dreams

My (Carl Jung’s) Most Difficult Experiment [P. 3]

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“We need a force not to start conflicts but to protect our nation and freedom. Therefore, making military service more attractive could draw more young people”. Said German Bundeskanzler Friedrich März a few days ago.
I wonder how and with what we can make being a soldier attractive. A soldier’s role involves killing; how can we make that aspect attractive?

I remember the 1960s and 1970s, during the Cold War and Vietnam War, when crowds gathered to protest against conflicts and advocate for peace. Over time, Western governments began to prioritise peace more and engaged in disarmament talks, seeking peaceful coexistence. Yet today, they focus on strengthening their military to defend peace and freedom!

What’s happening? Isn’t there enough war worldwide? Is Germany yearning for the glorious days of the 1930s? The facts appear this way!

However, this has always occurred whenever politicians become oblivious to the horrific machinery of war. Therefore, it might be meaningful to consider two of Jung’s dreams from before WWI, as excerpted from his autobiography. “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” describes Carl Jung’s dreams from 1913 to 1914. With thanks to Lewis Lafontaine. 🙏

In October [1913], while I was alone on a journey, I was suddenly seized by an overpowering vision: I saw a monstrous flood covering all the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps.
When it came to Switzerland, I saw that the mountains grew higher and higher to protect our country.
I realised that a frightful catastrophe was in progress.
I saw the mighty yellow waves, the floating rubble of civilisation, and the drowned bodies of uncounted thousands.
Then the whole sea turned to blood.
This vision lasted about one hour.
I was perplexed and nauseated, and ashamed of my weakness.

Thunder is no longer the voice of a god, nor is lightning his avenging missile.
No river contains a spirit, no tree makes a man’s life, no snake is the embodiment of wisdom, and no mountain still harbours a great demon.
Neither do things speak to him nor can he speak to things, like stones, springs, plants and animals.”
~ Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 585

Two weeks passed; then the vision recurred, under the same conditions, even more vividly than before, and the blood was more emphasised.
An inner voice spoke. “Look at it well; it is wholly real, and it will be so. You cannot doubt it.”
That winter, someone asked me what I thought were the political prospects of the world in the near future.
I replied that I had no thoughts on the matter, but that I saw rivers of blood.
I asked myself whether these visions pointed to a revolution, but I could not really imagine anything of the sort.
And so I concluded that they had to do with me myself, and decided that a psychosis menaced me.
The idea of war did not occur to me at all.
Soon afterwards, in the spring and early summer of 1914, I had a thrice-repeated dream that in the middle of summer an Arctic cold wave descended and froze the land to ice.
I saw, for example, the entire region of Lorraine and its canals frozen, and the whole area totally deserted by human beings.
All living green things were killed by frost.
This dream came in April and May, and for the last time in June 1914.
In the third dream, frightful cold had again descended from out of the cosmos.
This dream, however, had an unexpected end. There stood a leaf-bearing tree, but without fruit (my tree of life, I thought), whose leaves had been transformed by the effects of the frost into sweet grapes full of healing juices.
I plucked the grapes and gave them to a large, waiting crowd…

On August 1, World War I broke out!

Now, let’s continue with the next section, following (1, 2), about Dr Jung’s dreams and examining how a forecaster can predict potential human self-destructive plans. As mentioned in Part Two, Jung described hearing a strange woman’s voice in his mind and tried to analyse it.

He believed the voice was “the soul in the primitive sense,” known as the anima, and stated that he employed his analysis to write letters to his anima, experiencing it as both a ghost and a woman. He remembered this voice as that of a Dutch patient from 1912 to 1918, who convinced a colleague that he was a misunderstood artist. The woman had thought the unconscious was art, but Jung had maintained it was a natural phenomenon. The woman was likely Maria Moltzer, and the psychiatrist was Jung’s friend Franz Riklin, who shifted from analysis to painting, studying Augusto Giacometti in 1913. Riklin’s art was semi-figurative and abstract, with a notable 1915/6 work, Verkündigung, in Zürich, donated by Moltzer in 1945. Giacometti found Riklin’s psychological insights exciting, calling him a modern magician.

