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    Thread: Carl Gustav Jung - Videos, Books, Ruminations

    1. #126
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      Major new discovery!!

      Back on page 3 I posted a link to the Abstracts of Jung's Collected Works - brief synapses of each of the books (ok, not so brief really). It wasn't a good web page though - rather than functioning links leading to each book like a Wiki page would have, it was all one gigantic text page and you had to scroll down endlessly to find anything, which took all day. Well now I've found a much better version with live links.

      First here's the direct link to the abstract for Psychology And Alchemy, which I've been reading through. It actually sounds like it might be a very good book, in spite of how I was beginning to feel about his writings on Alchemy. Unlike Mysterium Conjunctionis it seems to be very clear and understandable - though I would need to hop over to Amazon and check the Look Inside to make sure of that. This is the book the excerpt came from in my last post.

      Here's the main page: Abstracts of The Collected Works.

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      Quote Originally Posted by Darkmatters View Post
      Just found this - Jung speaks about Mercurius and Alchemy:





      Wow - so it sounds like he's everything we both said above and then some!!

      • The hermaphrodite who splits into the classical brother/sister duality and is reunited in the coniunctio. So, anima and animus both?
      • He stands at the beginning and the end of the process -- of Individuation.
      • A symbol uniting all the opposites. So Shadow as well as Anima/Animus. Fun stuff!

      LOL, Just had our New Year celebrations over here, boring me with the flu is now off to bed. Have a Great Time where you are! :-D

      Re Mercurious, I've read stuff like the above before, but because I didn't know much about Jung (apart from the brief intro I got on my psych degree, yes, shocking!), I hadn't been able to connect as you have, and I'd forgotten it all because nothing to 'hang it onto' in my mind......

      And now I'm back with it, lol.

      The bit where I say that we get 'taken' into the unconcious, poor choice of words earlier, but mercurious has been referred to as a psychopomp somewhere, and a guide to the unconscious, and then in two places I've read that the animus and anima also serve this purpose...

      Anyway, chat again in due course. Enjoy the New Year! :-)

    3. #128
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      Quote Originally Posted by Rosanna View Post
      The bit where I say that we get 'taken' into the unconcious, poor choice of words earlier, but mercurious has been referred to as a psychopomp somewhere, and a guide to the unconscious, and then in two places I've read that the animus and anima also serve this purpose...
      I was just trying out all the different possibilities I could think of - but the Jung page confirmed that Mercurius (no O - it isn't like he's curious ) stands at the beginning and end of the Individuation process, so we were talking about the same thing. Unless he (or whatever the symbol of him really represents in the unconscious) also does other things - but I suspect balancing out the opposites to bring a person to wholeness is his main purpose.

      Quote Originally Posted by Rosanna View Post
      Anyway, chat again in due course. Enjoy the New Year! :-)
      Thank you - I definitely intend to! But first I plan to enjoy the New Years' Eve!! A little early as I don't usually stay up till midnight though. Think I'll watch Strange Days, which is set on New Year's Eve (I watched Die Hard on Christmas, because that's when it's set).

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      I have a book about mercurious that was expensive, wondering if there's a way I can share what's on my kindle privately with you and Snoop and any other regular on this thread (I've jumped a few pages, but will go back to catch up)....

      If there isn't a way, then I'm about to re-read it and see if it makes more sense to me now. Will come back soon. Off to bed :-)

    5. #130
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      A Primer on how to approach Jung's work

      I don't think there is a way to share anything from a Kindle book. What's the name of the book? It's possible there's a PDF floating around online or if it's old enough it might be on Archive.org.

      In order to gain a better understanding of Jung's ideas on Mercurius etc, I recommend reading through the abstract of the book I posted a few entries back (top of the page). I just made my way through it and it's got a lot of great nuggets. Many passages that relate directly to things we've been discussing on the last page coming from Hermeticism in particular. I've also now read through a Wiki page on Mercury, and it was incredibly revealing - turns out he's actually one of the more powerful Gods and does all kinds of things. All kinds of symbolism associated with him. I now think when it says he stands at the beginning and the end of the Individuation process (the Alchemical transmutation process) it means he is the Shadow (first thing you must encounter and work your way through) and then later he splits into the Szyzygy of Anima and Animus, for the final stage. He is represented by many symbols - the Unicorn, Phoenix, Dragon, and Lion among others.

