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Only One Who Has Risked The Fight With The Dragon And Is Not Overcome By It Wins The "treasure Hard To Attain." He Alone Has A Genuine Claim To Self-confidence, For He Has Faced The Dark Ground Of His Self And Thereby Has Gained Himself. This Experience Gives Him Faith And Trust.

-Carl Jung

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Only One Who Has

Carl Jung

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Only One Who Has Risked The Fight With The Dragon And Is Not Overcome By It Wins The "treasure Hard To Attain." He Alone Has A Genuine Claim To Self-confidence, For He Has Faced The Dark Ground Of His Self And Thereby Has Gained Himself. This Experience Gives Him Faith And Trust.

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Self Confidence

More From Carl Jung

An Archetypal Content Expresses Itself, First And Foremost, In Metaphors.

What Is Essential In A Work Of Art Is That It Should Rise Far Above The Realm Of Personal Life And Speak To The Spirit And Heart Of The Poet As Man To The Spirit And Heart Of Mankind.

For, In Order To Turn The Individual Into A Function Of The State, His Dependence On Anything Beside The State Must Be Taken From Him.

Here And There It Happened In My Practice That A Patient Grew Beyond Himself Because Of Unknown Potentialities, And This Became An Experience Of Prime Importance To Me. I Had Learned In The Meanwhile That The Greatest And Most Important Problems Of Life Are All In A Certain Sense Insoluble. They Must Be So Because They Express The Necessary Polarity Inherent In Every Self-regulating System. They Can Never Be Solved, But Only Outgrown.

A Sign Is Always Less Than The Thing It Points To, And A Symbol Is Always More Than We Can Understand At First Sight. Therefore We Stop At The Sign But Go On To The Goal It Indicates; But We Remain With The Symbol Because It Promises More Than It Reveals.

It Is Not For Us . . . To Send Out Missionaries To Foreign Peoples; It Is Our Task To Build Up Our Own Western Culture.

Western Culture

The Self As The Essence Of Individuality Is Unitemporal And Unique; As An Archetypal Symbol It Is A God-image And Therefore Universal And Eternal.

...consciousness Can Keep Only A Few Images In Full Clarity At One Time, And Even This Clarity Fluctuates.

You Are What You Do, Not What You Say You'll Do.

Moreover, My Ancestors' Souls Are Sustained By The Atmosphere Of The House, Since I Answer For Them The Questions That Their Lives Once Left Behind. I Carve Out Rough Answers As Best I Can. I Have Even Drawn Them On The Walls. It Is As If A Silent, Greater Family, Stretching Down The Centuries, Were Peopling The House.

I Am Looking Forward Enormously To Getting Back To The Sea Again, Where The Overstimulated Psyche Can Recover In The Presence Of That Infinite Peace And Spaciousness.

Looking Forward

Much Of The Evil In The World Is Due To The Fact That Man In General Is Hopelessly Unconscious.

From The Middle Of Life Onward, Only He Remains Vitally Alive Who Is Ready To Die With Life.

Our Mind Has Its History, Just As Our Body Has Its History. You Might Be Just As Astonished That Man Has An Appendix, For Instance. Does He Know He Ought To Have An Appendix? He Is Just Born With It....our Unconscious Mind, Like Our Body, Is A Storehouse Of Relics And Memories Of The Past. A Study Of The Structure Of The Unconscious Collective Mind Would Reveal The Same Discoveries As You Make In Comparative Anatomy. We Do Not Need To Think That There Is Anything Mystical About It.

The Term "self" Seems A Suitable One For The Unconscious Substrate Whose Actual Exponent In Consciousness Is The Ego. The Ego Stands To The Self As The Moved To The Mover, Or As Object To Subject, Because The Determining Factors That Radiate Outward From The Self Surround The Ego On All Sides And Are Therefore Supraordinate To It. The Self, Like The Unconscious, As An A Priori Existent Out Of Which The Ego Evolves. It Is, So To Speak, An Unconscious Prefiguration Of The Ego. It Is Not I Who Create Myself; Rather, I Happen To Myself.

Fidelity To The Law Of Your Own Being Is An Act Of High Courage Flung In The Face Of Life.

Yahweh [god] Must Become Man Precisely Because He Has Done Man A Wrong. He, The Guardian Of Justice, Knows That Every Wrong Must Be Expiated, And Wisdom Knows That Moral Law Is Above Even Him. Because His Creature Has Surpassed Him He Must Regenerate Himself

We Do Not Know Whether Hitler Is Going To Found A New Islam. He Is Already On The Way; He Is Like Mohammad. The Emotion In Germany Is Islamic; Warlike And Islamic. They Are All Drunk With Wild God. That Can Be The Historic Future.