Franz Beda Riklin Verkündigung 1915, Wikimedia

The November entries in Black Book 2 depict Jung’s return to his soul. He recalled dreams that led him to his scientific career and recent dreams bringing him back to his soul. In 1925, he noted his first writing phase ended in November: ” Not knowing what would come next, I thought perhaps more introspection was needed… I devised such a boring method by fantasising that I was digging a hole, and by accepting this fantasy as perfectly real. ” This experiment occurred on December 12, 1913 (See Liber Primus, chapter 5, p. 147).

To be continued …………

Thank you for reading! I don’t want to spoil your mood, but sometimes thinking more deeply can help us and prepare us for the worst. While I am on my way to spend the holidays, please note that responses to comments, if any, may be delayed.🙏💖

Illustration art at the top: Dali-Inspired Dreamscape

My (Carl Jung’s) Most Difficult Experiment [P. 2]

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What fascinates me about Jung is his commitment to self-exploration and his use of analysis to discover his Self through the interpretation of dreams. He dedicated his life to this pursuit with genuine honesty and sincerity. Today, I present another section of The Red Book, Liber Novus, by Carl Jung, from Sonu Shamdasani’s Reader’s Edition.🙏

The following month, on a train journey to Schaffhausen, Jung experienced a waking vision of Europe being devastated by a catastrophic flood, which was repeated two weeks later, on the same journey. Commenting on this experience in 1925, he remarked: “I could be taken as Switzerland fenced in by mountains and the submergence of the world could be the debris of my former relationships.” This led him to the following diagnosis of his condition: “I thought to myself, ‘If this means anything, it means that I am hopelessly off.’ ” (Introduction to Jungian Psychology, pp. 47-48). After this experience, Jung feared that he would go mad.
(Barbara Hannah recalls that “Jung used to say in later years that his tormenting doubts as to his own sanity should have been allayed by the amount of success he was having at the same time in the outer world, especially in America” [C. G. Jung: His Life and Work. A Biographical Memoir/ New York: Perigree, 1976/, p. 109]. )
He recalled that he first thought that the images of the vision indicated a revolution, but as he could not imagine this, he concluded that he was “menaced with a psychosis.” (Memories, p. 200). After this, he had a similar vision:

In the following winter, I was standing at the window one night and looked North. I saw a blood-red glow, like the flicker of the sea seen from afar, stretched from East to West across the northern horizon. And at that time, someone asked me what I thought about global events in the near future. I said that I had no thoughts, but saw blood, rivers of blood (Draft, p. 8).

In the year directly preceding the outbreak of war, apocalyptic imagery was widespread in European arts and literature. For example, in 1912, Wassily Kandinsky wrote of a coming universal catastrophe.
From 1912 to 1914. Ludwig Meidner painted a series of works known as the Apocalyptic Landscapes, featuring scenes of destroyed cities, corpses, and turmoil (Gerda Bauer and Ines Wagemann, Ludwig Meidner: Zeichner, Maler, Literat 1884-1966 / Stuttgart: Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1991). Prophecy was in the air!
In 1899, the renowned American medium Leonora Piper predicted that in the coming century, a terrible war would erupt in various parts of the world, purging the world and revealing the truths of spiritualism. In 1918, Arthur Conan Doyle, the spiritualist and author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, viewed this as prophetic (A. C. Doyle, The New Revelation and the Vital Message / London: Psychic Press, 1918, p. 9).

Dream _ A Great Work Of Art Is Like A Dream.
Artwork: Henri Rousseau
From the Carl Jung depth psychology site

In Jung’s account of the fantasy on the train in Liber Novus, the inner voice said that what the fantasy depicted would become completely real. Initially, he interpreted this subjectively and prospectively, that is, as depicting the imminent destruction of his world. His reaction to this experience was to undertake a psychological self-investigation. In this epoch, self-experimentation was used in medicine and psychology. Introspection had been one of the main tools of psychological research.

Jung came to realise that Transformations and Symbols of the Libido “could be taken as myself and that an analysis of it leads inevitably into an analysis of my own unconscious processes” (Introduction to Jungian Psychology, p. 28). He had projected his material onto that of Miss Frank Miller, whom he had never met. Up to this point, Jung had been an active thinker and had been averse to fantasy: “as a form of thinking I held it to be altogether impure, a sort of incestuous intercorse, thoroughly immoral from an intellectual viewpoint” (Ibid.). He now turned to analyse his fantasies, carefully noting everything. He had to overcome considerable resistance in doing this: “Permitting fantasy in myself had the same effect as would be produced on a man if he came into his workshop and found all the tools flying about doing things independently of his will” (Ibid.). In studying his fantasies, Jung realised that he was examining the myth-creating function of the mind (MP, p. 23).