      I looked at Amazon for Psychology and Alchemy - both the Look Inside and the customer comments. The beginning of the book, the part visible in the Look Inside feature, is incredibly easy to understand - but it seems to be a simple introduction he wrote because whenever he presented this alchemical material people were confused by it. But if you just go in and read that (on Amazon) I think it's pretty amazing in itself. And some of the comments do say this is not a place to start with Jung - you need a pretty solid basis first in his Individuation process and just his general theories. I suspect if you would get a book that explains the Individuation process that might be a good enough basis. I would go with one written by a modern Jungian analyst/scholar, like maybe Ego and Archetype by Edward Edinger or Murray Stein's Jung's Map of the Soul. These both get rave reviews from readers and are said to lay out the ideas clearly and comprehensively. Then maybe just take the plunge and dive in to Psychology and Alchemy itself? It would be a long term project - you would probably slowly gain understanding of it over a period of time. Something for deep contemplation now and then. But those books that you have to grow in order to understand are the ones that end up meaning the most to you.

      If you to decide to tackle something like this I would also recommend getting Darryl Sharp's Jung Lexicon. It can really help when you run into terms that make you scratch your head. Maybe also have a dictionary or encyclopedia of general psychological terms at hand as well, though for that Google and Wikipedia would probably work perfectly well. Pro tip - if a Google search doesn't turn up what you're looking for try adding the word psychology - that usually does the trick. And often I find it's very enlightening to look up Wiki entries on mythological figures or Gods when you run across them - a wealth of material comes up that adds depth and richness to your understanding.

      Hmmm - I think I just wrote up some kind of primer on how to approach Jung's work. That's actually a goal I had for this thread, though I still want to add some more at some point.
      Last edited by Darkmatters; 01-01-2018 at 09:47 PM.
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      Something that just came to mind this afternoon as I'm blogging, my interest was magic...which got me reading about alchemy and that got me reading about Jung.

      What is the difference between magic and alchemy??

      Trying to concentrate on my blogging but it's not happening..


      Oh another thing. When people have what are described as 'oceanic feelings' would that be what Jung would describe as meeting with the Self?
      Last edited by Rosanna; 01-02-2018 at 04:25 PM.

    7. #132
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      Quote Originally Posted by Rosanna View Post
      What is the difference between magic and alchemy??
      Well in some ways they have a lot in common - they are both attempts to explain or understand metaphysical ideas that we had intuitions about, developed before there was a clearly defined difference between rationality and irrationality - in other words before we understood fact from fantasy. Or maybe a better way to say it is before we could clearly separate what's happening outside our heads from what's happening inside, in the realm of dream and fantasy and fiction. We had not yet come to an understanding of the split nature of the human mind, the divide between conscious and unconscious. Between outer reality and the inner reality of the Psyche. Both of them are very real but in very different ways. And until we understood the difference we were like children or primitives (actually we WERE primitives, in terms of our understanding of the world).

      The difference between outer, physical reality (the world of Matter) and the inner Psyche, which expresses itself through projection ONTO the outer world. This explains why it took so long for us to understand the difference - because what happens inside (the magical or phantasmagoric reality within) seems to be happening somehow in the outer world but hidden (occulted). This is why people used to come up with theories about other realms - places that were supposedly real but difficult to find, like the Underworld, the Land of the Dead, Heaven, or Plato's World of Perfect Forms. They were all attempts to describe and understand the nature of the real Other World - the world of the Psyche.

      But Alchemy is something very specific - it was an attempt at natural philosophy that grew from a combination of Egyptian technologies such as mummy embalming and cosmology mixed with ancient Greek mythologies and superstitions, and specifically aimed at transmuting lead into gold. Or of course - at least that was the 'cover story'. Some of the alchemists understood they were really exploring and describing the inner human realm but disguising it as actual physical attempts to turn lead into gold (to avoid charges of heresy from the Roman Catholic Church), while they were really trying to transform the human soul into something transcendent (Individuated).