The Years... When I Pursued The Inner Images Were The Most Important Time Of My Life. Everything Else Is To Be Derived From This. It Began At That Time, And The Later Details Hardly Matter Anymore. My Entire Life Consisted In Elaborating What Had Burst Forth From The Unconscious And Flooded Me Like An Enigmatic Stream And Threatened To Break Me. That Was The Stuff And Material For More Than Only One Life. Everything Later Was Merely The Outer Classification, The Scientific Elaboration, And The Integration Into Life. But The Numinous Beginning, Which Contained Everything Was Then.

The Creative Process, So Far As We Are Able To Follow It At All, Consists In The Unconscious Activation Of An Archetypal Image And Elaborating And Shaping The Image Into The Finished Work. By Giving It Shape, The Artist Translates It Into The Language Of The Present And So Makes It Possible For Us To Find Our Way Back To The Deepest Springs Of Life.

Understanding Does Not Cure Evil, But It Is A Definite Help, Inasmuch As One Can Cope With A Comprehensible Darkness.

The Upheaval Of Our World And The Upheaval In Consciousness Is One And The Same. Everything Becomes Relative And Therefore Doubtful. And While Man, Hesitant And Questioning, Contemplates... His Spirit Yearns For An Answer That Will Allay The Turmoil Of Doubt And Uncertainty.

Individuation Is To Divest The Self Of False Wrappings.

Not Only Does The Psyche Exist, But It Is Existence Itself. It Is An Almost Absurd Prejudice To Suppose That Existence Can Only Be Physical...we Might Well Say, On The Contrary, That Physical Existence Is A Mere Inference, Since We Know Of Matter Only In So Far As We Perceive Psychic Images Mediated By The Senses.

A Special Ability Means A Heavy Expenditure Of Energy In A Particular Direction, With A Consequent Drain From Some Other Side Of Life.

Anthropologists Have Often Described What Happens To A Primitive Society When Its Spiritual Values Are Exposed To The Impact Of Modern Civilisation. Its People Lose The Meaning Of Their Lives, Their Social Organisation Disintegrates, And They Themselves Morally Decay. We Are Now In The Same Condition. But We Have Never Really Understood What We Have Lost, For Our Spiritual Leaders Unfortunately Were More Interested In Protecting Their Institutions Than In Understanding The Mystery That Symbols Present.

At The Moment I Am Looking Into Astrology, Which Seems Indispensable For A Proper Understanding Of Mythology. There Are Strange And Wondrous Things In These Lands Of Darkness. Please, Don't Worry About My Wanderings In These Infinitudes. I Shall Return Laden With Rich Booty For Our Knowledge Of The Human Psyche.

The Sad Truth Is That Man's Real Life Consists Of A Complex Of Inexorable Opposites - Day And Night, Birth And Death, Happiness And Misery, Good And Evil. We Are Not Even Sure That One Will Prevail Against The Other, That Good Will Overcome Evil, Or Joy Defeat Pain. Life Is A Battleground. It Always Has Been And Always Will Be; And If It Were Not So, Existence Would Come To An End.

Intuition Is Perception Via The Unconscious That Brings Forth Ideas, Images, New Possibilities And Ways Out Of Blocked Situations.

The Meaning And Design Of A Problem Seem Not To Lie In Its Solution, But In Our Working At It Incessantly.

Vocatus Atque Non Vocatus Deus Aderit.

A Particularly Beautiful Woman Is A Source Of Terror. As A Rule, A Beautiful Woman Is A Terrible Disappointment.

But What If I Should Discover That The Least Amongst Them All, The Poorest Of All Beggars, The Most Impudent Of All Offenders, Yea The Very Fiend Himself— That These Are Within Me, And That I Myself Stand In Need Of The Alms Of My Own Kindness, That I Myself Am The Enemy Who Must Be Loved— What Then?

Good Does Not Become Better By Being Exaggerated, But Worse; And A Small Evil Becomes A Big One Through Being Disregarded And Repressed.

One Of The Main Functions Of Formalized Religion Is To Protect People Against A Direct Experience Of God.

The World Will Ask You Who You Are, And If You Don't Know, The World Will Tell You.

So Often Among So-called "primitives" One Comes Across Spiritual Personalities Who Immediately Inspire Respect, As Though They Were The Fully Matured Products Of An Undisturbed Fate.

The Most Terrifying Thing Is To Accept Oneself Completely.

There Can Be No Transforming Of Darkness Into Light And Of Apathy Into Movement Without Emotion.

It Had Become Clear To Me, In A Flash Of Illumination, That For Me The Only Possible Goal Was Psychiatry. Here Alone The Two Currents Of My Interest Could Flow Together And In A United Stream Dig Their Own Bed. Here Was The Empirical Field Common To Biological And Spiritual Facts, Which I Had Everywhere Sought And Nowhere Found. Here At Last Was The Place Where The Collision Of Nature And Spirit Became A Reality.