Jung picked up the brown notebook, which he had set aside in 1902, and began writing in it (The subsequent notebooks are black, hence Jung referred to them as the Black Books). He noted his inner states in metaphors, such as being in a desert with an unbearably hot sun (that is, consciousness). In the 1925 seminar, he recalled that it occurred to him that he could write down his reflections in a sequence. He was “writing autobiographical material, but not as an autobiography” (Introduction to Jungian Psychology, p. 48).
From the time of the Platonic dialogues onward, the dialogical CE, St. Augustine wrote his Soliloquies, which presented an extended dialogue between himself and “Reason,” who instructed him. They commenced with the following lines:

When I had been pondering many different things to myself for a long time, and had for many days been seeking my own Self and what my own good was, and what evil was to be avoided, there suddenly spoke to me – what was it? I myself or someone else, inside or outside me? (This is the very thing I would love to know but don’t.) [St. Augustine, Soliloquies and Immorality of the Soul, ed. and tr. Gerald Watson (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1990), p. 23. Watson notes that Augustine “had been through a period of intense strain, close to nervous breakdown, and the Soliloquies are a form of therapy, an effort to cure himself by talking, or rather writing” /p. v/).]

While Jung was writing in Black Book 2:

I said to myself, “What is this I’m doing? This certainly is not science. What is it?” Then a voice said to me, “That is art!” This made the strangest sort of impression upon me, because it was not in any sense my impression that what I was writing was art. Then I came to this: “Perhaps my unconscious is forming a personality that is not I, but which is insisting on coming through to expression.” I don’t know why exactly, but I knew to a certainty that the voice that had said my writing was art had come from a woman … Well, I said very emphatically to this voice that what I was doing was not art, and I felt a great resistance grow up in me. No voice came through, however, and I kept on writing. This time, I caught her and said, “No, it is not”, and I felt as though an argument would ensue. {Ibid., p. 42. In Jung’s account, it appears that his dialogue took place in the autumn of 1913, although this is not certain, as the dialogue itself does not occur in the Black Book, and no other manuscript has yet come to light. If this dating is followed, and in the absence of the other material, it would appear that the material of the voice is referring to the November entries in Black Book 2, and not the subsequent text of Liber Novus or the paintings.}

To be continued!💖

The image on top: Pang Torsuwan -WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING!

Make Peace, No War; Is It Possible?!

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Today, I can only articulate my perplexed reflections regarding this event, which I may have somewhat anticipated yet did not expect. I am referring to the conflict that commenced yesterday between Israel and Iran. I do not wish to convey any patriotic sentiment, as I do not possess such feelings; however, I still experience ambivalent emotions regarding the dismantling of the Islamic regime and my connection to my place of origin.
That is what Carl Jung called the “Collective Unconscious.”

As I once responded to a dear friend’s question regarding my feelings; I have never supported war, but when one resides in a country governed by such a regime—killing young and old of one’s own people without mercy—and each day when venturing out onto the streets, uncertain if one will return alive, there is no other conclusion to draw!

via Lewis Lafontaine 🙏

Carl Jung’s perspective on war is complex and nuanced. He viewed war as a reflection of deeper psychological processes in individuals and nations, rather than just a political clash. Jung believed the “shadow” – the darker aspects of the human psyche – significantly influences this, with nations projecting undesirable traits onto enemies. He warned against the dangers of mass psychology and unconscious forces overwhelming reason, which can lead to destruction.
Jung’s views on war extend beyond military tactics; they explore the psychological roots of conflict, highlighting self-awareness, the risks of unchecked unconscious forces, and how individuation fosters peace.

