“It is in this transformation of perception that we find the healing of that great schism that split the West—the rift between thought and being. It is by means of the Creative Imagination ...” ~ Tom Cheetham, All the World an Icon: Henry Corbin & the Angelic Function of Beings.

“All of us, no matter who we are, in the pressures of our busy, complicated lives, lose this fundamental relationship to ourselves, again & again. We get caught in false “doing” that isn’t rooted in the ground of our being, the Self...” ~ Bud Harris, Becoming Whole: A Jungian Guide to Individuation.

“If a new world is to come, we must first create it in ourselves. You ask how the work of a few people can change the world. It has always been so. Ideas are powerful, not organisations. Nothing can be done by outward force; everything can be done by inner strength.” ~ JG Bennett.

“Without a global revolution in ... consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans, and the catastrophe toward which this world is headed – be it ecological, social, demographic, or a general breakdown of civilization – will be unavoidable.” ~ Václav Havel.

“This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not ‘come into’ this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree ...” ~ Alan Watts.

What Life Wants of Us ~~~~~~~ “It is not what we want but what life, apparently, wants of us. To believe this, one then has to believe also in mystery of some kind, that is, that we are more than merely material bodies that dance awhile and then just rot away.” ~ James Hollis, Source unknown.

“[Jung] became convinced that psyche extends beyond the human and encompasses the physical world. When we come into contact with the unconscious we witness the tip of a reality that exceeds our knowledge and imagination ...” ~ David Tacey, The Darkening Spirit: Jung, spirituality, religion.

“It is important to underline that individuation leads not only to a widening of personality, but also to a broadening of collective relationships. Contrary to the belief of some, individuation is not tantamount to isolation & abdication of social & ethical responsibilities ...” ~ Radmila Moacanin.

"We think that the world is our prison - whereas the prison is our way of thinking and feeling."~Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

“Basing consciousness upon soul accords with the Neoplatonic tradition – which we still find in Blake – where what today is called ego-consciousness would be the consciousness of the Platonic cave, a consciousness buried in the least aware perspectives.” ~ James Hillman, Anima.

“There are ... some signs in Western culture—albeit a minority subculture—of a slowly emerging trend, a paradigm shift beyond scientific materialism to greater self-awareness & mental receptivity; to interest in meditation and the intersection of psychology and spirituality ...” ~ Radmila Moacanin.

“What is required is a synthesis of both intuition & imagination with reason: the imagined place – though 1 that is nonetheless with discipline achievable – where each is at its best, standing in equitable relation to each of the others .. informed, where relevant, by science.” ~ Iain McGilchrist.

Wounded Inaction ~~~~~~~ “It is very dangerous when a wound is so common in a culture that hardly anyone knows that there is a problem. There is general discontent with our way of life but almost no one knows specifically where to look for its origin.” ~ Robert A. Johnson.

“The point of inner work is to build consciousness. By learning to do your own inner work, you gain insight into the conflicts and challenges that your life presents. You are able to search the hidden depths of your own unconscious ...” ~ Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work.

“Instead of a fragmented, mechanistic world where humans were little more than cogs in a machine, Schelling conjured up a world of oneness. The living and non-living worlds, he explained, were ruled by the same underlying principles ...” ~ Andrea Wulf, Magnificent Rebels.

“... over 2000 years ago, the schools of Plato & Aristotle put the seal on what was to become the most enduring Athenian contribution to intellectual history in the West: instead of the love of wisdom, philosophy turned into the love of talking and arguing ...” ~ Peter Kingsley.

“Even in these modern times, what half-heartedly is described as mystical perception is always pushed to the periphery. When it’s not denied it’s held at arm’s length — out there at the margins of society. But ...” ~ Peter Kingsley, In the Dark Places of Wisdom.

“Although its shape constantly changes to suit the age, the central tenets of the secret tradition remain the same. The idea that psyche, soul, constitutes the very fabric of reality; that humans are individual manifestations of a ... Soul of the World ...” ~ Patrick Harpur.

It is paradoxical, but you can feel both gratitude and resentment toward the person who forces you to begin down your own path of growth.~Robert A. Johnson, 𝘚𝘩𝘦: 𝘜𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘍𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘗𝘴𝘺𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺

“Humanity must suffer very much before it comes to an understanding of the advantage of unity. Most destructive forces have been directed for the purpose of obscuring the embryos of unification. Each unifying agent is subject to personal danger ...” ~ Nicholas Roerich.

This Transitional Age ~~~~~~~ “Ours is an age between world views, creative yet disoriented, a transitional era when the old cultural vision no longer holds and the new has not yet constellated. Yet we are not without signs of what the new might look like.” ~ Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche.

The Real World / Nature's Mirror ~~ “For Blake, as for Swedenborg, Plato, & innumerable mystics, the outer world is a reflection or symbol of an inner one. For them the real world is this higher, spiritual, interior reality, & the lower, physical universe is merely a sign of it ...” ~ Gary Lachman.

1/4 “Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt”, a story of Resistance in a near-future dystopia ... Links in comments. Image: The Unholy Worship / Gwabryel, Illustrator of Weird Fiction / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0. #PostTruth #Materialism #Disenchantment #Resistance #Underground

Seek and You Will Be Found ~~~~~~~ “An old alchemist gave the following consolation to one of his disciples: ‘No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you.’” ~ Carl Jung, Letters, Volume II.

“‘Paradise is a state of being’, wrote the poet Kathleen Raine, ‘in which outer and inner reality are at one, the world in harmony with imagination. All poetry tells of that vision ...’” ~ Quoted in Patrick Harpur, A Complete Guide to the Soul / The Secret Tradition of the Soul.