      I'm not sure what you mean specifically by Magic - it's such a vague term, but I'm just assuming you mean it in it's broad sense. I don't know - I suppose you could say alchemy was a subset of magic. To me they seem similar but distinct. It would be sort of like asking "what's the difference between progressive rock and pop music?" Progressive rock technically was a form of popular music, which is what pop music really means, but then the term pop music has come to mean something more specific and not quite the same thing anymore. So it's kind of a confusing question and hard to answer without going into a lot of detail in order to more clearly define your terms.

      And interestingly - clearly defining your terms is a form of Separatio or fine discrimination, and a prerequisite for Individuation. Often the mere act of working to define your terms more clearly is all that's needed to solve the problem - many problems result from simply unclear thinking or unclear wording. And the act of finding the right words or phrases fixes the problem of unclear thinking, since we think through language (in the conscious realm - in the unconscious it's more through images).

      Quote Originally Posted by Rosanna View Post
      When people have what are described as 'oceanic feelings' would that be what Jung would describe as meeting with the Self?
      I think oceanic feelings refers to what's also been called the sublime, or a sudden overwhelming sense of being at one with the entire universe. An expansion of consciousness. I think that's something that can result from a meeting with the Self, or possibly from any kind of plunge into the unconscious. So I would say it's more like a result of a meeting with the Self, or possibly certain other encounters with the unconscious.
      Last edited by Darkmatters; 01-02-2018 at 07:42 PM.
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      Quote Originally Posted by Darkmatters View Post
      I don't think there is a way to share anything from a Kindle book. What's the name of the book? It's possible there's a PDF floating around online or if it's old enough it might be on Archive.org.
      It's called The Alchemical Mercurious and it's someone's PhD paper I think, there's a lot in it, and I paid a lot for it, but at the time I couldn't really process it because I wasn't ready in terms of my knowledge base.

      Obviously I wouldn't dream of sharing someone's work that's for sale, but I believe it's acceptable to share relevant snippets with friends in conversation. In other words I would do so privately, not publicly. Anyway, I'll go through it again and anything that's relevant I will share (you're giving a lot, have to give back)

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      Quote Originally Posted by Darkmatters View Post
      In order to gain a better understanding of Jung's ideas on Mercurius etc, I recommend reading through the abstract of the book I posted a few entries back (top of the page). I just made my way through it and it's got a lot of great nuggets. Many passages that relate directly to things we've been discussing on the last page coming from Hermeticism in particular. I've also now read through a Wiki page on Mercury, and it was incredibly revealing - turns out he's actually one of the more powerful Gods and does all kinds of things. All kinds of symbolism associated with him. I now think when it says he stands at the beginning and the end of the Individuation process (the Alchemical transmutation process) it means he is the Shadow (first thing you must encounter and work your way through) and then later he splits into the Szyzygy of Anima and Animus, for the final stage. He is represented by many symbols - the Unicorn, Phoenix, Dragon, and Lion among others.
      I will go back and read it. Have we got any easy videos or accounts of the stages of individuation again? Only if you can think off the top of your head, I don't want you to go searching....

      And I suppose Mercurious is an archetype 'in' us as well as outside of us, waiting to scare us with the shadow and then become out beloved as the animus / anima.......and then.....whatever else the next stages are, I've not got that far. You may have noticed I start off quite literal, until my imagination starts working, LOL.

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      Something else that's niggling away at me, is that, those feelings, 'oceanic feelings' or whatever you want to call them, are so perfect, that to me, when I'm 'there,' there is no other 'work' to be done.......so they kind of feel like a destination, and much 'lighter' than any other mental process, especially that stuff which I imagine is individuation, lol.

      And if they are a desired end point (or are they? or is the state just a stage further along in the process?), how is it possible to get there without going through all the other stuff, because I'm pretty sure in my life, especially years ago when I had a lot of 'issues' as a younger person, I could still get to that state and feel at one with the world...

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      Oh dear, something else that's bothering me, lol, (sorry but I've got the rest of this week off and am catching up on all this).....the concept of 'flow' which Mihaly czikszentmihalyi spoke of, well he said he studied this after going to a seminar about Carl Jung. I will try and find what it was about that seminar that led him to eventually come up with a description of the 'flow' state and one thing I've always wondered is whether this state is also a type of 'oneness.' Cziksentmihalyi doesn't speak spiritually about it though, rather in empirical, observational terms.

