Chapter 2
SUPPRESSED IDENTITY
Darkness, Darkness
Mortificatio, Nigredo & Shadow;
The Wasteland of Despair and Delusion

Our beliefs about our own thoughts and decisions are
the product of self-interpretation and are often mistaken.
https://aeon.co/ideas/whatever-you-think-you-don-t-necessarily-know-your-own-mind

In the renewed world you can have no outer possessions,
unless you create them out of yourselves.
You can enter only into your own mysteries.
The spirit of the depths has other things to teach you than me.
I only have to bring you tidings of the new God and
of the ceremonies and mysteries of his service.
But this is the way. It is the gate to darkness.
~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, "Draft" Footnote 163, Page 246

If you get rid of qualities[of the Shadow] you don’t like by denying them, you become more and more unaware of what you are, you declare yourself more and more non-existent, and your devils will grow fatter and fatter.
~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis, Page 53.

 When you don’t acknowledge that you have such qualities [The Shadow], you are simply feeding the devils. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis, Page 53.

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/02/a-new-way-to-understand-and-treat-depression.html

Youthful longing for the world and for life, for the attainment of high hopes and distant goals, is life's obvious teleological urge which at once changes into fear of life, neurotic resistances, depressions, and phobias if at some point it remains caught in the past, or shrinks from risks without which the unseen goal cannot be attained. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 406.

Suffering that is not understood is hard to bear, while on the other hand it is often astounding to see how much a person can endure when he understands the why and the wherefore. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1578

Whenever contents of the collective unconscious become activated, they have a disturbing effect on the conscious mind, and contusion ensues. If the activation is due to the collapse of the individual's hopes and expectations, there is a danger that the collective unconscious may take the place of reality. This state would be pathological. If, on the other hand, the activation is the result of psychological processes in the unconscious of the people, the individual may feel threatened or at any rate disoriented, but the resultant state is not pathological, at least so far as the individual is concerned. Nevertheless, the mental state of the people as a whole might well be compared to a psychosis.
"The Psychological Foundation for the Belief in Spirits (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.595

The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14
 
To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light. Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle.
"Good and Evil in Analytical Psychology" (1959). In CW 10. Civilization in Transition. P.872

In reality, the acceptance of the shadow-side of human nature verges on the impossible. Consider for a moment what it means to grant the right of existence to what is unreasonable, senseless, and evil! Yet it is just this that the modern man insists upon. He wants to live with every side of himself-to know what he is. That is why he casts history aside. He wants to break with tradition so that he can experiment with his life and determine what value and meaning things have in themselves, apart from traditional resuppositions.
"Psychotherapist or the Clergy" (1932).
In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.528


“We have been conditioned to fear the shadow side of life and the shadow side of ourselves. When we catch ourselves thinking a dark thought or acting out in a behavior that we feel is unacceptable, we run, just like a groundhog, back into our hole and hide, hoping, praying, it will disappear before we venture out again. Why do we do this? Because we are afraid that no matter how hard we try, we will never be able to escape from this part of ourselves. And although ignoring or repressing our dark side is the norm, the sobering truth is that running from the shadow only intensifies its power. Denying it only leads to more pain, suffering, regret, and resignation. If we fail to take responsibility and extract the wisdom that has been hidden beneath the surface of our conscious minds, the shadow will take charge, and instead of us being able to have control over it, the shadow winds up having control over us, triggering the shadow effect. Our dark side then starts making our decisions for us, stripping us of our right to make conscious choices whether it’s what food we will eat, how much money we will spend, or what addiction we will succumb to. Our shadow incites us to act out in ways we never imagined we could and to waste our vital energy on bad habits and repetitive behaviors.” --Deepak Chopra

If a man's life consists half of happiness and half of unhappiness, this is probably the optimum that can be reached, and it remains forever an unresolved question whether suffering is educative or demoralizing. ~Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 248.

When Your Tree Is a Trap

Shortly before this experience I had written down a fantasy of my soul having flown away from me. This was a significant event: the soul, the anima, establishes the relationship to the unconscious. In a certain sense this is also a relationship to the collectivity of the certain sense this is also a relationship to the collectivity of the dead; for the unconscious corresponds to the mythic land of the dead, the land of the ancestors. If, therefore, one has a fantasy of the soul vanishing, this means that it has withdrawn into the unconscious or into the land of the dead. There it produces a mysterious animation and gives visible form to the ancestral traces, the collective contents. Like a medium, it gives the dead a chance to manifest themselves. Therefore, soon after the disappearance of my soul the "dead" appeared to me, and the result was the Septem Sermones. This is an example of what is called "loss of soul"--a phenomenon encountered quite frequently among primitives. From that time on, the dead have become ever more distinct for me as the voices of the Unanswered, Unresolved, and Unredeemed; for since the questions and demands which my destiny required me to answer did not come to me from outside. --Jung, MDR

Through depression we enter depths and in depths find soul. It moistens the dry soul, and dries the wet, It brings refuge, limitations, focus, gravity, weight and humble powerlessness. It reminds us of death. The true revolution begins in the individual who can be true to his own depression (Hillman 1977, pp. 98-9)

You see, all that a man does, whatever he attempts, means his individuation, it is an accomplishment, a fulfillment of his possibilities; and one of his foremost possibilities is the attainment of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 759

When you see your matter going black, rejoice, you are at the beginning of the work.
-- Rosarium Philosophorum

Nigredo is the dark state, and is considered the most difficult and negative operation of the alchemical process.  It is the shadow of the sun.  Putrefactio, and Mortificatio are two different aspects of the Nigredo.  Putreficatio means rotting, and Mortificatio means killing, hence it is associated with death.  In dreams figures like the dismembered Osiris usher in a rebirth.  In all religions associated with agricultural renewal, the rotting and death comes first.  The dead king may be buried in the fields to promote furtility.


Psychotherapy and Alchemy VI. Mortificatio — Edward F. Edinger
… the alchemical opus has three stages: nigredo, albedo, and rubedo: the blackening, the whitening, and the reddening. This paper is concerned with the first of these, the nigredo, or blackening, which belongs to the operation called mortificatio.

The two terms, “mortificatio” and “putrefactio,” are overlapping ones and refer to different aspects of the same operation. Mortificatio has no chemical reference at all. Literally it means “killing” and hence will refer to the experience of death. As used in religious asceticism it means “subjection of the passions and appetites by penance, abstinence, or painful severities inflicted on the body.” (Webster) To describe a chemical process as mortificatio is a complete projection of a psychological image. …

"A subjective man can have no general concept of good and evil. For a subjective man evil is everything that is opposed to his desires or interests or to his conception of good. One may say that evil does not exist for subjective man at all, that there exist only different conceptions of good. Nobody ever does anything deliberately in the interests of evil, for the sake of evil. Everybody acts in the interests of good, as he understands it. But everybody understands it in a different way. Consequently men drown, slay, and kill one another in the interests of good." ~ G.I. Gurdjieff.

Experiencing the Mortificatio:
Jung on Grief, Grieving and Mourning

No new life can arise, say the alchemists, without the death of the old. They liken the art to the work of the sower, who buries the grain in the earth: it dies only to waken to new life. -- Jung (1946)[1]

… When a person dies, the feelings and emotions that bound his relatives to him lose their application to reality and sink into the unconscious, where they active a collective content that has a deleterious effect on consciousness…. a persistent attachment to the dead makes life seem less worth living, and may even be the cause of psychic illnesses. The harmful effect shows itself in the form of loss of libido, depression, and physical debility…. -- Jung (1920)[2]

… thinking which is a mere equation,… is the working of the intellect. But besides that there is a thinking in primordial images, in symbols which are… inborn in him from the earliest times, and, eternally living, outlasting all generations, still make up the groundwork of the human psyche. It is only possible to live the fullest life when we are in harmony with these symbols; wisdom is a return to them. … One of these primordial thoughts is the idea of life after death. … The ancient athanasias pharmakon, the medicine of immortality, is more profound and meaningful than we supposed. --Jung (1930)[3]

Mortificatiois experienced as defeat and failure. Needless to say, one rarely chooses such an experience. It is usually imposed by life, either from within or from without…. -- Edinger (1985)[4]

Mourning is caused by the loss of an object or person who was carrying an important projected value. In order to withdraw projections and assimilate their content into one’s own personality it is necessary to experience the loss of the projection as a prelude to rediscovering the content or value within. Therefore, mourners are fortunate because they are involved in a growth process. They will be comforted when the lost projected value has been recovered within the psyche.  --Edinger (1992)[5]

Meanings and Etymologies
            “Grief” and its verb “grieve” come from the Latin gravis, “heavy, weighty” and its verbal form, gravare, “to burden or cause to grieve.”[6] When we grieve we are burdened, weighed down with sorrow and a sense of loss. “Mourn” has its origins in the Old English murnan, “to mourn, to be anxious.”[7] When we mourn we feel anxiety in the sense of angst,[8] anguish, the foreclosure of possibilities, the loss of the future we assumed we had with friend or family member.            

            Some psychologists claim that grief is not the same as mourning: Grief is passive, while mourning is active.[9] We grieve, feeling burdened inwardly. We mourn, manifesting a wide range of reactions in outer life, e.g. waves of forgetfulness, sadness, loneliness, regret, “magical thinking” (that we might turn back the clock or the calendar) and inconsolability, along with emotional lability, surprising responses to life situations, the upsurge of old memories we thought we had let go of long ago, even concern that we might be losing our minds.[10]

             All of these inward feelings and outer forms of mourning are aspects of a key archetype we all experience repeatedly in life—what the medieval alchemists called the mortificatio.[11]What’s meant by “archetype” and “mortificatio”? As the concept of “archetype” and the specific archetype related to grief and mourning are central to our topic, we must discuss them in some depth.

Putrefactio conflates two Latin words: puter and facere, lit. “to make something rotten or putrid.”[20] When we are experiencing the archetype of the putrefactio we often have dreams of overflowing toilets, or toilets out of order, walking through piles of feces or rotten messes[21]—not pleasant images. Something in life has rotted, lost its energy, needs to be thrown out. The most vivid example in domestic life is the necessary periodic cleaning-out of the refrigerator, but putrefactio situations occur in less tangible forms also, in life situations that require us to take action to clean out old attitudes, beliefs that are sapping our energy, or relationships that have lost their vitality.            
Closely connected to putrefactio situations is the mortificatio. The Latin means literally “to make (facere) a death (mors, mortis).”[22] Rarely do we “make” death: It befalls us. Nature does it, taking away friends, family, and, eventually, our own lives.[23] The mortificatio is the most negative of the alchemical “operations,” and the most painful to experience. Jung and his followers, however, recognize that the mortificatio is also an essential part of the opus, or work of life, the phase that is prior to rebirth, a time of life that is full of torment, to be sure, but at the same time contains a “secret happiness”[24] lying in the unconscious.
http://jungiancenter.org/essay/experiencing-mortificatio-jung-grief-grieving-and-mourning

FERMENTATION - MORTIFICATION - PUTREFACTION
Putrefactio and mortificatio usually refer to two different aspects of the same stage in the alchemical process and are both connected to death. Fermentation is often confused here too, so let's discuss all three.  Putrefactio and mortificatio are not considered alchemical processes but rather the inevitable result of various operations on substances which are deemed necessary for transformation to occur. Mortificatio is represented as a form of torture or
mutilation, as in the Passion of Christ and the death and mutilation of Osiris and is a feeling we all have experienced more than once in our lives.

