Russell Yetto 🜃 @Rusty518

#Jung: "Every creative person is a duality or a synthesis of contradictory qualities. On the one side he is a human being with a personal life, while on the other he is an impersonal creative process. As a human being he may be sound or morbid, and his personal #psychology can and should be explained in personal terms. But he can be understood as an artist only in terms of his creative achievement. We should make a great mistake if we reduced the mode of life of an English gentleman, or a Prussian officer, or a cardinal, to personal factors. The gentleman, the officer, and the high ecclesiastic function as impersonal officials, and each role has its own objective psychology. Although the artist is the exact opposite of an official, there is nevertheless a secret analogy between them in so far as a specifically artistic psychology is more collective than personal in character. #Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is 'man' in a higher sense – he is 'collective man,' a vehicle and moulder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind. That is his office, and it is sometimes so heavy a burden that he is fated to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being. As K.G. Carus says: 'Strange are the ways by which #genius is announced, for what distinguishes so supremely endowed a being is that, for all the freedom of his life and the clarity of his thought, he is everywhere hemmed round and prevailed upon by the Unconscious, the mysterious god within him; so that ideas flow to him – he knows not whence; he is driven to work and to create – he knows not to what end: and is mastered by an impulse for constant growth and development – he knows not whither.' In these circumstances it is not at all surprising that the artist is an especially interesting specimen for the critical analysis of the psychologist. His life cannot be otherwise than full of conflicts, for two forces are at war within him: on the one hand the justified longing of the ordinary man for happiness, satisfaction, and security, and on the other a ruthless passion for creation which may go so far as to override every personal desire. If the lives of artists are as a rule so exceedingly unsatisfactory, not to say tragic, it is not because of some sinister dispensation of fate, but because of some inferiority in their personality or an inability to adapt. A person must pay dearly for the divine gift of creative fire. It is as though each of us was born with a limited store of energy. In the artist, the strongest force in his make-up, that is, his creativeness, will seize and all but monopolize this energy, leaving so little over that nothing of value can come of it. The creative impulse can drain him of his humanity to such a degree that the personal #ego can exist only on a primitive or inferior level and is driven to develop all sorts of defects – ruthlessness, selfishness ('#autoeroticism'), vanity, and other #infantile traits. These inferiorities are the only means by which it can maintain its vitality and prevent itself from being wholly depleted. The autoeroticism of certain artists is like that of illegitimate or neglected children who from their earliest years develop bad qualities to protect themselves from the destructive influence of a loveless environment. Such children easily become ruthless and selfish, and later display an invincible egoism by remaining all their lives infantile and helpless or by actively offending against morality and the law. How can we doubt that it is his art that explains the artist, and not the insufficiencies and conflicts of his personal life? These are nothing but the regrettable results of his being an artist, a man upon whom a heavier burden is laid than upon ordinary mortals. A special ability demands a greater expenditure of energy, which must necessarily leave a deficit on some other side of life. It makes no difference whether the artist knows that his work is generated, grows and matures within him, or whether he imagines that it is his own invention. In reality it grows out of him as a child its mother. The creative process has a feminine quality, and the creative work arises from #unconscious depths – we might truly say from the realm of the Mothers. Whenever the creative force predominates, life is ruled and shaped by the unconscious rather than by the conscious will, and the ego is swept along on an underground current, becoming nothing more than a helpless observer of events. The progress of the work becomes the poet’s fate and determines his psychology. It is not #Goethe that creates Faust, but Faust that creates Goethe. And what is Faust? Faust is essentially a #symbol. By this I do not mean that it is an allegory pointing to something all too familiar, but the expression of something profoundly alive in the soul of every German, which Goethe helped to bring to birth. Could we conceive of anyone but a German writing Faust or Thus Spake Zarathustra? Both of them strike a chord that vibrates in the German psyche, evoking a 'primordial image,' as Burckhardt once called it – the figure of a healer or teacher of mankind, or of a wizard. It is the #archetype of the Wise Old Man, the helper and redeemer, but also of the magician, deceiver, corrupter, and tempter. This image has lain buried and dormant in the unconscious since the dawn of history; it is awakened whenever the times are out of joint and a great error deflects society from the right path. For when people go astray they feel the need of a guide or teacher, and even of a physician. The seductive error is like a poison that can also act as a cure, and the shadow of a saviour can turn into a fiendish destroyer. These opposing forces are at work in the mythical healer himself: the physician who heals wounds is himself the bearer of a wound, a classic example being #Chiron. In Christianity it is the wound in the side of Christ, the great physician. Faust, characteristically enough, is unwounded, which means that he is untouched by the moral problem. A man can be as high-minded as Faust and as devilish as Mephistopheles if he is able to split his personality into two halves, and only then is he capable of feeling 'six thousand feet beyond good and evil.' Mephistopheles was cheated of his reward, Faust's soul, and for this he presented a bloody reckoning a hundred years later. But who now seriously believes that poets utter truths that apply to all men? And if they do, in what way would we have to regard the work of art?" ~C.G. Jung, "The Artist," Spirit in Man, Art & Literature, CW 15, par. 157-159

