In House Exchange Between Wife and I

My wife and I had one of our typical exchanges this morning. While reading this morning I ran across some really good writing about James Hillman. It expressed well the experience that I've had reading Hillman's work. I liked the section so much, and noticed there was a brief silence in the crying and chattering children, that I thought I'd better take the opportunity to read it to her. Like usual, afterwards she shook her head and wondered what the hell that had to do with anything.

"What?" I asked.

She said, "It doesn't really resonate for me because his work hasn't had an impact on me like it has you."

"I know." I said, "But it was so good that I had to read it out loud to you."

"That's fine. I don't mind listening. It just doesn't have the same affect on me as it does you," she said.

Then I said to her, "You know, it just occured to me that I used to do this exact same thing with a girlfriend that I had when I was 14. We talked alot on the phone. And there were times where I'd sit feeling the same way I do this morning blabbering on about some fascinating idea that someone had talked to me about. I wasn't talking about books or other's writing back then because I didn't read books. But it's the same exact thing but in a slightly different form."

"Ha!" she said with a smile, " I guess some things just never change."

"Guess not."

Here is the writing that inspired this post:

"By the way, a nonromantic friend or partner, too, can be a muse. I've already told the story of how James Hillman entered my imagination, taking up room and board there for decades, giving rise to much creative work. He has done the same for many other people because of the seminal quality of his thoughts and writings. You read him and the seeds get planted in the soil of your mind and sprout in good time. Then you don't know for sure if the ideas are yours or his. He wrote about people starting out in childhood like an acorn destined to be an oak, but he himself was an acorn. You have to read him with care, lest you lose yourself in his brilliance.

"Hillman's anima, his soul, his aesthetic sense mixed with his sharp ideas, the spark of imagination within him, revealed the nature of his muse. He inspired with his imagination and with the world he loved. On the other hand, to me Hillman was a muse taking on the disguise of a friend." ( Thomas Moore, pg. 193, A Religion of One's Own)

Spring and Desire

Every spring it seems like my desires muliply.

"Desire takes you on and on until you realize that there is nothing in this world that will calm it completely. Then you find deep religion and learn that the ultimate object of desire is God or the divine, the mysterious and unnameable."--Thomas Moore, pg. 123, A Relgion of One's Own.

The Two Monk's Story

"In a famous Zen story two monks are walking together and come to a river. A beautiful woman is standing there trying to figure out how to get across. The older monk offers to help and picks her up and carries her. Later, as the two monks resume their stroll, the younger says, 'I thought we weren't supposed to have contact with women.' The older monk replies, 'I put the woman down long ago, but you're still carrying her.'

"The lesson usually drawn from this story is, do what you have to do and move on. From a typical spiritual point of view, the monk picks up the woman and then lets go. No attachments, no complications, no worries.

"But disturbing reflection can be a good thing. Even inner conflict and worry inspire the need to sort things out. In my interpretation of the story, the young monk who can't stop thinking about the woman would become the teacher. He's more human and has the capacity to carry his experiences for a long time and worry about them. In a way, the story contrasts spirit and soul, and I favor the soulful young man."Thomas Moore, Pg. 115, A Religion of One's Own)

It was a refreshing and a relief to read this excerpt this morning. I've heard this story a few times and I've always looked at it from the spiritual point of view. I'm glad Thomas Moore gave us his perspective from the soul's point of view. I spent a lot of my childhood worrying and full of inner conflict, and to have a licensed psychologist acknowledge that this it isn't a genetice defect or something that needs to be fixed is a huge relief, even as a I approach 40.

Thomas Moore on Soul and Spirit

"Spirit is the element that wants to perfect, purify, and transcend. It directs our attention to the future, the cosmos, and the infinite. It is abundant in education, progress, and vision. It allows us to advance and move upward in all our pursuits. It directs our attention away from ordinary life, the body, and sensual existence. Soul is the opposite: It lies embedded in our struggles and pleasures, in our ordinary circumstances and relationships, and in the emotions and fantasies that lie deep. We feel our soul stir at family gatherings and visits home, in deep friendships and romantic relationships. Comforting dinners and friendly lunches--food in general--makes the soul come alive. People often bring their soul issues to therapy and yet may need better ideas and a vision for their lives."--Thomas Moore, pg. 29, A Religion of One's Own

Another Week

Yesterday, after work, I made up my mind that I was going to return Jung's "Red Book" to the library. It was a day overdue and it's hard to get an extension on inter-library loan books. Plus, I've got plenty of books and magazines around here to read but not enough time to read most of them as it is. But when I got up to the counter to hand the book off to the librarian I changed my mind. I asked her if I could keep it for another week and she didn't think it would be a problem, they just had to do some paperwork on it. Once again, I walked out the library with "The Red Book." This time not feeling excited but slightly obligated and overwhelmed.