Decapitation, another form of separation, is a mortificatio which signals that the ego must be separated from the archetypal psyche in order to transcend. We must separate the ego from the collective unconscious, from the energies that initially gave it form, and learn to discriminate within non-duality, without projecting or choosing one side over another.

Edward F. Edinger describes mortificatio of the king or sun at the archetypal level as “the death and transformation of a collective dominant or ruling principle.”  Here is where we must slay our dragons and look for what can redeem us.  The image of God, soul, self needs to be connected back to the ego consciousness before we can reach any wholeness.  

Fermentation always implies a transformation that occurs with the introduction of another substance, such as the organic materials inherent in putrefaction.  Every time we endure any of these three psychological states, we are in a nigredo, usually enduring loss of psychic energy, the complete deflation of the ego, feeling souless, in a state of spiritual death.
The three mental states -mortification, putrefaction and fermentation-  dark stages of the soul - provide the seeds for rebirth and transformational growth.

The shadow can represent the whole of the unconscious – that is both personal and archetypal contents – or just the personal material which was in the background and not recognised, not wanted.
~E.A. Bennet, Conversations with Jung, Page 55

Very often certain apparently impossible intentions of the shadow are mere threats due to an unwillingness on the part of the ego to enter upon a serious consideration of the shadow. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 233-235

Either you begin your life with the shadow (putting the wrong foot forward) and later on you continue with your real personality, or vice versa. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 301-302

Death is a faithful companion of life and follows it like its shadow. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 34.

When you don’t acknowledge that you have such qualities [The Shadow], you are simply feeding the devils. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis, Page 53.

If you get rid of qualities[of the Shadow] you don’t like by denying them, you become more and more unaware of what you are, you declare yourself more and more non-existent, and your devils will grow fatter and fatter. ~Carl Jung, Dream
Analysis, Page 53.

Hence the optimistic assumption of psychotherapy that conscious realization accentuates the good more than the overshadowing evil. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 253-254.

Assimilation of the shadow gives a man body, so to speak; the animal sphere of instinct, as well as the primitive or archaic psyche, emerge into the zone of consciousness and can no longer be repressed by fictions and illusions. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 452

The shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants to live with it in some form. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 44.

The anima and animus have tremendous influence because we leave the shadow to them. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis, Page 53.

The fact is that if one tries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect, the shadow descends into hell and becomes the devil. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 569.

To be fully aware of the shadow would be an almost superhuman task, but we can reach a certain optimum of consciousness; we should be aware to a much higher degree than we are now. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 237.

We have to discover our shadow. Otherwise we are driven into a world war in order to see what beasts we are. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 235

So the Self is part of the collective unconscious, but it is not the collective unconscious; it is that unit which apparently comes from the union of the ego and the shadow. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 754

So whatever comes from behind comes from the shadow, from the darkness of the unconscious, and because you have no eyes there, and because you wear no neck amulet to ward off evil influences, that thing gets at you, possesses and obsesses you. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1265.

What is light without shadow? What is high without low? You deprive the deity of its omnipotence and its universality by depriving it of the dark quality of the world. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 967

Our shadow is the last thing that has to be put on top of everything, and that is the thing we cannot swallow; we can swallow anything else, but not our own shadow because it makes us doubt our good qualities. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1090.

Where is a height without depth, and how can there be light that throws no shadow? There is no good that is not opposed by evil. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 271.

The son became a thief, and the daughter a prostitute. Because the father would not take on his shadow, his share in the imperfection of human nature, his children were compelled to live out the dark side which he had ignored. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Pages 156-163

We can speak of the conscious ego as the subjective personality, and of the shadow self as the objective personality. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 139

The serpent leads the psychological movement apparently astray into the kingdom of shadows, dead and wrong images, but also into the earth, into concretization. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 102

Inasmuch as the serpent leads into the shadows, it has the function of the anima; it leads you into the depths, it connects the above and the below. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 102

A man who is possesses by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps. ~Carl Jung, CW 9.1, Para 222

One cannot avoid the shadow unless one remains neurotic, and as long as one is neurotic one has omitted the shadow. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 544-546

The shadow is the block which separates us most effectively from the divine voice. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 544-546

Therefore Elihu in spite of his fundamental truth belongs to those foolish Jungians, who, as you suggest, avoid the shadow and make for the archetypes, i.e., the "divine equivalents," which by the way are nothing but escape camouflage according to the personalistic theory. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 544-546

If God is only good, everything is good. There is not a shadow anywhere. Evil just would not exist, even man would be good and could not produce anything evil. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 518-519

Recognizing the shadow is what I call the apprentice piece, but making out with the anima is the masterpiece which not many can bring off. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 481

It is equally obvious that every insight into what I have called the "shadow" is a step along the road of individuation without one's being obliged to call this an individuation process. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 468-469

Therefore Elihu in spite of his fundamental truth belongs to those foolish Jungians, who, as you suggest, avoid the shadow and make for the archetypes, i.e., the "divine equivalents," which by the way are nothing but escape camouflage according to the personalistic theory. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 544-546

Just as a person refuses to recognize his own shadow side, so, but all the more strongly, he hates recognizing the shadow side of the nation behind which he is so fond of concealing himself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 430-433

But he [Rilke] doesn't have what it takes to make a man complete: body, weight, shadow. His high ethos, his capacity for abnegation, and perhaps also his physical frailty naturally led him towards a goal of completeness, but not of perfection. Perfection, it seems to me, would have broken him. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 381-382.

Even the saints cast a shadow. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 253-254.

There is need of people knowing about their shadow, because there must be somebody who does not project. They ought to be in a visible position where they would be expected to project and unexpectedly they do not project! They can thus set a visible example which would not be seen if they were invisible. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 163-174

When Christ withstood Satan's temptation, that was the fatal moment when the shadow was cut off. Yet it had to be cut off in order to enable man to become morally conscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 163-174

But becoming Man, he becomes at the same time a definite being, which is this and not that. Thus the very first thing Christ must do is to sever himself from his shadow and call it the devil (sorry, but the Gnostics of Irenaeus already knew it!). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 133-138

As a matter of fact, our society has not even begun to face its shadow or to develop those Christian virtues so badly needed in dealing with the powers of darkness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 133-138

Our society cannot afford the luxury of cutting itself loose from the imitatio Christi, even if it should know that the conflict with the shadow, i.e., Christ versus Satan, is only the first step on the way to the far-away goal of the unity of the self in God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 133-138

As a rule the shadow appears only in the singular. If it occasionally appears as a duality this is, so to speak, a "seeing double": a conscious and an unconscious half, one figure above the horizon, the other below. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 116-117.

It is indeed no small matter to know one's own guilt and one's own evil, and there is certainly nothing to be gained by losing sight of one's shadow. When we are conscious of our guilt we are in a more favorable position - we can at least hope to change and improve ourselves. ~Carl Jung, CW X, Para 440.

The darkness which clings to every personality is the door into the unconscious and the gateway of dreams, from which those two twilight figures, the shadow and the anima, step into our nightly visions or, remaining invisible, take possession of our ego-consciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 222.

When sacrifice is demanded it frequently implies the acceptance of our shadow- side. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

The Bible says, "Whosoever shall say "Racha" to his brother is guilty of hellfire." If we substitute "shadow" for "brother" and implicate the dark brother within, we open out this biblical word into new perspectives. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

"What ye have done to the least of your brethren ye have done unto me." The least of me is my inferior function which represents my shadow- side.
~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

Christ himself associated with tax collectors and whores and accepted the thief crucified beside him. “I am the least of my brethren and my own shadow.”
~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 13.

This man [Jung] did in fact accept the shadow and. . . this acceptance brought problems and tensions but also aliveness, reality, integrity, and depth of being. ~Elizabeth Howes, J.E.T., Page 120.

My shadow is indeed so huge that I could not possibly overlook it in the plan of my life; in fact I had to see it as an essential part of my personality and accept the consequences of this realization, and take responsibility for them.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 276-277.

That the imitation of Christ creates a corresponding shadow in the unconscious hardly needs demonstrating. The fact that John had visions at all is evidence of an unusual tension between conscious and unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Par 717.

That the imitation of Christ creates a corresponding shadow in the unconscious hardly needs demonstrating. The fact that John had visions at all is evidence of an unusual tension between conscious and unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Par 717.

If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Par 423.

The ancients always thought of coming events as having shadows cast in front of them. Here we have an animal killed, a mythological animal in fact—that is, instinct. ~Carl Jung, Introduction to Analytical Psychology, Page 153.

A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps. Whenever possible, he prefers to make an unfavorable impression on others. . . ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 222f.

In this way things repressed and forgotten come back again. This is a gain in itself, though often a painful one, for the inferior and even the worthless belongs to me as my shadow and gives me substance and mass. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 59.

How can I be substantial without casting a shadow? I must have a dark side too if I am to be whole; and by becoming conscious of my shadow I remember once more that I am a human being like any other. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 59.

First and foremost, however, it is not always possible to bring the patients close enough to the unconscious for them to perceive the shadows. On the contrary, many of them and for the most part complicated, highly conscious persons are so firmly anchored in consciousness that nothing can pry them loose.
~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 60.

After all, the essential thing is not the shadow but the body which casts it.
~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 64.

Shadow pertains to light as evil to good, and vice versa.
~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 64.

For, if the unconscious is held to be nothing more than a receptacle for all the evil shadow-things in human nature, including deposits of primeval slime, we really do not see why we should linger longer than necessary on the edge of this swamp into which we once fell. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 67.

If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 423.

Depression is not necessarily pathological. It often foreshadows a renewal of the personality or a burst of creative activity. There are moments in human life when a new page is turned. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, par. 373.