Recalling the phallus dream and brick games, Jung forms associations leading to his adult views on global devastation and “rivers of blood.” In autumn 1913, he sensed a sombre atmosphere, an oppression that appeared to emanate from external sources, as if something significant lingered in the air. He recalls how this feeling grew stronger over the months, eventually leading to a remarkable vision that took hold of him:

“I saw a monstrous flood covering all the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps. When it came to Switzerland, I saw that the mountains grew higher and higher to protect our country. I realised that a frightful catastrophe was in progress. I saw the mighty yellow waves, the floating rubble of civilisation, and the drowned bodies of uncounted thousands. Then the whole sea turned to blood.” Jung recalls several recurring dreams, regarding them as premonitions of world destruction leading up to the First World War.”

Anyway, I’ll just have to deal with it, just like so many others who have the same concerns. I truly hope this situation comes to a swift and favourable resolution, ultimately leading to a free and prosperous Iran.

My (Carl Jung’s) Most Difficult Experiment [P. 1]

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Regarding foresight, few individuals possess this ability, or perhaps it exists in everyone, yet most fail to recognise it. I knew some of my relatives, and one of my aunts had mastered it. She had seen ghosts in her large, old house, conversed with them, and could perceive events (in dreams) before they occurred. My brother Al also possessed such a gift, particularly in the final years of his life when he underwent surgery on his head to remove a tumour. I do not know if it is a gift, a curse, or a blessing; nonetheless, I would treasure that.

I, myself, have a small example: I had a dream in which one of my customers, an elderly woman I had driven to the doctor for many years but could no longer assist because she needed special transport, urgently called me to ask if I could pick her up and take her to her doctor. I wondered why I had dreamt of her after all this time. Two days after my dream, while driving a guest from her neighbourhood, she told me she recognised me as the person who had driven her friend from next door for a long time and asked if I knew she had passed away. I said no and asked when it had happened. She replied it was the night before last, the same night I had dreamt of her!

Dream analysis stands or falls with [the hypothesis of the unconscious]. Without it, the dream appears to be merely a freak of nature, a meaningless conglomerate of memory fragments left over from the day’s happenings.
~Carl Jung
“Modern Man in Search of a Soul”, p.2, Psychology Press

Now, let us read about one of the great minds in this field: Carl Gustav Jung. He was among the most sensitive and intuitive visionaries of all time. Here, he talks about his dreams, odd and extraordinary dreams. Once, he was even afraid that he had schizophrenia.

<Although it is from The Red Book, which everyone might have or may have even read, I believe many still do not notice the fineness in the “Introduction” at the beginning of the book, as I find it fascinating.>

From Carl Jung’s “The Red Book, Liber Novus: A Reader’s Edition,” by Sonu Shamdasani. (Introduction)

In 1912, Jung had some significant dreams that he did not understand. He gave particular importance to two of these, which, as he felt, showed the limitations of Freud’s conceptions of dreams. The first follows:

I was in a southern town, on a rising street with narrow half-landings. It was twelve o’clock midday–bright sunshine. An old Austrian customs guard or someone similar passes by me, lost in thought. Someone says, “That is one who cannot die. He died already 30 – 40 years ago but has not yet managed to decompose.”

I was very surprised. Here, a striking figure came, a knight of powerful build clad in yellowish armour. He looks solid and inscrutable, and nothing impresses him. On his back, he carries a red Maltese cross. He has continued to exist since the 12th century, and he takes the same route daily between 12 and 1 o’clock midday. No one marvelled at these two apparitions, but I was extremely surprised.

I hold back my interpretive skills. As regards the old Austrian, Freud occurred to me; as regards the knight, I myself.

Inside, a voice calls, “It is all empty and disgusting.” I must bear it. (Black Book 2, pp. 25-26)

Jung found this dream oppressive and bewildering, and Freud was unable to interpret it.

(In 1925, he gave the following interpretation to this dream: “The meaning of the dream lies in the principle of the ancestral figure: not the Austrian officer – obviously he stood for the Freudian theory – but the other, the Crusader, is an archetypal figure, a Christian symbol living for the twelfth century, a symbol that does not really live today, but on the other hand in not wholly dead either. It comes out of the time of Meister Eckhart, the time of the culture of the Knights, when many ideas blossomed, only to be killed again, but they are coming to life again now. However, when I had this dream, I did not know this interpretation” (Introduction to Jungian Psychology, p. 42).

