring typicalities in history; the basic syndromes in psychiatry; the paradigmatic thought models in science; the worldwide figures, rituals, and relationships in anthropology."
Hillman, James. The Essential James Hillman: A Blue Fire (pp. 23-24). Taylor and Francis.
"Archetypal psychology has pressed beyond the collection of objective data and the correlation of images as verbal or visual symbols. If archetypal images are the fundamentals of fantasy, they are the means by which the world is imagined, and therefore they are the models by which all knowledge, all experiences whatsoever become possible: “Every psychic process is an image and an ‘imagining,’ otherwise no consciousness could exist …” (CW 11: 889). An archetypal image operates like the original meaning of idea (from Greek eidos and eidolon): not only “that which” one sees but also that “by means of which” one sees. The demonstration of archetypal images is therefore as much in the act of seeing as in the object seen, since the archetypal image appears in consciousness itself as the governing fantasy by means of which consciousness is possible to begin with. Gathering of data does less to demonstrate objectively the existence of archetypes than it does to demonstrate the fantasy of “objective data.” -JH, Archetypal Psychology, 204-21
Image, Film, & the Predictive Arts
Post-Jungian Video Collaborations of Iona Miller & Nate Drendel
Cryptoporticus Productions
by Iona Miller, (c)2019
-----------
We are making our video series on the Major Arcana: Paths of Individuation & Soul-Making, available [below] for educational purposes. Our effort is to advance understanding of common themes in the collective art, heart, and soul of humanity.
We present a distilled visual alchemy of the The Fool's Journey in each encrypted card, each a retinal poem. A continuous narrative emerges through a discontinuous montage of film, documentary, and music video imagery and iconography.
Metaphors of the underlying order in chaos connect our departures from the ordinary world through impressionistic leaps of imagination with fiery hearts and luminous hair. The heart is the secret of the source of the perceptual eye. Names and latent symbols become omens. The characters of the soul help us see in the dark.
TEXT:
https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/arcane-cinema.html
https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/major-arcana.html
Archetypes as the core components of the human psyche. What does it mean if a soul is composed of archetypes as proposed by Hillman?
One more word we need to introduce is archetype. The curious difficulty of explaining just what archetypes are suggests something specific to them. That is, they tend to be metaphors rather than things. We find ourselves less able to say what an archetype is literally and more inclined to describe them in images. We can't seem to touch one or point to one, and rather speak of what they are like.
Archetypes throw us into an imaginative style of discourse. In fact, it is precisely as metaphors that Jung—who reintroduced the ancient idea of archetype into modern psychology—writes of them, insisting upon their indefinability. To take an archetypal perspective in psychology leads us, therefore, to envision the basic nature and structure of the soul in an imaginative way and to approach the basic questions of psychology first of all by means of the imagination.
Let us then imagine archetypes as the deepest patterns of psychic functioning, the roots of the soul governing the perspectives we have of ourselves and the world. They are the axiomatic, self-evident images to which psychic life and our theories about it ever return.
They are similar to other axiomatic first principles, the models or paradigms, that we find in other fields. For “matter,” “God,” “energy,” “life,” “health,” “society,” “art” are also fundamental metaphors, archetypes perhaps themselves, which hold whole worlds together and yet can never be pointed to, accounted for, or even adequately circumscribed. All ways of speaking of archetypes are translations from one metaphor to another.
"Even sober operational definitions in the language of science or logic are no less metaphorical than an image which presents the archetypes as root ideas, psychic organs, figures of myth, typical styles of existence, or dominant fantasies that govern consciousness. There are many other metaphors for describing them: immaterial potentials of structure, like invisible crystals in solution or form in plants that suddenly show forth under certain conditions; patterns of instinctual behavior like those in animals that direct actions along unswerving paths; the genres and topoi in literature; the recurring typicalities in history; the basic syndromes in psychiatry; the paradigmatic thought models in science; the worldwide figures, rituals, and relationships in anthropology."
Hillman, James. The Essential James Hillman: A Blue Fire (pp. 23-24). Taylor and Francis.
"Archetypal psychology has pressed beyond the collection of objective data and the correlation of images as verbal or visual symbols. If archetypal images are the fundamentals of fantasy, they are the means by which the world is imagined, and therefore they are the models by which all knowledge, all experiences whatsoever become possible: “Every psychic process is an image and an ‘imagining,’ otherwise no consciousness could exist …” (CW 11: 889). An archetypal image operates like the original meaning of idea (from Greek eidos and eidolon): not only “that which” one sees but also that “by means of which” one sees. The demonstration of archetypal images is therefore as much in the act of seeing as in the object seen, since the archetypal image appears in consciousness itself as the governing fantasy by means of which consciousness is possible to begin with. Gathering of data does less to demonstrate objectively the existence of archetypes than it does to demonstrate the fantasy of “objective data.” -JH, Archetypal Psychology, 204-21
https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/helios-titan.html
HELIOS: PRIMORDIAL LIGHT
Creation, Catastrophe, & Titanic Forces
by Iona Miller, (c)2018
Primordial Deities
About 4.6 billion years ago, our solar system, the Sun and the Earth were formed. Myth straddles a scientifically false account of the world, and one which never took place as recounted but contains core truths about the universe or human experience.
