Thea Euryphaessa

@theaeuryphaessa

Writer 📚 | Quotes | Depth/Jungian Psychology | Hero's Journey | Author of 'Running into Myself' and follow-up, 'Growing into MySelf' Long press the hashtag #MyBookShelf on app/click on desktop to search my posts for books I've shared.

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Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· 15d

On loneliness.

Loneliness is one expression of our rootlessness. Many people in our day, separated from tradition and often cast out by society, are alone with no myths to guide them, no unquestioned rites to welcome them into community, no sacraments to initiate them into the holy-and so there is rarely anything holy. The loneliness of mythlessness is the deepest and least assuageable of all. Unrelated to the past, unconnected with the future, we hang as if in mid-air. We are like the shades Odysseus meets in the underworld, crying for news about the people up in the world but unable themselves to feel anything.

Rollo May, The Cry for Myth

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· 18d

On how pursuing meaningful creative interests can change our lives in the most inspiring and positive of ways.

I have seen that myself again and again-that it is useful to show someone the animus or the shadow or some other complex, to have it out in 'washing dirty linen', but it is very often best just to help people to find the essential meaning of their lives, what they are there for. When they become interested in that, they completely lose interest in petty nonsense. When the main water of life in a human being is flowing again, when there is, for instance, some meaningful creative interest, then one no longer has time to spend hours on the phone to one's sister or brother or a friend to complain that she or he has been wrong. One just hasn't the time, and therefore one is much more inclined to think, "Oh well, let it be. Never mind. It may be my fault, so let's make peace." Because life is flowing again. When one finds the essential meaning of one's life, this has a purifying effect upon one's 'dirty linen' affairs.

By Marie-Louise von Franz from her book, 'Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales'.

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· 23d

More from Leeming on the meaning of myth. 🧵 2/2

Most of us have had dreams of falling from a great height, dreams of being lost or left behind, dreams of conquest—sexual, athletic, or whatever. Nearly every society has myths which express these themes on the group level. To be sure, dreams are in part products of the individual's personality and environment, but Jung has shown that the individual's psyche cannot be divorced from the psyche of the human race as a whole. Dreams are also products of inherited themes that are buried in the very depths of the human psyche. These are themes—archetypes—which, when we come across them, in literature, for instance, 'strike a chord' for no apparent reason. So myths spring from the particular problems and concerns of a given race or tribe, but on a deeper level their source is the universal soul of the human race itself.

— David Adams Leeming, Mythology: The Voyage of the Hero

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· 23d

David Adams Leeming on the meaning of myth. 🧵 1/2

C. G. Jung wrote: "the primitive mentality does not invent myths, it experiences them. Myths are original revelations of the pre-conscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings . . . ."

The point is not to search for the physical or historical correlative of myth, but for the meaning which is intrinsic in the myth itself, for myths, like dreams, are psychically real. Indeed, myths might be called the dreams of mankind. Dreams serve as escape valves for individuals. They represent wishes and fears. Myths serve whole societies and . . . many societies at once in much the same manner. The priests or medicine men or shamans who feel and convey the myths are, as Geza Roheim has written, "the lightning conductors of common anxiety. They fight the demons so that others can hunt the prey and in general fight reality."

— David Adams Leeming, Mythology: The Voyage of the Hero

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· 24d

It would be inaccurate to say . . . that an adventure has no purpose or a wandering no outcome. It is just that the purpose is never, in the end, what we thought it was. On the contrary, it is something that was unknowable, residing as it did in the wilds beyond our fences. #MyBookShelf #BookSky

A copy of Bayo Akomolafe's book, 'These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home' stood next to a white milk jug vase filled with pale pink wild roses.

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· 24d

On spirituality as the art of transfiguration.

Spirituality is the art of transfiguration. We should not force ourselves to change by hammering our lives into any predetermined shape. We do not need to operate according to the idea of a predetermined programme or plan for our lives. Rather, we need to practise a new art of attention to the inner rhythm of our days and lives. This attention brings a new awareness of our own human and divine presence.

— Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· 25d

Following the release of 'The Odyssey', here's Iain McGilchrist on the cultural importance of great stories and myths.

One of the reasons we are captivated by great plays and novels, narratives and myths, is that they allow us to stand back: to step away from the immediacy of experience, through what I call 'necessary distance', and see the complexities under which all human life labours. Such distance does not alienate, but, on the contrary, enables us to see ourselves with heightened awareness, and to empathise with those who stand for us—and for more than us. Great dramatic performances play out, in archetypal form, the intricacies of all human relationships and human motives, the conflicting demands of many-faceted love, of friendships, family and kin, of valued work, vocation, and the urge to create, the striving to preserve dignity and pride, and the lure of beauty towards things that are perhaps exciting, dangerous, deeply fulfilling and unendurable at once—not to mention loyalties to religious conviction, to a society's cohesion, to the need to avoid pain, and the call to confront evil, to belong to a society and to be a unique individual, to heal, to save and to give meaning to life. In short, they inculcate the practice of judgment.

— Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· 26d

On what our wounds can teach us.

The woundings of our lives can cause the withdrawal of our substance, the leaching of our spirits. Or we can choose to see them as the slings and arrows that fortune provides to gouge us sufficiently full of holes that we may yet become holy. "Wisdom through suffering", Sophocles said, and millions have assented to this cold if accurate comfort. For it is in the trials of wounding that all our immature or shadowed parts rise to meet us, never to leave us until we are either flat-out defeated and ready to begin the path of wisdom or willing to take steps to redress our lesser selves.

— Jean Houston, A Mythic Life: Learning to Live Our Greater Story

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· 28d

Jungian, James Hollis on eros as a guide on the psychospiritual path.

In the journey each of us lives, Eros is the guide of the quickened soul. Most of us learned early to distrust our desire, shy away from the large task that stands before us. Generally we seek comfort over enlargement, reassurance over risk, and seldom venture out beyond the predictable. Our dilemma is not that we are capable of both so much evil and so much self-denial, but that we are capable of so much spiritual pettiness. It may prove a 'terrible' thing to be summoned before the large, before the call of the numinous, but it is in those moments that we express our journey most fully.

— James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· Jul 13

Some hard truths from Jung.

Hysterical self-deceivers, and ordinary ones too, have at all times understood the art of misusing everything so as to avoid the demands and duties of life, and above all to shirk the duty of confronting themselves. They pretend to be seekers after God in order not to have to face the truth that they are ordinary egoists.

— Carl G. Jung, Collected Works 13

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· Jul 12

Jungian, Edward Edinger with a reminder to, 'be the change you wish to see in the world'.

There certainly are individuals whose life work and destiny require them to deal with political realities. That's the arena in which they live out their life. And each of us, trying to be as conscious as possible, must ask ourselves what our proper life arena is. If we decide that our life arena is politics, then we will be obliged to prepare ourselves to function effectively in that arena and live out our life there.
If, however, one's life arena is something else and yet one is in great distress at what is going on in the world, and one thinks, "Oh I ought to do something about it," my suggestion would be to think twice. Jung's conviction is that the most effective way to redeem or transform the world is first of all to transform the little piece of it that is oneself. And until that has been thoroughly accomplished, my thought would be that one isn't entitled to attempt the transformation of the outer world—unless, of course, one's work arena happens to be there.

— Edward F. Edinger, The Mystery of the Coniunctio: Alchemical Image of Individuation

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· Jul 11

Jung spot on here.

Each of us is equipped with a psychic disposition that limits our freedom in high degree and makes it practically illusory. Not only is 'freedom of the will' an incalculable problem philosophically, it is also a misnomer in the practical sense, for we seldom find anybody who is not influenced and indeed dominated by desires, habits, impulses, prejudices, resentments, and by every conceivable kind of complex. All these natural facts function exactly like an Olympus full of deities who want to be propitiated, served, feared and worshipped, not only by the individual owner of this assorted pantheon, but by everybody in his vicinity.