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      Quote Originally Posted by Rosanna View Post
      It's called The Alchemical Mercurious and it's someone's PhD paper I think
      Ok, once I took out the extra O this turned up: The Alchemical Mercurius By Mathew Mather. I was going to say you should always try to find accounts of Alchemy or Myth or whatever that are written by psychologists or even by Jungians in particular, because otherwise you need to try to translate it into psychological terms and to do that you need to really understand the Jungian stuff - I might be there in 20 years or so. So for now I need to find stuff written from a specific Jungian perspective. But luckily this is. Funny - even in the page I linked to it says it's really expensive so you should recommend it to your librarian.

      Wait a minute - I do recall there's a way of sharing brief parts of a Kindle book by highlighting them. If your Kindle is hooked up through wifi then somewhere you can read the most popular segments people have highlighted. I forget where I saw that - was it on Amazon somewhere? Need to try to find it again.

      I found the book on Amazon, but they don't seem to have a Kindle version listed, or I haven't found it yet. Here's a very intriguing description under the paperback version:

      The figure of the alchemical Mercurius features ubiquitously and radically in Jung’s later works, but despite this, there has been little research concerning Mercurius in Jungian studies to date. In this book, Mathew Mather explores the figure of the alchemical Mercurius and contextualises and clarifies its significance in Jung’s life and works.

      Placing the alchemical Mercurius as a central concern reveals a Jungian interpretation in which the grail legend, alchemy and precessional astrology, as three thematic threads, converge. In such a treatment, Jung’s belief in the dawning of a new platonic month emerges as a central consideration and an esoteric perspective on Jung’s life and works is brought more fully to light, constructing a life-myth interpretation.

      The book is comprised of three parts:

      • Aurea Catena: locating the figure of the alchemical Mercurius within the Western esoteric tradition
      • Daimonic Encounter: the relevance of this figure in Jung’s personal life
      • Magnum Opus: Jung’s portrayal of this figure in key texts such as Synchronicity, Aion, Mysterium Coniunctionis; and Emma Jung and von Franz’s The Grail Legend.


      The Alchemical Mercurius is a unique contribution to analytical psychology, substantially revealing ‘esoteric Jung’ and providing valuable perspectives on the theme of his myth for our times. The book will appeal to researchers and academics in the field of analytical psychology as well as postgraduate students.
      Last edited by Darkmatters; 01-02-2018 at 10:25 PM.

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      Quote Originally Posted by Darkmatters View Post
      Wait a minute - I do recall there's a way of sharing brief parts of a Kindle book by highlighting them. If your Kindle is hooked up through wifi then somewhere you can read the most popular segments people have highlighted. I forget where I saw that - was it on Amazon somewhere? Need to try to find it again.
      I will find out and yes, if you find out any way of doing it, let me know. Yes I paid lots for it, because I wanted it for a project I was working on at the time, not yet finished, and there was so little stuff out there.

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      I found the Kindle version. Not sure why it wasn't showing up with the hardback and paperback. Looks like it can be rented for a limited time for $14.95 or bought for $43.41. Not that steep for a new Jungian book really - this is a rather expensive hobby to pursue!

      Now to see if we can find a page of selected highlights from it...

      Thank you for bringing this book up!

      EDIT: I can't find anywhere on the Amazon page where you can read highlights. I think that's where I found it before, but I only recall ever seeing it for one book (don't remember which one). Time for a little internet sleuthing.
      Last edited by Darkmatters; 01-02-2018 at 11:01 PM.
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      Can you send private messages on this forum?

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      Mather states near the beginning of the book (I'm reading the Look Inside) that the only other Jungians who wrote about Mercurius were Emma Jung and Marie-Lousie Von Franz. In fact he has mentioned their book The Grail Legend several times already. I've been wanting to get it for a long time now and still haven't but now I might have to. Apparently Emma Jung had a lifelong love and fascination with the grail stories and studied them extensively in the context of her husband's Analytical psychology. And it can be had much cheaper than anything except renting the other book. Apparently Mercurius features in it at several points.

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      Quote Originally Posted by Rosanna View Post
      Can you send private messages on this forum?
      Yes, if you click on somebody's name there's a PM option. I think you might need to already have friended them for it to work, not sure though.