Around half a year later, Jung had another dream:

I dreamt at that time (it was shortly after Christmas 1912) that I was sitting with my children in a marvellous and richly furnished castle apartment – an open columned hall – we were sitting at a round table, whose top was a marvellous dark green stone. Suddenly, a gull or a dove flew in and sprang lightly onto the table. I admonished the children to be quiet so they would not scare away the beautiful white bird. Suddenly, this bird turned into a child of eight years, a small blond child, and ran around playing with my children in the marvellous columned colonnades. Then, the child suddenly turned into the gull or dove. She said the following to me: “Only in the first hour of the night can I become human while the male dove is busy with the twelve dead.” With these words, the bird flew away, and I awoke. (Black Book 2, pp. 17-18)

In Black Book 2, Jung noted that it was this dream that made him decide to embark on a relationship with a woman he had met three years earlier (Toni Wolff, Ibid., p. 17). In 1925, he remarked that this dream “was the beginning of a conviction that the unconscious did not consist of inert material only, but that there was something living down there (Introduction to Jungian Psychology, p. 42). He added that he thought of the story of the Tabula Smaragdina (emerald tablet), the twelve apostles, the signs of the Zodiac, and so on, but that he “could make nothing out of the dream except that there was a tremendous animation of the unconscious. I knew no technique for getting to the bottom of this activity; all I could do was just wait, keep on living, and watch the fantasies.”

I include this footnote to highlight his insatiable greed and relentless pursuit to decipher the meaning behind his dream and how he developed the interpretation.

Ibid., pp. 40-41. E. A. Benner noted Jung’s comments on this dream: “At first, he thought ‘twelve dead men’ referred to the twelve days before Christmas, for that is the dark time of the year, when traditionally witches are about. To say ‘before Christmas’ is to say before the sun lives again, for Christmas day is at the turning point of the year when the sun’s birth was celebrated in the Mithraic religion… Only much later did he relate the dream to Hermes and the twelve doves” (Meeting with Jung: Conversations recorded by E.A. Brenner during the years 1946-1961 [London: Anchor Press,1982; Zürich, Daimon Verlag, 1985], p. 93). In 1951, in “The Psychological Aspects of the Kore”, Jung presented some material from Liber Novus (describing them all as part of a dream series) in an anonymous form (“case Z.”), tracing the transformations of the anima. He noted that this dream “shows the anima as a elflike, i.e., only partially human. She can just as well be a bird, which means that she may belong wholly to nature and can vanish (i.e., become unconscious) from the human sphere (i.e., consciousness)” (CW9, I, § 371). See also Memories, pp. 195-96.

These dreams led him to analyse his childhood memories, but this did not resolve anything. He realised that he needed to recover the emotional tone of childhood. He recalled that as a child, he used to like to build houses and other structures, and he took this up again.

While he was engaged in this self-analytic activity, he continued to develop his theoretical work. At the Munich Psycho-Analytical Congress in September 1913, he spoke on psychological types. He argued that there were two basic movements of the libido: extraversion, in which the subject’s interest was oriented towards the outer world, and introversion, in which the subject’s interest was directed inward. Following from this, he posited two types of people, characterised by the predominance of one of these tendencies. The psychologies of Freud and Adler were examples of the fact that psychologies often took what was true of their type as generally valid. Hence, what was required was a psychology that did justice to both of these types (“On the question of psychological types,” CW 6).

Although this captivating story continues, I will share it in parts to facilitate understanding and enjoyment. Thank you for taking the time to read!

PS: In case someone interested, I will try to write about my new condition in a separate post. 🙏💖

Back again from Extraneous, with Kafka and a Daydream!

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When my brother, Al, was in the hospital to undergo surgery to remove a tumour from his brain, one of the professors told him that we humans know almost nothing ( just ten per cent) about how our brains work – The rest is still a puzzle! Therefore, unexplained phenomena, such as strange things like seeing ghosts, daydreams, or schizophrenia, are always fascinating topics for inquisitive minds.

According to Dr Carl Jung: …in schizophrenia, the complexes have become disconnected and autonomous fragments, which either do not reintegrate back to the psychic totality, or, in the case of remission, are unexpectedly joined together again as if nothing happened” (1939).

via Carl Jung Depth Psychology

Franz Kafka Dreams >Wrestling matches every night<

During our trip to Serbia (I will write a post about it soon), I brought along some books as I do on any trip. This time, I discovered some surprises. While renovating the apartment, I found a book I couldn’t remember owning. Upon picking it up, I found a shopping receipt in the book dating back to 1995. It was clear that the book belonged to Al. Apart from a few novels, Franz Kafka wrote thousands of letters about his thoughts, dreams, and daydreams, and I was excited to have this particular book. The book is in German, and I translated a description and one of his letters about his dreams. I often considered the similarities between Kafka and Dostoevsky, as the latter frequently had daydreams like a schizophrenic. In this dream, Dostoevsky is interestingly present! I hope you will enjoy it.