Our Heart Glows, And Secret Unrest Gnaws At The Root Of Our Being. Dealing With The Unconscious Has Become A Question Of Life For Us.

It Is Just Man's Turning Away From Instinct--his Opposing Himself To Instinct--that Creates Consciousness. Instinct Is Nature Andseeks To Perpetuate Nature; While Consciousness Can Only Seek Culture Or Its Denial.

Nature Does Not Deceive Or Conceal, But Reveals.

Active Imagination Requires A State Of Reverie, Half-way Between Sleep And Waking.

The 'squaring Of The Circle' Is One Of The Many Archetypal Motifs Which Form The Basic Patterns Of Our Dreams And Fantasies. But It Is Distinguished By The Fact That It Is One Of The Most Important Of Them From The Functional Point Of View. Indeed, It Could Even Be Called The Archetype Of Wholeness.

When Goals Go, Meaning Goes. When Meaning Goes, Purpose Goes. When Purpose Goes, Life Goes Dead On Our Hands.

One Could Say, With A Little Exaggeration, That The Persona Is That Which In Reality One Is Not, But Which Oneself As Well As Others Think One Is.

In Each Of Us There Is Another Whom We Do Not Know.

Memories Dreams Reflections

Perhaps, I Myself Am The Enemy Who Needs To Be Loved.

Twelve Experts Gathered In One Room Equal One Big Idiot.

Modern Man Is Sick Because He Is Not Whole.

Synchronicity: A Meaningful Coincidence Of Two Or More Events Where Something Other Than The Probability Of Chance Is Involved.

Fortunately, In Her Kindness And Patience, Nature Has Never Put The Fatal Question As To The Meaning Of Their Lives Into The Mouths Of Most People. And Where No One Asks, No One Needs To Answer.

If There Is Anything That We Wish To Change In The Child, We Should First Examine It And See Whether It Is Not Something That Could Better Be Changed In Ourselves.

Nothing Is More Repulsive Than A Furtively Prurient Spirituality; It Is Just As Unsavoury As Gross Sensuality.

The Starry Vault Of Heaven Is In Truth The Open Book Of Cosmic Projection.

Sensation Tell Us A Thing Is. Thinking Tell Us What It Is This Thing Is. Feeling Tells Us What This Thing Is To Us.

I Find That All My Thoughts Circle Around God Like The Planets Around The Sun, And Are As Irresistibly Attracted By Him. I Would Feel It To Be The Grossest Sin If I Were To Oppose Any Resistance To This Force.

I Live In My Deepest Hell And From There I Cannot Fall Any Further.

It Is In Applied Psychology, If Anywhere, That Today We Should Be Modest And Grant Validity To A Number Of Apparently Contradictory Opinions; For We Are Still Far From Having Anything Like A Thorough Knowledge Of The Human Psyche, That Most Challenging Field Of Scientific Enquiry. For The Present We Have Merely More Or Less Plausible Opinions That Defy Reconciliation.

Every Psychic Advance Of Man Arises From The Suffering Of The Soul.

The Symbols Of The Self Arise In The Depths Of The Body, And They Express Its Materiality Every Bit As Much As The Perceiving Consciousness. The Symbol Is Thus A Living Body

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 Purpose 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"— One Who Carries And Shapes The Unconscious, Psychic Forms Of Mankind.

Collective Unconscious

To Find Out What Is Truly Individual In Ourselves, Profound Reflection Is Needed; And Suddenly We Realize How Uncommonly Difficult The Discovery Of Individuality Is.

We Need More Understanding Of Human Nature, Because The Only Real Danger That Exists Is Man Himself.

Envy Does Not Allow Humanity To Sleep.

So They Speak Soothingly About Progress And The Greatest Possible Happiness, Forgetting That Happiness Is Itself Poisoned If The Measure Of Suffering Has Not Been Fulfilled.

During My Medical Education At The University Of Basle I Found Vivisection Horrible, Barbarous And Above All Unnecessary

Naturally, Every Age Thinks That All Ages Before It Were Prejudiced, And Today We Think This More Than Ever And Are Just As Wrong As All Previous Ages That Thought So. How Often Have We Not Seen The Truth Condemned! It Is Sad But Unfortunately True That Man Learns Nothing From History.

Everyone Knows Nowadays That People 'have Complexes'. What Is Not So Well Known, Though Far More Important Theoretically, Is That Complexes Can Have Us.

It Is On The Whole Probably That We Continually Dream, But That Consciousness Makes Such A Noise That We Do Not Hear It.