Nobody who finds himself on the road to wholeness can escape that characteristic suspension which is the meaning of crucifixion. For he will infallibly run into things that thwart and "cross" him: first, the thing he has no wish to be (the shadow); second, the thing he is not (the "other," the individual reality of the "You"); and third, his psychic non-ego (the collective unconscious).
~Carl Jung, CW 16, par. 470.

Affects occur usually where adaptation is weakest, and at the same time they reveal the reason for its weakness, namely a certain degree of inferiority and the existence of a lower level of personality. ~Carl Jung, "The Shadow," Aion, CW 9ii, par. 15.

There are people indeed who always project the blame, but I hold this to be incorrect! The fruit comes to him from the mother, through the friend, the shadow; this means that if he goes out into the world with his shadow, fruit will come to him. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XII, 1Feb1935, Pages 180

There are, it is true, cases of people who are living below their own value where the shadow is the superior instead of the inferior part of the personality. Such people are apparently very modest but there is a lot of cunning in their modesty. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 113.

As we are considering man's psyche, the ego in the conscious and the shadow in the unconscious are both masculine but on the lower floor it is different. There man meets his other side which is feminine. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 114.

You can protect your anima by Yoga exercises which only procure a conscious thrill, but you can protect her by catching the unconscious contents that well up from the depths of yourself. Try to see your fantasies are, no matter how disreputable they seem to be; that is your blackness, your shadow that ought to be swallowed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 95-97.

A point exists at about the thirty-fifth year when things begin to change; it is the first moment of the shadow side of life, of the going down to death. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 223.

It does not seem exactly probable to me that when Christ cuts off his shadow this is an immediate visionary experience, but chiefly a philosophical idea very drastically expressed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 553-554.

Seventy or eighty per cent of the population today belong to the middle ages, so that very few people are really adapted to this year 1934, and of those few the majority have forgotten their shadows which trail behind their well-adapted personas! ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 68.

My consciousness is like an eye that penetrates to the most distant spaces, yet it is the psychic non-ego that fills them with non-spatial images. And these images are not pale shadows, but tremendously powerful psychic factors. . . .
~Carl Jung, Freud and Psychoanalysis, CW 4, pp. 331 f.

If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 423.

With a little self-criticism one can see through the shadow-so far as its nature is personal. But when it appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus. In other words, it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil.
~Carl Jung; CW 17; The Shadow; Page 338; par. 19.

Taking it in its deepest sense, the shadow is the invisible saurian tail that man still drags behind him. Carefully amputated, it becomes the healing serpent of the mysteries. Only monkeys parade with it.
~Carl Jung; The Integration of the Personality.

Through the Christ crucified between the two thieves, man gradually attained knowledge of his shadow and its duality. This duality had already been anticipated by the double meaning of the serpent. Just as the serpent stands for the power that heals as well as corrupts, so one of the thieves is destined upwards, the other downwards, and so likewise the shadow is on one side regrettable and reprehensible weakness, on the other side healthy instinctively and the prerequisite for higher consciousness. ~Carl Jung; Aion; Page 255; Para 402.

Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. ~Carl Jung; The Philosophical Tree; CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335

This meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one’s own shadow. The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is. ~Carl Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, vol. 9, pt. 1 p. 21

The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge. Carl Jung; Aion; CW 9; Part II; Page 14.

It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of a few little weaknesses and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism. The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself. But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster's body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost. Having a dark suspicion of these grim possibilities, man turns a blind eye to the shadow-side of human nature. Blindly he strives against the salutary dogma of original sin, which is yet so prodigiously true. Yes, he even hesitates to admit the conflict of which he is so painfully aware. ~Carl Jung; On the Psychology of the Unconscious; CW 7; Two Essays on Analytical Psychology; Page 35.

Empirical psychology loved, until recently, to explain the "unconscious" as mere absence of consciousness-the term itself indicates as much-just as shadow is an absence of light. Today accurate observation of unconscious processes has recognized, with all other ages before us, that the unconscious possesses a creative autonomy such as a mere shadow could never be endowed with. Carl Jung; CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East; Page 14.

Rationalism and superstition are complementary. It is a psychological rule that the brighter the light, the blacker the shadow; in other words, the more rationalistic we are in our conscious minds, the more alive becomes the spectral world of the unconscious. ~Spuk: Irrglaube oder Wahrglaube? ; Foreword by C. G. Jung; In CW 18: P. 10.


No, the demons are not banished; that is a difficult task that still lies ahead. Now that the angel of history has abandoned the Germans, the demons will seek a new victim. And that won’t be difficult. Every man who loses his shadow, every nation that falls into self-righteousness, is their prey…. We should not forget that exactly the same fatal tendency to collectivization is present in the victorious nations as in the Germans, that they can just as suddenly become a victim of the demonic powers. ~Carl Jung; The Postwar Psychic Problems of the Germans.

To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light. Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle. ~Carl Jung; Good and Evil in Analytical Psychology; CW 10; Civilization in Transition; Page 872.

We carry our past with us, to wit, the primitive and inferior man with his desires and emotions, and it is only with an enormous effort that we can detach ourselves from this burden. If it comes to a neurosis, we invariably have to deal with a considerably intensified shadow. And if such a person wants to be cured it is necessary to find a way in which his conscious personality and his shadow can live together. ~Carl Jung; Answer to Job; CW 11; Psychology and Religion: West and East; Page 1.

In contrast to the meditation found in yoga practice, the psychoanalytic aim is to observe the shadowy presentation — whether in the form of images or of feelings — that are spontaneously evolved in the unconscious psyche and appear without his bidding to the man who looks within. In this way we find once more things that we have repressed or forgotten. Painful though it may be, this is in itself a gain — for what is inferior or even worthless belongs to me as my Shadow and gives me substance and mass. How can I be substantial if I fail to cast a Shadow? I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole; and inasmuch as I become conscious of my Shadow I also remember that I am a human being like any other. ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 35.

Good does not become better by being exaggerated, but worse, and a small evil becomes a big one through being disregarded and repressed. The Shadow is very much a part of human nature, and it is only at night that no shadows exist. ~Carl Jung; Carl Jung: "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity (1942) In CW 11; Psychology and Religion: West and East. Page 286.

To establish a really mature attitude, he has to see the subjective value of all these images which seem to create trouble for him. He has to assimilate them into his own psychology; he has to find out in what way they are part of himself; how he attributes for instance a positive value to an object, when as a matter of fact it is he who could and should develop this value. And in the same way, when he projects negative qualities and therefore hates and loathes the object, he has to discover that he is projecting his own inferior side, his shadow, as it were, because he prefers to have an optimistic and one-sided image of himself. ~Carl Jung; [Definitions," CW 6, par. 813.]

As soon as people get together in masses and submerge the individual, the shadow is mobilized, and, as history shows, may even be personified and incarnated. Carl Gustav Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Collected Works, 9i, par.478

The shadow, the syzygy, and the Self are psychic factors of which an adequate picture can be formed only on the basis of a fairly thorough experience of them. Just as these concepts arose out of an experience of reality, so they can be elucidated only by further experience ~Carl Jung; CW 9/2, par. 63.

When a woman realizes her shadow the animus can be constellated. If the shadow remains in the unconscious the animus possesses her through the shadow. When she realizes her animus, mystical generation can occur. Sarah was Abraham's legitimate wife, but Hagar, the dark one, had the procreative animus. Out of darkness the light is born. ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 30.

If the encounter with the shadow is the “apprentice piece” in the individual development, then, that with the anima is the “masterpiece.” ~Carl Jung, CW 9, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, Page 29.

The realization of the shadow is the growing awareness of the inferior part of the personality. ~Carl Jung, CW 8; On the Nature of the Psyche, Page 208.

The shadow is something very evasive. I don't know mine. I study it by the reaction of those around me. We depend on the reflection of the mirror of our entourage. When it is not good, self-criticism is in order. ~C. G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff - A Collection of Remembrances; Pages 51-70.

In the shadow we are exactly like everybody; in the night all cats are grey-there is no difference. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1090.

The devil knows what is beautiful, and hence he is the shadow of beauty and follows it everywhere, awaiting the moment when the beautiful, writhing great with child, seeks to give life to the God. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 289.

The image of God has a shadow. The supreme meaning is real and casts a shadow. For what can be actual and corporeal and have no shadow? ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 230.

Like plants, so men also grow, some in the light, others in the shadows. There are many who need the shadows and not the light. The image of God throws a shadow that is just as great as itself. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 230.

When the month of the Twins had ended, the men said to their shadows: "You are I," since they had previously had their spirit around them as a second person. Thus the two became one, and through this collision the formidable broke out, precisely that spring of consciousness that one calls culture and which lasted until the time of Christ. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Pages 314.

I am no longer alone with myself, and I can only artificially recall the scary and beautiful feeling of solitude. This is the shadow side of the fortune of love. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Introduction, Page 196

This dissolution of the darkness also dissolves the picture which we have made of ourselves. --Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Page 111.

But the right way to wholeness is made up, unfortunately, of fateful detours and wrong turnings.
~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 6.

Our present material consists of that which touches the ego, the individual or Self reaches far beyond this, it is only in the evening of life that we can say who we really are. ~ Carl Jung, Lecture VI 2June1934, Page 110.

 You yourself are a conflict that rages in itself and against itself, in order to melt its incompatible substances, the male and the female, in the fire of suffering, and thus create that fixed and unalterable form which is the goal of life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 375.

What do you think of the essence of Hell? Hell is when the depths come to you with all that you no longer are or are not yet capable of. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 244

There is no light without shadow and no psychic wholeness without imperfection.
To round itself out, life calls not for perfection but for completeness; and for this the “thorn in the flesh” is needed, the suffering of defects without which there is no progress and no ascent.” ~ C. G. Jung, CW, Vol. 12, para. 208.

"The first state is the hidden state, but by art and the grace of God it can be transmuted into a second, manifest state. That is why “the prima materia sometimes coincides with the idea of the initial stage of the process, the nigredo. It is then the black earth in which the gold or the lapis is shown like the grain of wheat. It is the black...~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy. Page 312.

My soul leads me into the desert, into the desert of my own self. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 235.

My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light. Carl Jung, MDR, Page 88.

Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking. The one is but the shadow of the other. ~Carl Jung; CW 7; Page 53; Para 78.

As for the nigredo, it is certain that no one is redeemed from a sin he not committed, and that a man who stands on a peak cannot climb it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 32-35.

“The world without spirit is a wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who’s on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it’s alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself.” ~ Joseph Campbell  

The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation.  When everything is lost,
and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed.
--Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

Only when we bear our situation and accept our depression will it be possible for us to change internally. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 373.

In the process of individuation, too, new contents can announce themselves in this devouring form and darken consciousness; this is experienced as a depression, that is to say, as being pulled downward. ~Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 373.

