It seems that everything that has ever happened to us is still alive somewhere in the depths of our psyche. ~James Hollis

The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give.~Francis Weller, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘪𝘭𝘥 𝘌𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘸

Violent men don’t have the strength of consciousness and character to own responsibility for what is missing in their own psychological life. They pummel others for not carrying their own anguished souls.~James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life

Perfection is inhuman. Human beings are not perfect. What evokes our love - and I mean love, not lust--is the imperfection of the human being. So, when the imperfection of the real person peaks through, say, 'This is a challenge to my compassion.~ Joseph Campbell

Jung pointed out absolute necessity for feminine values without which there would be no perception of Self. This is especially true in our time when everything is geared toward achievement. One of the best antidotes to that is to read Lao-tzu: “When you do nothing, everything is done.”~Helen Luke

The saviour does not come down from heaven but out of the depths of the earth, i.e., from that which lies below consciousness. ~CG Jung

Jung believed that the God of religion was dead because we had killed him with too much piety. We had made God shallow, narrow and good. This served to stifle and suppress the vitality of God; the divine life had been depleted by too much moralism.~David Tacey

Much of what remains undeveloped in us, psychologically speaking, is excluded because it is too good to bear. We often refuse to accept our most noble traits and instead find a shadow substitute for them.~Robert A. Johnson, 𝘓𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘜𝘯𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘓𝘪𝘧𝘦

People get absolutely intolerable when they have a creative idea in their womb and can’t bring it out. They’re neurotic, aggressive, irritable, and depressed. So then one has to help them bring the child out.~Marie-Louise von Franz, A Matter of Heart, 1984

The shadow self is not the negative aspects of self, but those aspects that are denied, unaccepted, or disowned. When you accept & explore the aspects of yourself that you’ve hidden, forgotten, or denied, you gain access to new reserves of energy, clarity, and freedom.~J Ellerby

I believe my unconscious knows what I need more than anyone else does. If you allow a dream image into your life when you are sick or having psychological difficulties, it can pull you in a helpful direction.~Marion Woodman

Psychologically, the dragon is one's own binding of oneself to one's ego, and you're captured in your own dragon cage. And the problem of the psychiatrist is to break that dragon, open him up, so that you can have a larger field of relationships. ~Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

The inescapable paradox of fire – of alchemy, of psyche, of intelligent living – consists in this double commandment: Thou shalt not repress / Thou shalt not act out. ~James Hillman, Alchemical Psychology

Each person’s psyche has an inborn evolutional urge to grow, to integrate the contents of the unconscious, to bring together all the missing parts of the total individual into a complete, whole, and conscious self.~Robert A Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”― John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra

All forms in life are imperfect, but the function of art is to see the radiance through the imperfection. ~Joseph Campbell

"It’s not unusual for scienceto catch up to art, eventually.Nor is it unusual for artto catch up to the spiritual." ~Rick Rubin, The Creative Act

It's an old Gnostic tradition that we don't invent things, we just remember.~Robert Bly, "The Long Bag we Drag Behind us".

Even if the Western ego continues to deny the need for wholeness, there are non-egoic parts of us that cry out for reconnection and healing.~David Tacey, Gods and Diseases

Certainly, when one person in a room is more conscious, it changes the consciousness of everyone in that room. And in a family, if one person is coming into consciousness, everyone in the household is going to be changed.~Marion Woodman, Parabola Interview

There is another reality, the genuine one, which we lose sight of. This other reality is always sending us hints, which without art, we can’t receive.~Saul Bellow, Nobel Prize Speech

An integrated individual is one who carries his own dark shadow of undesirable qualities, frees those around him from his projections, and by so doing actually transforms a fraction of the evil in the world.~Irene Claremont de Castillejo, Knowing Woman

"The physical world is true and real; the inner world is also true and real. It is when we muddle them, when we fail to live the inner world as symbol, when we try to locate it in literal people, that the illusory world is created." ~Robert A. Johnson, We

"Every myth, whether or not by intention, is psychologically symbolic. Its narratives and images are to be read, therefore, not literally, but as metaphors." ~Joseph Campbell, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘐𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘳 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘖𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘚𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘦

"Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary." ~Sebastian Junger, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

"Answers tell us where we’ve been. Questions get us on our journey, and I’ve often said to people in psychoanalysis, “This is not about curing you because 𝘺𝘰𝘶’𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘢 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦, 𝘺𝘰𝘶’𝘳𝘦 𝘢 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴. This is about making your life more interesting to you.”~James Hollis, A 𝘓𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨

I try to consider external events as external dreams; I assume they are carrying psychological meaning in a way a dream does.~Edward Edinger

In his book 𝘌𝘨𝘰 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘈𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘵𝘺𝘱𝘦, the Jungian analyst Edward Edinger writes that the experience of the Self is “most likely to occur when the ego has exhausted its own resources and is aware of its essential impotence by itself.”~Howard Sasportas

What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: 𝙙𝙤 𝙄 𝙙𝙖𝙧𝙚?~Joseph Campbell

A great work of art is like a dream; for all its apparent obviousness it does not explain itself and is always ambiguous. A dream never says "you ought" or "this is the truth." It presents an image and it is up to us to draw conclusions.~CG Jung

As Jung said, “Thank God for our neuroses!” It is thanks to them that we learn to confront ourselves and are forced, frequently through exasperating circumstances, to grow.~Alice O. Howell

My chief desire is to stir thought, trouble sleep, and provide some wider perspective.~James Hollis. In this episode I’m joined by actor and educator Jeff Miller for a raw, unfiltered conversation about why we love Hollis’s unsparing look at the psyche. www.podbean.com/eas/pb-68mxc...

As Jung noted, neurosis is “an act of adaptation that has failed". In the same way that spirit is trapped in matter, human vitality gets tied up in rigid structures of self-protection that may have once served a useful purpose but insulate us from the vitality of life.~David Fideler

In everyone some kind of artist is hiding. ~CG Jung, 𝘊.𝘎. 𝘑𝘶𝘯𝘨 𝘚𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨: 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘌𝘯𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴

Most of life involves our showing up, and we have so many ways of not showing up. Our popular culture is a vast array of protections, distractions, and soporifics, lest we be obliged to show up.~James Hollis, 𝘏𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴: 𝘋𝘪𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘙𝘶𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘓𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴

“[I]f a person just refuses to think that he has an inside problem, he’s not going to work the thing out. Nobody can do it for him. You have to learn how to recognize your own depths." ~Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey

The life span of any particular emotion is only one and half minutes. After that we have to revive the emotion to get it going again. We revive it by feeding it with an internal conversation about how another person is the source of one’s discomfort. ~Pema Chödrön, Taking the Leap

All we are not stares back at what we are. ~ W.H. Auden

[Jung] realized the significance of what it meant to live without a myth. One without a myth "is like one uprooted, having no true link either with the past, or with the ancestral life which continues within him, or yet with contemporary human society.~Sonu Shamdasani

You must first discover what you are afraid of; then you can overcome it. . . Georg Groddeck said something I like a lot: “You are afraid of what you desire.” Alejandro Jodorowsky Psychomagic

[O]ne of my favorite quotes from Jung when he was asked what his work is like. He said, "I want to help people to experiment with their own being so that nothing forever remains petrified."~Ursula Wirtz

If you do not have a mystic dimension you do not have a mythology, you have an ideology.~Joseph Campbell (𝘔𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘴)

The process of individuation does not make life easier—it makes it more meaningful. The path is not one of escape, but of deep engagement with the realities of suffering, growth, and self-discovery."— Edward Edinger, 𝘈𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘴𝘺𝘤𝘩𝘦

A great poem of the Zen tradition ends with this description of the awakened state: To be without anxiety about imperfection.~ Adyashanti

Jung realized that when Westerners try to dissolve their personal ego before they have resolved shadow issues, shadow issues grow to godlike proportions. ~Robin Robertson, Jungian Archetypes

Perhaps you also will one day understand that it is only the man who is really capable of being alone, and without bitterness, who attracts other people." ~CG Jung, 𝘓𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘰 𝘙𝘢𝘭𝘱𝘩 𝘞𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘭𝘦𝘳

From Jung I took courage to tell my patients not to put their faith in abstract concepts. Put your faith in your own unconscious, your own dreams.~Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work

Jung sees in the “natural” processes of synchronicity the attempts of nature to pattern and develop herself. There is no recognizable “cause” for this; it just happens. He is suggesting that there is an organizing principle to life within life itself.~J Gary Sparks, The Valley of Diamonds

The purpose of the first half of life is to give the ego a sense of security, and to make it believe in its achievements. The ego is the agent of incarnation, and if it does not feel grounded the Self cannot begin its work.~David Tacey

As any good therapist will tell you, you cannot heal what you do not acknowledge, and what you do not consciously acknowledge will remain in control of you from within, festering and destroying you and those around you.~ Richard Rohr