Hurry Is Not Of The Devil; Hurry Is The Devil.

Astrologers Are Influenced By Theosophy, So They Say, "that Is Very Simple, It Is Just Vibration!" ... But What Is Vibration? They Say It Is Light Energy, Perhaps Electricity, They Are Not Quite Informed. At All Events The Vibrations That Could Influence Us Have Never Been Seen, So It Remains Just A Word.

The Least Of Things With A Meaning Is Worth More In Life Than The Greatest Of Things Without It.

A Man Who Has Not Passed Through The Inferno Of His Passions Has Never Overcome Them.

Nothing Is Possible Without Love.

The Unconscious Is The Only Available Source Of Religious Experience. This In Certainly Not To Say That What We Call The Unconscious Is Identical With God Or Is Set Up In His Place. It Is Simply The Medium From Which Religious Experience Seems To Flow. As To What The Further Cause Of Such Experience Might Be, The Answer To This Lies Beyond The Range Of Human Knowledge.

The Ability To Ask Questions Is The Greatest Resource In Learning The Truth.

There Is No Light Without Shadow, And No Psychic Wholeness Without Imperfection.

Your Vision Will Be Clearer Only When You Manage To See Within Your Heart.

There Are As Many Archetypes As There Are Typical Situations In Life. Endless Repetition Has Engraved These Experiences Into Our Psychic Constitution, Not In The Forms Of Images Filled With Content, But At First Only As Forms Without Content, Representing Merely The Possibility Of A Certain Type Of Perception And Action.

Situations In Life

Astrology Is One Of The Intuitive Methods Like The I Ching, Geomantics, And Other Divinatory Procedures. It Is Based Upon The Synchronicity Principle, Meaningful Coincidence. ... Astrology Is A Naively Projected Psychology In Which The Different Attitudes And Temperaments Of Man Are Represented As Gods And Identified With Planets And Zodiacal Constellations.

The Psychotherapist Learns Little Or Nothing From His Successes. They Mainly Confirm Him In His Mistakes, While His Failures, On The Other Hand, Are Priceless Experiences In That They Not Only Open Up The Way To A Deeper Truth, But Force Him To Change His Views And Methods.

Observance Of Customs And Laws Can Very Easily Be A Cloak For A Lie So Subtle That Our Fellow Human Beings Are Unable To Detect It. It May Help Us To Escape All Criticism, We May Even Be Able To Deceive Ourselves In The Belief Of Our Obvious Righteousness. But Deep Down, Below The Surface Of The Average Man's Conscience, He Hears A Voice Whispering, 'there Is Something Not Right,' No Matter How Much His Rightness Is Supported By Public Opinion Or By The Moral Code.

Just As We Tend To Assume That The World Is As We See It, We Naively Suppose That People Are As We Imagine Them To Be.

Embrace Your Grief. For There, Your Soul Will Grow.

Six Weeks After His Death My Father Appeared To Me In A Dream... It Was An Unforgettable Experience, And It Forced Me For The First Time To Think About Life After Death.

Dreams Are Symbolic In Order That They Cannot Be Understood; In Order That The Wish, Which Is The Source Of The Dream, May Remain Unknown.

I Believe That We Have No Real Access To Who We Really Are Except In God. Only When We Rest In God Can We Find The Safety, The Spaciousness, And The Scary Freedom To Be Who We Are, All That We Are, More Than We Are, And Less Than We Are.

Do Not Compare, Do Not Measure. No Other Way Is Like Yours. All Other Ways Deceive And Tempt You. You Must Fulfill The Way That Is In You.

Securities, Certitudes And Peace Do Not Lead To Discoveries.

The Creation Of Something New Is Not Accomplished By The Intellect But By The Play Instinct Acting From Inner Necessity. The Creative Mind Plays With The Objects It Loves.

Yoga In Mayfair Or Fifth Avenue, Or In Any Other Place Which Is On The Telephone, Is A Spiritual Fake.

The Self Is Our Life's Goal, For It Is The Completest Expression Of That Fateful Combination We Call Individuality.

What Happens After Death Is So Unspeakably Glorious That Our Imagination And Our Feelings Do Not Suffice To Form Even An Approximate Conception Of It. The Dissolution Of Our Time-bound Form In Eternity Brings No Loss Of Meaning.

All The Most Powerful Ideas In History Go Back To Archetypes.

Whatever Is Not Conscious Will Be Experienced As Fate.

Neurosis Is Always A Substitute For Legitimate Suffering.

Dawn Is Born At Midnight.

The Totality Of The Psyche Can Never Be Grasped By The Intellect Alone.

Since Psyche And Matter Are Contained In One And The Same World, And Moreover Are In Continuous Contact With One Another And Ultimately Rest On Irrepresentable, Transcendental Factors, It Is Not Only Possible But Fairly Probable, Even, That Psyche And Matter Are Two Different Aspects Of The Same Thing.