To love someone else is easy, but to love what you are, the thing that is yourself, is just as if you were embracing a glowing red-hot iron: it burns into you and that is very painful.
Therefore, to love somebody else in the first place is always an escape which we all hope for, and we all enjoy it when we are capable of it.
But in the long run, it comes back on us.
You cannot stay away from yourself forever, you have to return, have to come to that experiment, to know whether you really can love.
That is the question-whether you can love yourself, and that will be the test. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminars, Pages 1473-1474.

Better to feel the weight of the earth too much than to hang out over the edge of it.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 373-374.

The transit from black to white via blue[i] implies that blue always brings black with it. (Among African peoples, for instance, black in­cludes blue;[ii] whereas in the Jewish-Christian tradition blue belongs rather than white).[iii] Blue bears traces of the mortificatio into the whitening. What before was the stickiness of the black, like pitch or tar, unable to be rid of, turns into the traditionally blue virtues of constancy and fidelity. The same dark events feel different. The tor­tured and symptomatic aspect of mortification—flaying oneself, pulverizing old structures, decapitation of the headstrong will, the rat and rot in one’s personal cellar—give way to depression. As even the darkest blue is not black, so even the deepest depression is not the mortificatio which means death of soul. The mortificatio is more driven, images locked compulsively in behavior, visibility zero, psyche trapped in the inertia and extension of matter. A mortificatio is a time of symptoms. These inexplicable, utterly materialized tortures of psyche in physis are relieved, according to the procession of olors, by a movement toward depression, which can commence as a mournful regret even over the lost symptom: “It was better when it hurt physically—now I only cry.” Blue misery. So, with the ap­pearance of blue, feeling becomes more paramount and the para­mount feeling is the mournful plaint (Rimbaud[i] equates blue with vowel “0”; Kandinsky[ii] with the sounds of the flute, cello, double bass and organ). These laments hint of soul, of reflecting and distanc­ing by imaginational expression. Here we can see more why ar­chetypal psychology has stressed depression as the via regia in soul­making.[iii] The ascetic exercises that we call “symptoms” (and their “treatments”), the guilty despairs and remorse as the nigredo decays, reduce the old ego-personality, but this necessary reduction is only preparatory to the sense of soul which appears first in the blued im­agination of depression.

Let us say, blue is produced by a collaboration between Saturn and Venus. According to Giacento Gimma,[iv] an eighteenth-century gemmologist, blue represents Venus, while the Goat, the Saturnian emblem of Capricorn, is blue’s animal. Capricorn, you will recall, ex­tends slowly from the depths to the heights; immense range and im­mense patience. Where blue brings to Venus a deeper melancholy, and to Saturn a magnanimity (another virtue of blue according to Gemma), it also slows the motion of whiteness, for it is the color of repose (Kandinsky). Thus blue is the retarding factor in the whiten­ing. It is the element of depression, that raises deep doubts and high principles, wanting to settle things fundamentally and get them right in order to clarify them. This effect of blue on white can appear as feelings of service, labor, and disciplined observance of the rules, civil conformities like the blue cross, blue collar and blue uniforms, which figures of these feelings might carry. The effect can also appear in feelings of guilt and conscience.

 Once the black turns blue, darkness can be penetrated (unlike the nigredo which absorbs all insights back into itself, compounding the darkness with negative introspections). The shift to blue allows air so that the nigredo can meditate itself, imagine itself, recognize that this very shadow state expresses “the essence of things and their abiding, inherent permanence.” Here is imaginal consciousness af­firming its ground.  --James Hillman, Alchemical Blue and the Unio Mentalis

THE NIGREDO
Working Through Depression with Alchemy

by Iona Miller, 2008

"Right at the beginning you meet the dragon, the chthonic spirit, the devil or, as the alchemists called it, the blackness, the nigredo, and this encounter produces suffering..."
~ Carl Jung

"I am an infirm and weak old man, surnamed the dragon; therefore am I shut up in a cave, that I may become ransomed by the kingly crown...A fiery sword inflicts great torments on me; death makes weak my flesh and bones...My soul and my spirit depart; a terrible poison, I am likened to the black raven, for that is the wages of sin; in dust and earth I lie, that out of Three may come One. O soul and spirit leave me not, that I may see again the light of day, and the hero of peace whom the whole world shall behold may arise from me..." ~ Aurelia Occulta Philosophorum

THE GREAT WORK

Alchemy is the Great Work, a process of separation, transformation and integration. This is just as true of the substances worked experimentally in the retort as it is of the personality undergoing the transformative process. You are the alchemical vessel and the contents of your psyche is the means and object of transformation. As the images and substances change, you change too.

There is theory and practice in science, and two applications in alchemy -- spiritual alchemy and experimental alchemy involving literal lab work. You can work either method separately or both in concert. Our true selves are beyond what our conscious awareness alone could ever make of us.

Benchwork is a projective mechanism that mirrors your psychic transformation synchronistically. Projection turns into a clarifying image. You gain an experiential knowledge of the elements and materials of alchemy, rather than just comprehending a concept.

There is a treasure to be discovered. Your psychophysical being is a vessel of the soul and spirit. The physical body is sustained by the energy body, the field body and its zero-point component. You are made of the fabric of spacetime. The alchemical axiom, “As Above, So Below” means there is a universe to explore within yourself and you are not separate from the whole Cosmos in any way.

The raw psychic contents (prima materia) become cooked (ultima materia). There is no quick fix to the accumulated baggage of life. The method works if you do, but you must be motivated, either by passion or despair to enter into such an arcane pursuit. You must dare to seize the noble fruit. The impetus may come from an inexplicable attraction to the experimental alchemical art, life passages, spiritual longing, an illness or dis-ease of body or mind, or both.

The spiritual landscape is changing and alchemy offers a safe harbor for the drifting spirit beyond institutional or cult affiliation. Many paths are vying for participants but alchemy chooses you. It is a self-initiatory path that provides a structure or scaffolding for metaphorical death and rebirth, a generic process described in many traditions. But you must remain dedicated to the process.

In exploring the unknown you are exploring yourself. The journey to wholeness often begins with a retreat – into oneself, your interior nature. The experience can be one of darkness, coldness, the isolation of the self-imposed outsider. Your energy is purposefully turning inward and it is best to follow it, even to amplify that dynamic. Some choose the laboratory, some a therapeutic setting, some plant allies, and others an eclectic self-directed approach.

We all have negative tendencies, self-destructive compulsions, self-sabotaging impulses, or neurotic self-defeating patterns. This is our psychological baggage. In his or her work, the novice alchemist channels both the voluntary and compulsive aspects of the depression that can drive the urge to transform.

The work itself forms a vessel of transformation, a safe place where the alchemist can be fully open to nature and his or her own primordial nature. With alchemy you can work with your thoughts and feelings rather than fighting or avoiding them. Once initiated, the unfolding cycles of the Magnum Opus naturally lead through and beyond the nigredo toward breakthroughs rather than breakdown, emergence rather than emergency.

You must grow and face your fears to solve the problems of multidimensional existence. But to do so you have to make spiritual growth a priority by giving it time and attention. Only your comprehension of the deeper nature of depression, recognizing the call, and your commitment to the conscious struggle for transformation makes it alchemical. Then you rescue the fragmented parts of yourself. Suffering is meaningful. It leads to empathy, which funds active compassion.

TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE

Part of the art of alchemy is decoding your own symbolic language. Depression means you have lost your dream and have yet to reconnect with a new one, with the new images or symbols that can pull you forward toward your future. Primal people call it loss of soul. We recognize it as loss of self-worth.

You hurt so much that you may be convinced you are going to die or even wish you would. But the fantasies of death are telegraphing a metaphorical message. Your old self is on its way out. Getting into this morbid state is the point. You have acute awareness of your mortality. The experience of maximum despair is “hitting bottom”. You are a mess. The good thing is there is nowhere to go but up. What do you want your tombstone to say?

You are metaphorically decomposing. This is the paradoxical flip side of ego inflation, toxic narcissism, and shallow self-absorption. It keeps us from responding to even outstanding opportunities. This crisis is an extraordinary opportunity to re-create your life and world. You have to learn how to use your strengths and skills while you meet multiple challenges and stressors. You need to uncover your buried potential and mine the gold of your buried talents and creativity.

This hero’s depression lifts once you embark on your mission with purpose, based on finding your inner vision. Once you’ve heard the “Call to Adventure” you have enthusiasm, passion, intentionality and direction. You determine to persevere through the crisis, but the road has many trials. The devil comes as chaos, suffering or pain. Psychophysical suffering feels like wandering around in fear and darkness – a dark night of the soul, even a journey to Hell.

The ancient Greek vision of Hades was that of a dark, cold, windy, dry realm. This is a good metaphor of all our early traumas of abandonment, hunger, loss, sorrow and shame that are frozen in the labyrinthine halls of psyche. We cannot meet or accept life's legitimate suffering. We can't grieve these ominous shadows so they pile up on us creating blind spots, despair, denial, and wrongful assumptions. The trouble they cause is their demand to be seen for what they are.

This glacial ice cave houses unresolved issues that continue to affect our relationships with self, others and world. It drives our compulsions for achievement and the pain of loneliness. We all carry the burdens of self-doubt and loneliness. We simply remove ourselves from whatever we cannot or will not process, but they remain alive and powerful though buried or frozen, multiplying in scope and weight as we grow older.

Though lack of unconditional acceptance is a natural part of human experience, these unhealing wounds are the hidden focus of our conscious lives. These early losses hang around frozen in time, as if they are still happening. Simply changing their apparent expression, they obstruct the flow of our lives until we recognize and acknowledge them.

The unhealing wounds of unrealized suffering, self-delusion, addiction, chronic depression, compulsivity, failed relationships and some physical illness present opportunities throughout life to reconcile and resolve what we couldn't heal earlier. The word 'resolve' echoes the alchemical maxim of 'Solve et Cogaula," the liquification and reintegration of essentially frozen psychic energy.


SOUL RETRIEVAL

Heartache and pain, a persistent sense of failure and inadequacy are core human experiences. We feel a hunger or sense we are missing something. The older we get, the more the fear of death creeps in, feeding the desire to numb out and not feel anything at all. Death tempts and attacks us in this predestined confrontation.

This unfinished business locks us into a distorted "virtual" reality, a false self. When we are out of balance and pursue pleasure at any cost, our old wound is showing. If these deepening shadows mess up our lives enough, we are forced to break free and tunnel out of the cocoon of distortions and self-loathing. This deadly and dreaded challenge to your courage can reconnect you with your lost confidence by drawing on transpersonal resources. It is an unavoidable part of the journey to an authentic life.