— Carl G. Jung, CW 11

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· Jul 6

From Stephen Mitchell's translation of Lao Tzu's, Tao Te Ching. #BookSky #MyBookShelf

A copy of Stephen Mitchell's book, 'Tao Te Ching: An Illustrated Journey' by Lao Tzu stood next to a white milk jug vase filled with pale pink wild roses.

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· Jul 3

If you've ever pulled a projection back from a partner in a relationship, then you'll know what Jungian, Marion Woodman says here is all too true.

Men are still inclined to project their perfect inner woman onto their partner, so they can't understand what's going on when the outer woman does something their inner woman would not do. It comes as a mighty shock and often the man insists, "That's not who you are." A projection is a very real thing. It's real energy. If I'm projecting onto a man my adoration of him, that energy is like crutches holding him up. My energy is supporting him. If I take that projection away, suddenly he's without crutches, so it's a terrifying moment in a relationship; he not only loses the image he thinks he loves but loses the powerful support of the projection. Conscious women are pulling back the adoring projection. It hurts but it's much healthier. It lets a man be who he is, a human being trying to find himself, just as the woman is. It allows for real love.

— Marion Woodman, Conscious Femininity

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· Jun 30

On darkness, hidden growth, and the power of patience.

The darkness, the depression, that dreadful feeling of emptiness and cautious hope that a period of waiting extracts from us may also be understood as a period when creative energy must quietly accumulate. Deep down where it is dark and moist, in the hidden place, the germ will sprout. Only in darkness will it take root. Darkness, so often seen as negative, is clearly necessary to fertility and hidden growth. A great energy is building and growing where we cannot see it. All of life seems silent and asleep before the creative breakthrough.
In myths, the fields must lie fallow and receptive before the corn goddess will allow the grain to grow again. In our own experience, any great work of art, any real relationship, certainly any healthy baby, needs a period of silent, undercover becoming. The creative process makes one, essentially, pregnant.
The value of this time of lying fallow is not very popular in Western culture. We don't like darkness. We don't like to wait patiently for what is unseen to gather the energy necessary to come to light. And if we want something, we want it now. Instant gratification is our constitutional right. Waiting is something to be done away with.

— Gertrud Mueller Nelson, Here All Dwell Free: Stories to Heal the Wounded Feminine

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· Jun 25

Abraham Maslow on fate/destiny.

I think it is possible to go pretty far with the notion of destiny or fate. This is a way of putting into inadequate words the feeling that one gets when one listens to self-actualising people (and some others) talking about their work or task. One gets the feeling of a beloved job, and, furthermore, of something for which the person is a 'natural', something that he is suited for, something that is right for him, even something that he was born for. It is easy to sense something like a pre-established harmony or, perhaps one could say, a good match like the perfect love affair or friendship, in which it seems that people belong to each other and were meant for each other. In the best instances, the person and his job fit together and belong together perfectly like a key and a lock, or perhaps resonate together like a sung note which sets into sympathetic resonance a particular string in the piano keyboard.

— Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· Jun 23

[This work]—it is an adventure which never comes to an end, for each time you turn a corner a completely new vista of life opens; you never know and have it all settled, even in the case of things which for the present you feel are sorted out. — Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy

This goes on constantly with psychological understanding; there are many layers and something can always be understood on a new and deeper level. You understand it with a part of yourself and then the penny drops deeper, as it were, and you realise the same thing but in a much more living and rich way than before, and that can continue indefinitely until it becomes completely real. Even if you feel you have realised something you should always have the humility to say that that is how you feel for the time being; a few years later you may say you did not know at all before but now can understand what was meant.

— Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· Jun 21

On loss, grief, and betrayal.