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      PM sent. :-)

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      Quote Originally Posted by Rosanna View Post
      I will go back and read it. Have we got any easy videos or accounts of the stages of individuation again? Only if you can think off the top of your head, I don't want you to go searching....
      I can scribble up a more detailed account than I have yet - but really there's not much more to it that what we've been discussing already. But here it is in better resolution:

      • Encounter with the Shadow -- Simple, but can take place over months or years through dreams, fantasies, artwork, life, whatever.
      • Encounter with the Anima/Animus -- Same as above. The difference being in the nature of the encounters - dreams or fantasies or artwork concerning your opposite-sex 'perfect match' or something along those lines. Perfect life partner match.
      • Encounter with the Self -- Again, but now you're encountering figures that seem to be some kind of perfect version of you, or an alternate reality version. Might or might not look like you, but feels like a perfect or a better you somehow I think.


      The Shadow figures you encounter represent parts of yourself that you've disowned or are ashamed or afraid to admit are parts of yourself, so you project them onto other people around you. If you tend to get in the same arguments over and over again with the same person or with different people over the same things, that is probably some unwanted quality in yourself that you're projecting onto them. Or maybe they're projecting something onto you - it can be hard to tell sometimes.

      I know a lot less about the Animus/Anima and the Self. I have encountered figures in dreams that I think came from each of these categories. My shadow figures were mysterious, sometimes frightening but not always, but they always exerted a certain fascination as if they were something really special.

      The ones I assume are Anima figures have been girls or women I used to know. Usually that I liked a lot and maybe had hopes of hooking up with or having a relationship with. Or at least ones that were really cool and I enjoyed hanging out with.

      They weren't always people I had known in waking life - sometimes it was just a really amazing woman appearing in a dream. But you get a certain special kind of feeling - a feeling that this was a really significant dream, you know? This is always true of a dream containing Archetypal figures.

      The Self figures I've encountered so far have been mostly authority figures. There was a plumber who showed up in 2 or 3 dreams and as they went on he lost his ragged lowly plumber persona and actually began to show a definite golden glow about him, and gave a strong aura of being a powerful Godlike figure. I suppose Self figures do always seem like Gods, though I think in the beginning they can show up as lowly people in ragged clothes. This is the way Odin used to like to walk among the people of Earth - disguised as a beggar. He was a Self figure in that regard. In fact in many religions/Myths there are Gods who like to disguise themselves as lowly peasants or beggars and get involved in people's lives. These religions and myths are reflections of Self figures. In my earlier dreams my Self figures tended to try to make me work harder or do menial labor of some kind and I would refuse. In the latest one he didn't do that - he actually showed up and started doing some work for me to fix my devastated house that had just demolished itself before my eyes. He had a crew of helpers who assisted him, and he sang loud bawdy songs in German that I couldn't understand. He seemed kind of uncool - sot of an asshole but like I needed him there to do whatever he was setting out to do. Fixing things in my damaged Psyche I assume. Lol - he actually reminded me of a mix of Carl Jung and Skip Conover, the guy who does the readings from Jung books on YouTube. Had Jung's sparkling mischievous eyes and Gnomelike demeanor.


      Quote Originally Posted by Rosanna View Post
      And I suppose Mercurious is an archetype 'in' us as well as outside of us, waiting to scare us with the shadow and then become out beloved as the animus / anima.......and then.....whatever else the next stages are, I've not got that far. You may have noticed I start off quite literal, until my imagination starts working, LOL.
      The reason we perceive them as existing outside is because the only way we can 'see' Archetypal figures is either in dreams and fantasies or through projection. They definitely come from inside. Another way we can externalize them in order to fix them down and see them better is through artwork. Because art starts as imagination -- fantasy essentially. Then we turn it into art. So it's the internal made external and put down on paper or canvas or whatever your medium is.