The New Yorker

According to Jean-Paul, dreams substantially affect a poet because he is used to fantasy. In contrast, Kafka’s dreams intensified his daytime fears. Taken out of context, his dreams form an interesting “storybook” of events and changes involving real people and places from his life. Kafka’s descriptive notes allow the reader to relive each dream-like episode as if watching a film vividly. This collection also serves as a documentary, presenting the dreams chronologically and reproducing Kafka’s comments on the phenomenon of dreams and dreaming.

Frank Kortan – THE METAMORPHOSiS

Gregor Samsa woke up one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous vermin. Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” challenges readers to accept this transformation as real, denying the possibility of dismissing it as merely a dream. This may frustrate those who rely on reason to understand the world and expect literature to assist them in this endeavour. In 1916, Franz Herwig criticized the rejection of realism and its associated positive aspects in an essay about the authors of the series “The Judgement Day,” in which Kafka’s story appeared. Gregor Samsa’s story “The Metamorphosis” challenges our understanding of reality and urges us to see the world in a new light. Kafka emphasizes that incomprehensible forces are shaping our lives, which may be more influential than we can rationally explain. According to his commentary on the story “The Judgement,” which he wrote in one go from ten o’clock in the evening to six o’clock in the morning, this is the only way to write in such a context—with a complete openness of body and soul! In this type of writing, the usual censorship of the mind is primarily eliminated. Everything can be risked, and a great fire is prepared for everyone for the strangest ideas, in which they perish and rise again.

Dream!
[To Milena Jesenska, August 1920; M 170-172]

Today, I think I dreamt of you for the first time since I’ve been in Prague. A dream towards morning, short and heavy, still caught up in sleep after a bad night. I know little about it. You were in Prague; we were walking along Ferdinand Street, a little opposite Vilimek, in the direction of the quay; some acquaintances of yours were walking past on the other side; we turned to look at them; you spoke of them, perhaps there was also talk of Krasa [I know he is not in Prague, I will find out his address]. You said as usual, but there was something incomprehensible, indescribable about rejection in it; I didn’t mention it but cursed myself, thereby only expressing the curse that was on me. Because we were in the coffee house, probably in the Kaffee Union (it was on the way, and it was also the coffee house from Reiner’s last evening), a man and a girl were sitting at our table, but I couldn’t remember them. Then, there was a man who looked very similar to Dostoyevsky but young, with a deep black beard and hair. Everything, for example, the eyebrows and the bulges over the eyes, were incredibly strong. Then you were there, and I. Again, nothing betrayed your aloof manner, but the rejection was there.

Painting: Jorge Ignacio Nazabal

Your face was – I could not look away from the tormenting oddity – powdered, and it was overly obvious, clumsy, bad; it was probably hot, and so whole powder lines had formed on your cheeks; I can still see them in front of me. Again and again, I leaned forward to ask why you were powdered; when you noticed that I wanted to ask, you asked obligingly – the rejection was simply not noticeable – >What do you want?< But I could not ask, I did not dare, and yet I somehow suspected that being powdered was a test for me, a crucial test, that I should ask, and I wanted to but did not dare. And so the sad dream rolled over me. At the same time, the Dostoyevsky man tormented me. His behaviour towards me was similar to yours but still a little different. When I asked him something, he was very friendly, sympathetic, leaned over, and open-hearted. Still, when I didn’t know what to ask or say – this happened every moment – he would withdraw with a jerk, sink into a book, know nothing more about the world and especially not about me, disappear into his beard and hair. I don’t know why I found this unbearable, again and again – I couldn’t do anything else – I had to pull him over to me with a question and again and again, I lost him through my own fault! 💖🙏🤗

The Imagen at top:  Youri Ivanov – Artiste Russe (Russian)

The Everyday Boredom of Life!