"At birth, according to #Jung, humans are entirely #unconscious. Only slowly does #consciousness emerge.³³ Because the initial human state is unconscious, unconsciousness is natural rather than, as for #Freud, artificial. Where for Freud the unconscious arises out of consciousness, for Jung consciousness arises out of the unconscious.³⁴ By 'consciousness' Jung means awareness of oneself as a subject, or 'I,' distinct from both the external world and the unconscious. The first center of consciousness is the #ego, so that the development of consciousness means at first the development of the ego. Because the consciousness of humanity has developed slowly, the ego of primitives is weak.³⁵ Rather than differentiating themselves from their unconscious and the world, primitives #project themselves onto the world and thereby encounter their unconscious rather than the world.³⁶ In #projecting themselves, as personalities, onto the world, they create a #religious world – a world ruled not by impersonal forces like atoms but by gods. Events in the world are not merely caused but willed.³⁷ So weak is the primitive ego that primitives not only project themselves onto the world but also identify themselves with it. Like infants, of which they are for Jung the phylogenetic counterparts, primitives have scant sense of themselves 'over against' the world. They do not distinguish between subjectivity and objectivity. They experience themselves objectively, as part of the world itself." ³³ See, for example, Jung, "Analytical Psychology," The Symbolic Life, 8; Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 348-49; "The Stages of Life," in his The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, Collected Works, vol. 8, 2d ed. (Princeton, N.].: Princeton University Press, 1969 [1960]), 387-91. See also Neumann, 3-127; M. Esther Harding, The "I" and the "Not-I" (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965), chaps. 1-3; Gerhard Adler, Studies in Analytical Psychology (New York: Capricorn Books, 1969), 120-36. ³⁴ See Jung, "Analytical Psychology," 10. ³⁵ On primitives see above all Jung, "Archaic Man," Civilization in Transition, 50-73. Although Jung refers to primitives throughout his writings, this essay is his sole work on primitives in their own right. See also Jung, "Approaching the Unconscious," in Jung et aI., Man and His Symbols (New York: Dell Laurel Editions, 1968),6-8 (original version entitled "Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams," The Symbolic Life, 183-264); "The Psychology of the Child Archetype," 153-54, 178. See also Adler, 127-29; Hans Schaer, Religion and the Cure of Souls in Jung's Psychology, trans. R.F.C. Hull (New York: Pantheon Books, 1950), 103-6; Harding, 38-40; Harding, Psychic Energy, 2d ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963), 332-33; Antonio Moreno, Jung, Gods, and Modern Man (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970), 9-14. ³⁶ On projection see Jung, "Analytical Psychology," 137-38. See also Harding, Psychic Energy, 331-34. ³⁷ See Jung, "Archaic Man," 55-68. ~Stephan A. Hoeller, The Gnostic Jung, pp. 11-12

#Jung: "Being able to bear life and its trials by continuously battling to remain conscious ultimately means being able to bear the presence of God. But that is in the distant future. If, however, we consciously lead a very simple life, like living in the forest and thereby reducing life to the simplest formula, then #consciousness has won. When the evening of humankind approaches, then the highest culture lies in the greatest simplicity. Because then one has recognized the meaning of existence and knows that everything is illusion, apart from living in what is. But were I to consider emigrating to Polynesia à la Gauguin, in the hope that I would find some perfection, or withdraw from the world like a hermit, to cut myself off from the world in order to contemplate its meaningless, the result would be neither meaning nor value. Rather, it would be like a reproach to the creator for making such a nonsense of this earthly existence. Life, nature, poses a deep problem. We would need to know an unimaginable amount more in order to comprehend the meaning of it all. This requires not just great scientific progress, but also a deepening of consciousness scarcely imaginable today – a distant goal, but one that gives dignity and hope to our existence. Apparently, we need to battle for our lives with all the fibers of our being, with the aim of achieving as much consciousness and knowledge as possible – knowledge about ourselves, about the world, about eternity. That is what gives meaning to life. Without consciousness, the existence of this world would be only a stupid incident of a silly demiurge." ~C.G. Jung, "God and Humans," Reflections on the Life & Dreams of C.G. Jung by Aniela Jaffé, p. 187 ▪️Watch my video interview with the book's publisher, Jungian analyst Robert Hinshaw, Ph.D. – youtu.be/JHpt6gHxXS4 ▪️Get the book (Affiliate Link) – amzn.to/3rWvwFL 📷: The 83-year-old wood-chopper [C.G. Jung]; photo © Aniela Jaffé.

