Shadows of the Night

Wednesday 27 February 2008

Christine writes today about our shadow sides. When teeing up a date with my new art therapist on the phone the other day, she told me she does lots of dreamwork, using Jungian archetypes, which is what I have been hanging out for. I am delighted to get to follow this path.

Christine featured this quote by Jung:

The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.


This has the ring of truth for me. What do you think of it? I also wonder if works the other way, too - our integrated, conscious selves project our wholeness outwards into the world?

Which sounds a bit spooky. But this idea keeps flitting around in my mind like a butterfly, that what is going on inside manifests itself outside, somehow. Of course, if you go too far down this road you get tied up in all the positive confessions hoopla, which Barb has been wrestling with lately.

Oh dear. I can't seem to keep myself from thinking naughty heretical things :) I think I'm part of the great end-times falling away (must be from being led astray by people like Rob Horton. He is the biggest heretic of them all).

I'm sure I would have been burnt at the stake if I lived in the Middle Ages (along with Rob Horton). I would have (hopefully) been the chick making up all the herbal potions to give to people and the powers that be would have called me a witch (the Church at that time was a bit unbalanced in its male/female stuff. Anything vaguely female was demonised and called a witch because the poor little men were scared of the big bad women :) I would have been chucked in the river to see if I floated. If I did, I would have been a witch, and would have been burnt at the stake. If I sank, then that would have proven that I wasn't a witch. The logic was quite wonderful, wasn't it? :)

9 comments

  1. I think I would have preferred drowning to burning, given the choice.

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  2. Yeah, I think so. At least you would have had the satisfaction of knowing that they would have maybe had the decency of feeling some level of guilt to be killing you in Christ's name (the very one waiting to welcome you in 3 seconds' time).

    But yuk, neither of those options seem particularly enamouring. I hope if I die at someone else's hands it's at the end of a gun.

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  3. The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.

    Thats an interesting quote Sue I'm going to think about it for a while.

    I am facinated by dreams too (hey remember i am the one who interpreted your vegemite dream)

    I had a dream once a few years ago about being in the hall in my sons school with a tray of chocolate eclairs. In the dream I turned to my left and there was a particular elderly man sitting straight in front of me(I knew this man in real life by name though not a friend as such). It was one of the most vivd dreams I ever had. Told my wife about it the next morning because it was so clear but seemingly meaningless. Anyway about a month later there was a function at the school. Afterwards there was tea and my mother was helping with the serving. She came up to me at one point with a tray of chocolate ecalirs and asked me to take them around. As I stood up and looked at the tray in my hands I had a weird feeling of deja vu. Turned to my left and there was that man I had seen in my dream. Very strange.

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  4. Stu - I think your Vegemite interpretation was pretty spot-on, n hindsight. At the time I thought ou were being kinda tongue-in-cheek about it, but as I thought about it, it made sense (and sheesh - THAT'S sure panning out in my life to be true!!! ;)

    That is bizarre about your premonitional dream! Did you talk to the man at all, or were you too freaked out.

    Mm, chocolate eclairs. Yum

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  5. I was being totally tongue in cheek. But what the heck, the Lord moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform.

    I offered him an eclair(the man from the dream, not the Lord) and then went and sat down for a while I was feeling pretty gob-smacked. I had to check with my wife that I did really tell her about my dream and she remembered it.

    I spend a bit of time each morning trying to remember my dreams. Always hate it when I can't. I went through a phase about four years ago of attempting lucid dreaming. Ever tried that? I had some success alright and it was certainly a bit of fun.

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  6. I nearly spat my water out onto Samantha's screen then :)

    Lucid dreaming - well, I daydream an awful lot, but they don't have the consistency of dreams - they're very literal and non-weird. Tell me more.

    I'm starting to write down my dreams for my art therapist - yay! She's gonna diagnose me as a nutcase! Yay!

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  7. sue: oh i love seeing my name show up in the blog posts of others (ego-mania - i own it). i would gladly burn with you: heretics side-by-side.

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  8. The whole point of the lucid dream is that you are aware that you are in a dream so you can decide what to do, who to meet etc.

    There are various techniques developed to help induce a lucid dream and guidelines for what to do when you are in one.

    I got it to work a few times and usually just decided to fly, at the time it seemed like the obvious thing to try.

    I am still often aware when I am in a dream but I suppose because I am not concentrating on lucid dreaming or doing any of the associated practices I don't actually take advantage of it.

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  9. Rob - hehe. I thought you'd appreciate it :)

    Stu - It's strange you mention it, because I had my very first one (at least from memory) last week. I dreamt I was in a room with a young guy, about 20 or so, and I thought, "Who shall I make him? Oh, okay, I'll make him my son" (even though I don't have kids). And so then we began talking, and started play-acting with each other. I can't remember what we were saying, but we were pretending to be other people. Diagnose that one, Carl :)

    It was really weird, but kinda cool. I might go googling now about lucid dreaming. I wanna do it again :)

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