Have you discovered the link?
Have you ever looked at Aristotles book “on the heavens” as a psychology book instead of a book about the cosmos? It almost overlays the Bible specifically. He explains what earth, water, fire and air are in accordance to the Bible’s views It’s not about the cosmo, it’s a personal psychology book. We just interpret it’s from a “western” standpoint.
Is my ego just weak or is my unconscious just too strong?
I live in a country (the Philippines) where our lockdowns have lasted the longest in the entire world, forcing almost all of us to stay indoors longer than anyone else in the world. During the course of my stay indoors, I have noticed myself having involuntary thoughts, impulses, and shadow projections, and I find myself saying words as if I'm possessed or I have Tourette's syndrome. I think the fact that I have been in isolation for so long has forced me to face the deeper parts of myself, which is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because I see this a chance to know myself more and become more integrated, but also a curse because my involuntary speech has ruined my friendships with a lot of people. How do I further deal with these involuntary actions?
Potential and Poverty
As much as social hierarchies raise the exceptional among us to heights where they can be admired, they diminish some of us to almost non-existent social value. Through a combination of bad decisions, tragedy, and evil I found myself near the bottom of all social hierarchies. To live in such a position is to add a catalyst of suffering and vulnerability to life. If you are some combination of sick and poor enough few people will regard you in a positive light. Perhaps rightly so, because life can be like a ship wreck where people are just trying to keep their heads above water. Thankfully, I have learnt that I can orient myself towards a high ideal and find that place where tragedy and responsibility meet and create potential to improve my life. Recently, I became employed in the trades, in a position with decent earning and growth potential. This is after 10 years of unemployment or underemployment, and living in my parents basement in small town Ontario. The biggest increase in my quality of life, and I think my utility as a person has been my financial independence. Yet, I can not help but feel that life at the bottom of the hierarchy is unduly punitive and even sadistic; domesticated animals are generally treated better than humans at the bottom of social hierarchies. So much of my potential was constrained by the necessities to cloth, feed, and shelter myself, basic human dignity and self respect are hard to maintain when you have so little. My question is: what extent do western hierarchies waste human potential? And if so, to what extend is that loss related to poverty?
ACTUALLY Integrating the Unconscious
What are some practical methods to integrate the Shadow and the Anima/Animus complex? Depth psychology is pretty stark about the damaging potential for unintegrated contents to run roughshod over our lives, work, relationships… but what might be some actual, real-world steps that everyday people can take to a) dissolve externally projecting and b) integrate, harness and utilise these powerful forces, lurking beneath the threshold of consciousness…? And on the collective level, to what extent might the problem of these unintegrated contents be attributed to the many social / psychological / political crises of the day? Thanks