Constructive discontent can drive our best thoughts, emotions, and actions. But to get to its root you must enter a tomblike passageway, making a journey to “the center of the Earth,” to the center of yourself to gain the treasure, the cure, the grace. This is engagement with power within.

You can't go back so you must go forward. We have the potential to grow beyond mere personal fulfillment to transpersonal experiences. New information you gain from the unconscious helps you create a dynamic new situation, an ever-widening, self-perpetuating cycle that restores flow.

LIVING TRUST

What if you actually believed you are a capable and worthwhile person? How would building and aligning with greater mental, emotional and physical power within impact all facets of your life and relationships? What would life be like if you really opened a new pathway that helps you live, lead and succeed in your purpose, in your essential nature? What is blocking you?

When old defenses no longer work, you must develop new coping skills for developmental challenges. But this initiatory way includes many deaths and rebirths. Nigredo, the blackening, isn’t always the first stage, but may be one of relapse, eclipse or another incubation stage.

Nigredo is a recurrent cycle of desire and frustration with no real beginning. Your energies are sucked from the outer world and turned in on themselves. Normal life is radically disrupted. When you are paralyzed by life there is nothing to do but let go of your control fantasies. An eclipse of the ego offers a way into the deeper energies of the unconscious.

After involuntary or voluntary symbolic death, reborn spirit eventually emerges from the rotting corpse of the old self with its limiting worldview. This death is equivalent to the conception of the legendary Philosopher’s Stone. Death becomes your ally and advisor. Meditators are advised to “die daily” in their practice. The ego is eclipsed but the Stone is born. These trials nourish the Self. Vision expands, wisdom deepens, self matures.

Conscious alchemy offers a direction, an operational roadmap for realizing your highest potential. It is a psychospiritual path, approached experimentally and spiritually. You make the experiment on yourself. It is a whole brain, whole self process, involving both rational and irrational forces.

Psyche has a regressive tendency. If you block the process of growth, depression will recur, again and again. You will regress anytime your work goes awry, you seemingly take a step backward, or circumstances weigh you down. Each octave of work brings exponential results. Over time, you catch yourself in self-defeating acts sooner in the cycle. But the full weight of the dirty business must be born each time disruption intrudes chaotically into your life.

THE NIGREDO

Even the root of the word “alchemy” refers to the black soil of Egypt. This Egypt is an imaginal realm of Hermetic mysteries, which created the dying and rising god Osiris. This root mystery influenced many cultures, including the Eleusinian rites of ancient Greece. Initiatory rebirth is an awakening into a higher life. It is echoed in the rites of Dionysus, Attis, Adonis, and Mithras. Death and spiritual rebirth permeates all the mystery religions. Hermetic texts influenced the growth of European alchemy.

You must bury your old self in that rejuvinating soil for new life to emerge. The nigredo means seeing all through the bleak eyes of depression but it also means “seeing through” the meaning and value of depression. You may belong to a guild of like-minded travellers, but you walk the transformative path alone. It is a solitary journey.

The nigredo is often called the first alchemical operation but there is no distinct order handed down from tradition. It is the first stage of mortificatio – the killing of the old worn out or obsolete personality. Many people seek a spiritual path because of their existential despair. The old self must dissolve, the neurosis must be liquified and reduced to the primal condition.

Only a purging fire will turn this darkness white. It might be the slow heat of a rotting corpse or fetid compost pile but the inner fire is lit. Like a struck flint, flashes of insight ignite the inner fire which leads to searing visions of the truth of your reality and channel your burning desire toward further transformation that brings clarity.

A truth is only a truth when it lives, otherwise it is perfectly nonsensical;
it must be able to change into its own opposite, to even become an untruth at times. (Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1311)

“Something” in you has already died and it’s beginning to stink. This blackening phase of the alchemical process describes a gloomy time of depression. All the signs seem inauspicious. You feel unlucky, caught in a black mood whose origin may be difficult to pinpoint. This is because your current ego attitudes are outdated.

You feel stuck because you aren’t coping or adapting to present circumstances. These feelings may come into your life due to an overload of stress, financial and relationship problems or clinical depression. Depression is a “no love” script. Love may be there but you have lost the capacity to feel it. You wonder in anguish, “Is this all there is?"
”
There are three main types of clinical depressive disorders: major depressive disorder, dysthymia (mood swings), and the depressive lows of bipolar disorder. Mania is a defense against depression. Self-deception, loss of self-esteem and anger are part of it. Conventional treatment freely dispenses antidepressants. However, that just adds to the numbing and fakeness.

Paradoxically, both depression and its medical cure cause the personality to become “flat,” libido is suppressed. An integrative approach includes psychosocial therapy to focus on the personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal issues behind depression. A wide range of severe side effects make antidepressants alone poor therapy, particularly for seekers in spiritual crisis. The condition must be actively addressed. Medication suppresses self-expression just like addiction kills creativity.

Poison is in the cure. Research has shown that traumatic experiences can change the way the brain works. So can talk therapy, and even more so, process-oriented therapy, which creates flow experiences. Self-regulation can be learned, using resonance techniques, concentration and meditation. The brain undergoes changes similar to those induced by medication but in a positive, adaptive way that arises within.

Whether we speak of normal experience, chronic depression or grief, it is a fact that frustration is deeply woven into the fabric of life. We are riddled with desires and programmed by ideals. Should some of our real or imagined needs be temporarily met, we immediately begin wishing for more.

Chronic dissatisfaction stands in the way of our contentment. Depression has its roots in failure to adjust to lowered expectations of self, others, and a world that doesn’t meet our childish needs. Overcoming the anxiety and depressions of contemporary life requires a drastic change in attitude about what is important and what is not.

MELANCHOLIA

Faust was given power by the Devil on condition that he would never be satisfied with what he has. The advertising myth of the “American Dream” did the same thing to us all. Happiness and satisfaction with life depend on how small a gap you perceives between what you wish for and what you possess. Traditional social shields such as religion, ethnic traditions, patriotism, etc. no longer are effective for many disrupted by the harsh winds of chaos.

Psychic disorder produces conflicting signals that prevent or distract us from carrying out our good intentions. We give this condition many names, depending on how we experience it: pain, fear, rage, anxiety, depression, ennui, anomie, or jealousy. All these varieties of disorder divert and force our attention obsessively into undesirable directions. Energetic flow is blocked.

The new biological explanations of mental disorders as neurotransmitter imbalances make “good stories” but still lack empirical substantiation. Over-diagnosis has led to a “pharmademic” of over-medicated “pod people.” Yet, research shows that talk therapy and self-regulation techniques are as effective as drugs. The cornerstones of psychotherapy are insight and emotional growth.

If you practice alchemy with the feedback of other practitioners, it functions as a process-oriented therapy, allowing for projection and solution of problems. It is one of the most ancient spiritual paths. Spiritual technologies are the intuitive response to depression and the ever-present fear of death.

Many individuals experience a period of melancholia between the ages of 28 to 30 (and again at 55 to 60). Astrologically, this is triggered by Saturn return, the return of the planet to its original position in the natal chart. Classically, it is a time of disappointment, divorce, soul-searching and reassessment of values and orientation in life. It also holds the seed of mastery.

Saturn governs the aging process, since it represents actualization of more and more of one's potential. It presides over lingering death and chronic illness. At its worst, senex consciousness destroys spontaneity, obsessed by its repetitive disciplines into a narrowness of emotions, mental processes, and activities. Saturn has “control issues” and also rules crises situations of life and the mental cravings of “lust for results.”

The planet Saturn puts the accent on responsibility, in this case responsibility to yourself for fulfilling your potential. Finally, you are truly growing up and your destiny begins to take form. You may be pressured into it, even if you resist it, and this is that black mood's positive intent. Suffering becomes a meaningful path.

You may think you are not depressed because your feelings are numbed out or you make sure you stay too busy to notice. You may just be in denial with workaholism, hypochondria, an antisocial personality, substance abuse problem, hyperactivity, compulsivity, oppositional behavior, rage, or other means of devil may care acting out and acting in. You may try many horizontal escapes, but no matter where you go, there you are.

Having lost the sweet savor of life, you may be feeling older than your years, not in a good way but rigid and humorless with a thousand aches and pains. If chronic degenerative disease isn’t enough, there is the continual futureshock of new technology and morphing culture. If you are young, depression masquerades as anxiety, a conflict of opposites, generational and social rebellion, alienation, and angst.

Your behavior telegraphs the underlying depression to those with eyes to see. They know because they have been through it. Often when you are in it, you can’t see it. You might even unconsciously use your predicament to manipulate the sympathy and attention of others. But something’s just not right and you sense it in every fiber of your being.

GOOD GRIEF

Like Charlie Brown with his dark cloud, most of us have felt depressed in greater or lesser degree. Loss is a psychophysical experience. Since everything changes as time flows, and change entails loss, this is not surprising. Sometimes we lose face through shameful behavior, in our own eyes and those of others. There are some things we just need to face directly even if they are scary or painful.

We grow sad and depressed when a person we love dies or a cherished phase of life passes. Grief is universal and normal. In fact, failure to grieve is evidence of psychological abnormality. Staying stuck in grief is not healthy; it suppresses the immune system and élan vital. Process work in alchemy or therapy is a way of moving on. Mourning is work and takes mental effort.

Mourning is characteristically a state of mind, but it is accompanied by a host of painful somatic sensations that are remarkably uniform. In acute grief we experience physical distress occurring in waves lasting from twenty minutes to an hour at a time, a feeling of tightness in the throat, choking with shortness of breath. We need to sigh, have an empty feeling in the abdomen, lack of muscular power, and intense subjective distress we call tension or mental pain.

Traumatic bereavement happens in a variety of settings including personal and community violence, even global catastrophe. Traumatic bereavement contrasts experiences of quiet death at home, without mutilation, bodily distortion, shock, threat, horror, and helplessness. Reactions to the traumatic circumstances are different and predict more adverse health outcomes for the bereaved.

Traumatic stress interferes with the grieving process. The emotional aspect of grief is just as painful as the somatic. Inner anguish, loss of interest in a dreary, empty world, isolation from other people, loneliness and feelings of inner emptiness seem to persist for an eternity. In this way, grief mimics clinical depression.

The call to heal and the call to death are ultimately the same call to formlessness, to return to source. Many disorders display symptoms and imagery which represent stalled stages in the natural consciousness restructuring process. We get stuck in our attempts to heal ourselves.
 