Everything That Irritates Us About Others Can Lead Us To An Understanding Of Ourselves.

But India Did Not Pass Me By Without A Trace: It Left Tracks Which Lead Me From One Infinity To Another Infinity.

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.

The Unsatisfied Yearning Of The Artist Reaches Back To The Primordial Image In The Unconscious Which Is Best Fitted To Compensate The Inadequacy And One-sidedness Of The Present.

One Of The Most Difficult Tasks Men Can Perform, However Much Others May Despise It, Is The Invention Of Good Games.

The Longing For Light Is The Longing For Consciousness.

Meaning Makes A Great Many Things Endurable---per Haps Everything.

Conscious And Unconscious

The Dream Is A Little Hidden Door In The Innermost And Most Secret Recesses Of The Soul, Opening Into That Cosmic Night Which Was Psyche Long Before There Was Any Ego-consciousness, And Which Will Remain Psyche No Matter How Far Our Ego-consciousness Extends.

You Are A Slave Of What You Need In Your Soul.

Without Freedom There Can Be No Morality.

Memories Dreams Reflections

You Must Live Life In Such A Spirit That You Make In Every Moment The Best Of Possibilities.

The Spirit Is The Life Of The Body Seen From Within, And The Body The Outward Manifestation Of The Life Of The Spirit-the Two Being Really One.

With A Truly Tragic Delusion,” Carl Jung Noted, “these Theologians Fail To See That It Is Not A Matter Of Proving The Existence Of The Light, But Of Blind People Who Do Not Know That Their Eyes Could See. It Is High Time We Realized That It Is Pointless To Praise The Light And Preach It If Nobody Can See It. It Is Much More Needful To Teach People The Art Of Seeing.

In The Last Analysis, The Essential Thing Is The Life Of Individual. This Alone Makes History, Here Alone Do The Great Transformations Take Place, And The Whole Future, The Whole History Of The World, Ultimately Springs As A Gigantic Summation From These Hidden Source In Individuals.

In Thirty Years I Have Treated Many Patients. Among All My Patients In The Second Half Of Life, Every One Of Them Fell Ill Because He Had Lost That Which The Living Religions Of Every Age Had Given Their Followers, And None Of Them Was Really Healed Who Did Not Regain His Religious Outlook.

In Studying The History Of The Human Mind One Is Impressed Again And Again By The Fact That Its Growth Keeps Pace With A Widening Range Of Consciousness, And That Each Step Forward Is An Extremely Painful And Laborious Achievement. One Could Almost Say That Nothing Is More Hateful To Man Than To Give Up The Smallest Particle Of Unconsciousness. He Has A Profound Fear Of The Unknown. Ask Anybody Who Has Ever Tried To Introduce New Ideas!

I Can Only Gaze With Wonder And Awe At The Depths Of And Heights Of Our Psychic Nature. Its Non-spatial Universe Conceals An Untold Abundance Of Images Which Have Accumulated Over Millions Of Years Of Living Development And Become Fixed In The Organism....beside This Picture I Would Like To Place The Spectacle Of The Starry Heavens At Night, For The Only Equivalent Of The Universe Within Is The Universe Without; And Just As I Reach This World Through The Medium Of The Body, So I Reach That World Through The Medium Of The Psyche.

We Should Know What Our Convictions Are, And Stand For Them. Upon One's Own Philosophy, Conscious Or Unconscious, Depends One's Ultimate Interpretation Of Facts. Therefore It Is Wise To Be As Clear As Possible About One's Subjective Principles. As The Man Is, So Will Be His Ultimate Truth.

The Fact Is That Certain Ideas Exist Almost Everywhere And At All Times And Can Even Spontaneously Create Themselves Quite Independently Of Migration And Tradition.

The Unconscious Is Not A Demoniacal Monster, But A Natural Entity Which, As Far As Moral Sense, Aesthetic Taste, And Intellectual Judgment Go, Is Completely Neutral.it Only Becomes Dangerous When Our Conscious Attitude To It Is Hopelessly Wrong. To The Degree That We Repress It, Its Danger Increases.

Our Intellect Has Created A New World That Dominates Nature, And Has Populated It With Monstrous Machines.

No One Can Flatter Himself That He Is Immune To The Spirit Of His Own Epoch, Or Even That He Possesses A Full Understanding Of It. Irrespective Of Our Conscious Convictions, Each One Of Us, Without Exception, Being A Particle Of The General Mass, Is Somewhere Attached To, Colored By, Or Even Undermined By The Spirit Which Goes Through The Mass. Freedom Stretches Only As Far As The Limits Of Our Consciousness.