@jungianLaura The small town of Galway, NY

Picked up this book on alchemy after seeing it as a reference in another book (on alchemy 🙃) and I’m really loving the depth the author has curated. Highly recommend for the alchemically curious seeker.

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As Jung told Alan Watts, he was glad he wasn’t a Jungian. “I’m Jung.” I do not want anyone to be a Jungian.... I want people above all to be themselves.... Should I be found one day only to have created another “ism” then I will have failed in all I tried to do.~L van der Post

@DebLukovich 🧙🏻‍♂️ 🔮 🤷🏻‍♂️

“The balanced man accepts the world as it is, the unbalanced man is forever seeking to change it, and therefore all progress depends on the unbalanced man.” —George Bernard Shaw

“The state of imperfect transformation, merely hoped for and waited for, does not seem to be one of torment only, but of positive, if hidden, happiness. It is the state of someone who, in his wanderings among the mazes of his psychic transformation, comes upon a secret happiness

For a man's psychology, the sun corresponds to the conscious psyche and the moon to the unconscious. Thus Jung says, "Becoming conscious of an unconscious content amounts to its integration in the conscious psyche and is therefore a coniunctio Solis et Lunae."~Edward Edinger

"Jung once wrote that if there is something wrong with society, there is something wrong with the individual, and if there is something wrong with the individual, there is something wrong with me. No individual has 'caused' the present crisis, but every individual can contribute something to help. In times like these, we need astrological help in understanding our own responses and our own choices." ~Liz Greene, Ph.D., Jungian analyst, 2021

The Aion Lectures, by Edward F. Edinger!

Jung: "mankind is, in essentials, psychologically still in a state of childhood – a stage that cannot be skipped. The vast majority needs authority, guidance, law. This fact cannot be overlooked. The Pauline overcoming of the law falls only to the man who knows how to put his soul in the place of conscience. Very few are capable of this ('Many are called, but few are chosen'). And these few tread this path only from inner necessity, not to say suffering, for it is sharp as the edge of a razor." ~C.G. Jung, CW 7, par. 401

"The Seven Dangers of Becoming Interested in Jung’s Ideas," by Daryl Sharp. On our blog at innercitybooks.net!

✨BOOK GIVEAWAY✨ Individuation: Vol. 1️⃣ of the Collected Writings of Jungian analyst @MurrayWSteinII, Ph.D. ▪️To enter: Follow us and retweet without comment. Winner chosen Apr. 19, 2023. Open to US 🇺🇸 mailing addresses only. ▪️Speaking of Jung: speakingofjung.com/blog/2021/7/5/…

@SophiaCycles Great Quote! I remember Edinger F. Edinger writing about this too in his Mysterium Lectures book I think it was. In the astrological houses, I also think of the relationship between the third and ninth houses in astrology, in Howard Sasportas book on the 12 houses.

Jung represents human consciousness as something like a field, a magnetic field, so to speak. As soon as a content enters the field of consciousness, it falls into a web of associations.~Marie-Louise von Franz, Creation Myths

"The task of the next eon, the #Aquarian age, depicted as the water carrier, is not only that we extract spirit from the second fish but that we carry the water that contains the fish. Where previously, the fish were contained in water, the #psychological task visiting us now in the transition of eons is to hold the water that contains the fish. Practically that means that we find the #mythological or #religious images and powers within ourselves. We turn to the reality of the #symbolic world and relate to it within ourselves. We do not look outside us for the authoritative voices that guide us. We hear those voices, submit to their messages, and let them be our guide. We are dealing with a fundamental shift in #consciousness. This is the inner guidance, the true living spirit, as #Jung repeatedly points out while elucidating the processes of #transformation at #depth." ~J. Gary Sparks, Jungian analyst, The Call of Destiny: An Introduction to Carl Jung's Major Works, p. 134 On the latest episode of Speaking of Jung: Interviews with Jungian Analysts

✨BOOK GIVEAWAY✨ The Call of Destiny: An Introduction to Carl Jung's Major Works by Jungian analyst J. Gary Sparks ➡️ TO ENTER: Follow me & @InnerCityBooks. Retweet w/out comment. Ends 3/17. ▪️Get the book: amzn.to/3Thf8sY ▪️See the interview: youtu.be/XWFoo3Ec-58

If you are doing something primarily for money and without a real emotional commitment, it will translate into something that lacks a soul and that has no connection to you.