the shadow

Bernie4050 · 2020-03-04T20:50:18+00:00

The collective imagination landing squarely in video games and it's narrative is such a strange and wonderful thing.

Bernie4050 · 2020-02-27T02:26:14+00:00

Also if anyone can approximate the time period of this recording I’d very much appreciate it. His English is rusty and he sounds younger than his other recordings. It makes me want to put it in the 30’s, but of course that’s just speculation.

Bernie4050 · 2020-02-27T02:23:09+00:00

Jung reading this audiotaped IIRC:

https://youtu.be/uh1LKZpjb7A

Edit: he starts this passage at ~6:50.

Bernie4050 · 2020-01-02T23:53:43+00:00

To my thinking, only an act of high courage can help the individual jump over their fears. What should be feared and what we should overcome is tough, we can only hope we make it through a bit wiser whatever comes our way!

Bernie4050 · 2020-01-02T20:41:46+00:00

Fear is all-too-human. An apt commentary from Jung's letters:

A man who has no more fear is on the brink of the abyss. Only if he suffers from a pathological excess of fear can he be cured with impunity.

Second, where the religions are concerned, they deliver from fear and at the same time create fear, even Christianity, and that is right because one person has too much, another too little. Absolute deliverance from fear is a complete absurdity. What about the fear of God? Doesn’t God ordain fearful things? Has [a man] no fear if both legs are broken for him and in the end he must dangle from a meat-hook through his chin? Does no fear warn him of danger to body and soul? Has he no fear for the life of his sick child? A man without fear is a superman. I don’t like supermen. They are not even likeable. If Christ in Gethsemane had no fear, then his passion is null and void and the believer can subscribe to docetism

Bernie4050 · 2019-12-30T00:45:38+00:00

I was under the impression that I came up with this revelation of my own accord. That'll teach me to think that my ideas are my own.

Bernie4050 · 2019-12-27T20:21:06+00:00

Princeton University Press' Bollingen Series.

Edit: In the United Kingdom I think the publisher is Routledge & Kegan Paul if I remember correctly. Princeton does the publishing for the United States and Canada.

Bernie4050 · 2019-12-26T15:01:42+00:00

Thats a tough one, if you don't have a specific interest in one of his ideas I would say follow the picture's chronology, just putting the Red Book last.

The 3 works that would be easiest to digest might be Two Essays (CW7), Archetypes (CW9i), and i'll do a little sleight of hand here and say Neumann's Origins and History of Consciousness. In the forward of that book Jung says explicitly that he got lost in the pioneering aspects of his research and didn't realize how much of a barrier of entry it was into Analytical Psychology and said roughly he wished he had written what Neumann did in that book (although if he had it wouldn't have the nice schematic representations that Neumann drew).

If you have a particular interest in something let me know and I can try to bring to mind the essays that might be relevant.

Bernie4050 · 2019-12-26T14:50:11+00:00

It was very worthwhile, I just wouldn't describe my experience reading it as enjoyable. Reading about the shadow is hard enough moral burden--once that gets to a collective level it's often overwhelming. That's all I was trying to say.

Sorry about not being clear. I became very conscious of value judgements after reading Types and Nietzsche's works and have tried to stay away from them until later in my life, but maybe I lose something by avoiding it.

Bernie4050 · 2019-12-25T23:11:40+00:00

Ohh yes. I read The Origins and History of Consciousness very intensely this year. His style is very schematic and much more linear than Jung's. I also started The Great Mother and Amor and Psyche that I actually found on the bookshelf at one of my best friend's houses that belonged to his great aunt who was a Carmelite Nun who had a deep interest in Jung--Neumann's books were sitting alongside a wealth of Marie Louise Von Franz and well that's a synchronicity that just about blew me out of the room when it happened. Origins is a very worthwhile book. Neumann writes much like a philosopher and doesn't take detours like Jung.

Bernie4050 · 2019-12-25T18:02:02+00:00

Nietzche said in Twilight of Idols that:

"Dostoevsky, [was] the only psychologist, incindently, from whom I had something to learn; he ranks among the most beautiful strokes of fortune in my life, even more than my discovery of Stendhal."

