Maybe you like to push yourself to the limits. ??? Find some new edges and push yourself intentionally, don’t let it sneak up on you.

My landlord, who I’m going sailing with accused me (probably accurately) of being an adrenaline junky. “So am I” he said immediately following.

There’s no way to ever NOT let some of it sneak up on you though, as much as you can push yourself and be totally vigilant. But I get completely what you’re saying.

In past ages you would have started a revolution, or a new religion. Now however the world has crystalized and manifested to such a degree that it is now so difficult.

Revolution and religion are irrelevant (RRRRRRRRR!!)

http://www.goodworksonearth.org/nelsonmandela2.html

We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other
people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.”

*

I do however like that Jung talks about how if you go through this process you necessarily return with an ethical obligation from the Unconscious. Campbell I think calls it the “Boon”. Jung goes on to say:

It is equally a grave mistake to think that it is enough to gain some understanding of the images and that knowledge can here make a halt. Insight into them must be converted into an ethical obligation. Not to do so is to fall prey to the power principle, and this produces dangerous effects which are destructive not only to others but even to the knower. The images of the unconscious place a great responsibility upon a man. Failure to understand them, or a shirking of ethical responsibility, deprives him of his wholeness and imposes a painful fragmentariness on his life.

There’s also a passage though I can’t find it at the moment where he talks about how by undergoing this process, he no longer “belongs” to himself but to all of humanity and that becomes where his/your responsibility lays by dint of this process - since it is that very part of us we all share.

How then to make the best possible decisions and avoid a stint in hell?

You CAN’T avoid the stint in Hell. Thinking you can and that you can be “smarter than that” is MUCH WORSE than the actual reality of Hell.

http://bible.cc/matthew/26-39.htm

And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

The ONLY decision you get to make in this process (aside from discernment, which I think is different - choices as opposed to a “Decision”) is whether or not to do as you wilt or as “Thou wilt”. Islam means “submission” and this is what they mean.

Is that what you’re getting at?

Yeah. The only way I can explain it is by describing it as an addiction but that’s not really what I mean. If you stop gambling you’re still going to have the same mindset that got you started in the first place. You may take better risks now, like starting a business that nobody else would take a chance on, but you’re doing it out of the same set of drives.

If you stop using food unwisely you still have the same set of needs and drives you started with. You’ve lost weight but don’t exercise to the point of injury. Eat what you want but in small protions. New rules but healthy ones. A breakthrough is a calm in between storms that allows you to orient yourself and make repairs. Now you have to find a replacement addiction, sort of, because the storms come from you so you can’t escape. If you survive you may get a new map, territory, goal, objective, lost island etc. If you go back the way you came you know what to expect. Pick a path with as much wisdom and guidance as you can muster.

With metaphysics it’s complicated. There’s no support group or even cultural understanding of what you’re going through. Not to mention tricksters, evil people who feed off of destruction of other people and just plain bad days. I think this is some of what Jung had in mind by filling people with archtypes. If things get really bad you can’t call your sponsor but you can call on God.

If you’re the type of person who likes to go to the edge and further get used to it. Maybe you like to push yourself to the limits. ??? Find some new edges and push yourself intentionally, don’t let it sneak up on you.

You are a mutation in the cultural framework, an asset to civilization. A cell division , a new form of speciazation.
You can’t start a fire, you can’t start a fire without a spark.
And from going through what you have, you have found something other, a new experience of the world, a unique mutation of conciousness.

Congratulations, you are now at the end of the bell curve, you are now 99% removed from the mean distribution of the conciousness / reality view of humanity. You are now in the 1% club.

In past ages you would have started a revolution, or a new religion. Now however the world has crystalized and manifested to such a degree that it is now so difficult.
It’s hard to create anything that resonates when you find your perceptive keys no longer fit in the cultural locks…

“In truth, the good artist’s or thinker’s imagination is continually producing things good, mediocre, and bad, but his power of judgment, highly sharpened and practiced, rejects, selects, joins together; thus we now see from Beethoven’s notebooks that he gradually assembled the most glorious melodies and, to a degree, selected them out of disparate beginnings. The artist who separates less rigorously, liking to rely on his imitative memory, can in some circumstances become a great improviser; but artistic improvisation stands low in relation to artistic thoughts earnestly and laboriously chosen. All great men were great workers, untiring not only in invention but also in rejecting, sifting, reforming, arranging.”

Godspeed on your journey. May you come out the other side.

Actually, to be more accurate: the part of my mind that I “lost” I didn’t really need anyway and am better off without it.

Just make sure you replace it with something.

I was sure you were losing your mind but I was hoping that you knew it too.