The message of loss and grief and betrayal is that we cannot hold on to anything, cannot take anything or anyone for granted, cannot spare ourselves acute pain. But what abides is the invitation to consciousness. What is constant amid inconstancy is the summons to individuation. We are neither our point of origin nor our goal; the former is long gone, the latter forever recedes as we move forward. We are the journey itself. Loss, grief and betrayal are not just dismal places we must unwillingly visit, they are integral to the maturation of consciousness. They are as much a part of the journey as the places where we feel respite and would tarry. The great rhythm of gain and loss is outside of our control; what remains within our control is the attitude of willingness to find in even the bitterest losses what remains to be lived.

By James Hollis from, 'Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places'.

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· Jun 18

Jungian, James Hollis on 'adulting'.

Being an adult has virtually nothing to do with age or size, but rather with the level of consciousness and the level of personal responsibility to which one has evolved. Whining about fate, accidents of birth or parenting, or one's moment in history, are examples of infantilism. Expecting someone else to take care of us is another. The two great delusions hardest for humans to shake are the fantasy of the 'magical Other', the person who is going to enter our life and make it work, make it meaningful and painless, and the fantasy of 'immortality', wherein the mortal thread which links us all to the human condition applies only to others. Living a life of narcissistic preoccupation, the search for immediate gratification and the systematic avoidance of pain and responsibility for self and others are still other common patterns of infantility. Sadly, these characteristics apply to great masses of humans in the modern era. So many creature comforts, so much vicarious, voyeuristic living, so much flight from the abyss over which one daily walks.

James Hollis from, '𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘰𝘥𝘴: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘺𝘵𝘩 𝘪𝘯 𝘔𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘓𝘪𝘧𝘦'.

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· Jun 8

More of the excerpt from Robert Bly's, 'Iron John' for context.

In high school a girl might ask, "Do you love me?" I couldn't answer. If I asked her the same question, she might reply, "Well, I respect you, and I admire you, and I'm fond of you, and I'm even interested in you, but I don't love you." Apparently when she looked into her chest, she saw a spectrum of affections, a whole procession of feelings, and she could easily tell them all apart. If I looked down into my chest, I saw nothing at all. I had then either to remain silent or fake it.

Some women feel hurt when a man will not 'express his feelings', and they conclude that he is holding back, or 'telling them something' by such withholding; but it's more likely that when such a man asks a question of his chest, he gets no answer at all.

Some of that numbness is gone now. I can answer questions about my feelings, and I can see people down there with different coloured robes, walking around, and tell one from the other. It's possible that as a man gets older, certain numb parts of his body naturally begin to come to life. It's also possible that the numbness moves away as we learn to go to other people besides our parents for protection. Men my own age protect me, or so I feel, and a few feisty and loving women, and a few determined younger men.

— Robert Bly, Iron John: Men and Masculinity

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· Jun 6

Vassi continues with more on how women, sex, and the body have often been excluded from spirituality [with some particularly spicy language—consider yourself warned]:

The notion that women and sex have been excluded from the area of seeking truth might seem an overstatement, but consider the common prejudice which keeps most of us from wondering whether Buddha continued fucking after his satori. The legend has it that after he became enlightened, his wife became a nun. And what of Jesus? What mammoth insensitivity is involved in presuming that he had nothing to learn in the arms of Mary Magdalen? Did Meher Baba fuck? Did Krishnamurti fuck? These questions seem blasphemous. Yet why should that be if we were not so conditioned to believe that holiness and wisdom are incompatible with sexuality, that an enlightened man will no longer have intimate contact with a woman's body?

— Marco Vassi, Bodhi is the Body [essay from, The Erotic Impulse edited by David Steinberg]

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa· Jun 6

Marco Vassi on how many spiritual paths have often been anti-erotic, anti-body, and anti-women: 'Enlightenment has been almost exclusively a man's game. Women have been considered at best irrelevant and at worst ruinous in the quest for truth'.