      Quote Originally Posted by Rosanna View Post
      Something else that's niggling away at me, is that, those feelings, 'oceanic feelings' or whatever you want to call them, are so perfect, that to me, when I'm 'there,' there is no other 'work' to be done.......so they kind of feel like a destination, and much 'lighter' than any other mental process, especially that stuff which I imagine is individuation, lol.
      What I was trying to say is that a feeling is an emotion - and emotions are the end result of a process. Individuation is the process - the oceanic feeling is the end result of the process, it isn't the process itself. You get a great feeling of accomplishment or pride when you win a competition or complete a difficult task, but the feeling is the result of whatever you had to do in order to get there - see what I mean? You might win a competition because you studied hard or learned some new skills and practiced a lot. Getting the great feeling at the end of it is a reward - but the process was the learning and the practice. They're not the same thing. They are cause and effect basically. When you said that the oceanic feeling is the encounter with the Self, I'm saying I think the feeling is more like an after effect of the encounter.

      But I was also trying to say that I think other things can cause the same feeling. Not only Individuation. Just as many different things can cause any other emotion. We only have a very limited number of emotions, and they result from many different causes.

      Just to try to be clear, because I think we're talking past each other - I was reacting to the fact that you said you thought the oceanic feeling might BE the encounter with the Self. I was just saying it isn't the encounter, but could be the end result of an encounter.

      Quote Originally Posted by Rosanna View Post
      And if they are a desired end point (or are they? or is the state just a stage further along in the process?), how is it possible to get there without going through all the other stuff, because I'm pretty sure in my life, especially years ago when I had a lot of 'issues' as a younger person, I could still get to that state and feel at one with the world...
      The desired end point is Individuation - which is a balanced Psyche, or at least more balanced than it was previously. The feelings are a byproduct.

      Individuation happens frequently - especially when we're young, because then it's a natural thing that just happens - a part of growing up. It stops happening naturally after you've become an adult, and then it can happen automatically during times of great turmoil and stress, or through an effort of facing your own shadow elements and then Anima/Animus elements, usually while in psychoanalysis, though some people have done it themselves. Jung did it himself, though as an analyst of course he had his own analyst - they always do because a broken analyst can't fix anybody else. It's said that a person is incapable of recognizing and 'owning' all the contents of their own shadow without a lot of help from a very good qualified analyst.

      So yes - Individuation can happen spontaneously if you're undergoing something traumatic or if you just happen to have a few epiphanies.

      Quote Originally Posted by Rosanna View Post
      PM sent. :-)
      Thank you!! Much appreciated.
      Last edited by Darkmatters; 01-03-2018 at 01:05 AM.
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    20. #145
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      Snoop, sending you a pm.

      Darkmatters, I will return tomorrow and respond, thanks
      Last edited by Rosanna; 01-03-2018 at 01:15 AM.

    21. #146
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      Quote Originally Posted by Darkmatters View Post
      What I was trying to say is that a feeling is an emotion - and emotions are the end result of a process. Individuation is the process - the oceanic feeling is the end result of the process, it isn't the process itself. You get a great feeling of accomplishment or pride when you win a competition or complete a difficult task, but the feeling is the result of whatever you had to do in order to get there - see what I mean? You might win a competition because you studied hard or learned some new skills and practiced a lot. Getting the great feeling at the end of it is a reward - but the process was the learning and the practice. They're not the same thing. They are cause and effect basically. When you said that the oceanic feeling is the encounter with the Self, I'm saying I think the feeling is more like an after effect of the encounter.
      :
      Ok, I understand...I just find that those feelings can come really easily. A long walk can do it. Sitting in a pretty garden. Or getting into the 'flow' state, to the point where I lose all sense of self and time, etc (as is described for this state in the literature), and so get a similar feeling of oneness.

      It can therefore be an almost instantaneous thing. Whereas reading about individuation, or the hero's journey....and seeing how movies / stories are inspired by it, there is a hell of a process and a lot of struggle before any blissful state is reached (the end point). My experience is that a lot of that struggle can be bypassed? (maybe? at least some of the time? ie it may not always be a linear process? ) I question this because of course I don't know, but it has seemed in my life that I tap into a state that I feel connects me to a higher level of some sort, of course I can't stay there, lol, but for a while I can write fairly good poetry while in that state...

      Not saying there isn't a lot of other work to be done, but just that sometimes I feel like I've bypassed any 'journey' and gone straight to where I think is the end point of these journeys.

      Sorry if I'm talking in riddles, it's late here. ignore if it's not helpful to the thread. :-)
      Last edited by Rosanna; 01-03-2018 at 05:25 PM. Reason: wrong post
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    22. #147
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      It sounds like you're confusing pleasant feelings with Individuation. Just because you feel happy or at peace doesn't mean you've overcome your psychological issues.