Myths reveal the human condition in relation to the sky, stars, and planets. The theory and nature of myth is related to the sky. The Titan god Helios is one such personification. The ancients naturally worshiped the life-giving sun, the symbol of the Source and origin of all things.
The circumpunct symbol has been around for millennia, as "the circle with the dot in the middle". The circumpunct meaning ranges from an explanation of deity,to an explanation of the self. The circumpunct is one of most symbolic of all symbols. An Egyptian solar symbol dates back to Ra (or Re), god of the midday sun. In fact, the circle with a midpoint, plus a vertical line is the hieroglyph meaning "sun".
The all-seeing eyes derives from the circumpunct. The most ancient initiatory and healing symbols, the circumpunct, a dot within a circle and/or a cross within a circle symbolizes the inner sun. is all-seeing eye evolved from prehistoric sun-disc images. The solar cross and wheel pendants mark the cardinal directions and the zodiacal houses of the precessional Great Year, a 26,000 years long cycle.
Helios symbolizes the order of solstices punctuated by periodic eclipses. Ancient mankind built megaliths, burial chambers, and cave features to predict these cycles and fearsome wonders. Today, we use telescopes, and the heart of each telescope is a mirror which brings things into focus.
The primacy of Helios reflects the primacy of consciousness. Solar energy and fire were always natural metaphors of creative power that becomes exhausted, then sinks back into its prior unconscious condition. Helios became the symbol of pure consciousness shining in the darkness of the unknown and the spiritual vision of the seer.
HELIOS: PRIMORDIAL LIGHT
Creation, Catastrophe, & Titanic Forces
by Iona Miller, (c)2018
Primordial Deities
About 4.6 billion years ago, our solar system, the Sun and the Earth were formed. Myth straddles a scientifically false account of the world, and one which never took place as recounted but contains core truths about the universe or human experience.
Myths reveal the human condition in relation to the sky, stars, and planets. The theory and nature of myth is related to the sky. The Titan god Helios is one such personification. The ancients naturally worshiped the life-giving sun, the symbol of the Source and origin of all things.
The circumpunct symbol has been around for millennia, as "the circle with the dot in the middle". The circumpunct meaning ranges from an explanation of deity,to an explanation of the self. The circumpunct is one of most symbolic of all symbols. An Egyptian solar symbol dates back to Ra (or Re), god of the midday sun. In fact, the circle with a midpoint, plus a vertical line is the hieroglyph meaning "sun".
The all-seeing eyes derives from the circumpunct. The most ancient initiatory and healing symbols, the circumpunct, a dot within a circle and/or a cross within a circle symbolizes the inner sun. is all-seeing eye evolved from prehistoric sun-disc images. The solar cross and wheel pendants mark the cardinal directions and the zodiacal houses of the precessional Great Year, a 26,000 years long cycle.
Helios symbolizes the order of solstices punctuated by periodic eclipses. Ancient mankind built megaliths, burial chambers, and cave features to predict these cycles and fearsome wonders. Today, we use telescopes, and the heart of each telescope is a mirror which brings things into focus.
The primacy of Helios reflects the primacy of consciousness. Solar energy and fire were always natural metaphors of creative power that becomes exhausted, then sinks back into its prior unconscious condition. Helios became the symbol of pure consciousness shining in the darkness of the unknown and the spiritual vision of the seer.
ARCHETYPAL PSYCHOLOGY
ART STATEMENT 2020
Iona Miller, (c)2019
Learning Objectives:
Discovery, Awakening, Integration, Implementation
1. To compare traditional, contemporary and philosophical thinking about
symbols, myths, images and themes;
2. To analyze the creation, use, misuse, and exploitation of symbols and imagery in cultural and personal life;
3. To create symbolic meaning and describe imaginal impact on individuals and culture;
4. To describe symbolic and imaginal processes and expression in individual and group transformation;
5. To critique new conceptualizations of historical symbols and the creation of symbolic meaning.
"I beg you to have patience with everything that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." - Rilke, (1929)
Ensoulment
Soul is a metaphorical conception of psyche, the self-sustaining imaginal substrate. Hillman conceives psyche (or anima mundi) as a non -religious, psychological soul, a numinosum of the World Soul with its complex urges, instincts, and inclinations.