“Our daimon is our tutelary and constant companion. It has been there from childhood to the present, but it is usually drowned out by the noise of our environment, the fears that haunt us, the “stories” that separate us, and the sundry distractions popular culture offers ...” ~ James Hollis.

“Sensation establishes what is actually given, thinking enables us to recognize its meaning, feeling tells us its value, and finally intuition points to the possibilities of the whence and whither that lie within the immediate facts ...” ~ Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul.

Plato’s Cave ~~~~~~~ Once You Understand Plato’s Cave, There’s No Going Back ... Video (14 min). www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAn9... #PlatosCave #Illusion #Awakening #Reality #HerosJourney #HerosQuest

Pass it On ~~~~~~~ VENTURA: “... [A]ll of this passing things on, in all its forms, may not cure the world now—curing the world now may not be a human possibility—but it keeps the great things alive. And we have to do this because, as Laing said, who are we to decide that it is hopeless? ...”

“We create the world that we perceive, not because there is no reality outside our heads, but because we select and edit the reality we see to conform to our beliefs about what sort of world we live in ...” ~ Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind.

“It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.” ~ Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder. Image: Tulip / William Morris (1834-1896), dig enhanced by Rawpixel / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.

“We always start with the naive assumption that we are masters in our own house. Hence we must first accustom ourselves to the thought that ... we live in a kind of house which has doors and windows to the world, but that ... the objects or contents ... do not belong to us ...” ~ Carl Jung.

“[I]t has [been] assumed that we are concerned with some corporate and organised body, whereas we are concerned only with the course of experience in the higher consciousness.” ... “I am not speaking of formal institutions ...” ~ A.E. Waite, The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal.

“... Active imagination requires a state of reverie, half-way between sleep and waking. It is like beginning to fall asleep but stopping short before consciousness is lost and remaining in that condition ...”* ~ Anthony Stevens, On Jung. *Hypnagogia.

“[T]he erosion of tribal and institutional images that once possessed the power to link our ancestors with the transcendent energies of the cosmos has left millions of moderns reaching for secular surrogates ...” ~ James Hollis, Living Between Worlds.

The Root Causes of Why We're FUBAR or “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” ... esowteric.vivaldi.net/2026/01/16/t... #PostTrust #PostTruth #Materialism #Disenchantment #Resist #Resistance #Underground #Survival #DarkAges

“Now we have to get back the cosmos, and it can’t be done by a trick. The great range of responses that have fallen dead in us have to come to life again. It has taken two thousand years to kill them. Who knows how long it will take to bring them to life ...” ~ D.H. Lawrence.

“I had come to the conclusion a long time ago that there was no escape from the labyrinth of contradictions in which we live except by an entirely new road, unlike anything hitherto known or used by us ...” ~ P.D. Ouspensky.

“There is a universal sense in humans that there is unity and cohesion at the heart of life, and that it is possible for us to be consciously aware of it ...” ~ Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work.

“On the mythic view, or the psychic view, shared with many mystics, Creation is continuous. Jung writes, "The psyche creates reality every day." But this psyche is not localized inside our heads. Rather, we exist in it ...” ~ Tom Cheetham, Green Man, Earth Angel.

Societal Collapse by Design: MAGA’s Big Plan: Very short read ... esowteric.vivaldi.net/2026/01/28/s... Image: Destruction from the series The Course of Empire / Thomas Cole (1801–1848) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.

What is Water? ~~~~~~~ “Fishes, asking what water was, went to a wise fish. He told them that it was all around them, yet they still thought that they were thirsty. (Nasafi).” ~ Idries Shah, The Sufis. Image: Aquarium Fish / Mike Fisher / Wikimedia Commons (orig. Flickr) / CC BY 2.0.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises from within us, our life’s star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar. ~ William Wordsworth, from “Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”.

“Some want to turn the clock back, harkening back to some golden age of nostalgia, when women, children, the lower class, parishioners, and people of other races and creeds knew their place; not the 1950s, but further ...” ~ H.M. Forester, Preface to Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt. Link in comments.

“The disaster that has overtaken the modern world is the complete splitting off of the conscious mind from its roots in the unconscious. All the forms of interaction with the unconscious that nourished our ancestors ... are largely lost to us ...” ~ Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work.

“[A]ccording to Jung, the ego, full of distortions and projections, needs to be dissolved before the Self can emerge. The Self, however, which is the totality of the psyche, includes the ego. In the process of individuation one does not destroy the ego ...” ~ Radmila Moacanin.

“The neglect of the education of the soul is characterised by a lack of intimacy, by an over-emphasis on “competencies” and “tools” – the distancing language of technology, military strategy, surveillance, corporate efficiency, quantification, target-setting ...” ~ Dr Jeremy Henzell-Thomas.

What do you get when The Handmaid's Tale meets 2012? Here's the preface ( in English) to the new Italian edition of Dark Star Rising. www.gary-lachman.com/post/apocaly...

“[A] good work of fantasy awakens a "sense of wonder" that many of us lost as we grew from children to adults. But isn't that escapism? Many critics argue so. They agree with Rene Descartes ..." ~ Robin Robertson, Jung and Frodo: 7 Paths of Individuation in Lord of the Rings.

“[S]ince the Industrial Revolution, but particularly in the last fifty years, we have created a world around us which, in contrast to the natural world, reflects the left hemisphere’s priorities and its vision ...” ~ Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary (2009).