[Monday, January 16, 2006]
(5:40 a.m.)
It is more than a matter of writing a book, or of writing many books. More important by far is the need to live the knowledge. To some extent one serves as a model to others in anything one does, and that serving as a model can occur – must occur – in every aspect of life. If various aspects contradict each other, each aspect – and the contradictions among aspects – serves a different model. This is not to say that one is primarily a model for others. Is one’s life primarily lived for the sake of one arm, or one ear? Yet the arm and the ear are as integral as any other past of the whole
So – this is a time to be transformed. Clever phrasing, eh? It may be and should be read two ways. The times are to be transformed; you are to be transformed in these times.
It is more than a matter of writing books. But you always knew that.
All right, friends, it is 6 a.m. and I am tempted to go make some coffee as my starter to the day. Yet I know it is a little early to be starting with coffee. I could but I don’t need to. So – where am I and why am I finding it harder to work?
The phase of any project after the initial enthusiasm is often discouragement – at the least it is, well, a reaction from enthusiasm. You still see the value, but you cannot help seeing the amount of work to be done versus your ability to do it, and you have not yet done enough of it to see clearly that you can do it, and are doing it, successfully. It is just a transitory thing. We do warn you, however, against diverting your efforts into several channels – that is, thinking to write the Iona book at the same time you write the healing and guidance book. Given that the nature of the work is the same, this will leave you merely with so much more unfinished work – so much larger a pile of notes, so much larger a list of things to be done. If you want to day-dream a novel as you proceed on the non-fiction, that is fine and will provide amusement. But not two non-fictions at once. You did sense that, but tried anyway. We as usual let you try – it is your life. But now that you have seen the result, there is no use in trying to persist (though in actual fact you would do little) when it is a dead-end process.
Well, putting aside the note-taking for Iona is a relief, actually.
Robert Johnson says that when something is ready to move into consciousness, it needs an intermediary, generally a person or thing, and will be projected onto it. This is as I was discussing the other day. He tells of following Krishnamurti and what a wretched teacher he was – and of his dream that sent him to Fritz Kunkel and ultimately to Jung. I really have been guided by an automatic pilot. Maybe we all are if we listen. I knew Jung was the important man the first time I read anything by him.
Johnson says (p. 76): “Our projections of the hero onto others always represent where we are headed.” He says, “I feel that the ego is properly used as the organ of awareness, not the organ of decision.” I like that very much. “The ego serves as the eyes and ears of God. It gathers the facts, but it does not make the ultimate decisions. The decisions come from the Self…. (p. 100)
And he quotes British philosopher Owen Barfeld as saying “Literalism is idolatry.”