We, too, are imaginal being, more organismic than disciplined. Plato said, “Images, like myth, are necessary for the enchantment of the soul." Each image contains a fractal-like representation of past, present, and future. Fiction and imagination are symbolic variants of dreams -- feeling knowing and knowing feeling.
The transformation of imagery reflects in creativity; transformation of beliefs, thoughts, feelings, values, attitudes and behavior. New changes and life challenges are always in flux. It reorganizes as repertoire expansion, an aesthetic infusion of depth and feeling, yielding to and repetition of core themes.
Anima mundi embodies the pandemonium of all forms in external and internal perceptions, an archetypal way of seeing -- seeing through the world.
Nature, anima mundi, in this fashion exemplifies what we also are -- our soul is the whole world.
We become elementary perceivers of the environment and instinctual soul.
Psyche is an image-maker, veiled in the reflection of images. A self- revelatory imaginal force generates imagery and a way of "seeing through" events from the literal to the concealed metaphor or overlooked presence.
Transformation results from deepening within the flow of psychic imagery. Destructuring transformative processes dissolve, increasing the sense of flow. Entering the turbulent flow of the stream of consciousness, we can ride its currents back to the Source. Chaotic images contain the entire pandemonium of images, raw psychic material and emergent assemblage. They carry an echoing resonance -- a sense of fate, necessity, and limitation.
Metaphors function internally like mini-myths or personal fables, mythologizing perceptions, feelings, and existence into mythic enactments. Using “as-if ” fictions to transform reality into mythic consciousness links psyche and environment together. The path of the psyche is a bridge to the irrational, left in its recovery of meaning. Consequences are the effects of past states we inherit that continue to constitute the present moment.
It is the living medium of our emotions and our mental concepts as we are the living manifestation of psyche. This is a way of knowing, direct personal encounter with the soul, a synthesis of therapeutic, mantic and creative arts that make the divine an intrinsic part of our being -- the aesthetic heart.
Jung said, "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."
We find our story as it shapes us. We shape our drama until it carries resonance. Our aesthetic vision is of an ensouled world in which the ordinary carries something of wonder and meaning. We may find it in nature, in the consulting room, in the cinema, or in the cards, if it doesn't find us first. Layering image on image amplifies the mystery.
Our search through errant necessity, like The Fool or Parcival, is for multidimensional relationship with the psyche, the understanding of total psychic involvement, patterns of unique character speciation, functional spirituality, and evocation of radical creativity. The image works on us even without a conclusion or goal. Imagination doesn’t have to achieve or commit to create.
In The Power of Myth, Campbell states, “People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances without own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
Imagination changes the situation of the psyche. The world gets to us through the imaginal function, sense perception, seeing, noticing, reacting -- an enlarged space where we can be more of ourselves. Myth is cosmic history but history is ordinary reality.
We are the intended audience, always primed for archetypal drama where 'truth' is what remains true to life. The archetype becomes an encounter that expresses in all aspects of life, more fundamental to life than any individual psyche. For an image to be a “living symbol” it must refer to something that otherwise cannot be known.
Anyone can access the imaginal panoply and soul-making. Like Tarot, the non-personal imaginal realm is an oracle of the underworld temple for those who drink from it. We care for and serve the soul, the fantasy in all reality.
Valuing perspective over substance, Archetypal Psychology centers on recognizing archetypes as valuing processes. When soul appears, beauty appears as the value of each particular heartfelt thing, a mythopoetic world view, engaged in a world that is animated with soul.
Hillman says, "But the heart's way of perceiving is both a sensing and an imagining: to sense penetratingly we must imagine, and to imagine accurately we must sense." Gibran urges, "Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights. But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge."
"My fantasies are like wounds, they reveal my pathology. Resistance protects me. Fantasies are incompatible with my usual ego , and because they are uncontrollable and 'fantastic' - that is away from my the relation to ego reality - we feel them alien. We are not embarrassed in the same way about our will and intelligence; indeed we proudly exhibit their accomplishments. But what breeds in the imagination we tend to keep apart and to ourselves. Imagination is an inner world - an inner aspect of consciousness. These affections and fantasies are the imaginal or unconscious aspect of everything we think and do. This part of the soul that we keep to ourselves is central to analysis, to confession, to prayer, central between lovers and friends, central in the work of art, central to what we mean by 'telling the truth'." (James Hillman, 'The Myth of Analysis' 'On Psychological Creativity')
The oceanic and mundane mingle in the face value of the story. Such stories move us; they mobilize our deep resources. Soul moves through us when we feel the significance of an ensouled world with meaning and wonder. The unconscious responds to dramatic, metaphorical and poetic gestures -- symbolic acts.