HEALING PROCESS

Alchemy is a creative, synergetic process. It produces the universal medicine because it is essentially a healing process. Healing is a form of creativity. You become aware of previously unconscious emotions and find patterns in your behavior. You learn discernment and to intervene in our own negative cycle by exercising, practicing your passion, thought-stopping and changing your messages to yourself.

This curative power is that of the wounded healer archetype. Conscious alchemy means self-care, self-regulation, and self-help through a philosophical mindbody lifestyle. In an eclectic approach, you choose what works for you. You apply it with a level of intensity that meets or exceeds the compelling nature of the depression. Knowing yourself is true wisdom and mastering yourself is true power. You learn to modulate your own neurochemistry to improve your quality of life.

UNIVERSAL METASYN

What is described as the Elixir or Universal Medicine is a primary goal of alchemy. Those who take this literally might seek it in spagyrics or the "white gold" of Ormus, but it can just as easily be the mobilization of the body's own healing potential through psychoneuroimmunology and/or the placebo effect.

Arguably, the universal medicine is inextinguishable Light. Science has shown that the basis of biophysics is not chemistry but subtle fields and biophotons. Life has a biophotonic nature which is the basis of the energy body or field body. Life is orchestrated by light. Our atoms, DNA and cells emit light which choreographs our biological processes. An ultrapowerful energy potential radiates from zero point.
http://myzeropoint.50megs.com http://photonichuman.50megs.com

The Void exist within us just as it pervades the entire cosmos. Uncountable photons flicker on and off within us and influence the holographic blueprint of the body that is transcribed through our DNA and gene expression. The essence of healing is a return to the unconditioned state, free of all conditioning and full of primordial energy potential. Coherent light and sonic resonance or cymatics are present at the intracellular level. http://virtualphysics.50megs.com

We can take responsibility for our bodies and health, reclaiming our inherent shamanic, yogic and psychosomatic self-healing power. This alone changes our compassionate spiritual relationship to self, others, and universe. Meditation masters of all traditions speak of this primordial inner light and its brilliant healing power - Medicine Light.

The old-yet-new healing paradigm includes non-material but highly effective shamanic, psychic and spiritual tech that can be applied effectively in any cultural context. Mind is more than a powerless prisoner of the body. It has the power of focus, committed attention and intentionality. When you take responsibility for you own healing and well-being, the self-organizing power of your own hyperdimensional organism creates a positive resonance.

Healing fosters our evolutionary potential. Personal stillpoint is the point of release and reconnection. There is catharsis in the void. We touch our source, drink of the wellspring of life, reboot our system. Potentials are the source of all electromagnetic phenomena. To realize our own potential, we need to learn the art of living well, not just living better.

We can root out the disturbances of the past and transform them into assets, or strengths. We can remove the incongruencies of conflicting agendas in our belief systems and their fallout - our unresolved feelings. When we change our attitudes about ourselves and our past, we initiate a cascade of neurological changes that cover all four domains of our being. We can cultivate deeper awareness. The mind can change what "matters" to embody a healthier self.

The symbols of alchemy represent aspects of yourself. As you manipulate them, the attitudes associated with them morph. You start recovering from acute depression and become less vulnerable to depression in the future. We heal in the ground of our being.

The healing comes from deep inside not outside, adding to a sense of personal empowerment, rather than reliance or dependence on a pill or another person or an intangible belief. Suffering teaches us to nurture hope. Healthier lifestyle choices may follow.

Sadness is a clarifying and relieving emotion that helps us move on after losses. On the other hand, depression is a paralyzing short-circuit of self-doubt and self-recrimination. Sometimes people become depressed because they are not appropriately angry or sad over the situation. Self-reported distress includes the experience of headaches, faintness, loss of sexual appetite, trouble remembering things, uncontrolled temper outbursts, blaming oneself, pains in the lower back, feelings of inferiority to others, feeling hopeless and nauseous.

A BITTER PILL

Some lives are structured around a depressive life script. Often someone occupies the Victim role in the drama triangle, but switches periodically into the Persecutor role, or through magical means into the Rescuer role. The timing of the script is “Wait.” The “wait” is for a magical occurrence that transforms the world without requiring us to take an active part to initiate change. This is the secret meaning of “initiation” – it includes practice. It must be experiential. One must maintain a beginner’s mind.

The blocks include negative self-talk: “Don’t Succeed,” “Don’t Think,” “Don’t Be Close,” “Don’t Have Fun,” and “Don’t Judge Others.” Even “new age guilt”: “It’s my fault I’m sick; I did it to myself.” Medications may suppress symptoms, but turn you into a homogenized “pod person.” By themselves, they are never a cure. As such, they should be used only to recalibrate for the real healing process. They don’t deal with issues of guilt or change self-accusatory self-talk.

An experience we think is worthless can turn out to be the portal to healing, deepening and enriching us, funding our compassion for self and others. “Healing” does not necessarily mean a cure or total elimination of all symptoms. It has to do with a subjective process, difficult to describe. Self-expression has a curative value. As you work with symbols to manifest them, they heal you right back. By its very nature, the alchemical process is irrational, totally individual, and yet linked to a timeless and universal experience.

The therapist gives helpful encouragement to integrate new knowledge, or relate to the unintegratable, and accept it. Alchemy also helps us understand what the unconscious is saying directly. This promotes growth according to our own inner laws, allowing the unfolding of the total potential. Alchemy helps you conduct a similar process of self-initiation on yourself. The guide is your higher self, perhaps in some personification, pulling you toward your future.

REVIVAL

Flow helps us to integrate the self because in a state of deep concentration consciousness is unusually well ordered. Thoughts, intentions, feelings, and all senses are focused on the same goal. Concentration and ritual are forms of meditation – in alchemy, the meditatio. Experience is in harmony. And when the flow episode is over, one feels more “together” than before, not only internally but also with respect to other people, the world and cosmos in general.

Ultimately, it matters little what complex mechanisms help us mobilize our own inner capacity for healing. The fact that we enter the healing process with commitment and intentionality is far more important. Taking the journey toward healing means we recreate the archetypal journey of the hero or heroine, who is neither helpless nor hopeless, but approaches fate with determinism and courage.

NEW SELF-IMAGE

Is pain, grief, depression, fear, anxiety, guilt, relationship or career disappointment, rejection, alienation, inner conflict, victimization, resentment, superstition, rage, self-doubt or procrastination holding you back? Perhaps your old view of your self has become confining, obsolete, role-bound, or you just feel stuck. Are you afraid you can't cope with either failure or success? We always have to adapt to our environment. You have to TRY, even to fail. Maybe you think your 'glory days' are all in the past.

Through conscious alchemy you can retrieve the psychophysical biochemistry of your balanced and peak performance states. You can apply this felt sense to pain management as well as emotional issues or boosting your potential. By recalling vital times, you essentially regress your body chemistry to a more youthful you, and minimize the toxic chemistry of stress. This allows both body and mind to relax and recalibrate homeostasis. You can also draw on the support and encouragement of your evolving future self through imagination.

Just as one incident can create trauma, one healing moment can change that instantly. When we willingly submit to the universal process of death and renewal we activate transpersonal resources that transcend our own limited capacities for restructuring our consciousness and self-healing. Ultimately all healing is self-healing, and implies profound self-acceptance, and can lead to loving acceptance of others and the world as it is, rather than as we would like it to be. This is the basis of compassion and service.

ENVISION YOUR FUTURE

Perhaps you lack the right tools to help you realize your potential, to make it so. Self-mastery is a continuous process, which can be used to improve your position wherever you currently find yourself. Our motivations come from our beliefs and values. But along the road of life we may not have developed the resources to deploy our skills or have fallen into traps that derail us when we try.

Identifying beliefs and roadblocks is a solid first step to change. You already probably know exactly what you would like to change, and just how you feel when that's not happening, and even where you feel that in your body and what it is like. This technique allows you to get in touch with a metaphor of your situation.

The body is an alchemical furnace. The brain sends chemical messengers -- neurotransmitters of pain and pleasure -- throughout the body. In turn, the body sends signals to the brain about its sense of distress or safety and well-being.

We can intervene intentionally in this cycle at any point. We can use nutrition, exercise, self-talk and psycho-sensory exercises that create the kinds of experiences that move us forward in our goals. This is 21st Century alchemy - intentionally changing body chemistry from both inside and outside. Our organism obeys one of the maxims of information technology: "Garbage In; Garbage Out".

SELF DIRECTION

Studies have shown that the mindbody cannot distinguish imagination from reality in its automatic reactions. The same internal chemistry is produced whether you do something or imagine it, making mind and body truly one. Transform your imagination into reality.

It all starts and ends with imagination - with what you picture in your mind and the self-talk you use to convince yourself what things mean and what to do. This is where you develop vision and create meaning, which leads to purpose and understanding your mission in life. To change your mind, along with the feelings, attitudes and chemistry that it creates, just systematically change your imagination - the image you hold of your self, others, and world.

Inner guidance comes through the intimate connection between the chemistry of your body and that of your mind and moods. We all recognize a gut-feeling when we have it. Health and well-being involves physical, emotional, mental and spiritual dimensions.

A healthy mindbody opens the way to balance, integration, and inner peace, without resorting to personality-distorting medications. Research has shown that therapy is as effective as antidepressants. We all need exercise, affection, and discipline. We also benefit from reflection or self-knowledge. This alchemical investigation of self is a spiritual journey toward increased balance and mastery.

THE SHADOW KNOWS

Your shadow consists of all the baggage you have stuffed into your false self. You are either afraid to show it, or paradoxically compelled to show it in impulsive behavior. Either way, it is out of control. Acting out self-limiting, self-defeating or self-destructive tendencies means the shadow is running the show. Anger, sadness and fear block joy.

When your ego can no longer pursue only its selfish concerns and addictive demands, the Self forces you into a depression to shake up the stagnant order of things. It brings a burning awareness of your shortcomings and inadequacies. To get to the root of these, you need to process old traumas and negative core beliefs that limit you severely. The self appears on your inner stage as the shadow, and confronts you with your inferior traits.

"The head of the Raven" is another traditional name for the nigredo. It corresponds to the encounter with the shadow. Your ego and the shadow must eventually be reconciled. Your restlessness and disorientation come from your conscious experience of conflict between conscious and unconscious drives. The unconscious must be transformed. The Self devours itself and dies, only to rise again when the work is perfected. But feelings of guilt, worthlessness and powerlessness must be suffered and worked through patiently.

The Shadow is a ‘splinter personality’ that prevents you from realizing your unique potential for personal fulfillment. Cowardice, laziness, ambivalence, rashness, dishonesty, envy, greed, lust, vanity, and attachment, and other self-indulgent tendencies will have to be faced directly. The narcissistic shadow is the diametrical opposite of our positive assets. If you are compulsively organized in daily life, the shadow is a slacker. If you are puritanical, the shadow is promiscuous.