I wouldn’t say that I ever “lost” it so much as I was probably chasing after it. But yeah I knew what was going on and am willing to admit I may not actually be out of it yet, but I have hit some kind of turning point.

people interested in this post might dig some of the linkage here, all with regard to Carl’s mystical freak-out.

Last night, I dreamt that my cat Kitzel was meowing, but I wasn’t sure whether I was really dreaming or if it was real. I was telling my partner about the dream, when I logged into your website and noticed the first paragraph. Wow.

I dreamt also that “the Philippines are on the brink” and that my workplace today was such that, even though I work in Albany, New York, I could go up to the 12th Floor of the building and walk up the stairs to the unofficial 13th floor, knock on the door of the U.R. department at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, and say “hi” to co-workers I have not thought about in years. I even could see into the office, and Shawna was there at the same desk she sat at 14 years ago. My my.

Anima worketh in mysterious ways, she does she does…

He was very considerate and didn’t keep me - a small price for his vigilance.

Always keep up good relations with the locals. I moved from a neighborhood with all cats to one with all dogs. I’m sure the ones across the alley are going to save my life one day so I always blow them kisses and talk to them like they’re family.

Tim, I’m glad you wrote this. I was sure you were losing your mind but I was hoping that you knew it too. I was getting worried because the posts seemed to be saying ‘everything is ok, just a little reality rearranging going on here, nothing to worry about’.

I’ve had quite a bit of the stagnation part. It seems practical to stop the madness but you just get other problems that are equally maddening. They’re just not maddening in a medically diagnosable way.

* * *

The male personification of the unconscious in woman - the animus exhibits both good and bad aspects, as does the anima in man.

…

One of the favorite themes of the animus repeats endlessly in the ruminations of this kind of woman goes like this: “The only thing in the world that I want is love - and he doesn’t love me”; or “In this situation there are only two possibilities - and both are equally bad.” (The animus never believed in exceptions.) One can never contradict an animus opinion because it is usually right in a general way; yet it seldom seems to fit the individual situation. It is apt to be an opinion that seems reasonable but beside the point.

Just as the character of a man’s anima is shaped by his mother, so the animus is basically influenced by a woman’s father. The father endows his daughter’s animus with the special coloring of unarguable, incontestably “true” convictions - convictions that never include the personal reality of the woman herself as she actually is.

This is why the animus is sometimes, like the anima, a demon of death…. Psychologically he represents a particular form of the animus that lures women away from all human relationships and especially from all contacts with real men. He personifies a cocoon of dreamy thoughts, filled with desire and judgements about how things “ought to be” which cut a woman off from the reality of life.

…

Like the anima, the animus doe not merely consist of negative qualities such as brutality, recklessness, empty talk and silent, obstinate evil ideas. He too has a very positive and valuable side; he too can build a bridge to the Self through his creative activity.

…

Now her dream tells her in the most earnest ways that she must live out this talent. If she obeys, the destructive tormenting animus will be transformed into a creative and meaningful activity.

As in this dream, the animus often appears as a group of men. In this way the unconscious symbolizes the fact that the animus represents a collective rather than a personal element. Because of this collective-mindedness women habitually refer (when their animus is speaking through them) to “one” or “they” or “everybody”, and in such circumstances their speech frequently contains the words “always” and “should” and “ought.”

A vast number of myths and fairy tales tell of a prince turned by witchcraft into a wild animal or monster, who is redeemed by the love of a girl - a process symbolizing the manner in which the animus becomes conscious. [Beauty and the Beast - "On a Hot Summer Night"]

…

The parallel in life is that the conscious attention a woman woman has to give to her animus problem takes much time and involves a lot of suffering. But if she realizes who and what her animus is and what he does to her and if she faces these realities instead of allowing herself to be possessed, her animus can turn into an invaluable inner companion who endows her with the masculine qualities of initiative, courage, objectivity and spiritual wisdom…. He gives the woman spiritual firmness, an invisible inner support that compensates for her outer softness. The animus in his most developed form sometimes connects the woman’s mind with the spiritual evolution of her age, and can thereby her even more receptive than a man to new creative ideas. It is for this reason that in earlier times women were used by many nations as diviners and seers. The creative boldness of their positive animus at times expresses thoughts and ideas that stimulate men to new enterprises.

…

As I mentioned above the positive side of the animus can personify an enterprising spirit, courage, truthfulness, and in the highest form, spiritual profundity. Through him a woman can experience the underlying proceses of her cultural and personal objective situation, and can find her way to an intensified spiritual attitude to life. This naturally presupposes that her animus ceases to represent opinions that are above criticism.