Hillman notes, "Here begins phenomenology: in a world of ensouled phenomena. Phenomena need not be saved by grace or faith or all-embracing theory, or by scientific objectiveness or transcendental subjectivity. They are saved by the anima mundi, by their own souls and our simple gasping at this imaginal loveliness. The ahh of wonder, of recognition..."
Archetypal psychology is rooted in archetype and focused on the image by cultivating imagination in the middle realm of self-revealing significance. Its vehicle is mythology, grounded in a world view of pluralism and polytheism, the mythic and metaphorical realm.
The procedure is imaginal, rhetorical, poetic. Its direction is depth without measure, abysmal mystery (the intolerable, the uncanny, the alien), not the rising heights of spirit. Psychic presences are “the spontaneous experiencing, envisioning and speaking of the configurations of existence as psychic presences” (Re-Visioning, 12).
In The Soul's Code, Hillman says, "myth has a redemptive psychological function, and a psychology derived from it can inspire a life founded on it." Our daimon "has affinities with myth, since it is itself a mythical being and thinks in mythical patterns."
As Japanese poet, Matsuo Basho said, "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought." 'What we are seeking causes us to seek' is a truism. Storytelling has always been a sacred art. Life engenders such stories. Enactment includes attention, desire, intimacy -- witnessing and reflecting the story.
Soulful theatrical language, which is emotional, dramatic, sensual, and fantastic is shared by psychodrama. Even an empty theatre is full of human stories. The objective of traditional theater has always been to transform its participants in some way.
Mythical Appreciation
The unconscious expresses itself in the emergent mythopoetic function, a glimpse into the transcendent dimension. Libido, the generalized life instinct, is spiritualized by the numinous energy of the living myth, by intention, thought, and desire, even compulsion. Archetypes impact us in intense, overwhelming, multifaceted ways.
Soul escapes the therapeutic and aesthetic in the ordinary world. Our story is what matters -- the dreamlike nature of reality -- more of an aesthetic arc than a developmental spiritual quest.
Heraclitus tells us, “You could not discover the limits of the soul (psyche) , even if you traveled every road to do so; such is the depth (bathum) of its meaning (logos)” (Revisioning xi).
Our journey is an epic tale, a transformation story rooted in deep time, a continuous recapitulation of the universal story, now fused with our personal myth and communion with Beauty. Suffering is transformed into devotion through our myth. Myth has no dogma.
We never stop dreaming. Imagination constantly emerges as a continuous narrative that exists and contains ordinary reality, a paradoxical reality-dream. We recover what the world has denied, repressed, and forgotten in our dreams. Our commitment and responsibility to our own dreams grows. When we long for the thing that will open up reality, other forms of consciousness appear which were previously unconscious.
Feeling our body more deeply opens the spiritual landscape. "Man has no Body distinct from his soul; for that called Body is a portion of a Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age," according to William Blake.
Hillman links body and speech: "The murder of speech is the self-murder of the human animal, a suicidal evisceration of our species' specific endowment. Like tigers losing their stripes, like beached whales and blind eagles are we without our rhetoric. Speech is our body, speech is our shape, speech is our beauty."
In 'Culture and the Animal Soul' he concludes, "the return to the animal means a return to the poetic urge in any citizen, an urge symbolized by the actual poet who, like an alpha animal, leads the herd with the power of display."
The Egyptians thought we have five bodies: the (most subtle) Spiritual Body (Egyptian: Sahu); and, the increasingly less subtle: Magical Body (Khu); Shadow (Haidit); Double (Ka); and Physical Body (Aufu).
Some suggest finding God in the body and the truth of suffering, the enlivening eidos of divine ideas. If symptoms are our entree to the unconscious, we can follow Hillman's prescription: "To heal the symptom, we must heal the person, and to heal the person we must first heal the story in which the person has imagined himself."
Most myths have wounding after wounding at their core. Myths are the greatest stories, a sort of psychic DNA that illuminates and sustains us and allows us to endure. This mythic intelligence is the persistent base note of our mythopoetic life song.
Hillman made reference to gods, goddesses, demigods and other imaginal figures which he referred to as sounding boards "for echoing life today or as bass chords giving resonance to the little melodies of daily life."
Story exposes us to our fate and incentives. "Perhaps--who knows," writes Jung, "these eternal images are what men mean by fate." We need this help, for who can carry his fate alone?" (Hillman) The creative function saves "the diversity and autonomy of the psyche from domination by any single power, whether this domination be by a figure of archetypal awe in one’s surroundings or by one’s own egomania. ‘ (Re-Visioning, 32)
This psychological awakening is a spiritual initiation that potentially restores meaning to life. Instead of psychological concepts, they appear as high-impact mythological images, the "mythological unconscious" testing our ability to endure and discover integrity in depth.