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I’m not sure if any of you have experienced a feeling like I did a few days ago. It’s hard to put into words, but I will try: I had a few things I wanted to remember and sort out in my head, but I wasn’t sure if they were just dreams or had actually happened!

Have you ever had moments when you couldn’t tell if something that happened the previous day was real or just a dream? It reminded me of schizophrenia, which was quite frightening. It’s like having a blurred line between reality and imagination, making it challenging to distinguish what’s real and what’s not. The reason for all this may be a dream I had the night before.

That night, I had a dream I can still recall. In the dream, I saw Robbie Williams, who had released an album that wasn’t a hit! The album was dull, and he was pretty upset about it, though he always had great help from his mate Guy Chambers. I haven’t ever been a big fan of his and haven’t purchased any of his singles. I have only heard his songs on the radio and listened to them once, and not more. That’s why I find it strange that he appeared in my dream.

Painting by Santiago Caruso

Next, a young girl appeared during my dream and offered me her new album. I liked that, though she said she would mix it up with Robbie Williams’ album. Truthfully, they matched perfectly together and became a great hit!

When I told my wife about that, she said it was time for me to begin writing music again! Her advice refers to my earlier time in Germany.

It was around the early ’90s when I used to play guitar on the streets, and as I had only music in my head, I attempted composing, and I managed to write a few songs, which I recorded using an MC (my friends who are my age would know what I am referring to!). The recordings included drums, rhythm guitar, solos, and vocals. I played all these by myself in my tiny room those days with the help of two cassette recorders; poor me! You should see how talented I was!! I suppose this MC is in our basement, in a plastic bag, spending the last minutes of her life.

The main subject I aim to cover is our everyday lives and how boring they can be. Therefore, I took my recent post from Facebook with a quote by Marie-Louise von Franz on this topic. I will compare it with the life of an artist who can live without any single sign of being bored.

Illustration by Wojtek Siudmak – Matter.

Boredom is a symptom of life being dammed up, that one does not know how to get what one has within oneself into reality. — Marie-Louise von Franz, The Problem of the Puer Aeternus

While considering my own, my wife’s, or my friend’s everyday lives, I often ponder why everything seems so mundane. Even the weekends, which should be a time for rest and enjoyment, can sometimes feel dull and uneventful, especially for those who work tirelessly throughout the week. One does plan to enjoy a meeting, going to Cinema to watch a good movie, or driving for a side trip, the time runs out fast like the wind, and it is again the damnd Monday! Of course, it might be because I am retired now and have a view from a distance.
I believe that the problem is the lack of creativity. Most people end up in jobs they have never chosen or desired; they do that only to make money. Don’t you think these repeated days doing almost the same thing make it no fun anymore? However, for an artist, every new day is a challenge in creating new art.

The pointé is here in Dr. Jung’s words; even then, I comprehended it much better now.

Via Quozio

How can an artist’s life not be boring?

As a child, I had different career aspirations, such as becoming a pilot, free of borders or terrain. Still, in my youth, my only wish was to be a music composer, and every morning, I would go to my studio to make a new song. That’s why I think the lucky people who make art or do something similar will never feel bored!

I am convinced that we all were created to create, and art is our way of creating. Therefore, when we are forced to do something else without lust and passion, which, unfortunately, has become common in society, the outcomes are wasted fruits.

After pouring out my heart with the hope that I will achieve my goal of conveying my message to you, I want to mention that next week is the Easter holiday, and I will probably be absent and miss your kind reactions and feedback. However, I might try to post using the WP timer! Let’s see what happens; until then, I appreciate your visits and hope you have a lovely time, everybody. 🤗💖💥🖖

The illustration at the top is by Micha Lobi.

The Way of What is to Come.

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The Red Book by C. G. Jung, Liber Primus fol. i(v)

As I continue to read Carl Jung’s book, The Red Book, I find myself wondering how his words are so relatable to me. They touch me deeply and feel familiar. I do not speak often and tend to keep to myself. However, I want to learn how to express myself more creatively using images. I long to see a sign of mercy that will give me hope and belief, even though I still wish to have visions like Jung had.

