Collective unconsciousness and life
-The journey of alchemical transformation of life
Collective unconsciousness:
The surface of the unconscious is more or less personal, which I call personal unconsciousness. But the individual's unconsciousness depends on a deeper level, which is neither derived from personal experience nor acquired by individuals, but is innate. I call it a deeper collective unconsciousness. I chose the term "collective" because this part of the subconscious is not personal, but universal. Different from individual psychology, its content and behavior pattern are roughly the same as all individuals everywhere. In other words, it is the same for all people, and therefore constitutes a common psychological foundation with super-individuality, which is shared by all of us.
The content of personal unconsciousness is mainly what people call emotional complex, which constitutes the personal and private aspects of psychological life. On the other hand, the content of the collective unconscious is a well-known prototype.
How does consciousness treat the unconscious?
Unconsciousness is usually regarded as a kind of compressed fragment, which is related to our most personal and intimate life-similar to the sensory defect in the Bible. This is what the unconscious looks like when you look at it from the perspective of consciousness. But consciousness seems to be essentially a matter of the brain. It looks at everything separately and separately, so it also looks at the unconscious in the same way, completely treating it as my unconscious. Therefore, it is generally believed that people who enter the unconscious state are trapped in a suffocating self-centered subjective atmosphere, and in this dead end, they are considered to be the caves of spiritual hades and attacked by various fierce beasts.
Symbol of water:
Water is the most common symbol of unconsciousness. The lake in the valley is unconscious, or the unconscious is under the consciousness, so it is often called "subconscious" and often has a subconscious derogatory meaning. Water is the "spirit of the valley", that is, the dragon of the Tao, which is similar to water in essence-the yang contained in yin.
Water (Mirror) —— Personality Mask and Reality
Whoever looks at the water will see his face first. Whoever goes to see it in person will be in danger of confronting himself. The mirror is not flattering, it faithfully shows everything reflected on it, in other words, it reflects a face that we have never shown to the world, because we put a personality mask on it, that is, an actor's mask. But the mirror is behind the mask, reflecting the real face.
This kind of confrontation is the first test of spiritual inner way-a test enough to scare away most people, because it is even more unpleasant to meet yourself. As long as we can project all negative things into the environment, they can be avoided. But if we can see our own shadow and bear to understand it, then a small part of the problem is solved: we have at least tapped our own unconscious.
Shadow is a living part of personality, so I hope to coexist with it in some form. It will not be considered non-existent or rationalized as harmless. This problem is quite difficult, because it not only challenges people from all directions, but also reminds them of their powerlessness and lack of skills.
Strong nature-I don't like being reminded of this, but I prefer to think of myself as a hero who transcends good and evil. I prefer to cut the gordian knot rather than simply let go. Finally, people have to admit that many problems cannot be solved by one's own efforts. This kind of recognition has the advantages of honesty, truthfulness and reality, thus preparing a space for the collective unconscious compensatory reaction: people are now more inclined to pay attention to beneficial ideas or perceptions, or to ideas that were not allowed to be expressed before. Maybe people will pay attention to visiting their dreams at this time, or reflect on some internal and external events that happened at this time. If people have such an attitude, all kinds of beneficial forces lurking in deeper human nature will awaken and intervene, because powerlessness and weakness are permanent experiences and eternal problems of human beings.
The necessary and inevitable reaction from the collective unconscious expresses itself through the concept based on prototype formation. When you meet yourself, you first meet your own shadow. Shadow is a narrow road, a narrow door, and its painful squeezing makes everyone who walks down the deep well unable to escape. But one must know oneself to know who he is. Because surprisingly enough, what comes out from behind the door is an endless vast area, full of unprecedented uncertainty, and obviously there is no distinction between inside and outside, up and down, each other, you and me, and good or bad. This is a water world, in which all life is suspended. The field of sympathetic nervous system and the soul of all living things start from here, and I am inseparable from this and that. When I experience the other in myself, the other who is not me is also experiencing me.