The Woman Is Increasingly Aware That Love Alone Can Give Her Full Stature, Just As The Man Begins To Discern That Spirit Alone Can Endow His Life With Its Highest Meaning. Fundamentally, Therefore, Both Seek A Psychic Relation To The Other, Because Love Needs The Spirit, And The Spirit Love, For Their Fulfillment.

Warmth Is The Vital Element For The Growing Plant And For The Soul Of The Child.

Resistance To The Organized Mass Can Be Effected Only By The Man Who Is As Well Organized In His Individuality As The Mass Itself.

If People Can Be Educated To See The Lowly Side Of Their Own Natures, It May Be Hoped That They Will Also Learn To Understand And To Love Their Fellow Men Better. A Little Less Hypocrisy And A Little More Tolerance Towards Oneself Can Only Have Good Results In Respect For Our Neighbor; For We Are All Too Prone To Transfer To Our Fellows The Injustice And Violence We Inflict Upon Our Own Natures.

Where Wisdom Reigns, There Is No Conflict Between Thinking And Feeling.

The Christian Missionary May Preach The Gospel To The Poor Naked Heathen, But The Spiritual Heathen Who Populate Europe Have As Yet Heard Nothing Of Christianity.

The Shoe That Fits One Person Pinches Another; There Is No Recipe For Living That Suits All Cases.

Masses Are Always Breeding Grounds Of Psychic Epidemics.

Liverpool Is The Pool Of Life, It Makes To Live.

Man Is The Mirror God Holds Up To Himself, The Sense Organ With Which He Apprehends His Being.

Filling The Conscious Mind With Ideal Conceptions Is A Characteristic Of Western Theosophy, But Not The Confrontation With The Shadow And The World Of Darkness. One Does Not Become Enlightened By Imagining Figures Of Light, But By Making The Darkness Conscious. The Latter Procedure, However, Is Disagreeable And Therefore Not Popular.

About A Third Of My Cases Are Suffering From No Clinically Definable Neurosis, But From The Senselessness And Emptiness Of Their Lives.

Madness Is A Special Form Of The Spirit And Clings To All Teachings And Philosophies, But Even More To Daily Life, Since Life Itself Is Full Of Craziness And At Bottom Utterly Illogical. Man Strives Toward Reason Only So That He Can Make Rules For Himself.

The Symbols Of The Self Arise From The Depths Of The Body.

The Highest, Most Decisive Experience Is To Be Alone With One's Own Self. You Must Be Alone To Find Out What Supports You, When You Find That You Can Not Support Yourself. Only This Experience Can Give You An Indestructible Foundation.

It Seems As If It Is Only Through An Experience Of Symbolic Reality That Man, Vainly Seeking His Own “existence” And Making A Philosophy Out Of It, Can Find His Way Back To A World In Which He Is No Longer A Stranger.

Plants Were Bound For Good Or Ill To Their Places. They Expressed Not Only Beauty But Also The Thoughts Of God's World, With An Intent Of Their Own And Without Deviation. Trees In Particular Were Mysterious And Seemed To Me Direct Embodiments Of The Incomprehensible Meaning Of Life. For That Reason, The Woods Were The Places Where I Felt Closest To Its Deepest Meaning And To Its Awe-inspiring Workings.

Meaning Of Life

All The Works Of Man Have Their Origin In Creative Fantasy. What Right Have We Then To Depreciate Imagination.

One Looks Back With Appreciation To The Brilliant Teachers, But With Gratitude To Those Who Touched Our Human Feelings. The Curriculum Is So Much Necessary Raw Material, But Warmth Is The Vital Element For The Growing Plant And For The Soul Of The Child.

Who Looks Outside, Dreams; Who Looks Inside, Awakes.

Real Liberation Comes Not From Glossing Over Or Repressing Painful States Of Feeling, But Only From Experiencing Them To The Full.

Creative Power Is Mightier Than Its Possessor.

What Is Not Brought To Consciousness, Comes To Us As Fate.

The Fact That Astrology Nevertheless Yields Valid Results Proves That It Is Not The Apparent Positions Of The Stars Which Work, But Rather The Times Which Are Measured Or Determined By Arbitrarily Named Stellar Positions. Time Thus Proves To Be A Stream Of Energy Filled With Qualities And Not, As Our Philosophy Would Have It, An Abstract Concept Or Precondition Of Knowledge.

Knowing Your Own Darkness Is The Best Method For Dealing With The Darknesses Of Other People.

Life Is Something That Has To Be Lived And Not Talked About.

There Is No Birth Of Consciousness Without Pain.

Collective Unconscious

That Which We Do Not Confront In Ourselves We Will Meet As Fate.

