“The risk is, that the artifex becomes identical with the goal of his opus. He becomes inflated and crazy: “multi perierunt in opere nostro!” There is a “demon” in the prima materia, that drives people crazy.” Unpublished Letter to Alice in Jung History

Not identifying with the collective unconscious is a crucial first step to establishing the ego/Self axis, whereby the energies which are present in the work are not usurped. Instead, they are served.   The risks on a path of individuation are real, for the energies that want to manifest and can show a disregard for the fragility of the ego through which it takes place.  (see definition of Inflation)

I came across this quote from von Franz on Jung at Heart which is worth sharing as it relates to the lopsidedness in the current collective construct of consciousness.

“The contemporary Zeitgeist belittles feeling…I don’t think that we can achieve much if we remain on the level of “reasonable” materialistic thinking— it is not altogether wrong; it is wrong only if we infer “that is it…”

Jung says in a letter that we have become too lopsidedly intellectual and rational and have forgotten that there are factors that cannot be influenced by a one-track intellect. We then see emotionality flaring up as a compensation (letter to Albert Oppenheimer, 10 October 1933. 1973a, 128–129). We need to be more than just reasonable and level-headed, an attitude which only infuriates the young people. We must offer them a creative spiritual, non-materialistic view of reality as a whole—namely a real connection with the unconscious as a supramaterial, extrasensory reality to which we must relate, not only with our minds but also with feeling and emotion.”

When we only see from the perspective of the ego, the focus can be to navigate with the ease of smooth sailing. I’m struck by the opposing image found in the New Testament when out in the storm, Christ sleeps snugly in the boat until, pushed by the desperation of the situation, the disciples wake him up.

Much of the work of a Jungian process, like the image of that small boat tossed in the tempest, is an operation that leads to the awakening of the Anthropos.

What can be done in this moment, wherever you happen to be meeting this text, to access the splendor that resides right where you are but just beyond the periphery of consciousness? How does the light lie across the objects that surround? What process is taking place? Growth, decay, silence?

A developing thirst…

In Irish mythology Bridghid was:

“a woman of poetry, and poets worshipped her, for her sway was very great and very noble. And she was a woman of healing along with that, and a woman of smith’s work, and it was she first made the whistle for calling one to another through the night. And the one side of her face was ugly, but the other side was very comely. And the meaning of her name was Breo-saighit, a fiery arrow.”

I’ve often held close the reading of Shakespeare’s Eighteenth Sonnet that it was drafted to one such Anima Mundi.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

“When an archetype is constellated it can appear in the inner and outer world at the same time.  Each distinct case is an example of creation.”  (From Conversations with C.G. Jung, pg 55)

What will come next into the clearing, this space that opens between us?

The Grail Legend has many layers which capture different aspects of the individuation journey. One of my favorite is the seeking of the location of the grail castle. I see a strong parallel between the search for the elusive entryway to the castle with search for Self, what in Jungian analysis is called the establishment of the ego/Self axis.

In a matter of fact way within the introduction of The Grail Legend by Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz we hear that “Naturally the Grail Castle cannot be localized in reality.” (pg. 13)

This all points to Henri Corbin’s teachings on the imaginal and his own visionanry experiences.  Corbin makes reference to Blake who in the poem Milton writes,

“And if he moves his dwelling-place, his heavens also move

Where’er he goes…”

I’ve been able to observe a stretch of the upper Delaware River for the past six years which figures prominently in the natural gas drilling debate.  The technique known as fracking has been a hot topic in local politics and got national attention in the press as well as in the film Gasland by a local filmmaker Josh Fox.

Living in these folded hills and along the streams that feed into the Delaware I’ve found myself coming to a deep appreciation for the water that resides in the earth.  Our well pulls it into our home and we sustain our lives with it.  While we are some ten miles outside the New York City watershed, this is the same area that provides the life stream of water to every faucet that gets opened in the five boroughs ninety miles southeast.

While I speak of wanting to protect one well, I believe that all decisions regarding these problems benefit if they can see the link in how the need to protect one well is tied to need to protect all the water we depend upon.

The archetype of initiation, explored thoroughly in the writings of Joseph Henderson, commences with the crossing of a threshold. But it feels like collectively we’ve lost our bearings on finding the place of the crossing.  Henderson notes,

“Initiation, more than any other body of knowledge has suffered throughout history from the fate of continually being forgotten and having to be rediscovered. “(Henderson, Thresholds of Initiation, pg.1)

Interestingly, threshold is often noted in the progression of addictions, except that often the stories shared in this context note that it was “as if” they crossed an invisible line after which the addiction took off.  They did not recognize the threshold.

In the monomyth of Joseph Campbell, threshold is where we cross from the known into the unknown, “leaving the known limits of his or her world and venturing into an unknown and dangerous realm where the rules and limits are not known.”  Locked doors can be pointing out threshold issues and might be pointing to well defended structures that protect our ego-centrism.

The are many lenses which we can wear when observing a given situation. Our specialized and highly developed educational system often seems pointed at given us a set of special goggles with which to see the world. In many ways the same thing can be leveled at the Jungian framework which I’ve been learning and practicing over the last three years.

I’m struck by the importance of certain statements Jung made about regarding humility when attempting to work with the unconscious. There is a great need to approach each dream with a certainty that one has no clue what it can possibly mean. Otherwise, we are likely jump to conclusions and not give the subtly of the message its due.