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The following six short pieces have always resonated together...they remind me that we (mankind), in our hubris, think we know everything...but we don't - and what we don't know often has a hunger to eat us alive. Agnosticism is a faith itself.

The highest happiness of man . . . is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

We dance around in a ring and suppose.
But the secret sits in the middle and knows.

-Robert Frost
 

Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable.
But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops.

-H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
 

The most important thing we can know about a man is what he takes for granted

and the most elemental and important facts about a society are those that are seldom debated and generally regarded as settled.
-Louis Wirth (1897 - 1952)

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds is as something unfathomably mysterious,

thought begins.

-Albert Schweitzer (1875 - 1965)

Then I asked: "does a firm perswasion that a thing is so, make it so?"

He replied: "All poets believe that it does, & in ages of imagination this firm perswasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm perswasion of any thing."

-Part of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

By William Blake, 1790

Wayfarer, the only way is your footsteps,
there is no other.
Wayfarer, there is no way, y
ou make the way as you go.
As you go you make the way
and stopping to look behind,
you see the path that your feet will never travel again.
Wayfarer, there is no way -
only foam trails in the sea.
-Antonio Machado


Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt - marvellous error! -
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart
I said: Along which secret aqueduct
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt - marvellous error! -
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt - marvellous error! -
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt,
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt - marvellous error! -
That it was God I had
here inside my heart.
-Antonio Machado

Is my soul asleep?
Is my soul asleep?
Have those beehives that work
in the night stopped? And the water-
wheel of thought, is it
going around now, cups
empty, carrying only shadows?

No, my soul is not asleep.
It is awake, wide awake.
It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches,
its eyes wide open
far-off things, and listens
at the shores of the great silence.

-Antonio Machado



The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed.  Why do men now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

All is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

For all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things...

And though the last lights off the black west went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins

IMMORTALITY

by: Susan Mitchell

GE cannot reach me where the veils of God

Have shut me in,

For me the myriad births of stars and suns

Do but begin,

And here how fragrantly there blows to me

The holy breath,

Sweet from the flowers and stars and hearts of men.

From life and death.

We are not old, O heart, we are not old,

The breath that blows

The soul aflame is still a wandering wind

That comes and goes;

And the stirred heart with sudden raptured life

A moment glows.

A moment here--a bulrush's brown head

In the grey rain,

A moment there--a child drowned and a heart

Quickened with pain;

The name of Death, the blue deep heaven, the scent

Of the salt sea,

The spicy grass, the honey robbed

From the wild bee.

Awhile we walk the world on its wide roads

And narrow ways,

And they pass by, the countless shadowy troops

Of nights and days;

We know them not, O happy heart,

For you and I

Watch where within a slow dawn lightens up

Another sky.



THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US

by: William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

HE world is too much with us: late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. -- Great God! I'd rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: (from Ode. Intimations of Immortality)

By William Wordsworth

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

     Hath had elsewhere its setting,

          And cometh from afar:

     Not in entire forgetfulness,

     And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

     From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

     Upon the growing Boy,

But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,

     He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east

     Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,

     And by the vision splendid

     Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

 

The arch of sky and mightiness of storms

Have moved the spirit within me,

Till I am carried away

Trembling with joy.

-Uvavnuk, Inuit shaman woman

"The great sea has set me in motion set me adrift,
Moving me as a the weed moves in a river
the arch of sky and mightiness of storms
have moved the spirit within me till I am carried away
trembling with joy"

-Uvavnuk, Netsilik Inuit shaman

my first poem put out to the public - sligthtly tweaked - based on a dream I had:

Psyche's Tides

Psyche's energy washes in & out

Tugged & pulled by the gravity of big things in the sky

Tides rising high on the shore of consciousness

Ebbing back to the ocean

Leaving fishy critters and surfers flopping around on the high water mark

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider --
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give -- yes or no, or maybe --
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
-William Stafford


The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
-Derek Walcott


When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,
and when we escape like squirrels turning in the
cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves.

Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,
we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like
burnt paper.
-D. H. Lawrence



The Holy Longing
Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
Because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love making
sweeps you forward.

Distance does not make you falter
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.
-Goethe


We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.
-The Tao Te Ching



The Heart of Hercules
Lying under the stars in the summer night
Late while the autumn constellations climb the sky
as the cluster of Hercules falls down the west
I put the telescope by......
my body is asleep only my eyes and brain are awake
the stars stand around me like gold eyes
I can no longer tell where I begin and leave off
the faint breeze in the dark pines and the
invisible grass
the tipping earth
the swarming stars have an eye that sees itself.
-Kenneth Rexroth



Some Questions You Might Ask
Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of an owl?
Who has it, and who doesn't?
I keep looking around me.
The face of the moose is as sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.
Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to think of it, what about maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?
What about the grass?
-Mary Oliver


Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love
what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile, the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across landscapes,
over the prairies and deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting---
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
-Mary Oliver



A Sleep of Prisoners
The human heart can go the lengths of God
Cold and dark we may be......
But this is no winter now.
The frozen misery of centuries cracks, begins to thaw.
The thunder is the thunder of the flows, the thaw, the flood, the upstart spring.
Thank God our time is now.
When wrong comes up to face us everywhere, never to leave us.
The longest stride of soul folk ever took.
Affairs are now soul sized, the enterprise is exploration into God.
But what are you waiting for?
It takes so many thousand years to wake.
But will you wake? For pity's sake.
-Christopher Frye



Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We were 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 others permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
-Nelson Mandela-1994 Inaugural Speech


 

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream-and not make dreams your master;