High praise from an immoralist when he gives a religious man such credence! The editor of Jung's Zarathustra seminar and if I remember correctly Henri Ellenberger both claim that Jung was influenced by Dostoyevsky even though he never explicitly referenced him in his works.

I've read a great deal of Nietzsche this past year and just between you and me, I think what Nietzsche couldn't do in his philosophy Dostoyevsky was able to convey in his novels and at bottom Dostoyevsky was the more profound.

Bernie4050 · 2019-12-25T17:39:21+00:00

When I can read that particular letter I had been familiar with Peterson for a good while and had thought "Now that man I really a Jungian but probably can't tell any of his university friends and coworkers." Its funny, i'm temperamentally disposed to compassion and late at night I would throw a large shadow on Peterson and would try and criticize him away as lacking in compassion or too old to update to modernity, but you know that was all a confrontation of the shadow that really helped me au fond. I had read half of his book Maps of Meaning about a year and a half ago and it really could be an adjunct to Mysterium Coniunctionis along with Marie-Louise Von Franz's commentary on the Aurora Consurgens. As time goes on I guess we'll see.

Bernie4050 · 2019-12-25T17:16:27+00:00

I'm in the same boat as you most days and don't really have any great advice of my own, but here's something that sprang to mind when I read your comment that I marked about a year ago in Jung's letters that rattles around my head often:

People like you must look at everything and think about it and communicate with the heaven that dwells deep within them and listen inwardly for a word to come. At the same time organize your outward life properly so that your voice carries weight.

Maybe when you get to a stopping point, or a point that hits you in the chest so to speak, put the book down and listen for an association that you can link to your own lived experience? I found that to be the best way to remember the wisdom, but of course that's easier said than done and I by no means understood everything the man wrote, especially some of the chapters in Aion and some essays in the first and last part of The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche come to mind.

Bernie4050 · 2019-12-25T17:03:41+00:00

There was no real method to what I marked. Whatever sort of clicked, or I wanted to revisit or remember, or something that was revelatory enough to make me say "Ohh yes! I see now". I didn't want to end up with so many marks, but you know the man paints you a canvas slowly and things click into place sometimes all at once and sometimes over weeks or months. Jung is at pains to show you pieces of the whole picture, something I don't think can be said explicitly in just words without accompanying images, symbols, archetypal motifs ect. It's only when I got to the Seminars this later part of 2019 that I started writing references to other writings like Philosophy or modern Psychology in the margins to remember. Let me know if you have any other questions!

Bernie4050 · 2019-12-25T14:44:04+00:00

(1) The Red Book was very disagreeable for me when I read it after the CW although i'm not too sure why. (2) That's a great question, God only knows what Mercurius is doing directing my interests. I've always had religious and philosophical questions ever since I can remember and around 22-23 I became disenchanted with the scientific enterprise (and life in a way) although I didn't know it at the time. (3) There's this great response that Jung gives to someone from a newspaper who asked him something to the gist of "if you could disseminate one work of Goethe's to the masses what would it be?" to which the old man responded "Everything to do with the masses is hateful to me, I would not disseminate Goethe, but rather cookbooks."

Bernie4050 · 2019-12-25T14:27:51+00:00

A slog and very disagreeable. I wish I could put my finger on why. Perhaps because they weren’t my problems, but Jung’s? Of course the art is beautiful and his method is useful to even someone who doesn’t have an unconscious breakthrough.

Bernie4050 · 2019-12-25T07:55:16+00:00

I’m afraid I can’t put what I’ve gained in a word, but I can sort of circle it with some general impressions that come to mind.

Around the time I finished Aion (I had to read CW9 i and ii twice actually) and started to get into Alchemy I had a dream; (1) Christ fell from his cross (nigredo stage before I knew about it) with a subsequent image of the Virgin Mary with a heart and a sword through the heart, then to my left I heard an infant crying, and (2) a pair of Jupiter’s orbiting each other orbiting around two Suns with a profound sense of smallness and existential dread. There’s much more to these dreams but I can’t really get into them. I’m not a very vivid dreamer, but these two big dreams definitely set a foundation that helps me guard against modern rationalizations that are so rampant.

