“Answering the following questions, for example, often enlightens the consciousness: Where am I like that snake? Where am I the stomach cramp? How am I this dream figure? When did I react of behave like that gestalt? What are my everyday problems and how does my imagination help? How is my physical behavior called into question by my body work? Only when these questions are asked is Mercury forced to give his gifts.”
“… marriage appears not just as a commitment to an outer partner but as a bondage to oneself, to one’s own reality, to time and cultural demands. Without the marriage bond and associated guilt feelings, the tendency to avoid inner and outer reality would prevail. A commitment to a partner necessitates working out conflicts. Outer partners, of course, are – in one sense at least – easier to split off and divorce. But not working out problems with an outer partner mirrors the tendency of divorcing inner conflicts as well. Marriage therefore symbolizes, among other things, the conscious commitment, to suffer through inner conflicts and to try and transform relationships.”
“For example, let us say that choose to do something. We can test to see if the energy that chose that thing comes from the voluntary nervous system and is a compulsion, or if it comes from the Self. First, mechanically stop yourself from accomplishing the act. Sit quietly or meditate until a peaceful condition is reached. (During the achievement of this peaceful state the impulses to do the act may reappear as fantasies. These fantasies are often associated to “marriage” partners.) In time, however, the strength of doing impulses subsides and you may experience the harmonious rhythm of the autonomous nervous system. The earlier impulses are still there, but now at a distance they appear as senseless compulsions. You experience a split. Something would like to commit certain acts but you lack the ego energy to accomplish them. Only when the energy persists after such an experience is the original act meant, because it is not being powered by what Jung called the Self. However, if the direction of consciousness has truly changed, the act you wanted to accomplish as an “anima or animus possession” of the voluntary nervous system which had become split off from the Self.”
“Sit quietly and do nothing. After a few minutes begin to count exhalations of breath. Count 1, 2, 3, etc., with each exhalation to 10. Then repeat. After a few minutes or so, your counting will be disturbed by some physical motion or internal dialogue. At this point, people who have not developed the capacity to concentrate on imagination and those who are simply overworked and tired will fall asleep. But if awareness is sharpened, then one will catch a fantasy or inner dialogue which disturbs counting. If one is aware of what is happening, one can note this dialogue and make it conscious, and also note how this inner conversation or fantasy affects breathing.”
“The hero’s job is to uproot doing’s compulsion. Then the body does the rest. When new energy is awakened it produces almost indescribable effects. These effects are phenomena of introverted, inner concentration and meditation, which belong to the lonely realm where one confronts the life process on its own terms. An analyst or therapist can barely deal with this realm of the patient which, in the end, can be touched only by the individual himself.
But our tale also gives us a warning: Active imagination coupled with body meditation may create temporary peace and a sense of physical well-being, but it does not solve conflicts with the world and the possessive hold of mundane interests. Reaching nirvana and engaging in deep meditation are Eastern versions of Western tranquilizers. Coupling inner harmonies with outer obligations must remain a challenge.”
“Life itself is a raven. We are ejected from the womb, plummeted into the life and left to fate. People with negative parent experiences have an excess amount of raven psychology in them. They live like ravens, are overly cautious, and suspicious. A raven-like feeling of abandonment complicates intimate relationships when partners accuse each other of being raven parents and not caring. But the raven crying for help is a dreambody which cannot care for itself. The dreambody calls out for help. Unconsciously, people project their raven problem onto someone else, claiming that others do not care enough. In reality it is one’s own innermost center that is crying out for love; only ego consciousness can give this love by focusing on dream messages and body motions.
When the hero kills his horse and feeds it to the ravens, he takes the energy he was using to horsepower himself through life and feeds it to his soul… When the raven is fed, the individual follows the flow of his fantasies and body movements and knows that the greatest loneliness is the desperation of the Self, unattended by consciousness and in danger of dying… The raven is often related to the devil in myths. If the Self is not cared for and fed, if the subtle body experience is not amplified by consciousness, then it manifests negatively in the form of symptoms and accompanying fears of death. Behind death fears connected to body symptoms is the call of the raven, the soul that has not been fed.”
“Anything can be done as long as it belongs to one’s individuation, but if reality must be mastered for ego purposes only, the work becomes unbearable.”
“The variations and differentiation of physical contact remain only a tempting potential in a semi-forbidden area. When this area is entered consciously, immediate relief occurs in many persons, especially those who are gifted in body communication.”
“I remember listening to a finger that began to speak in the middle of a boring conversation I was having.”
