Mars
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On 4182, by paragraph
What to understand of the shadow, personal and general. I’ve this volume on the shelf (The Portable Jung – edited by Joseph Campbell) awaiting a thourough reading, but inclined to very personal revelations I’m postponing it until further notice… tbc. The shadow is always present: she’s my very dead but everlasting muse.
“… on projection…” absolutely, and the senses we’re equipped with are impaired. The assumptions we add does not reflect the reality, but add to our reality, our impresion of it: Our perception of reality is only the perception of it, and hence not the reality we can behold. Again, our senses and our imagination (-s) are impaired.
The archetypal view – cast imprint -, rendered to a physical appearance, alive and thriving, bursting into live, love and grieve, overcomes this to humble and to simple view and experience… if realised, but scarce.
Hope on on top of a copepable mess is ok. But we’re in deep trouble. No belief or hope, that’s imaginitive. {shortcut to above paragraph granted as done}
That’s the challange of mankind, but considering it’s nature (I’m a member of), if concluded we’re not fit. {ditto: shortcut to above paragraph granted as done}
It is not a matter if we, the human kind, can ‘jump over out shadow’. We are not, as any species have prooved before, capable to do so. To do so, we have to ‘dehumanise’ ourselves. A caterpiller has to give up all defences and immunity in order to convert to a mouthless butterfly… no chance here really .No one really wants to meet one’s own shadow.
Ever saw a child realising this, dancing away from it, inescapable?
We’re children in this living realisation, dancing with our shadows all the way through our life. Even beyond the physical appearances and awarenesses. In the end, for better, as an individual, we simply must and have to die in order to give room to others. And what counts for individuals, regarding their ‘realisation’ of things happening, is as evident for any species, to adapt to to needs of contemporain times.Gracious yours, too, of course
On # 4178:
On spot: how much are we consious responsable beings, most gifted of all species roaming this planet, and how much are we just beasts, hunters and prey?
Up until recent times, the aim was to thrive forward, for better means for mankind and the world (an aim with flaws but an aim), to raise to a universal responsible consciousness. Now, with all abundance available, we’re simply devouring everything like a biblical plague, all awareness gone. Your examples, maybe western orientated, are self-evident.
This is the very sign of the crisis of the species homo sapiens-sapiens: are they able to trod on the next stepstone or smash down like oversized dinosaurs not able to cope with now unfolded technical asteroid?
Once we are faced with our fragilities, depending on contemporain circumstances, we’re either advancing or withdrawing. Since 1985, in my view, with Reagan’s election as ‘Sugar-for-free-President’, when the western civilisation was considered (for some) as completed, no real other ‘white spots’ on the maps were to be exploited anymore, we – the cruel children – had no other way then to kill ourself.
What now? Is there a way out of this ego labyrinth? Common awareness spread out over all of us human beings, within one or two decades counting 10000000000 species? How, why, when, what, &c &c. I’m sorry, but I count this human species as written off. There to few (10%) on the apex to lift the rest, those in/with power (10%) to act are impaired, framed in their envious apple-grabbing. Another 10% prefer escapism in sybaritism (addiction of any kind), the majority (70%) are just numbness. Currently on the edge: how to persuade the sybarits to either understanding or empowerment, to drag the compliant masses to their sides.
A shadow play in broad daylight, in your convenient living room supplied by your favourite payed information straw.
Now, this shadow thing…On # 4177:
Raised within the scientific dimensions (math, astronomy, politics, engineering), and the curious explanations of most common people (religion, everlasting growth, eternal abundance, paradisical life after subjugated life), that vast backdrop is a bliss for unimaginate other things beyond our simple human understanding. We are not the center of the universe, not the reason for (any) creation, less than an unnoticed comma in an unheard chitchat. Accept it or turn back to the children’s fairytale-view, or the beast’s unawareness.
To state the conflictness between religion and science is like equalising a god that is supposed to create everything, even that cannot be created, and noticing that water is a liquid (at room temperature). This wondrous belief in science is general with those unknown to it (buy yourself a saw in the free market temple with cheap money and you’re transformed too into a hosanna-carpenter). Science is no belief – belief is a simplified science (phrase by Joseph Campbell). How we wish to cope with it is our very personal choise imprinted by force to keep running in circles or by climbing the walls of the maze.
And whatever this choise, both vectors push us (and more simpler creatures with a more simpler ratio) through, if surviving long enough (aka becoming to old for reproduction) contemplating the meaning of life. Best boiling down ever done by Monty Phyton.
Addressing symbols as symbols, and not as a gateway to pass through, is the risk of using symbols. A cross is a sword, a star is a guide, and so on. The scientific way is to reject those transforming symbols and pass through right away. What in religious words is framed like the union of opposites, in science it is the realisation of the very duality of natural things. At the root of it there is no relation between cause and consequence, something human brains are not designed for to comprehend. The tools we use for that in science are like the symbols in religion. And both can be used for good (to understand our existence in life or our life in existence) and for cruelty like wars and slavery, either by killing or by algorithms.
