Soul Journey Stack

Here is a stack I’m working with today as I approach session and finalize research ideas. I miss the days I had in psychic paradisal seclusion where I had the attention span and tranquility to read deeply on my blissful island. Research reading is different. Sometimes my inner child wishes me sick so that I may read to her, but of course the mother knows these days are about learning a new balance, a sense of participatory work, and the father guides this work toward contribution and completion.

Excerpt from the book James A Hall’s The Jungian Experience, chapter on The Personal & Transpersonal:

“We emerge from an archetypal world and construct a personal world for ourselves out of whatever materials we are given by fate and circumstance. The mother carries for the infant all the archetypal possibilities of the archetype of the mother, presumably formed over immense time by the unconscious assimilation in the species of the inexpressible mass experience of human mothering. These archetypal possibilities are gradually incorporated, to whatever degree possible, into the developing image of the personal mother. But no actual mother can be an adequate carrier for the extended range of possibilities of the archetype. Both infant and mother are unaware of this process, feeling the relationship is only between them. In later life, however, in dreams and imaginal productions, it is possible to observe that the archetypal possibilities not realized by the personal mother are still present in the psyche, ready to enrich the mind in ways that were not sufficiently realized in childhood. Dream images that show mothering figures other than the personal mother often indicate the attempt of these archetypal patterns to contact the ego. The same is true of the father. By adulthood, it is usual for the human being to have no memory of the earliest years, a time when the everyday world of familiar surroundings was constructed out of archetypal potentialities. Those possibilities which were actualized are felt to be “real” and those that remain dormant in the unconscious have no existence at all in the conscious mind, although they may have powerful patterns that will be needed later in life…”

When the Spirits Come Back (Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts)

By Janet O. Dallett

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“In its usual state, the adult mind is aware of the immensities of the physical universe an the vast otherness in the world, but relatively unaware of the range and complexity of the objective psyche within. It is usually only the introverted personality, or the extravert who through force of individuation develops introversion in the 2nd half of life, that is aware of the reality of the inner world. The personal sphere of the individual is transcended both inwardly and outwardly by transpersonal realities. To the Puer, who tends to identify with unactualized potentialities, the objective demands of the external world are an antidote to dangerous flights of inflation that would hold the person back from self actualization. Mankind is obliged to live in both worlds, holding the tension that inevitably arises between them. In looking at a large number of analytical cases over decades, it seems clear to me that the Self desires two achievements:

“1. the formation of a strong ego, and 2.that the ego, once formed, again relates to the depths of the psyche.

“If the person holds back from life (a usual cause of neurosis), the dreams seem to press for a working through of that resistance.In serious blockage, the dreams may even become threatening to the dream-ego, as if to push where persuasion has failed. While neurosis may appear to be only an impediment to living a complete life, it actually has a positive purpose in that its symptoms force the ego to face up to the avoided tasks of individuation. Once there is a strong ego structure, dreams often reveal possibilities of relating more deeply to the unconscious. Dreams of initiation may occur at that time. It is as if the regulating center of the psyche, the Self, presses for the development of an ego structure in order to establish a viewpoint in the world. The Self then presses for the depths of the psyche to be seen. In short, the psyche wishes to see itself!”