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      Quote Originally Posted by Darkmatters View Post
      It sounds like you're confusing pleasant feelings with Individuation. Just because you feel happy or at peace doesn't mean you've overcome your psychological issues.
      Ok, yes, I get that. That's really why I used the word 'bypass,' because all psychological issues are still there, just not while in that state.

      My interest in the state is not because of the happy feeling, etc, it's that it's one where there's no longer a sense of ego, just a sense of merging with all around.....and I had been equating that to some latter stage of the alchemical process (as it applies to us mentally), Fermentation (?) Where below meets above....The reason I thought that is because some of the best insights reach us in that state, solutions to problems, creative inspiration, etc. And often the feeling is that they come to us, rather than from us. Hence the term 'divine inspiration' I imagine.

      I realise I'm playing with ideas here and maybe going off track, feel free to stop at this point on this issue and I'll be patient and give it more thought.

      To give the context of where I'm coming from, I had been reading books by Wayne Dyer (nothing to do with Jung, I realise), and he was talking about how we are naturally inspired when we let go of all the consituents of ego. And I was trying to see how his work, which I relate to, fits with an alchemical process, because it is like magic when you're inspired... Thanks for listening to my mental chaos anyway

      Frustratingly for me, Wayne Dyer doesn't speak directly about creative inspiration (which I've equated with some type of alchemical completion / end point, even if its not the main one for a person's life), but he mentions Carl Jung and synchronicity around 12.58 here:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqe1dDEnVTk
      Last edited by Rosanna; 01-03-2018 at 05:26 PM.
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      Ok, I see where you're coming from now.

      I think our disagreement last night was mostly a semantic one - I was quibbling about the difference between the process and the resulting feelings or state, and you never really addressed that issue. I'm trying to just let that go now and understand your actual point instead. It's weird though once an issue like that comes up how hard it can be to let it go if the other person just fails to understand or at least acknowledge your point. It probably involves some projection on my part, possibly yours as well. A projection from one person will often bring a counter-projection from the other. Lol it's possible our Anima and Animus came out and started clashing (). Something like that anyway - I can recognize when I go into a more obsessive state than normal and become more driven toward a specific result, and I think that happened last night. That would be a complex or neurosis - the personal unconscious version of an Archetype (Archetypes are in the Collective Unconscious.) I'm pretty introspective and have learned to often see when I'm projecting, but it still isn't easy to let it go - it comes full-blown with strong emotional drivers and a dose of cognitive dissonance that makes you feel like you're right.

      Or maybe I just got a little peeved because I felt like you weren't getting my point and I had to keep repeating myself (< something like the flow of my reactions from then to now)

      Ok, now to try to explain what I said last night in better context. Even though I got a little brusque there was still a valid point- I just didn't articulate it very well.

      I did say that the Oceanic Feelings/Flow State etc can result from other things besides full Individuation, though it can result from that as well. What I mean is that I don't think you need to complete the full course of Individuation in order to get some massive benefits - each time you make some progress along it you get a good charge that can result in creative energy.

      Each time for instance that you integrate another piece of your Shadow it frees up the psychic energy that's bound up in it and that energy, which was working against you as part of your Shadow, becomes available for you to use productively. I suspect that will cause the Oceanic Feelings / Flow State and an outpouring of creative energy, as well as bringing euphoria and allow you to advance farther toward full Individuation.

      ^ Enlarged because this part is the core and most important part of my post. When it was just normal size in the middle of a paragraph it was too easy to pass over. And now a simile to help explain it:

      It's sort of like being in a class - each time you pass a test or complete a project you feel a sense of accomplishment and get a good grade, even though it doesn't mean you've earned your full degree yet. And yet each positive encounter like that is important and cumulatively they do add up to a degree.

      I hadn't mentioned Jung's ideas about encounters with the Shadow (as well as the other encounters, with Anima/Animus and Self) releasing the bound up psychic energy for your use, but that is core in his work. And I think it really explains the Oceanic Feelings/Flow State thing, and how it can happen even without full Individuation.

