JUNG THOUGHTS FROM A WISE OLD MAN

It's many years since I first encountered C.G. Jung's autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections. At the time, in my habitually over-eager way of demonstrating camaraderie with certain thinkers, I emphatically underlined many passages in this book. I have been re-reading it now and am amused to find that those passages are exactly the ones that I would underline now if I hadn't already done so. 

Here is Dr. Jung, after his trip to India, reflecting on the differences between his outlook and the Indian form of spirituality:

I, on the other hand, wish to persist in the state of lively contemplation of nature and of the psychic images. I do not want to be freed from human beings, nor from myself, nor from nature; for all these appear to me the greatest of miracles. Nature, the psyche, and life appear to me like divinity unfolded - and what more could I wish for?To me the supreme meaning of Being can consist only in the fact that it is , not that it is not or is no longer.

To me there is no liberation à tout prix. I cannot be liberated from anything that I do not possess, have not done, or experienced. Real liberation becomes possible for me only when I have done all that I was able to do, when I have completely devoted myself to a thing and participated in it to the utmost. 

Amen!


A new illustration has been added to EPISODE FIFTEEN of La Vie en Rosé. Go there to see it full size.

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EMOTION, REPETITION, EROSION

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By the way, in case you're wondering, the voices don't express how I'm feeling at present!


This audio-visual experiment is the result of my current thinking about emotions - specifically the unhappy kind - and how they shape the mind and body by constant repetition, like the slow drip-drip of water on stone. Somewhere in our inner album of memories there must be a key frame, a feeling or sequence of feelings we experienced very deeply in response to something. So deeply that it began a process of repetition which perhaps continues to this day, even if we have forgotten the original event.

Anything in our present reality which even vaguely resembles that original key frame acts as a trigger and can start up the whole sequence again, ringing that Pavlov bell. I'm fascinated by how repetition works on the mind and body, both in negative and positive ways, and how we can consciously alter a process which has, by force of repetition, become unconscious. Devising strategies to create new patterns, those we want rather than being trapped in those we don't want, is fertile territory for the imagination to explore. I prefer to approach subjects like this adventurously and playfully rather than to rely on the vast body of accumulated knowledge. If I come to similar observations, so much the better, but I'll do it my way......my wa..a...aaa..y!

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Formats available: Quicktime (.mov)

Tags: emotions, negative, feelings, voices, repetition, child, woman, man, water dripping, stone, erosion, time, psyche