Hillman says, it may be easier to talk about these ideas as archetypes, the soul’s relation with death, with body, the world, other souls, love, beauty, sickness, family, ancestors, power, history, time. The gods return to us as archetypes. This may be a move beyond the Collective Unconscious to the World Unconscious.
The path leads through the ghost-lands of the unconscious, undead aspects of personality. 'Seering' and soul-searing voices illuminate the darkest layer of the inherited personality structure and the daimonic imagination and uncanny intelligence, another order of reality.
The inner voice of the daemon speaks, uncensored, and takes control for a time. This "assuming the god-form" is an epiphany -- a miracle marriage, the merging of subject and object, figure and ground, profane and sacred.
Our demons are the instinctual impulses and unconscious complexes that overcome and possess us. We confront the pitiless monsters of archetypal Grief, Loss, Cares, Diseases, Age, Dread, Hunger, Want, Death, Toil, Sleep, Catastrophe, War, and Discord. Our personal suffering is commuted to collective, even transpersonal suffering.
We detect footprints on the path as we learn the stories of those who have gone before us which may lighten our load. We reconnect with the roots of our being using our instinctual nature to dialogue with the unconscious.
We may uncover the pattern that connects us to the past and to the future when the path to transcendence reverses itself in more than a regressive retreat into ancient levels of awareness. But it means sitting in the fire of our own fears and suffering while honoring soul's perspective.
We find transubstatiation through the fullness of larger stories, tapping into the universe living in us in a microcosmic way, into the Music of the Spheres, from the depth of our capacity. We get it at a molecular level. Alan Watts said, "You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself."
Enactment
Myth bursts through, opening the pathways to the past, the future, and the cosmic, opening the heart through the viscera. We actively rethink and engage our primal story with all our ways of seeing. Life is the enactment of mythical or imaginal scenarios. The soul of our actions emerges.
We fractally repeat a recursive spiral of multi-temporal emergent patterns and forms -- the flow-through of another order of time. History repeats because it is an expression of human nature, which includes the mythic dimension. Time is an imaginary dimension - process, revealing the dynamics of both time and its inverse. Space is a field where energy can work in a point of time.
A point of time which contains all space is a moment now, a line of time is an occurrence, and a wave of time is recurrence. We resonate at these time intervals transforming consciousness. Everything is simultaneous. In remembering, the active present supersedes past experience. Time is more than theoretical, it is theatrical.
Hillman points out that we can remember, associating backward and downward into the forgotten and repressed. And in psychic reality we find a multiplicity of answers to all major, archetypal, sorts of questions--relative answers. Each archetypal perspective has its way of self-knowing, touching all points of the soul, all channels of images resonating as timelessness.
Iona Miller, (c)2019
Learning Objectives:
Discovery, Awakening, Integration, Implementation
1. To compare traditional, contemporary and philosophical thinking about
symbols, myths, images and themes;
2. To analyze the creation, use, misuse, and exploitation of symbols and imagery in cultural and personal life;
3. To create symbolic meaning and describe imaginal impact on individuals and culture;
4. To describe symbolic and imaginal processes and expression in individual and group transformation;
5. To critique new conceptualizations of historical symbols and the creation of symbolic meaning.
"I beg you to have patience with everything that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." - Rilke, (1929)
Ensoulment
Soul is a metaphorical conception of psyche, the self-sustaining imaginal substrate. Hillman conceives psyche (or anima mundi) as a non -religious, psychological soul, a numinosum of the World Soul with its complex urges, instincts, and inclinations.
We, too, are imaginal being, more organismic than disciplined. Plato said, “Images, like myth, are necessary for the enchantment of the soul." Each image contains a fractal-like representation of past, present, and future. Fiction and imagination are symbolic variants of dreams -- feeling knowing and knowing feeling.
The transformation of imagery reflects in creativity; transformation of beliefs, thoughts, feelings, values, attitudes and behavior. New changes and life challenges are always in flux. It reorganizes as repertoire expansion, an aesthetic infusion of depth and feeling, yielding to and repetition of core themes.
Anima mundi embodies the pandemonium of all forms in external and internal perceptions, an archetypal way of seeing -- seeing through the world.
Nature, anima mundi, in this fashion exemplifies what we also are -- our soul is the whole world.
We become elementary perceivers of the environment and instinctual soul.
Psyche is an image-maker, veiled in the reflection of images. A self- revelatory imaginal force generates imagery and a way of "seeing through" events from the literal to the concealed metaphor or overlooked presence.
Transformation results from deepening within the flow of psychic imagery. Destructuring transformative processes dissolve, increasing the sense of flow. Entering the turbulent flow of the stream of consciousness, we can ride its currents back to the Source. Chaotic images contain the entire pandemonium of images, raw psychic material and emergent assemblage. They carry an echoing resonance -- a sense of fate, necessity, and limitation.