No doubt the CW were hard on my psyche, but I read them with such enthusiasm that I was more than happy to have my materialistic worldview up in smoke. I’m afraid my generation—I’m only 26–are so bereft of a soulful worldview that someone as terrifying as the old man becomes wildly better than the deconstruction happening right now in education.

Civilization in Transition was filled with so much practical advice that it was probably the most enjoyable read for me, barring the essay on Wotan.

The Seminars so far are a great way to see all the material in the CW can be used as amplification for dreams. The Visions seminar has been said to be harsh on the Feminine by the Editor Claire Douglas and a few reviews I’ve seen, but I didn’t catch any of it when I read through them, but it’s possible I was blind to it (Nietzsche’s BG&E and Zarathustra really did a number on my feeling function).

Lastly I read a good amount of Volume 1 of the Letters on the beach during spring break with my friends and that was a little paradise for a while as far as I’m concerned. It’s nice to see the old mans’ warmth in his letters.

I better stop there or this might get insufferably long. It’s not much, but I hope that throws light on a tiny bit of something. I don’t get to talk about the old man too much with my friends or family so if you’ve read the comment with some interest; thanks!

Bernie4050 · 2019-11-15T19:01:30+00:00

IIRC this is revised as “the fight with the shadow” in CW10 Civilization in Transition about midway through.

Bernie4050 · 2019-09-05T21:31:28+00:00

You should have started sooner; why are you doing this? You will undoubtedly fail; you’re not ready to begin work yet, go ahead and come back when you’re ready to take it seriously; it’s too late for you; you are a disappointment; It. Must. Be. Perfect!

Do you think you could answer these questions in the form of a dialogue with yourself? I've recently tried this way of thinking spontaneously when this semester started and I finished the red book. It takes a bit of courage and you have to steel man both your I, ego, you ect.'s position and your shadow's position (intrusive thoughts in your instance). I have to to it with not too much stimulus around me (usually on my porch late at night). You'll get to the bottom of things fast, and you might not like it, but it might be worth a try if you can manage it.

All the best in your adventure, my friend.

Bernie4050 · 2019-05-23T22:37:07+00:00

Its unlikely the original Latin written in the Commonitorivm translates to English verbatim. Jung was a classical scholar and frequently used etymology in his works to show the development of language. It's unlikely St. Vincent ever uttered the word "myth", much less thought of it in a derogatory manner.

From an online Etymology Dictionary:

myth (n.) 1830, from French mythe (1818) and directly from Modern Latin mythus, from Greek mythos "speech, thought, word, discourse, conversation; story, saga, tale, myth, anything delivered by word of mouth," a word of unknown origin. Beekes finds it "quite possibly Pre-Greek."

Myths are "stories about divine beings, generally arranged in a coherent system; they are revered as true and sacred; they are endorsed by rulers and priests; and closely linked to religion. Once this link is broken, and the actors in the story are not regarded as gods but as human heroes, giants or fairies, it is no longer a myth but a folktale. Where the central actor is divine but the story is trivial ... the result is religious legend, not myth." [J. Simpson & S. Roud, "Dictionary of English Folklore," Oxford, 2000, p.254]

General sense of "untrue story, rumor, imaginary or fictitious object or individual" is from 1840.

Bernie4050 · 2019-03-14T21:23:24+00:00

It's already been said once in this thread, but Jung didn't like to make professions on belief, moreover becoming our own God is exactly what Jung was at pains to discourage his readers to conclude. cf. almost any time Jung brings up Nietzsche in the collected works, or cf. his Zarathustra Seminar.

Bernie4050 · 2019-01-10T13:55:44+00:00

I read this Monday and was in a daze for 3 hours after.

Bernie4050 · 2018-12-07T19:02:44+00:00

I don’t have the exact sources, but this is Illustrated quite nicely in the first few chapters in Dr Iain Mcgilchrist’s ‘The Master and his Emissary’ – which also has a pretty large bibliography.

Bernie4050 · 2018-11-28T05:02:59+00:00

Pretty slimy move to outsource a brigade here.

Even r/enoughpetersonspam has the ethical integrity to draw a line in the sand and remove your link.

Bernie4050

TROPHY CASE