All Neurotics Seek The Religious

Astrology Is Of Particular Interest To The Psychologist, Since It Contains A Sort Of Psychological Experience Which We Call Projected - This Means That We Find The Psychological Facts As It Were In The Constellations. This Originally Gave Rise To The Idea That These Factors Derive From The Stars, Whereas They Are Merely In A Relation Of Synchronicity With Them. I Admit That This Is A Very Curious Fact Which Throws A Peculiar Light On The Structure Of The Human Mind.

Archetypes, In Spite Of Their Conservative Nature, Are Not Static But In A Continuous Dramatic Flux. Thus The Self As A Monad Or Continuous Unit Would Be Dead. But It Lives Inasmuch As It Splits And Unites Again. There Is No Energy Without Opposites!

Nights Through Dreams Tell The Myths Forgotten By The Day.

The Unconscious Wants To Flow Into Consciousness In Order To Reach The Light, But At The Same Time It Continually Thwarts Itself, Because It Would Rather Remain Unconscious. That Is To Say, God Wants To Become Man, But Not Quite.

An Understanding Heart Is Everything In A Teacher, And Cannot Be Esteemed Highly Enough.

Therein Lies The Social Significance Of Art: It Is Constantly At Work Educating The Spirit Of The Age, Conjuring Up The Forms In Which The Age Is More Lacking. The Unsatisfied Yearning Of The Artist Reaches Back To The Primordial Image In The Unconscious, Which Is Best Fitted To Compensate The Inadequacy And One-sidedness Of The Present. 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.

The Need For Mythic Statements Is Satisfied When We Frame A View Of The World Which Adequately Explains The Meaning Of Human Existence In The Cosmos, A View Which Springs From Our Psychic Wholeness, From The Co-operation Between Conscious And Unconscious. Meaninglessness Inhibits Fullness Of Life And Is Therefore Equivalent To Illness. Meaning Makes A Great Many Things Endurable - Perhaps Everything.

Fullness Of Life

Caution Has Its Place, No Doubt, But We Cannot Refuse Our Support To A Serious Venture Which Challenges The Whole Of The Personality. If We Oppose It, We Are Trying To Suppress What Is Best In Man - His Daring And His Aspirations. And Should We Succeed, We Should Only Have Stood In The Way Of That Invaluable Experience Which Might Have Given A Meaning To Life.

I Think There Will Be A Reaction - A Reaction Will Set In Against This Communal Dissociation. You Know, Man Doesn't Stand Forever, His Nullification. Once, There Will Be A Reaction, And I See It Setting In, You Know, When I Think Of My Patients, They All Seek Their Own Existence And To Assure Their Existence Against That Complete Atomization Into Nothingness Or Into Meaninglessness. Man Cannot Stand A Meaningless Life.

Sometimes You Have To Do Something Unforgivable Just To Be Able To Go On Living.

Language, In Its Origin And Essence, Is Simply A System Of Signs Or Symbols That Denote Real Occurrences Or Their Echo In The Human Soul.

How Difficult It Is To Reach Anything Approaching A Moderate And Relatively Calm Point Of View In The Midst Of One's Emotions.

Even A Lie Is A Psychic Fact.

The Upheaval Of Our World And The Upheaval Of Our Consciousness Are One And The Same.

God Enters Through The Wound.

One Is Forced To Speak Not Of What Is Held In Common Between The Cultures, But What Is Held In Common Between The Myths, And That In Its Simplest Archetypal Forms.

Words Are Animals, Alive With A Will Of Their Own

Instinct Is Like Nature Herself - Prodigiously Conservative, And Yet Transcending Her Own Historical Conditions In Her Acts Of Creation.

The Judgment Of The Intellect Is, At Best, Only The Half Of Truth.

Trust That Which Gives You Meaning And Accept It As Your Guide

Whenever We Touch Nature We Get Clean. People Who Have Got Dirty Through Too Much Civilization Take A Walk In The Woods, Or A Bath In The Sea. Entering The Unconscious, Entering Yourself Through Dreams, Is Touching Nature From The Inside And This Is The Same Thing, Things Are Put Right Again.

In Each Of Us Is Another Whom We Do Not Know. He Speaks To Us In Dreams And Tells Us How Differently He Sees Us From The Way We See Ourselves.

Nothing Worse Could Happen To One Than To Be Completely Understood.

Sometimes, Indeed, There Is Such A Discrepancy Between The Genius And His Human Qualities That One Has To Ask Oneself Whether A Little Less Talent Might Not Have Been Better.

Discrepancies Between

Hitler's Unconscious Seems To Be Female.