Metaphors function internally like mini-myths or personal fables, mythologizing perceptions, feelings, and existence into mythic enactments. Using “as-if ” fictions to transform reality into mythic consciousness links psyche and environment together. The path of the psyche is a bridge to the irrational, left in its recovery of meaning. Consequences are the effects of past states we inherit that continue to constitute the present moment.
It is the living medium of our emotions and our mental concepts as we are the living manifestation of psyche. This is a way of knowing, direct personal encounter with the soul, a synthesis of therapeutic, mantic and creative arts that make the divine an intrinsic part of our being -- the aesthetic heart.
Jung said, "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."
We find our story as it shapes us. We shape our drama until it carries resonance. Our aesthetic vision is of an ensouled world in which the ordinary carries something of wonder and meaning. We may find it in nature, in the consulting room, in the cinema, or in the cards, if it doesn't find us first. Layering image on image amplifies the mystery.
Our search through errant necessity, like The Fool or Parcival, is for multidimensional relationship with the psyche, the understanding of total psychic involvement, patterns of unique character speciation, functional spirituality, and evocation of radical creativity. The image works on us even without a conclusion or goal. Imagination doesn’t have to achieve or commit to create.
In The Power of Myth, Campbell states, “People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances without own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
Imagination changes the situation of the psyche. The world gets to us through the imaginal function, sense perception, seeing, noticing, reacting -- an enlarged space where we can be more of ourselves. Myth is cosmic history but history is ordinary reality.
We are the intended audience, always primed for archetypal drama where 'truth' is what remains true to life. The archetype becomes an encounter that expresses in all aspects of life, more fundamental to life than any individual psyche. For an image to be a “living symbol” it must refer to something that otherwise cannot be known.
Anyone can access the imaginal panoply and soul-making. Like Tarot, the non-personal imaginal realm is an oracle of the underworld temple for those who drink from it. We care for and serve the soul, the fantasy in all reality.
Valuing perspective over substance, Archetypal Psychology centers on recognizing archetypes as valuing processes. When soul appears, beauty appears as the value of each particular heartfelt thing, a mythopoetic world view, engaged in a world that is animated with soul.
Hillman says, "But the heart's way of perceiving is both a sensing and an imagining: to sense penetratingly we must imagine, and to imagine accurately we must sense." Gibran urges, "Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights. But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge."
"My fantasies are like wounds, they reveal my pathology. Resistance protects me. Fantasies are incompatible with my usual ego , and because they are uncontrollable and 'fantastic' - that is away from my the relation to ego reality - we feel them alien. We are not embarrassed in the same way about our will and intelligence; indeed we proudly exhibit their accomplishments. But what breeds in the imagination we tend to keep apart and to ourselves. Imagination is an inner world - an inner aspect of consciousness. These affections and fantasies are the imaginal or unconscious aspect of everything we think and do. This part of the soul that we keep to ourselves is central to analysis, to confession, to prayer, central between lovers and friends, central in the work of art, central to what we mean by 'telling the truth'." (James Hillman, 'The Myth of Analysis' 'On Psychological Creativity')
The oceanic and mundane mingle in the face value of the story. Such stories move us; they mobilize our deep resources. Soul moves through us when we feel the significance of an ensouled world with meaning and wonder. The unconscious responds to dramatic, metaphorical and poetic gestures -- symbolic acts.
Hillman notes, "Here begins phenomenology: in a world of ensouled phenomena. Phenomena need not be saved by grace or faith or all-embracing theory, or by scientific objectiveness or transcendental subjectivity. They are saved by the anima mundi, by their own souls and our simple gasping at this imaginal loveliness. The ahh of wonder, of recognition..."
Archetypal psychology is rooted in archetype and focused on the image by cultivating imagination in the middle realm of self-revealing significance. Its vehicle is mythology, grounded in a world view of pluralism and polytheism, the mythic and metaphorical realm.
The procedure is imaginal, rhetorical, poetic. Its direction is depth without measure, abysmal mystery (the intolerable, the uncanny, the alien), not the rising heights of spirit. Psychic presences are “the spontaneous experiencing, envisioning and speaking of the configurations of existence as psychic presences” (Re-Visioning, 12).
In The Soul's Code, Hillman says, "myth has a redemptive psychological function, and a psychology derived from it can inspire a life founded on it." Our daimon "has affinities with myth, since it is itself a mythical being and thinks in mythical patterns."
As Japanese poet, Matsuo Basho said, "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought." 'What we are seeking causes us to seek' is a truism. Storytelling has always been a sacred art. Life engenders such stories. Enactment includes attention, desire, intimacy -- witnessing and reflecting the story.
Soulful theatrical language, which is emotional, dramatic, sensual, and fantastic is shared by psychodrama. Even an empty theatre is full of human stories. The objective of traditional theater has always been to transform its participants in some way.
