The bad part of going crazy is that it’s so good.

By that I mean that it’s fun to have everything in the world suddenly start communicating with you meaningfully and vying for your attention. As hard as it ever gets to sort through all of it, it’s an absolutely stunning experience of being alive. At that point though, when everything has a face and everything communicates with you and everyone says that nothing has a face and nothing communicates with you, well things get hairy. Faces get covered with hair and nod off to sleep.

By that I mean that I am tired of drinking and carrying on. You reach a point where it becomes more difficult not to change than to just throw yourself off the cliff into the cold dark waters below. Drinking just becomes a matter of swimming in your own stagnant pool. You don’t get anywhere with it. And it ruins your “liver” - the part of you that makes you “live.” No coincidence, there. Words don’t lie; it’s just us people who use them to.

Last night I dreamt I was in a tattoo parlour. A female tattoo artist appeared with a scar tattooed on her face. The sight of it made me seriously consider getting a scar tattooed on my face as well. It was a compulsion. I felt like I had to do it, but overcame the desire. Desire isn’t even the right word though. I was right when I said compulsion. If we take the Jungian “anima” theory at “face value” (can’t help but highlight my own delicious wordplay!), then this woman would once again indicate my own reflected female sole soul essence. Which would explain the great compulsion I felt to acquire a matching mark upon my face as her: because she is my reflection, and I hers. We have a reciprocal relationship: what befalls one of us befalls the other.

So does that mean I have the mark upon me then already? Is it actually a tattoo or is it a real scar? Hers started above her left eye, presumably passing through it downward and streaking across her cheek, like tears etched upon the point of a sword. What does this indicate? The ability to see into two worlds based on wounds intentionally taken up or self-inflicted. What then are those two worlds? The above and below. The inner and the outer. The penetration of the knife cutting through to the world beneath.

A dim circle.
The hole in the whole of the ocean.
Castles evergreen (in anticipation)
*Remarkable coaching opportunity*
reach outward, home
ox cart, themselves

Those are phrases and images which appeared in my expansion upon these dream images. The other dream I remember from last night was that I was at the White House - which is a fairly important symbol signal, I suppose. The palace of the King. The place of the Skull. Golgotha. I think Jimmy Carter may have been there or referenced somehow, which means another one of the pictures I posted recently was sucked up into the faculties of the subconscious mind. I think this is a really key point in this sort of alchemical work: you must be adequately seeding yourself with numinous imagery language and symbols. Your subconscious mind strives towards it endlessly. It feeds off of it and generates energy from these things, which it then transmits back to you in little usable packets. Symbols are tools and generators.

Skeletons have been coming up a lot lately. Has anybody else noticed? Pandora is about to give us her last gift.

Even more important though was that I was in a library in the White House. But there was an ornate cage separating myself from the books, as some of them were very old and valuable, I suppose. I recognized some books on alchemy on the shelf though and took it upon myself to squeeze into the cage and look at them and climb out before Jimmy Carter or anyone else could notice.

So in general I suppose that’s fairly positive: eating from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. I have some great quotes about just that I pulled from Edward Edinger’s Ego And Archetype earlier. These quotes sum up a lot of things for me and well I don’t need to go into the rest of it. They can do their own work without my intruding. If they aren’t read they will at least be available within the collective unconscioous aura we share.

One more thing before I delve into quotes right now: what’s the deal with “fire” lately? It’s so “hot right now.”

Okay this is a great quote about one of Edinger’s clients who was extremely creative within his own mind but failed to bring it into fruition in the real world, which was causing him anxiety attacks.

He was a talented man filled with creative ideas and inspirations. He could have the most amazing dreams, complete plays down to the last detail of costume and music, exit and entrance; but he could never get himself to do the hard work of putting them down on paper. It seemed as though the dream itself was adequate reality, as though just the fact that he could have such magnificent compositions in fantasy were sufficient reality to relieve him of any sense of obligation to realize them in fact. Such an attitude is an identification with the original unconscious wholeness, the provisional life, which avoids the hard work required to make the potential actual. Although he thought he wanted to write, fantasies were unconsciously considered sufficient in themselves. Such a person is afraid to make the commitment required to create something real. He would lose the security of anonymity and expose himself to judgement by being something definite. This amounts to living in the “Garden of Eden” state and not daring to eat of the fruit of consciousness.

So on target. Following up later, he writes:

He came to realize that his anxiety was not a meaningless symptom but a danger signal trying to warn him that his prolonged residence in the Garden of Eden might have fatal psychological consequences. As the dream suggested, it was time to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and accept the inevitable consequences of being a conscious individual… The paradise state, too long persisted in, becomes a prison; and expulsion is then no longer experienced as undesirable but as a release.

And now for your daily pictures. Enjoy!