He conversed with the spirits, the spirit of the time, the spirit of depth, talking about the Supreme Meaning by the fact that he is laughter and worship; a bloody laughter and a bloody worship. A sacrificial blood binds the poles. Jung has his humanity for help: What solitude, he said, what a coldness of destruction you lay upon me when you speak such! Reflect on the destruction of being and the streams of blood from the terrible sacrifice that the depth demands (Referring to Jung’s vision). Dr Jung had visions which became a reality throughout his time. He was excited, not sure if schizophrenia was threatening him. However, every genius seems to have this ability, as my brother Al had it.

As we observe the world today, starting wars easily, bombing, and killing have become routine occurrences, it might not be necessary for us to have the kind of visions that Dr. Jung had in his time. However, his words hold significance since they reflect a deeper insight into the human psyche.

Carl Jung On Psychosis
Carl Jung Depth Psychology

Let’s read what he speaks about his visions:

“But the spirit of the depths uttered: No one can or should halt sacrifice. Sacrifice is not destruction; sacrifice is the foundation stone of what is to come…
“The mercy that happened to me gave me belief, hope, and sufficient daring not to resist the spirit of the depths further but so utter his words. But before I could pull myself together to really do it, I needed a visible sign that would show me that the spirit of the depths in me was, at the same time, the ruler of the depths of world affairs.

It happened in October 1813, when I was living alone on a journey. During the day, I was suddenly overcome by a vision in broad daylight: I saw a terrible flood that covered all the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps. It reached from England up to Russia and from the coast of the North Sea right up to the Alps. I saw yellow waves swimming through rubble and the death of countless thousands.

Carl Jung: “On Pictures In Psychiatric Diagnosis” – Carl Jung Depth Psychology

The vision lasted two hours; it confused me and made me ill. I was not able to interpret it. Two weeks passed, then the vision returned, still more violent than before, and an inner voice spoke: “”Look at it; it is completely real, and it will come to pass. You cannot doubt this.“” I wrestled again for two hours with this vision, but it held me fast. It left me exhausted and confused. And I thought my mind had gone crazy.

Jung discussed this vision on several occasions, stressing different details like in his 1925 seminar Introduction to Jungian Psychology (p. 44f), to Mircea Eliade, and Memories (pp. 199-200):

{Jung’s versions were frightening as he saw even a sea of blood over the northern lands. He explains: }

As a psychiatrist, I became worried, wondering if I was not on the way to “doing a schizophrenia,” as we said in the language of those days… I was just preparing a lecture on schizophrenia to be delivered at a congress in Aberdeen, and I kept saying to myself: “I’ll be speaking of myself! Very likely, I’ll go mad after reading out this paper.” The congress was to take place in July 1914 – exactly the same period when I saw myself in my three dreams voyaging on the Southern seas. On July 31st, immediately after my lecture, I learned from the newspapers that war had broken out. Finally, I understood. And when I disembarked in Holand on the next day, nobody was happier than I. Now, I was sure that no schizophrenia was threatening me. I understood that my dreams and my visions came to me from the subsoil of the collective unconscious. What remained for me to do now was to deepen and validate this discovery. And this is what I have been trying to do for forty years.

The fire from the egg in Carl Jung’s Red book

In the year 1914, in the month of June, at the beginning and end of the month, and at the beginning of July, I had the same dream three times: I was in a foreign land, and suddenly, overnight and right in the middle of the summer, a terrible cold descended from space. All seas and rivers were ice-locked, and every green living thing had frozen.
The second dream was thoroughly similar to this. But the third dream at the beginning of July went as follows: I was in a remote English land. It was necessary that I return to my homeland with a fast ship as speedily as possible. I reached home quickly. In my homeland, I found that in the middle of summer, a terrible cold had fallen from space, which had turned every living thing into ice. There stood a leaf-bearing but fruitless tree, whose leaves had turned into sweet grapes full of healing juice through the working of the frost (like the ice wine). I picked some grapes and gave them to a great waiting throng.

[Draft: This was my dream. All my efforts to understand it were in vain. I laboured for days. Its impression, however, was powerful (p.9). Jung also recounted this dream in Memories].

Can we interpret the end of his dream, where sweet grapes are present, as a positive outcome of human madness? Who knows! Anyhow, hope dies last.🙏💖

Source: The Red Book by C. G. Jung, Liber Novus, A Reader’s Edition; Sonu Shamdasani

Title illustration by Mariusz Lewandowski