If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And-which is more-you'll be a Man, my son!
- Rudyard Kipling 



 

Politics

'In our time the destiny of man presents its meanings in political terms.' -Thomas Mann

How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has both read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms.
- William Butler Yeats 



 

Starlight

My father stands in the warm evening
on the porch of my first house.
I am four years old and growing tired.
I see his head among the stars,
the glow of his cigarette, redder
than the summer moon riding
low over the old neighborhood. We
are alone, and he asks me if I am happy.
"Are you happy?" I cannot answer
I do not really understand the word,
and the voice, my father's voice, is not
his voice, but somehow thick and choked,
a voice I have not heard before, but
heard often since. He bends and passes
a thumb beneath each of my eyes.
The cigarette is gone, but I can smell
the tiredness that hangs on his breath.
He has found nothing, and he smiles
and holds my head with both his hands.
Then he lifts me to his shoulder,
and now I too am there among the stars,
as tall as he. Are you happy? I say.
He nods in answer, Yes! oh yes! oh yes!
And in that new voice he says nothing,
holding my head tight against his head,
his eyes closed up against the starlight,
as though those tiny blinking eyes
of light might find a tall, gaunt child
holding his child against the promises
of autumn, until the boy slept
never to waken in that world again.
- Philip Levine


Whatever you can do,
or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius,
power and magic in it.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wow, great question to stimulate those memories! Kudos to the asker...
Um, I recall with fondness those little Apollo/Gemini toy spaceships I had in the 1960's. I was 5-6 years old and was just fascinated with the space program. The toy rocketships were maybe 10 inches long, had multiple rocket stages and everything! I remember the fantasies of being an astronaut and the kindergarten play space capsule we had in the class room...oh, thanks for asking!

I'm the founder of a new local club under the same title and my friends at Pacifica Graduate Institure Yahoo group suggested starting a new blog. They even suggested the title!

'Well,' I said, 'I'm no web-expert and pretty busy with my family, including pterodactyl-two year-old son, T.J., so have patience if you're looking to me to do it...could take a while...but I'll give it a go!'

I  see the blog as being a place where any 'Friend of Jung' - or anyone interested in the world of Soul - can join in a discussion of the human psyche.
So, here's my first entry and it reflects what we did at our meeting:

...last night's meeting was nice. 6 peeps, 2 1/2 hours long:

We started by handing out a little cheat sheet of Jungian terms like anima & animus, archetypes & the collective unconscious; the ego, persona, shadow, Self, personality types/typology, etc.
We distributed brochures introducing the affordable Centerpoint series of courses - from our club brochure:

The program uses workbooks and audio CD's in small interactive study groups with a curriculum drawn from Jung's prolific writings, plus interviews and articles representing international leaders in the field of analytical psychology. This is a wonderful way to familiarize yourself with the theory and practice of Jung's teachings leading to self-growth and individuation. No prerequisites necessary - Participation not mandatory. Visit www.centerpointec.com for details.

After settling in and getting acquainted, we got on the subject of 'Soul' going around the room with our thoughts & reflections on it... I read from Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dali Lama (1939- ):

I call the light and high aspects of my being spirit and the dark and heavy aspects soul.

Soul is at home in the deep, shaded valleys.

Heavy torpid flowers saturated with black grow there.

The rivers flow like warm syrup. They empty into huge oceans of soul.

Spirit is a land of high white peaks and glittering jewel-like lakes and flowers.

Life is sparse and sounds travel great distances.

There is soul music, soul food, and soul love...

People need to climb the mountain not simple because it is there

But because the soulful divinity needs to be mated with the spirit.

Afterwards, someone made the poignant remark: ‘it is all that and none of that...'
As Heraclitus said, ‘If you went in search of it, you would not find the boundaries of the soul, though you traveled every road-so deep is its measure...'

Later, we watched an cool interview on video of James Hollis, Jungian Analyst & prolific writer, with the hostess of the ‘Living Smart' series at Houston PBS. This was in anticipation of his lecture/workshop in a couple weeks down south in San Diego, CA.

Lastly, we finished talking about two words/concepts, Auseinandersetzung & Enantiodromia:

From The Middle Passage by Hollis (p.108):

Jung employed one of those portmanteau German words, Auseinandersetzung, to describe the necessary dialog with ourselves. One might translate the concept as "setting one thing out over against the other," figuratively depicting a confrontation or dialectic.

From Wikipedia:

Enantiodromia is a concept introduced by psychiatrist Carl Jung where the superabundance of any force inevitably produces its opposite. It is equivalent to the principle of equilibrium in the natural world, in that any extreme is opposed by the system in order to restore balance.

Jung used it particularly to refer to the unconscious acting against the wishes of the conscious mind. ("Aspects of the Masculine", chapter 7, paragraph 294).

Enantiodromia. Literally, "running counter to," referring to the emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time. This characteristic phenomenon practically always occurs when an extreme, one-sided tendency dominates conscious life; in time an equally powerful counterposition is built up, which first inhibits the conscious performance and subsequently breaks through the conscious control. [Definitions," ibid., par. 709.]

Enantiodromia is a Greek term first implied by the writings of Heraclitus. Jung's use of it many centuries later is not by far the first use of the concept. In modern culture, for example, it has been applied to subject of the film "The Lives of Others", to show how one devoted to a fascist regime breaks through his loyalty and emerges a humanist.

Undoubtedly, two very fascinating concepts with some intriguing connections...

That's all for now...

Take care!

Andy in Ventura

founder, Ventura Friends of Jung - Soul Psychology Club