Mythical Appreciation
The unconscious expresses itself in the emergent mythopoetic function, a glimpse into the transcendent dimension. Libido, the generalized life instinct, is spiritualized by the numinous energy of the living myth, by intention, thought, and desire, even compulsion. Archetypes impact us in intense, overwhelming, multifaceted ways.
Soul escapes the therapeutic and aesthetic in the ordinary world. Our story is what matters -- the dreamlike nature of reality -- more of an aesthetic arc than a developmental spiritual quest.
Heraclitus tells us, “You could not discover the limits of the soul (psyche) , even if you traveled every road to do so; such is the depth (bathum) of its meaning (logos)” (Revisioning xi).
Our journey is an epic tale, a transformation story rooted in deep time, a continuous recapitulation of the universal story, now fused with our personal myth and communion with Beauty. Suffering is transformed into devotion through our myth. Myth has no dogma.
We never stop dreaming. Imagination constantly emerges as a continuous narrative that exists and contains ordinary reality, a paradoxical reality-dream. We recover what the world has denied, repressed, and forgotten in our dreams. Our commitment and responsibility to our own dreams grows. When we long for the thing that will open up reality, other forms of consciousness appear which were previously unconscious.
Feeling our body more deeply opens the spiritual landscape. "Man has no Body distinct from his soul; for that called Body is a portion of a Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age," according to William Blake.
Hillman links body and speech: "The murder of speech is the self-murder of the human animal, a suicidal evisceration of our species' specific endowment. Like tigers losing their stripes, like beached whales and blind eagles are we without our rhetoric. Speech is our body, speech is our shape, speech is our beauty."
In 'Culture and the Animal Soul' he concludes, "the return to the animal means a return to the poetic urge in any citizen, an urge symbolized by the actual poet who, like an alpha animal, leads the herd with the power of display."
The Egyptians thought we have five bodies: the (most subtle) Spiritual Body (Egyptian: Sahu); and, the increasingly less subtle: Magical Body (Khu); Shadow (Haidit); Double (Ka); and Physical Body (Aufu).
Some suggest finding God in the body and the truth of suffering, the enlivening eidos of divine ideas. If symptoms are our entree to the unconscious, we can follow Hillman's prescription: "To heal the symptom, we must heal the person, and to heal the person we must first heal the story in which the person has imagined himself."
Most myths have wounding after wounding at their core. Myths are the greatest stories, a sort of psychic DNA that illuminates and sustains us and allows us to endure. This mythic intelligence is the persistent base note of our mythopoetic life song.
Hillman made reference to gods, goddesses, demigods and other imaginal figures which he referred to as sounding boards "for echoing life today or as bass chords giving resonance to the little melodies of daily life."
Story exposes us to our fate and incentives. "Perhaps--who knows," writes Jung, "these eternal images are what men mean by fate." We need this help, for who can carry his fate alone?" (Hillman) The creative function saves "the diversity and autonomy of the psyche from domination by any single power, whether this domination be by a figure of archetypal awe in one’s surroundings or by one’s own egomania. ‘ (Re-Visioning, 32)
This psychological awakening is a spiritual initiation that potentially restores meaning to life. Instead of psychological concepts, they appear as high-impact mythological images, the "mythological unconscious" testing our ability to endure and discover integrity in depth.
Hillman says, it may be easier to talk about these ideas as archetypes, the soul’s relation with death, with body, the world, other souls, love, beauty, sickness, family, ancestors, power, history, time. The gods return to us as archetypes. This may be a move beyond the Collective Unconscious to the World Unconscious.
The path leads through the ghost-lands of the unconscious, undead aspects of personality. 'Seering' and soul-searing voices illuminate the darkest layer of the inherited personality structure and the daimonic imagination and uncanny intelligence, another order of reality.
The inner voice of the daemon speaks, uncensored, and takes control for a time. This "assuming the god-form" is an epiphany -- a miracle marriage, the merging of subject and object, figure and ground, profane and sacred.
Our demons are the instinctual impulses and unconscious complexes that overcome and possess us. We confront the pitiless monsters of archetypal Grief, Loss, Cares, Diseases, Age, Dread, Hunger, Want, Death, Toil, Sleep, Catastrophe, War, and Discord. Our personal suffering is commuted to collective, even transpersonal suffering.
We detect footprints on the path as we learn the stories of those who have gone before us which may lighten our load. We reconnect with the roots of our being using our instinctual nature to dialogue with the unconscious.
We may uncover the pattern that connects us to the past and to the future when the path to transcendence reverses itself in more than a regressive retreat into ancient levels of awareness. But it means sitting in the fire of our own fears and suffering while honoring soul's perspective.