The collective subconscious is by no means a compressed personal system, it is completely objective, as broad as the world and open to the world. There, I am the object of every subject, and I don't use it in my ordinary consciousness, because in my ordinary consciousness, I always have the subject of the object. There, I was completely integrated into the world and became a part of it so deeply that I easily forgot who I was. The proper description of this state is "lost in self". But if consciousness can notice, this self is the world. That's why we must know who we are. Improve the level of self-awareness, otherwise we are easily swallowed up by the unconscious. "The night is coming, the light of consciousness is about to disappear, and the dark unconscious sea is about to enter." )
Anima:
Anyone who looks into the water will see his own image, but soon there will be creatures looming behind the image, perhaps all kinds of fish and harmless "residents" in the depths of the lake-as long as there are no ghosts in the lake, they are harmless. They are a strange aquatic creature. Sometimes a female water demon-a female fish that is half man and half fish-will get into the fisherman's net. Monsters are fascinating animals;
She pulled him halfway,
He was half immersed in water,
Never seen it again.
The water demon is a charming woman with more instinctive characteristics. I call her Anima. She may also be the daughter of a siren, a mermaid, a fairy in the forest, Grace or Elgin, or a banshee or banshee. She charmed the young people and took their lives. Critics who care about moral education will say that these images are projections of passionate emotional States and are purely worthless fantasies. Before the problem of moral consciousness existed, there were elves in forests, the earth and streams long ago.
These beings are admired and feared at the same time, so their rather peculiar erotic charm is just one of their characteristics.
The seductive lust of the witch in the distant past is called "erotic fantasy" today, and she can complicate our spiritual life in the most painful way.
She can surprise us like a siren giant;
She can ride on our heads like a banshee;
Like a wizard, she can transform at will, and usually shows an unbearable independence, which seems unsuitable for spiritual content.
Sometimes she causes all kinds of charming selves that can be called the best ecstasy, or releases great fear of the devil's development among us.
She is a prankster, crossing our path with countless deformations and disguises, playing tricks on us with various tricks, causing happy and unpleasant fantasies, depression and ecstasy, emotional generation and so on.
Even in the state of rational intake, the banshee has never given up the prank.
The witch never stopped stirring the poison of her love and death;
Her magic poison has been refined into deception and self-deception. Although invisible, it is also dangerous.
Anima is the archetype of nature, which successfully summarizes the history of unconsciousness, primitive spirit, language and religion. It is a veritable "main cause." Humans cannot create. On the contrary, their emotions, reactions, impulses and spontaneity come from anything else in their spiritual life. It's a life behind consciousness. This kind of life cannot be completely integrated with consciousness, but it breeds consciousness. Because spiritual life is ultimately an unconscious life, surrounded by consciousness from all directions.
Although our whole unconscious spiritual life seems to belong to Anima, she is just one of many prototypes. She doesn't represent the whole unconscious. She's just one aspect of the unconscious. Non-ego, non-male things are probably women, because this non-ego is perceived as not belonging to me, so it is outside me, so the image of Anima is usually projected on women.
Everything Anima touches becomes mysterious-absolute, dangerous, taboo and magical. She is a big snake in the Garden of Eden, where there are people with superior decision-making and good intentions. She put forward the most convincing reason not to spy on the unconscious, because it is a kind of possession, which will destroy our moral taboos and release all kinds of forces that are best kept unconscious and undisturbed. There is always some truth in what Anima said, because life is not only good in nature, but also bad at times. If there is no traditional morality, spiritual life and physical life will get along more harmoniously and often maintain a healthier state.
If encountering shadows is a "work" in the process of personal development, then encountering Anima is a "masterpiece". The relationship with Anima is also a test of courage, a severe test and fire of human spirit and rational power. (Fire: The alchemy test is coming. )
When we deal with Anima, we are dealing with psychological facts that humans have never grasped before. The form of projection, for his son, Anima is hidden in the dominant power of his mother, and sometimes she leaves him with a lifelong emotional attachment, which seriously affects his fate as an adult. She may also inspire him to fly high.
Although he may be the chaotic requirement of life, there is always something strange and meaningful in her, that is, a kind of hidden knowledge or hidden wisdom, which forms the strangest contrast with her irrational elf nature.
There is a universe in all chaos, a secret order in all disorder, and a fixed law in all impermanence, because everything that works is based on its opposite. To realize this, we need people's discernment, because people's discernment breaks everything down into various beliefs-only judgments.
Only when all the supports are cut off and the back cover can't provide even the smallest safety hope can we experience a prototype, which has been hidden behind the meaningful nonsense interpreted by Anima until then. This is the prototype of meaning, just as Anima is the prototype of life itself.
