What is an example of a price you felt you had to pay to make you feel wiser today, lately?
“Many of us had lived our lives up to this point with a secret feeling of shame.” “Often this shame stemmed from unresolved guilt over mistakes we’d never fully dealt with.” (Overeaters Anon., p. 29) “A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong,
which is but saying … that he is wiser today than yesterday.” Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745) Irish satirist/writer
“One evening, Simple Simon met a pie man. The pie man was on his way to a food fair in the village.
“Dear pie man, let me taste one of your pies,” said Simple Simon.
“Alright, but first you have to give me a penny. Then I will give you a pie,” said the pie man.
“I’m sorry but I don’t have any money,” said Simple Simon. The pie man smiled and left Simple Simon standing by the roadside. Simon did not have a pie from the pie-man who did not give a pie to the Simon because Simon did not give a penny to the pie-man.”
Everything has a price. We have to pay the price to attain what we want. Otherwise, our life will not make a progress.
Like Krishnamurti, how have you followed your own Sacred Heart to the peaceful resolution of a challenge you’ve faced, lately?
“We have found that God [or one’s H.P.]* does not make too hard terms with those who seek Him. To us, the realm of spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive, never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe, to all … .” (As Bill Sees It, p. 7)
“In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.” – Krishnamurti (1895 – 1986) Indian spiritual author
“Yes, we … did dream those dreams. How natural that was since most [of us] are bankrupt idealists. Nearly every one of us had wished to do great good, perform great deeds, and embody great ideals.” (12 & 12, p. 156)
“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” – Carl Jung (1875 – 1961) Swiss, psychologist
What steps have you taken to live the life you have always wanted, lately?
“Jung was the eminent adept of Freud and, for a while, a tireless fighter for the Freudian cause, that is, the universal promotion of psychoanalysis. He was influenced by Freud’s approach to the delicate problem of dream interpretation. Later on, Jung develops his own theory which includes several revolutionary features: subject level, prospective aspect, compensation, amplification method.
It is known that Freud interprets dreams on the object level; that is, according to the relationship between the dreamer and the persons or situations in his real of phantasy life. Jung introduces the subject level. What is this level? The fact that the dream reveals, in a symbolic way, some features of dreamer’s psychic life or of his internal psychic transformations. This way the dream becomes an indicator of those changes that sometimes point to the development of the individuation process.
Dreams are a cloudy picture.
So if someone dreams of his mother, the mother in Jung’s view is not an evocation of the real mother, but of the dreamer’s anima, that is, his emotional, feminine side. Mother can also be a suggestion to what is basically biologic in the human nature or can lead to the inherited background, the homeland in a cultural way.
Freud’s dream approach is retrospective; that is, it refers mainly to past events, placed back in the dreamer’s childhood (psychic trauma, sexual repressed wishes and so forth). Jung’s dream approach is prospective; he treats the dream like an inner map of dreamer’s future psychic evolution towards a more balanced relationship between his ego and the unconscious (be it personal or collective).
Talking about infantile complexes, Jung states, in accordance with his orientation, that complexes are not of importance per se; what really matters is what the individual’s ego does with them. This way, the complexes, even the neurotic ones, become raw material for dreams, the language through which the dream (the unconscious) expresses itself.
The mother complex,
for example, may indicate a process of development on the basis of some inherited features or life events that constitute the background of the individuation.
For Jung the concept of compensation includes another powerful idea: the dream is an attempt to counterbalance a hypertrophied ego. That is why the interpretation of dreams should seek to discover the compensatory aspects that help the ego better adapt to the demands of internal and external life. In a certain clinical situation, as a result of a dream interpretation, Jung had to explain to his patient that she must resign her too rationalist attitude (as a consequence of her animus inflation) in order to cure her severe neurosis. This way the dream becomes a message of the unconscious that indicates several neurotic deficiencies in the individual life orientation.
Finally, Jung adds to the free association method, developed by Freud, the method of amplification . He states that there are elements of the dream to which the dreamer cannot provide personal associations.(1) These elements are symbols.(2) In this case, the analyst should intervene with his knowledge and complete the dreamer’s gaps related to them. The associative material comes from various cultural areas: mythology, religion, alchemy, folklore and so forth.
One must notice that these essential additions to the method of dream interpretation should not be taken over easily. Jung warns us repeatedly that dreams ought to be interpreted at first by Freud’s method. Only exceptional cases demand the use of his own method.(3)
“His are the gifts that we inherited before time was, and that will still be ours when time has passed into eternity. His are the gifts that are within us now, for they are timeless. And we need not wait to have them. They belong to us today.” ACIM* (Lesson 104) on achieving inner peace. “When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.” Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) German-American scientist
What “great gifts” of your own have you used lately, to achieve inner peace?
“If we ask, God will certainly forgive our derelictions. But in no case does He render us white as snow and keep us that way without our cooperation. That is something we are supposed to be willing to work toward ourselves.” (12 & 12, p. 65) “Whatever God’s dream about man may be, it seems certain it can not come true unless man co-operates.”– Stella Terrill Mann / English spiritual author
How has your own “cockiness” played a role in causing you pain, lately?
Oh! the days are gone, when Beauty bright
My heart’s chain wove;
When my dream of life, from morn till night,
Was love, still love.
New hope may bloom,
And days may come,
Of milder calmer beam,
But there’s nothing half so sweet in life
As love’s young dream:
No, there’s nothing half so sweet in life
As love’s young dream.
Though the bard to purer fame may soar,
When wild youth’s past;
Though he win the wise, who frown’d before,
To smile at last;
He’ll never meet
A joy so sweet,
In all his noon of fame,
As when first he sung to woman’s ear
His soul-felt flame,
And, at every close, she blush’d to hear
The one loved name.
No, — that hallow’d form is ne’er forgot
Which first love traced;
Still it lingering haunts the greenest spot
On memory’s waste.
‘Twas odour fled
As soon as shed;
‘Twas morning’s winged dream;
‘Twas a light, tht ne’er can shine again
On life’s dull stream:
Oh! ’twas light that n’er can shine again
On life’s dull stream.
“We do not like to pronounce any individual as an alcoholic, but you can quickly diagnose yourself … . Try to drink and stop abruptly. Try it more than once. It will not take long for you to decide, if you are honest with yourself about it. (The Big Book, pp. 31-32) “Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom.” – Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826) 3rd US President