Our dark side isn’t necessarily acted out in self-destructive behavior, but if it has no means of self-expression no ego can transform beyond this phase of development. Some form of inner dialogue is useful. You must come to a conscious understanding of those things you have repressed, and have not been able, nor dared to live out. As a symbol of the self, the shadow embodies the primitive, dark background from which we all emerge. But only the ego passes negative judgment on the shadow. The self embraces all opposites, including good and bad.

Highly religious individuals, who tend to over-identify with the great good of the Light, have shadows that may assume the form of a devilish adversary. What may start as good intentions becomes perverted through repression not transformation. But in the broader reality, the shadow gives human existence body and depth. In physics, the brighter the light, the deeper the shadows which are cast by it. The shadow embodies our hidden agendas, ulterior motives and pathologies.

If you do not take responsibility for consciously becoming aware of your shadow traits, you will find them projected onto others (of the same sex) in your environment. You may feel an irrational instinctive hatred for virtual strangers. This is the collective basis of racial prejudice. When you feel any emotion that seems highly exaggerated, it usually means you are projecting. When that extreme emotion is irrational vehemence, you are projecting your own repressed weakness onto others. To do this you must deny a part of yourself and you cannot experience wholeness.

Therefore, in order to continue your process of transformation, you must come to an awareness of your particular shadow characteristics. If you reach down deeply enough, you will find that the shadow is not only negative, but holds your unlived potential for positive change, also.

As you re-own this lost part of yourself, you open a channel between the conscious and the superconscious levels, between the ego and the self. This experience can bring a flood of light, joy, and energy, which brings temporary release from the depression.
Even your psychosomatic symptoms may vanish suddenly. It’s more than placebo effect.

If your personality is not well-grounded you may not be able to assimilate an inflow of light and strength. The alchemist must balance intellect and emotion by using imagination in a controlled way to digest this sudden illuminating insight. For your ego to react with egotism or conceit is to confuse itself with the power of the self. This confusion of levels has the unfortunate effect of creating a self-glorification. Of course, you are divine, but it is Source shining through you.

If you are bedazzled by spiritual truths beyond your mental power to digest, you may become self-deluded and/or victimized by a cult. You need to develop your powers of discrimination. Megalomania is extreme egotism and can lead a person to act out the role of prophet or savior, spurred on by the excitement of his or her own inner awakening.

You may begin experiencing paranormal phenomena, ESP, clairvoyance, or synchronicities (meaningful coincidences). You may have visions of divine beings, or hear voices, or dabble with automatic writing. Be sure to examine any messages of uncommon origin with discrimination. Any messages exalting your personality should be automatically suspect.

Other reactions to spiritual awakening may occur later as doubts fall away and inner security is found. You may be elated for a time, but your personal self was only temporarily overpowered not permanently transformed. When the spiritual influx ebbs away you may be in for trouble from your ego, which desperately seeks to reassert its dominion.

The trap is to judge yourself even more harshly for being merely human. You have not fallen lower than when you began, but you may feel the full fury of the lower drives when their uncontrolled expression is threatened. They may rear their ugly heads with more force than ever.

Another reaction is to deny the value and reality of your spiritual awakening. The inner critic, or skeptic, creates doubts and attempts to label it a fantasy. With bitterness and sarcasm you may rebuke your aspirations and ideals. But when you have had a transformative vision, you cannot deny it for long, and remain healthy. It brings more depression, a sense of unworthiness, and the feeling you are damned. Nigredo can be likened to "going through Hell."

All those in the arts and sciences experience periods of aridity and inability to work. No new inspirations come. You feel cut off from the source of creative flow. The depression and restlessness that result may lead to alcohol or drugs, until or unless the sudden flow of inspiration brings a sense of renewal.

You need to be aware of the true nature of this crisis, and realize that an exalted state cannot be maintained forever. It is no fall from grace, but a natural occurrence that gives you emotional and mental relief from the tensions of inspiration and illumination. After all, you can only digest so much change at once. Instead of staying stuck in the depression you can continue on the path to self-realization.

MEANING & MYSTERY

It is impossible to feel isolated, lonely, and “dead” with a felt sense of revivifying identification, which stems from direct experience of the dynamic whole of reality. It restores our sense of personal wholeness. We are an indivisible part of a flow in the whole field of consciousness. The entire cosmos is contained holographically within us: “As Above; So Below.”

When we become “superconductors” of consciousness, we draw from the spiritual wellsprings of life and health, that which eternally makes the world bloom anew, which brings re-enchantment. The “dam” of depression which has blocked the dynamic flow of life and love cannot withstand this immense healing force forever. It breaks through the “dead void” and one is no longer estranged from the power of the dynamic ground-state of existence, or cosmic unity.

What was lost has been found. The wilderness is no longer barren. Life blossoms and bears fruit. The self is the whole range of psychic phenomena, a psychic organ of perception. The self is transcendent, a center between conscious and unconscious, because it points to an unlimited future and unbound creative expansion of the evolutionary process. It signifies the harmony and balance of various opposing forces. Symbols of the self can be anything the ego recognizes as a greater totality than itself: the androgyne, the diamond body, the flower of life, the Elixir, the Stone.

The average heart beats two billion times and you can change utterly in any one of them. Reclaim your innate capacity for changing the cellular, subatomic, and psychophysical processes of your energy body. WHAT YOU THINK and the excitation level of your overall system changes your chemistry, markedly. We are fluid fields, through which energy and matter dynamically flow and change. Lifestyle, diet, emotional state and consciousness play a huge role in health and disease. We can catalyze our psychophysical homeostasis and spontaneous healing processes, complementing any traditional care we may require.

Restoration of the flow-state comes through identification with the alchemical process. Genius embodies powers greater than our own for no one can ever embody at once all the potential qualities of archetypal Self. But we can become extraordinary by transforming our character like carving a diamond from the rough.

Self is the primordial I AM of Being, as fundamental as inhalation and exhalation. Our lives are defined by their limitations and the strategies we use to cope with and overcome them. The self expresses the unity of the personality as a Whole, our holistic organism. The unconscious, including the mindbody and energy body, is the medium from which the sacred Source flows forth.

This is the serpentine process of healing. It changes us at the quantum, energetic and psychobiological levels. It literally changes our biochemistry. Creative flow states have the power to restructure our consciousness at the most fundamental level. Alchemy is an endless source of creativity, spiritual sustenance, and pleasure. Passion for the Great Work connects you experientially with Mystery.

REFERENCES

Campbell, Joseph (1976), The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Bollingen.

Miller, Iona, “Conscious Alchemy,” (2006) consciousalchemy.50megs.com/

Miller, Iona and Graywolf Swinney, (2000) CHAOSOPHY 2000, “Depressive Disorders / Grief and the Consciousness Restructuring Process,” Asklepia Foundation. www.asklepia.org/Chaosophy...onCRP.html

Miller, Iona and Richard Alan Miller (1994), THE MODERN ALCHEMIST: A Guide to Personal Transformation, Phanes Press: Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Hell is when the depths come to you with all that you no longer are or are not yet capable of Hell is when you can no longer attain what you could attain. Hell is when you must think and feel and do everything that you know you do not want.

Hell is when you know that your having to is also a wanting to, and that you yourself are responsible for it. Hell is when you know that everything serious that you have planned with yourself is also laughable, that everything fine is also brutal, that everything good is also bad, that everything high is also low, and that everything pleasant is also shameful. But the deepest

Hell is when you realize that Hell is also no Hell, but a cheerful Heaven, not a Heaven in itself, but in this respect a Heaven, and in that respect a Hell. That is the ambiguity of the God: he is born from a dark ambiguity and rises to a bright ambiguity.  Equivocalness is simplicity and leads to death. But ambiguity is the way of life. If the left foot does not move, then the right one does, and you move. The God wills this. --Jung, [The Red Book; Page 244]

The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won’t let go of your life: your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away, but they’re not punishing you, they’re freeing your soul. If you’re frightened of dying and you’re holding on, you’ll see devils tearing your life away. If you’ve made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth. ~ Meister Eckhart

I am the Hermetic King resurrected from the sepulcher of the Nigredo. My fire has been drawn out of the darkness; purified and exalted. My expansive fire is Solar by nature and I am called the Son of the Sun. I am the purified and exalted fire of your soul. I am the solar radiance of your consciousness and the true Gold of the philosophers. Blessed are they who have assimilated the inner most nature of this most adorable Fire!

The secret is that only that which can destroy itself is truly alive.
~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 81.

In the Middle Ages the flight to the spiritual world was still necessary. It was meaningful then to want to live spiritually and give little attention to the material, for meaning was directed towards the spirit. But it is meaningful today to want to descend with dignity to the chthonic world. ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 47.

...real liberation does not come from glossing over or repressing painful states of feeling, but only by experiencing them fully. ~Carl Jung; A study in the process of individuation; CW 9i; Picture 8. 451 p. (p. 335-337).

The unconscious can also express itself through a depression.
People so spoilt by success that they are no longer accustomed to struggle for it, must sometimes suffer disaster in order to wake up: otherwise life is too easy for them.

They are too comfortable and they have to pay for it somehow.
Many are plagued by chronic ailments or intermittent depressions because fate does not torment them in other ways.

Chronic illness or depression is then directly meaningful. They are mechanisms, to be sure, but so long as people are enslaved by these mechanisms they are saved from a more cruel fate.

There are some patients the analyst must even treat emotionally, and he must not allow certain other patients to exploit him. He can talk very openly and sternly to these and even respond emotionally to them. Such people enslave others.

They must be shown that they have a desire to dominate: they must be told the truth.
People of this kind are subject to depression because they want to rule others but cannot manage to. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 15.


Only when we bear our situation and accept our depression will it be possible for us to change internally. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 373.

In the process of individuation, too, new contents can announce themselves in this devouring form and darken consciousness; this is experienced as a depression, that is to say, as being pulled downward. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 373.

Depression is not necessarily pathological. It often foreshadows a renewal of the personality or a burst of creative activity. There are moments in human life when a new page is turned. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, par. 373.

Since the depression was not manufactured by the conscious mind but is an unwelcome intrusion from the unconscious, the elaboration of the mood is, as it were, a picture of the contents and tendencies of the unconscious that were massed together in the depression. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 82.

Often, however, we find cases where there is no tangible mood or depression at all, but just a general, dull discontent, a feeling of resistance to everything, a sort of boredom or vague disgust, an indefinable but excruciating emptiness. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 83.