Science threw me into this loosening and in the end completely disentangling of the cause and consequence. Life is not a zipper with two sides from bottom to top. This is a better view: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap201025.html
Consider the universe as a quantum-hiccup. It’s breathtaking until the utter chocking when all is evaporated into virtual radiation. A wink to catch the flash.
Frankly spoken jamesn., we are with a very few wrestling with our shadows here, but very much appriciated.Very bluntly spoken, R³ is a genius or a hermit. Both appreciated, we have fine discussions. But better branch off very preferred as this keeps things more readable (intertwinted topics don’t work). And a fresh open start better too! So the single R³ subject of Science vs Myth. Maybe a chapter on its own (lots of fun too!).
Outshouted on a ‘Language as Methaphor’ topic as a non-english native tongue in the lions den I consider as a mere compliment. All my fierce stodgy sparking and spicey thoughts are lost in translation throughout.
Thanks Stephen.
Referring to the last paragraph of jamesn. post 4148, Joseph Campbell on the Grail legends explains this known mythical hero, Parceval, as the one who seeks that middle, and it is his (french) name: par ce val – through the middle (of the valley), both steep sides to avoid.
But after depth-reading jamesn. post again, it shows both the relation between mythology and psychology – or the psyche, and that this very dual vision (parallax) is at the root of our being. Once at the threshold of those crisis, this very shadow part of human consious ego responds in an unknown mode (underworld Ereshkigal kills here upperworld Inanna egoself once confronted… on her own grounds!) whereas to operate as a decent human amongst other equal humans, one has to cope with the earthly survival, deal with them as friends or foes (polarisations), and negotiate ones purpose and goals to personal (imprinted or gifted) goals. On that plane, there is no room for a shadow. But at night, in our dreams appears our devils, dracula’s and ghosts our shadow wishes to dance with.
Where Easter, in spring, is the celebration of the renewal of the consious ego life, on the opposite we encounter Halloween in autumn, the celebration of the subsleep unknown is replayed in costumes and with decoration. The same of old on the southern hemisphere of course, but with other (non-northern classic) names.
From my (european) view to this initiated (by SG) perspective, local interpretations are moulded in local realities, and extremely temporarily through the mythical lens. What do the Gods cast upon us now? Yet another ordeal to cope with? Oh, how and why, to our knees, follow the leader-leader or accept utter mass-extinction.
Hmm… challenging times for sure, but no real threshold really. Climate, resources, population, diseases, migration, swift energy & food supplies? Our gods (they are our gods – ‘us ourselves’) don’t give a damn about us (‘us ourselves’). If that does not change, we’re extinct already.
Hope is the last resort once Pandora has opened our faith. (But don’t blame her, it’s we!)
R³, your path is unique as anyone’s, so engage!
“The rat race and labyrinth of modernity is fraught with scientific & mythic connotations.”
As long as the word connotations is part of the statement, I accept it. Without it, I reject it. Science and fraught are as unrelated as mortality to belief.
The numbers do coincide, but the coincidence is not from the numbers. Flat surface numbers do not explicate how things are and work, alas. Relativity and quantum mechanics (no relation to cause and response) rule the physical reality, but you’re free to believe anything – of course.
Yet, these parallels are intriguing!
Just read the last post steep & swift (‘diagonal’), it resembles a reading recently about one of the oldest Sumerian stories: the decent of Inanna, queen of heaven and earth into the great below, to be rendered into a corpse by her shadow sister Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld, who appears to be her same identity in opposite form. To coincide ultimately, in the end. Written in cuneiform tablets approx 3000BC, but still in fashion.
Stephen,
Obvious as your guardian obligation in this now. I submit to your gracious observance, as should anyone, and your successors.
Dear R³,
Agreed up to Alexander, but you’ve lost me from ‘Ó’ onwards to Mark. things are lost in translation indeed (and cultural differences too). Oh Stephen, what a wonderfull subject! But science and conviction cannot merge into democratic truth, like your hands shaking themselves: it will never fit.
I consider it ridiculous to have ‘a word’ first after which ‘things’ emerge. Topsy-turvy reasoning: I say ‘blue’, hence ‘the Sky is blue!’ And the sky is not blue, it is diffracted sunlight (blue defracts most) you see. The rest is transparent.
For most people, exponentials, logarithms, math in general and logic reasoning are perpendicular to their personal perception and resulting understanding or awareness of the fragmented or simplified reality surrounding the comfy habitat. Once thrown out of such prejudice, nothing remains. Escapism to religion, dictators and servility remains. Nulling as a beast. That is utter human poverty where in contrast a lazy dalit beggar is more respectfull.
He was not unhappy not gaining materialistic wealth from his virtues, as his children were of another everlasting source, being fruits of (almost) immortality. Cast into his time with earthly and epochal challenges, discipline was his framework to gather the yield ‘beyond the horizon’. Not the most obvious choise for the many of us, whatever the circumstances – nothing is granted in the end. The choise of the broad way or the small path, in times and places of one’s experience, we’re all in the downward current seeking an upgoing opportunity, or a reassuring, meandering spell to the all forgetting ocean of nothingness. The dubble edged sword.
He’s not known for it, but it proofs he’s a good dancer anyhow.