I Know Every Numbskull Will Babble On About "black Man," "maneater," "chance," And "retrospective Interpretation," In Order To Banish Something Terribly Inconvenient That Might Sully The Familiar Picture Of Childhood Innocence. Ah, These Good, Efficient, Healthy-minded People, They Always Remind Me Of Those Optimistic Tadpoles Who Bask In A Puddle In The Sun, In The Shallowest Of Waters, Crowding Together And Amiably Wriggling Their Tails, Totally Unaware That The Next Morning The Puddle Will Have Dried Up And Left Them Stranded.

Myth Is More Individual And Expresses Life More Precisely Than Does Science.

We Are A Psychic Process Which We Do Not Control, Or Only Partly Direct. Consequently, We Cannot Have Any Final Judgment About Ourselves Or Our Lives.

I Deliberately And Consciously Give Preference To A Dramatic, Mythological Way Of Thinking And Speaking, Because This Is Not Only More Expressive But Also More Exact Than An Abstract Scientific Terminology, Which Is Wont To Toy With The Notion That Its Theoretic Formulations May One Fine Day Be Resolved Into Algebraic Equations.

I Use [heraclitus' Discovery Of] Enantiodromia For The Emergence Of The Unconscious Opposite In The Course Of Time. This Characteristic Phenomenon Practically Always Occurs When An Extreme, Onesided Tendency Dominates Conscious Life; In Time An Equally Powerful Counterposition Is Built Up, Which First Inhibits The Conscious Performance And Subsequently Breaks Through The Conscious Control.

Dreams Are The Guiding Words Of The Soul.

Life Calls Us Forth To Independence, And Anyone Who Does Not Heed This Call Because Of Childish Laziness Or Timidity Is Threatened With Neurosis. And Once This Has Broken Out, It Becomes An Increasingly Valid Reason For Running Away From Life.

We Can Keep From A Child All Knowledge Of Earlier Myths, But We Cannot Take From Him The Need For Mythology.

A Criminal Becomes A Popular Figure Because He Unburdens In No Small Degree The Consciences Of His Fellow Man, For Now They Know Once More Where Evil Is To Be Found.

Individualization Does Not Shut One Out From The World, But Gathers The World To Oneself.

The Self Is Not Only The Centre But Also The Whole Circumference Which Embraces Both Conscious And Unconscious; It Is The Centre Of This Totality, Just As The Ego Is The Centre Of Consciousness.

Nothing Has A Stronger Influence Psychologically On Their Environment And Especially On Their Children Than The Unlived Life Of The Parent.

One Finds One's Destiny On The Path One Takes To Avoid It.

The Great Problems Of Life — Sexuality, Of Course, Among Others — Are Always Related To The Primordial Images Of The Collective Unconscious. These Images Are Really Balancing Or Compensating Factors Which Correspond With The Problems Life Presents In Actuality. This Is Not To Be Marveled At, Since These Images Are Deposits Representing The Accumulated Experience Of Thousands Of Years Of Struggle For Adaptation And Existence.

Collective Unconscious

The Gods Have Become Our Diseases.

Memories Dreams Reflections

Whoever Is Afraid Must Needs Be Dependent; A Weak Thing Needs Support. That Is Why The Primitive Mind, From Deep Psychological Necessity, Begot Religious Instruction And Embodied It In A Magician Or A Priest.

Astrology Is Assured Of Recognition From Psychology, Without Further Restrictions, Because Astrology Represents The Summation Of All The Psychological Knowledge Of Antiquity.

There Was Need Of A Phantastic, Indestructible Optimism, And One Far Removed From All Sense Of Reality, In Order, For Example, To Discover In The Shameful Death Of Christ Really The Highest Salvation And The Redemption Of The World.

The World Begins To Exist When The Individual Discovers It.

I Shall Not Commit The Fashionable Stupidity Of Regarding Everything I Cannot Explain As A Fraud.

I Am An Orphan, Alone: Nevertheless I Am Found Everywhere. I Am One, But Opposed To Myself. I Am Youth And Old Man At One And The Same Time. I Have Known Neither Father Nor Mother, Because I Have Had To Be Fetched Out Of The Deep Like A Fish, Or Fell Like A White Stone From Heaven. In Woods And Mountains I Roam, But I Am Hidden In The Innermost Soul Of Man. I Am Mortal For Everyone, Yet I Am Not Touched By The Cycle Of Aeons.

This Whole Creation Is Essentially Subjective, And The Dream Is The Theater Where The Dreamer Is At Once: Scene, Actor, Prompter, Stage Manager, Author, Audience, And Critic.

The Images Of The Unconscious Place A Great Responsibility Upon A Man. Failure To Understand Them, Or A Shirking Of Ethical Responsibility, Deprives Him Of His Wholeness And Imposes A Painful Fragmentariness On His Life.

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Daniel Berrigan

Edgar Rice Burroughs

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