This morning, to justify my keeping it, I was determined to randomly open it and just start reading a section or some footnotes. So, I did. The first paragraph that I layed my eyes on was underlined in pen by someone else. It read:

"It is better to be thrown into visible chains than into invisible ones. You can certainly leave Christianity but it does not leave you. Your liberation from it is a delusion. Christ is the way. You can certainly run away, but then you are no longer the way." [Pg. 293]

I think it's noteworthy because this is more or less what I've been getting at in some of my posts after the sermon from my fundamentalist neighbor. I also wrote down another quote that I think is somehow related to telephone sermon:

"Like everything healthy and long-lasting, truth unfortunately adheres more to the middle way, which we unjustly abhor." [pg. 293]

Seeing more blue herons around here. Time to go add to my firewood pile.

The Lorax and Beauty

"A think of beauty is a joy forever"-- John Keats

Believe it or not I first heard this quote while the kids were watching "The Lorax" about a month or so ago. After I wrote it down I'd assumed Dr. Seuss came up with it until I googled it this morning. It looks like he stole it from Keats.

I've heard James Hillman say that beauty is proof that the gods exist. Without it we'd only have theology.

Off to work we go this morning. That wasn't the plan until the phone woke me up at around 10 last night.

A Two-Thousand Year Curse

The other day I posted about the telephone sermon that my firewood cutting, fundamentalist Christian neighbor felt that he needed to give me. I'm a bit worried that come across as anti-Christian or anti-religious or just beyond all of that at times. I don't think I am. I was born and baptized a Christian for gods sakes. I may proclaim that I'm not Christian on the surface but below I am. The great thinker and psychologist James Hillman convinced me of this last year, and he alluded to it here in Lament of the Dead (A conversation about Jung's Red Book that I highly recommend to anyone interested in Jung's work.)

"When I'm talking about the Christians, I'm not only talking about those who are denominationally officially Christian, or go to Church or whatever. We're all Christians. We're all suffering the two-thousand year curse that has been laid on us by what you all like so much, the early Church." (Pg. 218)

Perhaps, I'm just one of the billions suffering from the two-thousand year curse.

My Big Red Friend

I spent some time with my big, red friend this morning. I ran across this statement that Carl Jung made in a seminar back in 1930.

"We are prejudiced in regard to the animal. People don't understand when I tell them they should become acquainted with their animals or assimilate their animals. They think the animal is alway jumping over walls and raising hell all over town. Yet in nature the animal is a well-behaved citizen. It is pious, it follows the path with great regularity, it does nothing extravagent. Only man is extravagant. So if you assimilate the character of the animal you become a pecularily law-abiding citizen, you go very slowly, and you become very reasonable in your ways, in as much as you can afford it." [Pg.296, The Red Book]

It's interesting to note that the other day when I called into Wisconsin Public Radio the guest from the Wisconsin Towns Association kept repeating throughout the program that local ordinances must be reasonable. I'd say that if the citizentry assimilates the "character of the animal," as Jung recommends, a very reasonable response to any potential harm moving into a community is to simply say NO. You cannot mine our sand, spray pesticides on the fields, spread shit across a 1000 acres, or pack close to a thousand head of cattle on less than adequate acreage.

Jung's Red Book

Yesterday I got the chance to pick up Carl Jung's "Red Book" from my local library through inter-library loan. The book is huge. My wife says it's bigger than a sheet-cake pan and it looks like a real page turner. She also said it'll also cure me of falling asleep in bed with a book. It's possible that it could give me a concussion or a bloody nose if I hold it just right and doze off. My son laughed at me when he walked by the kitchen table as I was reading it. He said it looks like a giant wizard's book. When I walked out of the library with it I felt like a boy again. Similar to what it felt like when I walked out of the grocery story with a new pack of baseball cards thirty years ago. Part of it, I think, is because of the sheer size of the book and the other is that I'm giddy about having it in my hands. I'm interested in reading about an intense conversation between a man and his soul.

Like usual I was looking through the footnotes and found this quote: "If he [A Man] accepts the feminine in himself, he frees himself from slavery to woman."( pg.263) D.H. Lawrence once said something like if a man doesn't organize his life around his vision he will become a slave to a woman's sex nights. I'll have to look the quote up again. I probably murdered it. I wonder if this is why some men can't live without pornography. They have a hard time accepting that other half of themselves.

That's my amatuerish psychological insight for the day.

The Soul and Imagination

I had a guy tell me the other day that he didn't believe that we have souls. I don't know if we do or not. But I found this quote referring to Carl Jung and "The Red Book" interesting:

"...actually what he [Carl Jung with his Red Book] reestablished was that the psyche is a living world of imagination and that any person can descend into that world. That's your truth, that's what you are, that's what your soul is. You're in search of soul, and your soul is imagination. As Blake said, Jesus, the imagination, meaning the very creative power, the redemptive power, the strength that you are, is given to you by this remarkable thing that Coledridge called the esemplastic imagination, this force that presents itself figured. They are your teachers, they are your motivators, and they are your landscapes. That's what the habitations of your depths are. This seems to me the prophecy. I think this is the teaching that DOES come out [of the Red Book]."--James Hillman, Pg. 114, Lament of the Dead

Masculinity and Gender

This is some of the best writing on gender and masculinity that I've seen in a long time. It also speaks to my experience.

