Four Ways to Work With Your Shadow
Unfortunately, there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct […]
The Defining Characteristics of the Opus
It’s life that matters, nothing but life — the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all. ~Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Idiot Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And […]
The Essential Thing Is the Opus
I observe myself in the stillness of Bollingen and with all my experience of nearly eight decades must admit that I have found no rounded answer to myself. I am just as much in doubt about myself as before, the more so the more I try to say something definite. It is as though familiarity […]
What Do Dreams Say About This Phase of Your Life?
I’m going through an uncomfortable phase. I’ve had the same dream almost every night for three weeks. It has no images. Just thoughts and words: I’m writing a blog post about the Mediatrix archetype. Although the words vary, the same three elements appear in every dream. First, I’m determined to understand and describe this archetype. […]
Dancing to the Laws of Your Own Nature
So if we follow the laws that are in our own nature, they will lead us to the right end…. You have got to trust yourself with your own experience, because, according to the natural law, it will lead to a state of completeness. I do not speak of a state of perfection—that is prejudice—but […]
Dream Mother Sends Me Some Reassuring Dream Mothers
Everything young grows old, all beauty fades, all heat cools, all brightness dims, and every truth becomes stale and trite. For all these things have taken on shape, and all shapes are worn thin by the working of time; they age, sicken, crumble to dust—unless they change. But change they can, for the invisible spark […]
Knowing the Substance of the Thing from Inside
“Man needs difficulties, they are necessary for health.” C.G. Jung, “The Transcendent Function” ([1916]/1958), CW 8, par. 143. This will be a short one. As you can see, I have a compromised left hand that makes it uncomfortable to type for very long. Late last week I sprained my wrist. I was standing on a […]
My Assignment This Time Around
It’s beautiful, cool, and refreshing in the Smokies. We’ve had a lot of company and I’ve enjoyed it. But I’m feeling tired these days. I caught a cold from one of our visitors and spent most of Monday and Tuesday in bed. That’s why I didn’t write a post last week. For the first time […]
What Matters More: Matter or Meaning?
“As we hurtle toward a cold and barren cosmos…the only direction to look is inward. That is the noble direction to look. It is a direction that foregoes ready-made answers and turns to the highly personal journey of constructing our own meaning. It is a direction that leads to the very heart of creative expression […]
That Certain Something About a Horse
“There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man. [Or a woman].” ~Winston Churchill “Would you be able to take Sophia to the stable now?” I consider how to respond to my daughter’s text. It’s 3:00 on Monday, the day I write my blog posts for […]
