Marion Woodman, a brilliant Jungian analyst, discusses her therapy technique, dream interpretation, etc. Broadcast May 1997.
The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological kind, but are psychic events. We are threatened in a fearful way by wars and revolutions that are nothing else than psychic epidemics. At any moment a few million people may be seized by a madness, and then we have another world war or a devastating revolution. Instead of being exposed to wild beasts, tumbling rocks, and inundating waters, man is exposed today to the elemental forces of his own psyche.
“
| — | C.G. Jung |
Most thinking people realize that we have come to the end of a paradigm that is not only not serving us, but is destroying us. The culture is collapsing and only a melding of both masculine and feminine energies, integrating body and soul, can halt the current social and environmental devastation.
“
| — | - Marion Woodman |
Marion Woodman: “How we see ourselves determines what happens to us in our lives. If we do not respect and love ourselves that will carry over into our relationships and others will not respect us.”
Marion Woodman on healing…
In this clip, Jungian analyst and writer Robert A. Johnson talks about “The Golden World,” the natural, mystical paradise we inhabit but no longer see. The image is a clip from The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch (c.1480-1505).
Robert Johnson offers a way to re-envision the Christian Cross and “heresy” in a way that, perhaps, more men can relate to. Envision the horizontal cross-bar of the Cross as our “doing” dimension. When we focus exclusively on “doing” our lives start to feel empty and meaningless. The vertical bar on the cross, connecting earth and sky (or, “Heaven and Earth”) can be our “being” dimension. We need the balance of both.
In the Christian tradition, Robert Johnson points out, all “heresy” is a misunderstanding of the nature of Christ. Christ was both fully human and fully divine. Anything that departs from that exact balance is heresy. Robert found the power of the word “heresy” in his own life. You don’t need to be Christian to spot heresy in your own psyche. “When my life becomes more doing than being I am in heresy. Alternatively, if my life becomes more being than doing, again I am in heresy. … Heresy is the dislocation of the center of gravity of the personality.”
Robert hastens to add that he’s thrown the word “spirituality” out of his vocabulary because it seems to imply abandoning the earthly dimension. “I have little patience with people who say they are on a spiritual path, because almost invariably they are trying to advance the vertical (lofty, unearthly) part of their lives at the expense of the horizontal (earthly, human) dimensions of their being. … some ancient wag joked that not only could Saint Teresa chat with God, she also never burned a dinner!”
“
| — | Robert A. Johnson (Jungian analyst, writer and mystic) on the Cross and Heresy… |
I looked, and looked,
and this I came to see:
That what I thought
was you and you,
Was really me and me.
and this I came to see:
That what I thought
was you and you,
Was really me and me.
“
| — | an old proverb [read more on projection] |
Most thinking people realize that we have come to the end of a paradigm that is not only not serving us, but is destroying us. The culture is collapsing and only a melding of both masculine and feminine energies, integrating body and soul, can halt the current social and environmental devastation.
“
| — | - Marion Woodman, Dancing in the Flames |
That which is called the Christian religion existed among the ancients, and never did not exist, from the beginnings of the human race until Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion, which already existed, began to be called Christianity.
“
| — | - Carl Jung |