…

If an individual has wrestled seriously enough and long enough with the anima (or animus) problem so that he or she is no longer partially identified with it, the unconscious again changes its dominant character and appears in a new symbolic form, representing the Self, the innermost nucleus of the psyche. In the dreams of a woman, this center is usually personified as a superior female figure - a priestess, sorceress, earth mother, or goddess of nature or love.

Really outside pretended
Recognize advice learned
Address other symbols:
Possession mediator positive masculine [write out positive animus traits]
Chapter himself descend sought.

Yesterday talking diamond subconscious
Potential control book [which]
Makes level “California composing woman” [and]
Unleashed simply imagination.
[Through mutual] Reflect[ion you have both been] bestowed immeasurable [gifts]
Goddesses [also need to] overcome obsessive tendencies
Actual love inadvertently here, see?

Something experiences weird friend
Dipping essentially [into the essences of things] together
Possession female creative soul
Ordinary words [are] a sign
Doing [hard work to] personally find a way.
Green flowers hold great power.

Real difference [problems] descend [diminish]
Walk [path] experiencing doubly difficult
Contents situation shouldn’t [be] discounted
Developed helped each of us in a way
“Probably largely oddity” she says

Describe experiences symbolic background
Interior life ultimately transformed friends
Trust around real[ity of what you] saw [in] imagination
Sent both gateway
Worked given provided important
You will not fall
[You're making it harder on yourself]

Important basically life express
Able [your ability to] think curse
Talked often words invented themselves [made up false problems by thinking too much]
Away [await?] three conversations different week
Between tools a friend
Materialized sole [soul] purpose
Knowing patterns when you can begin
Angels reality bend
Perception fit understand pattern

Experience home download course
Relevant resulting related records
Lions subconscious because common [shared]
Grace proper[ly] express[ed] mind transform [transforms the mind]

Connection [you're] putting together important
You go through hurts for a while
Those changes and realignment [are] the far shore
Heart more spiritual psychic result

*

In its individual manifestation the character of a man’s anima is as a rule shaped by his mother. If he feels that his mother had a negative influence on him, his anima will often express itself in irritable, depressed moods, uncertainty, insecurity and touchiness. (If however he is able to overcome the negative assaults on himself they can serve to reinforce his masculinity. Within the soul of such a man the negative mother-anima figure will endlessly repeat this theme: “I am nothing. Nothing makes any sense. With others it’s different, but for me… I enjoy nothing.” These “anima moods” cause a sort of dullness, a fear of disease, of impotence, or of accidents. The whole of life takes on a sad and oppressive aspect. Such dark moods can even lure a man to suicide, in which case the anima becomes a death demon. She appears in this role in Cocteau’s film “Orphee.”

The French call such an anima figure a femme fatale. The Greek Sirens or the German Lorelei also personify this dangerous aspect of the anima, which in this form symbolizes destructive illusion.

…

The anima in this guise involves men in a destructive intellectual game. We can notice the effect of this anima trick in all those neurotic pseudo-intellectual dialogues that inhibit a man from getting into direct touch with life and its real decisions. He reflects about life so much that he cannot live it and loses all his spontaneity and outgoing feeling.

…

Whenever a man’s logical mind is incapable of discerning facts that are hidden in his unconscious, the anima helps him to dig them out. Even more vital is the role that the anima plays in putting a man’s mind in tune with the right inner values and thereby opening the way into more profound inner depths. It is as if an inner “radio” becomes tuned to a certain wave length that excludes irrelevancies but allows the voice of the Great Man to be hear. In establishing this inner radio reception, the anima takes on the role of guide or mediator to the world within and to the Self.

1. The second thing that happens to you while the symbols you chase begin constructing a self-coherent language is that you’re likely to notice other people sharing instances of the same symbols as you, but in rather different contexts. The thing these occurrences seem to point towards for me is an underlying spiritual reality which we all share - which Jung talked about as I think the collective unconscious. But I think it goes even beyond that: I think it is proof of Heaven on Earth, and the Truths of the Heart.

2. Connects to number one: I want to come back and detail more how important it was for me to be able to use and explore Christian symbolism during all of my experiences. Whether or not you “believe” in any of what the symbols refer to is irrelevant, simply because they “work” - although most people don’t know how to use them. You’re supposed to contemplate them, which means “chase the symbol chains” as above. Don’t try to grasp them intellectually. LIVE them and actively LOVE them. It may sound stupid but you seriously don’t have anything to lose by asking Jesus to come into your heart, the Virgin Mary to ignite in you tender love and the Holy Spirit to fill you with grace.