We find transubstatiation through the fullness of larger stories, tapping into the universe living in us in a microcosmic way, into the Music of the Spheres, from the depth of our capacity. We get it at a molecular level. Alan Watts said, "You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself."
Enactment
Myth bursts through, opening the pathways to the past, the future, and the cosmic, opening the heart through the viscera. We actively rethink and engage our primal story with all our ways of seeing. Life is the enactment of mythical or imaginal scenarios. The soul of our actions emerges.
We fractally repeat a recursive spiral of multi-temporal emergent patterns and forms -- the flow-through of another order of time. History repeats because it is an expression of human nature, which includes the mythic dimension. Time is an imaginary dimension - process, revealing the dynamics of both time and its inverse. Space is a field where energy can work in a point of time.
A point of time which contains all space is a moment now, a line of time is an occurrence, and a wave of time is recurrence. We resonate at these time intervals transforming consciousness. Everything is simultaneous. In remembering, the active present supersedes past experience. Time is more than theoretical, it is theatrical.
Hillman points out that we can remember, associating backward and downward into the forgotten and repressed. And in psychic reality we find a multiplicity of answers to all major, archetypal, sorts of questions--relative answers. Each archetypal perspective has its way of self-knowing, touching all points of the soul, all channels of images resonating as timelessness.
We need a new Participatory Wisdom for how to be and how to get along in our rapidly changing world. We need to change the architecture of our participation with self, others and world for a richer user experience, an attitude not a technology. Science isn't the panacea. Soon it will make us Borg, transhumans with bioelectronic supplementation. Science still doesn't know what energy, matter, electricity, life, or the cosmos is, but the secret of the Universe is that IT's ALIVE! And so are we.
Calm Passion
That very nonmechanical liveliness, the joi de vivre of passion, best communicates our holistic Presence to others, to the world. In ancient times, wisdom was thought of as the type of knowledge needed to discern the good and live the good life. It was one of the four virtues, including justice, moderation, and courage, which comes from the heart as the root couer,shows. The pursuit of wisdom comes from a willingness to expose the pretenses of wisdom wherever we find them, even in ourselves. It gives us the infallible judgment to discern what is worthy of pursuit.
The "courage to be" -- what we potentially are, our mission and raison d'etre -- is essentially an ethical act of affirming our identity despite any shortcomings or the possibility of dreadful outcomes. It is embodied in two basic life strategies, which can be summed up as, "Say it then play it" or "Play it and then say it."
In the former we declare our intent. We begin with an inspiration, fantasy or desire, name it then go about the process of making it so. In the later, we place ourselves in the matrix of spontaneous events and find ourselves living larger than life, and then maximize that fortune to parlay it into further opportunities for fantastic experiences. Wisdom is developed through experience, insight and reflection -- the common sense of foresight, or "connecting the dots."
Philosophy as the love of wisdom is a metaphysical pursuit, which opens the depth dimension. Sure, each of us can be wise in our craft, but that is merely a steppingstone to the greater accomplishment of a well-lived life, optimizing our talents and opportunities for expression. Knowledge is the basis for making good choices. Without the right information, we are stuck in the "garbage in/garbage out" modality.
Participatory Wisdom
Practical wisdom, then, means the disposition and skill to use knowledge in the right ways -- fully actualized power. Skepticism toward rigid dogmas and even our own beliefs helps us stay quietly open to the opportunities, which might otherwise be lost. In this mode, faith comes from a solid connection with the nurturing Ground of our Being, the inherent power of self-affirmation, despite the threat of nonbeing.
Faith in oneself pragmatically confronts and transcends both theism and mysticism with a skeptical eye toward their limiting content. In this regard, it affirms radical freedom. This is a freedom to simply be what we are, more fully, without cultural or "imported" conditioning.
Insecurities remain, but are no longer paralyzing. When the inner aim is true, we cannot help but be drawn forward toward our own Truth. Aligning ourselves with others who appreciate the fundamental interconnectedness of life helps us thrive. It opens the door to both learning and mentoring others.
Courage in the face of the unknown is a gift of our Spirit. This strength of mind and heart is our Essence, our essential nature, which can neither be taught nor learned, but is a grace. It means power over oneself to muster and self-regulate inspiration, mood and creativity.
The evolutionary "edge,” the new self-organizing order always emerges from chaos. Courage gives us the will to surpass ourselves, and joy in doing so. Without courage, we can’t tolerate failure or success. With it, we can face the prospect of setbacks, guilt, condemnation and even death, for our lives are not empty nor meaningless...but a grand work of art, an artfully lived life with the acceptance that what IS-IS.
Thus, seeking and promoting wisdom means the capacity to realize what is of value in life for oneself and others, including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides that is the domain of aesthetics - Art with Heart. There is an art to creating environments, new worlds of perception. http://ionamiller.weebly.com/paramedia-ecology.html
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