Youthful longing for the world and for life, for the attainment of high hopes and distant goals, is life's obvious teleological urge which at once changes into fear of life, neurotic resistances, depressions, and phobias if at some point it remains caught in the past, or shrinks from risks without which the unseen goal cannot be attained. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 406.

When we suffer from lack of psychic energy, we say we have a depression or an inhibition, not realising that part of our mental hierarchy has one away beyond our control, that we have, in fact, lost our soul. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 13.

Depressions always have to be understood teleologically. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.

“Although the attributes of Christ (consubstantiality with the Father, co-eternity, filiation, parthenogenesis, crucifixion, Lamb sacrificed between opposites, One divided into Many, etc.) undoubtedly mark him out as an embodiment of the self, looked at from the psychological angle he corresponds to only one half of the archetype.

The other half appears as the Anti-Christ. The latter is just as much a manifestation of the self, except that he consists of its dark aspect. Both are Christian symbols, and they have the same meaning as the image of the Savior crucified between two thieves.

This great symbol tells us that the progressive development and differentiation of consciousness leads to an ever more menacing awareness of the conflict and involves nothing less than a crucifixion of the ego, its agonizing suspension between irreconcilable opposites." ~Carl Jung

"It was during Advent of the year 1913--December 12, to be exact-- that I resolved upon the decisive step. I was sitting at my desk once more, thinking over my fears. Then I let myself drop. Suddenly it was as though the ground literally gave way at my feet, and I plunged down into dark depths. I could not fend off a feeling of panic. But then, abruptly, at not too great a depth, I landed on my feet in a soft, sticky mass. I felt great relief, although I was apparently in complete darkness. After a while my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, which was rather like a deep twilight. Before me was the entrance to a dark cave..."
--C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams,Reflections, pag.219

"One must be utterly abandoned to God; nothing else matters, but fulfilling God's Will."
--Carl Jung, 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections'.

Nobody can fall so low unless he has a great depth. If such a thing can happen to a man, it challenges his best and highest on the other side; that is to say, this depth corresponds to a potential height, and the blackest darkness to a hidden light. --C.G. Jung

"If everything is or can go wrong; its opposite should also populate the mind, i.e. the optimism. This would be sure to have built-in tools to safely exit the psychic state of chaos, making sure that States of dismay are inserted with internal layout to change something. The only remaining possible is this inexorable life factor. There is no human being sentenced previously to a pathological state; and no wish to praise fools, all without any exception have own resources to cope with their adversity." ~C. G. Jung

What do you think of the essence of Hell?

Hell is when the depths come to you with all that you no longer are or are not yet capable of. Hell is when you can no longer attain what you could attain.

Hell is when you must think and feel and do everything that you know you do not want. Hell is when you know that your having to is also a wanting to, and that you yourself are responsible for it.

Hell is when you know that everything serious that you have planned with yourself is also laughable, that everything fine is also brutal, that everything good is also bad, that everything high is also low, and that everything pleasant is also shameful.

But the deepest Hell is when you realize that Hell is also no Hell, but a cheerful Heaven, not a Heaven in itself, but in this respect a Heaven, and in that respect a Hell.
~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 244.

In his latest revelations, Pope Francis said:
"Through humility, soul searching, and prayerful contemplation we have gained a new understanding of certain dogmas. The church no longer believes in a literal hell where people suffer. This doctrine is incompatible with the infinite love of God. God is not a judge but a friend and a lover of humanity. God seeks not to condemn but only to embrace. Like the fable of Adam and Eve, we see hell as a literary device. Hell is merely a metaphor for the isolated soul, which like all souls ultimately will be united in love with God.”

At your low point you are no longer distinct from your fellow beings.

You are not ashamed and do not regret it, since insofar as you live the life of your fellow beings and descend to their lowliness / you also climb into the holy stream of common life, where you are no longer an individual on a high mountain, but a fish among fish, a frog among frogs.

Your heights are your own mountain, which belongs to you and you alone. There you are individual and live your very own life.

If you live your own life, you do not live the common life, which is always continuing and never-ending, the life of history and the inalienable and ever-present burdens and products of the human race.

There you live the endlessness of being, but not the becoming. Becoming belongs to the heights and is full of torment.

How can you become if you never are?

Therefore you need your bottommost, since there you are. But therefore you also need your heights, since there you become.

If you live the common life at your lowest reaches, then you become aware of your self.
If you are on your heights, then you are your best, and you become aware only of your best, but not that which you are in the general life as a being.

What one is as one who becomes, no one knows. But on the heights, imagination is at its strongest. For we imagine that we know what we are as developing beings, and even more so, the less we want to know what we are as beings.

Because of that we do not love the condition of our being brought low; although or rather precisely because only there do we attain clear knowledge
of ourselves. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 266.

The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not?

That is the telling question of his life.

Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance.

Thus we demand that the world grant us recognition for qualities which we regard as personal possessions: our talent or our beauty.

The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life.

He feels limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy.

If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change. In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted. In our relationships to other men, too, the crucial question is whether an element of boundlessness is expressed in the relationship. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Chapter "On Life After Death.”

“There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul,
a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were.”
― Hazrat Inayat Khan

“The principle aim of psychotherapy is not to transport the patient to an impossible state of happiness, but to help them acquire a steadfastness and philosophic patience in face of suffering. Life demands for its completion and fulfillment a balance between joy and sorrow. But because suffering is positively disagreeable, people naturally prefer not to ponder how much fear and sorrow fall to the lot of man.” --Carl Jung; Psychotherapy and a Philosophy of Life’

"At the age of eighty, Jung received a visit from a former student, now seventy years old, who wanted to question him about the death and the possibility of another life. He said," On her deathbed will not be of great help to remember the one in which I believe: you might have your own idea on the issue. " It was an explicit an invitation to address the problem in first person and pay attention to dreams."
M-L von Franz, Near death archetypal experiences. Existential depression is a depression that arises when an individual confronts certain basic issues of existence. Yalom (1980) describes four such issues (or “ultimate concerns”)–death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness. Death is an inevitable occurrence. Freedom, in an existential sense, refers to the absence of external structure. That is, humans do not enter a world which is inherently structured. We must give the world a structure which we ourselves create. Isolation recognizes that no matter how close we become to another person, a gap always remains, and we are nonetheless alone. Meaninglessness stems from the first three. If we must die, if we construct our own world, and if each of us is ultimately alone, then what meaning does life have?

Why should such existential concerns occur disproportionately among gifted persons? Partially, it is because substantial thought and reflection must occur to even consider such notions, rather than simply focusing on superficial day-to-day aspects of life. Other more specific characteristics of gifted children are important predisposers as well.
http://theunboundedspirit.com/existential-depression-in-gifted-children/

Into this dark night souls begin to enter when God draws them forth from the state of beginners—which is the state of those that meditate on the spiritual road—and begins to set them in the state of progressives —which is that of those who are already contemplatives—to the end that, after passing through it, they may arrive at the state of the perfect, which is that of the Divine union of the soul with God.

Wherefore, to the end that we may the better understand and explain what night is this through which the soul passes, and for what cause God sets it therein, it will be well here to touch first of all upon certain characteristics of beginners (which, although we treat them with all possible brevity, will not fail to be of service likewise to the beginners themselves), in order that, realizing the weakness of the state wherein they are, they may take courage, and may desire that God will bring them into this night, wherein the soul is strengthened and confirmed in the virtues, and made ready for the inestimable delights of the love of God. And, although we may tarry here for a time, it will not be for longer than is necessary, so that we may go on to speak at once of this dark night. --Opening to St. John of the Cross "Dark Night of the Soul"

T. H. White wrote in The Once and Future King about young Arthur's depression, his dark night of the soul.  He sought counsel from his mentor Merlin, the magician. Merlin tells Arthur, "The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies. You may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins. You may miss your only love. You may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it, then: To learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you."

“Why do we focus so intensely on our problems? What draws us to them? Why are they so attractive? They have the magnet power of love – somehow we desire our problems; we are in love with them much as we want to get rid of them. Problems sustain us; maybe that's why they don't go away. What would a life be without problems – completely tranquilized. There is a secret love hiding in each problem”. [James Hillman]

"This world is empty to him alone who does not understand how to direct his libido towards objects, and to render them alive and beautiful for himself, for Beauty does not indeed lie in things, but in the feeling that we give to them." ~Carl Jung; The Psychology of the Unconscious .

Libido:
Psychic energy in general.
Libido can never be apprehended except in a definite form; that is to say, it is identical with fantasy-images. And we can only release it from the grip of the unconscious by bringing up the corresponding fantasy-images.["The Technique of Differentiation," CW 7, par. 345.]

Jung specifically distanced his concept of libido from that of Freud, for whom it had a predominantly sexual meaning.
All psychological phenomena can be considered as manifestations of energy, in the same way that all physical phenomena have been understood as energic manifestations ever since Robert Mayer discovered the law of the conservation of energy. Subjectively and psychologically, this energy is conceived as desire. I call it libido, using the word in its original sense, which is by no means only sexual.["Psychoanalysis and Neurosis," CW 4, par. 567.]

[Libido] denotes a desire or impulse which is unchecked by any kind of authority, moral or otherwise. Libido is appetite in its natural state. From the genetic point of view it is bodily needs like hunger, thirst, sleep, and sex, and emotional states or affects, which constitute the essence of libido.["The Concept of Libido," CW 5, par. 194.]

In line with his belief that the psyche is a self-regulating system, Jung associated libido with intentionality. It "knows" where it ought to go for the overall health of the psyche.
The libido has, as it were, a natural penchant: it is like water, which must have a gradient if it is to flow.["Symbols of the Mother and of Rebirth," ibid., par. 337.]

Where there is a lack of libido (depression), it has backed up (re-gressed) in order to stir up unconscious contents, the aim being to compensate the attitudes of consciousness. What little energy is left resists being applied in a consciously chosen direction.
It does not lie in our power to transfer "disposable" energy at will to a rationally chosen object. The same is true in general of the apparently disposable energy which is disengaged when we have destroyed its unserviceable forms through the corrosive of reductive analysis. [It] can at best be applied voluntarily for only a short time. But in most cases it refuses to seize hold, for any length of time, of the possibilities rationally presented to it. Psychic energy is a very fastidious thing which insists on fulfillment of its own conditions. However much energy may be present, we cannot make it serviceable until we have succeeded in finding the right gradient.["The Problem of the Attitude-Type," CW 7, par. 76]

The analytic task in such a situation is to discover the natural gradient of the person’s energy.
What is it, at this moment and in this individual, that represents the natural urge of life? That is the question.["The Structure of the Unconscious," ibid., par. 488.]

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iona_m@yahoo.com
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