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Following Your Own Star
Question: Why is it that so few people follow their own star? Why is the star such a heavy burden?
Marie-Louise Von Franz: Because following your own star means isolation, not knowing where to go, having to find out a completely new way for yourself instead of just going on the trodden path everybody else runs along.
That’s why there’s always been a tendency in humans to project the uniqueness and the greatness of their own inner self onto outer personalities and become the servants, the devoted servants, admirers, and imitators of outer personalities.
It is much easier to admire a great personality and become a pupil or follower of a guru or a religious prophet, or an admirer of a big, official personality-a president of the United States-or live your life for some military general whom you admire.
That is much easier than following your own star.
~Marie-Louise Von Franz, The Way of the Dream
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“I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on… The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.”
-Mark Rothko
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