In the book When Nietzsche Crys, there are countless descriptions about Anima. In chapter 19, there is a sentence: "Maybe symptoms are messengers of meaning, and only when their meaning is understood will symptoms disappear." If we want to overcome these symptoms, we must decide what Bertha's illusion means to you. (At this point, the meaning of the prototype is revealed.)
P282: She escaped, escaped dangerously, and escaped safely. Passion, mystery and magic. She was a great liberator, and provided a suspended sentence for his death sentence. She has superhuman strength, she is the cradle of life, a great maternal confession, and she forgave him all the wildness and animality. She provided him with eternal love, eternal friendship and eternal existence. She is a shield against the sharp teeth of time, providing salvation in the abyss of hell and protection in the underworld below.
Bertha is a rich symbol of mystery, protection and redemption. Buhrer called it love. But its real name is prayer.
P348 Nietzsche: Salome is beautiful, but she is more like my twin heart at the real pink moment. She understood me and pointed me in a new direction-to a dizzy height, which I never had the courage to explore before.
Jung: The Sun Constellation and the Moon Constellation have completed an alchemical journey, and the children born are ourselves.
-Analysis of Salome's alchemical journey of the sun and the moon
Let's first look at what kind of life inertia and emotional response mode the moon is shaped by the family growth environment, and then look at what kind of goal setting and personal achievements the sun has lived in the process of life growth.
Only in this way can we know whether the moon is satisfied with the inner child and whether it can transition to the development and realization of the heroic potential of the sun.
Moon: the river of emotional instinct, the principle of motherhood, the embrace of love.
Sun: the principle of fatherhood, the establishment of a sense of separation, and the courage to sail.
The maternal principle of the moon: both sides have a sense of security.
The paternal principle of the sun: the sense of value of personal struggle
Absorb and transform the huge subconscious power of the moon, so that the sun has a steady stream of power to sail and sail. Every adventure has a more integrated harvest of the sun and the moon. Everyone can't stay in the life inertia of the moon constellation, but must give full play to the power of the sun. Only in this beautiful world can we feel the happiness of our moon constellation.
From the safety protection of the maternal energy of the moon, we learned to be separated and independent, and gradually developed a heroic pursuit of the paternal energy of the sun.
We continue to experience the interaction between the moon and the sun in turn until the moon and the sun merge into a new force of yin and yang.
British Jungian astrologer Liz Green advocated:
The sun must melt into the life of the moon, so that the potential me can develop into the creator of life experience.
Only when the moon absorbs the meaning of the sun can the instinctive habit of life develop into the personal value of life.
At the same time, she believes that most people's emotional instinct (sense of security and belonging) will conflict with the sun's goal-seeking strength (personality and personal consciousness), making the sun's inner hero road more difficult.
Salome
German writer Salbo once commented on Salome as a "muse with extraordinary ability". A man who is pregnant with this woman and knows her for a few months can give birth to a spiritual newborn for the world. "
Sun sign: Aquarius
Moon sign: Pisces
In Inner Sky, Stephen described Aquarius like this:
Aquarius prototype:
Genius, innovator, truth teller, scientist, exile
If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him. -Zen believers
Destination:
Freedom is the destination of Aquarius. What is this? Personality, the ability to choose your own path, do what you want, and not accept orders from anyone-whether from father, mother, president, priest or other authoritative figures.
Aquarius must cultivate absolute loyalty to truth. Whatever the consequences, she must tell what she saw.
The destination of Aquarius? That is, completely true and unyielding self-expression. Perfect personality.
Shadow:
She must have a sense of certainty that her cognition is correct.
But this stubbornness can also destroy her.
Pisces prototype: mystic, dreamer, poet, shapeshifter
We are transparent beings. We are perceptors. We are consciousness, not objects. We are not solid, we are infinite. Tang Wang
Symbol: the ocean is not a fish, but the home of the fish-the mother ocean.
Destination:
Pisces is a symbol of consciousness itself.
The destination of Pisces is a fine-tuning of consciousness and mind.
Shadow:
Pisces must be fascinated by their own consciousness. They must also learn self-control.
The shadow of Pisces is escape. She will try to escape from the objective world and enter her own subjective world.