Solution-Focussed

The fundamental error persists in the public that there are definite answers, “solutions,” or views which need only be uttered in order to spread the necessary light. But the most beautiful truth — as history has shown a thousand times over— is of no use at all unless it has become the innermost experience and possession of the individual. Every unequivocal, so-called “clear” answer always remains stuck in the head and seldom penetrates to the heart.

 

 

The needful thing is not to know the truth but to experience it.

 

 

Not to have an intellectual conception of things, but to find our way to the inner, and perhaps wordless, irrational experience — that is the great problem.

 

 

Nothing is more fruitless than talking about how things must or should be, and nothing is more important than finding the way to these far-off goals. Most people know very well how things should be, but who can point the way to get there?

 

 

– C. G. Jung, The Symbolic Life

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image credit – reversethinking.co.uk

Society Is A Double-Bind

And that is just the paradox of the situation: society gives us the idea that the mind, or ego, is inside the skin and that it acts on its own apart from society.

 

Here, then, is a major contradiction in the rules of then social game. The members of the game are to play as if they were independent agents, but they are not to know that they are just playing as if! It is explicit in the rules that the individual is self-determining, but implicit that he is so only by virtue of the rules. Furthermore, while he is defined as an independent agent, he must not be so independent as not to submit to the rules which define him. Thus he is defined as an agent in order to be held responsible to the group for “his” actions. The rules of the game confer independence and take it away at the same time, without revealing the contradiction.

 

This is exactly the predicament which Gregory Bateson calls the “double-bind,” in which the individual is called upon to take two mutually exclusive courses of action and at the same time is prevented from being able to comment on the paradox. You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t, and you mustn’t realize it. Bateson has suggested that the individual who finds himself in a family situation which imposes the double-bind upon him in an acute form is liable to schizophrenia. For if he cannot comment on the contradiction, what can he do but withdraw from the field? Yet society does not allow withdrawal; the individual must play the game.

 

– Alan Watts, quote taken from themouseftrap.com

 

 

 

 

Image credit – xtramagazine.com

 

 

 

The Effect of Projection

The effect of projection is to isolate the subject from his environment, since instead of a real relation to it there is now only an illusory one.

– Carl Jung

 

 

 

 

 

Image credit – “Passengers on the Dystopia Express”, by Eric Wayne, digital painting [1/2/2023]. artofericwayne.com 

 

 

 

 

Self-Inquiry

Abandon desire, anger, greed and delusion, make self-inquiry: Who am I? those devoid of self-knowledge are fools and as captives in hell they are tormented.

 

– Bhaja Govindam of Sri Sankaracharya

 

 

 

 

Image credit – wallpapers.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Dreamer In The Dream

It isn’t possible for the dreamer in the dream that mind dreams to prove that truth is false, and that this manifests in the dream as suffering.

 

– Wei Wu Wei (paraphrased)








Image credit – deepdreamgenerator.com

Other People’s Ideas

Psychology is only the study of other people’s ideas, it far better to study yourself than to study other people’s fantasies.

 

– G. I. Gurdjieff

 

 

 

 

Image credit – goodfon.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Convenient Myths

Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain… Now it’s long been understood – very well – that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time.

 

– Noam Chomsky

 

 

 

 

 

Image credit – flickr.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hungry Ghost Perception

As a yidag, whatever experience comes my way in life I am never able to be receptive to it. All my opportunities are missed because I do not see them as opportunities. The job offer was fine, but the salary was not quite what it should be and the employer seemed antagonistic. My partner is a good person, I can see that – but they have such irritating habits. Hungry ghosts lack the capacity to actively appreciate. There is always a downside, always a ‘but’. In this realm there is a feeling of isolation. I cannot trust that I am liked, or fully embrace liking others. I am unable to appreciate what I have, so I exist in continual poverty, desperate to fulfil the next perceived need. What I have is never good enough, but I also feel that I could never achieve anything better. Hungry ghost perception is completely coloured by perceptual poverty and isolation. We live in this realm a great deal of the time.

 

– Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

 

 

 

 

Image credit – trace.org

 

 

 

Wholly Nested

The illusory never existed, while the relative world is wholly nested within the Absolute.

 

– Joel Friedman, mentalhelp.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image credit – wallpaper.mob.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Craving

The state of craving for anything blocks all deeper experience. Nothing of value can happen to a mind which knows exactly what it wants. For nothing the mind can visualize and want is of much value.

 

– Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj 

 

 

 

 

Image credit – Michael S. Helfenbein