"Gender is an aspect of our individuality. I am a man as no one else is a man. My masculinity is like my American spirit, a defining facet. The variations of gender are infinite, and so it is absurd to reduce gender to two categories and insist that everyone fit into one or the other. Besides, all dualisms doom us to division and conflict. They are simplistic descriptions of experience and tend toward easy literalism. Paradoxically, to become less certain about one's own gender may be the turning point at which one begins to discover the richness of one's masculinity and femininity."--Thomas Moore, Pg.55, Original Self

Anxiety and Collapse

"Anxiety is nothing but fear inspired by an imagined future collapse. It is the failure of trust."-Thomas Moore

A few questions come to mind after running across this quote this morning. What kind of future collapse do you imagine? Where should we put our trust to alleviate the general feeling of anxiety in this day in age?

Reflection Isn't Enough

"...in feeling and desire we tend to realize the importance of something for the soul. Desire is holy, as D.H Lawrence, the romantics, and the Neoplatonists insisted, because it touches and moves the soul. Reflection is never enough."--James Hillman, Pg. 273, A Blue Fire

Emotion

A life after Ishmael reflection: One of the effects that reading Ishmael back in the late-nineties had on me was that it moved my emotions out it into the world. In other words the inrage started to change into outrage. Reading Derrick Jensen's work then pushed it further.

"Emotions are mainly social. The word comes from the Latin ex movere, to move out. Emotions connect to the world. Therapy introverts the emotions, calls fear 'anxiety." You take it back, and you work on it inside yourself. You don't work psychologically on what that outrage is telling you about potholes, about trucks, about Florida strawberries in Vermont in March, about burning up oil, about energy policies, nuclear waste, that homeless woman over there with the sores on her feet--the whole thing."--James Hillman, pg. 12, We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and The World's Getting Worse

A Dialogue Between a Couple of Guys

"How do I get out of this story* I'm in?"

"You don't understand, my friend. There is no way out. There is no program. You're a wanderer now."

"A wanderer?"

"Don't you remember the lines you read to me by Machado a few years back?"

"No, refresh me."

"Here they are: 'Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind one sees the path that never will be trod again. Wanderer, there is no road-- Only wakes upon the sea.'"--Antonio Machado

"You're not going to go on and talk about the unconscious, dreams, the sea, Moby Dick and all that bullshit again are you?"

"No, I've got a building to build..."

*A story is a scenario interrelating man, the world, and the gods."--Pg. 41, Ishmael

Why I'm Here

Two decades ago I moved up to northwestern Wisconsin. Right before I left a friend of mine said, "What the hell you moving up there for? There is nothing up there." There are moments when I wonder why I'm still here. As James Hillman has said, we never really know why. But I'm going to speculate as to why anyway. The answer might be found in this quote by Lewis Mumford: "Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers." Both of my grandfathers grew up on farms in northern Wisconsin. I was nourished by stories from northern Wisconsin since I can remember.

Problems

"Problems sustain us--maybe that's why they don't go away. What would a life be without them? Completely tranquilized and loveless, too. There is a secret love hiding in each problem...."--James Hillman

It's The Story

“There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will ACT like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.” - Daniel Quinn

George Washington God King

I was following my nose this morning and doing some reading on Wikipedia about William Blake and Orc energy. I found this excerpt interesting:

"Blake had many expectations for the American revolution, which is described in a prophetic way within the poem. However, he was disappointed when the fallen state of existence returned and that slavery was not immediately ended. He was also disappointed when there was not a sensual liberation. After Napoleon declared himself emperor in 1804, Blake believed that the Americans would start treating George Washington as their god king in the manner that the French treated Bonaparte and the English George the III. He continued to believe in an apocalyptic state that would soon appear, but he no longer believed that Orc man, the leader of a revolution, would be the agent of the apocalypse. Instead, he believed that God could only exist in men, and he distrusted all hero worship."

I've heard more than a couple people refer to George Washington as a god king.

Half-gods and Devils

Sitting with a couple of books before I head out to plant some more posts in the ground for our pole shed. I've called it a barn in the past but it's actually only half the size of your average barn. We're hoping to have the framework up and the roofs on before the snow flies.

One of the books I'm sitting with this morning is The Conduct of Life, by Lewis Mumford. I like this quote out of it: "When the god in him is repressed, the half-gods and devils take possession of man." Another one of the books that I'm sitting with is, of course, Lament of the Dead. And in it the authors explain how the half-gods and devils appeared to Carl Jung in the form of figures in his active imagination. He named, had conversations with, and sketched them. From what I understand so far this is essentially what Jung's Red Book is about.