      This happens spontaneously all the time - but you can help it along by understanding what the various elements of the Psyche are - Shadow Amima/mus etc, and how they function, and the necessity to integrate them rather than deny and project them. When you recognize that you've had a Shadow dream for instance, write it down and then try to analyze it. It's really surprising how much just writing it down helps - so many times I woke up remembering a dream and thought I had it all figured out already, but then as soon as I started writing it new ideas flowed out and it turned out to mean much more than I thought at first glance. In fact often the dreams that at first seem stupid or not worth thinking about turn out to be the best. This is the kind of introspection Jung is talking about - and as I say, you can progress and free up the psychic energy (Freud used to call it Libido, though that doesn't mean it's specifically sexual, it refers to the Life Energy - a movement toward Life and Beauty rather than toward Death/Misery).

      I think I'm trying to pack too much into this one post - stuff that really requires more lengthy explanation. But at least now it's out and can be elaborated on further. Man, I really need to stop adding on to this post - must... post... it... now....

      Ok, now go back and re-read the big part - it's the most important.
      Last edited by Darkmatters; 01-03-2018 at 07:22 PM.
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      The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead

      I was just looking on Amazon (man, I'm spending a lot of time and money there lately! ) and discovered a book by Stephan Hoeller called The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead - you might have guessed by the title of the post .

      This one really strikes my fancy! I've been fascinated by Gnosticism ever since there was someone here on the board posting under the name Gnostic and talking about it. I've already bought a couple of books about Gnosticism in general and read well into them, but it was lacking any specific reference to Jung, and at the time I wasn't really aware that he was into it. Now with the 2 of them combined in this book I'm hooked - especially after reading through the (very lengthy!) Look Inside. Turns out Hoeller is a pretty excellent writer too - I had found his YouTube channel before and started listening to a couple of his podcasts, but I didn't like them - don't really remember why. Oh, it might have been his weird voice and accent, if I remember right - made him sound really sarcastic like a comedian and also hard to understand. Unless I'm mixing him up with somebody else, but I don't think I am.

      Oh, and to belatedy answer a question you asked recently Rosanna - Gnosticism is a variant on Christianity that does not rely on Faith or Works but on Knowledge. Gnosis means Knowledge. It's the root word in Agnostic, which means a lack of knowledge - as in "I don't profess any knowledge concerning a God or Gods". So it's not a statement of belief, as Atheism is ("I do not believe in a God or Gods"), but rather one of knowledge. The Gnostics didn't have a strongly systematized set of doctrines or dogmas, though they did write a heck of a lot (most of which was hunted down and destroyed, as the Gnostics themselves were, by the Roman Catholic church under charges of Heresy). But rather they tried to gain understanding of the religious through firsthand experience. Jung felt a close kinship to them, in fact he was basically a modern-day Gnostic himself because this is exactly what he did as described in his Red Book. His Active Imagination sessions were in a sense journeys through the depths of his inner underworld, populated by gods and demons and all manner of strange mythical figures. So in reading the works of the ancient Gnostics he recognized that what they were describing were the same kind of experiences as he had - they discovered the same inner world and the same figures.

      In other words - the Gnostics were early explorers and documenters of the Collective Unconscious and its resident Archetypes.

      In many ways Christianity does the same thing, as all religions do, but they've all unfortunately been heavily dogmatized and distorted in order to gain the obedience of the adherents, plus Jung always maintained that the Biblical account was terribly flawed because they saw God and Satan as separate entities - one totally good and one totally bad, and that's a complete misrepresentation of how things really are inside the psyche. Really Satan should have been the shadow side of God. Being split the way they are is analogous to a psychic schism - a form of cosmic Schizophrenia or split personality disorder. And of course it's very damaging to have something like that at the center of your belief system - the God image needs to be whole. A religion that denies a dark side to the Almighty breeds adherents who are split themselves, and project evil onto the Other - so they tend to dehumanize their opponents and allow the darkness to grow within themselves. Anything you deny and project will grow to monstrous proportions and destroy you. So sayeth Jung. Understandably, the church of Jung's day was not happy with him...

      Anyway - I was hooked right away - the intro to the book is amazing. Also, it mentions Mercurius and Hermeticism, though I don't know how extensively.
      Last edited by Darkmatters; 01-04-2018 at 05:20 AM.
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