Letting go

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

One night in the middle of the night I was looking through a beautiful book a friend sent me, The Blue Heron Book Of Love And Gratitude. And there, on page 39, was my spiritual autobiography, in these words from psychologist William James.

“The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of the personal center of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down.”

That’s just how it (finally) happened. I relaxed and threw the burden down. Or, I didn’t even need to throw it down; I shrugged it off. But like so many of the things we learn, it can’t be passed on to others merely by telling them about it. We have to test for ourselves whether a thing is true or not.

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Greer on The Trouble with Binary Thinking

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

John Michael Greer is an interesting thinker, whose column The Archdruid Report appears Wednesdays at http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/ My friend Rich Spees sent me an email reminder that the weekly column had been posted, saying, “Oh, you’re going to like the latest druid.” I don’t always, but this time, he was so right. The spooky thing, as I told Rich, is that decades ago, writing in my journal, I made a conscious decision to always find a third choice, never to stay at two, because (something told me) any two would be incomplete and misleading. Where did that knowing come from?

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First Noosphere World Forum

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

A friend  sent  me to this website: http://www.noosphereforum.org/

It took a while for me to get beyond the artwork. Unfortunately their presentation is in reversed type (white over a background) so I took this text from this pagehttp://www.noosphereforum.org/drupal/?q=node/6 and reformatted it so I could read it. Now, I haven’t yet read the other pages, but this seems to me an important initiative. The analysis feels real. It ties in with what I have felt in my bones for most of my lifetime: We are in a once-in-a-species-lifetime transition and it’s a good and hopeful thing!

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Jung: “The bettering of a general ill begins with the individual”

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Carl Jung died in 1961, half a century ago. The following quotation was contained in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, which was copyrighted 1959. I don’t know when the specific paper “A Study in the Process of Individuation” was published, but the original paper from which it was developed goes back at least to 1933.

You think it’s possible he may have something to say to our time?????

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Gordon Phinn on reincarnation

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

My friend Gordon Phinn writes an interesting blog,  http://anotherwordofgord.wordpress.com/ and in today’s entry he touches on the issue of reincarnation. If you’ve read either The Sphere and the Hologram or The Cosmic Internet, you’ll know that my views on reincarnation, as shaped by what the guys have been telling me, don’t match the common view. But Gordon has a lot of experience, and you’ll find his views worth considering.

Jung: Our needs and desires are always active

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

A. I. Allenby visited Carl Jung soon after World War II. This excerpt from his description of his visit is from the book C. G. Jung Speaking, page 158.

Another time Jung reverted to the problem of self-doubt, using a further example by way of illustration. “Our needs and desires are always active,” he said. “Trouble occurs only if they are active in the unconscious, if we do not take them consciously in hand so as to give them a definite form and direction. If we refuse to do this we are dragged along by them to become their victim. Then they are like a sledge rushing downhill snow, with no one at the steering-ropes. You must place yourself firmly at the steering-ropes, not hang on at the back or, worse, be unwilling to take the ride at all — that only lands you in panic. Our unconscious energies give momentum to our journey through life and, if we direct our course, our actions will have strength; we may even sense that God is behind us.”

Jung: What would you say about a vegetarian tiger?

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

In 1961, Chilean diplomat and author Miguel Serrano spoke with Carl Jung for the final time, less than five months before Jung’s death. (This is from C.G. Jung Speaking.)

[MS:] I’ve also come to see Hermann Hesse. He believes that the right road is simply one which is in agreement with nature.

[CGJ:] That is also my philosophy. Man should live according to his own nature; he should concentrate on self-knowledge and then live in accordance with the truth about himself. What would you say about a tiger who was a vegetarian? You would say, of course, that he was a bad tiger. Thus everyone must live in accordance with his nature, both individually and collectively.