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Getting To The Truth
C. G. Jung letter to Victor White
There are some impoverished creatures perhaps, for whom mescaline would be a heaven sent gift without a counter poison, but I am profoundly mistrustful of the pure “gifts of the gods”, you pay very dearly for them.
This is not the point at all, to know of or about the unconscious, nor does the story end here. On the contrary, it is how and where you begin the real quest. If you are too unconscious, it is a great relief to know a bit of the collective unconscious. But it soon becomes dangerous to know more, because one does not learn at the same time how to balance it through a conscious equivalent. That is the mistake Aldous Huxley makes, he does not know that he is in the role of Zauberlehrling, sorcerer’s apprentice, who learned from his master how to call the ghosts, but did not know how to get rid of them again.’
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“Meaningful change requires a true transformation that shifts the levels of understanding and opens the realms of possibility. Yet, there is a poverty of imagination when it comes to facing the size and depth of the problems we all face. In mistaking appearances for the real thing, people wind up with the appearance of strength, the appearance of leadership and the appearance of meaning while suffering a loss of all that is truly meaningful in the end. Genuine change, whether it be in the hearts of people or in the culture at large, is more difficult than changing the appearance of things and therefore can be a more rare occurrence. In hard times, inner changes must precede changes to outer circumstances.”
- Michael Meade, “Awakening the Soul”
We know there’s a deeper truth to living but we don’t know how to get to it. We may memorize passages from our culture’s word of God, we may join religions, cults and meditation groups but the invisible wall between our daily lives and a real knowing of why we live seems illusive. Unless we close our minds completely with belief and “knowledge,” we can sense that we are somehow locked out of paradise.
We hear stories about the experience of awakening to the overwhelming beauty and meaning of existence and we admire those we think are enlightened. Our judgement is flawed, though. Not being enlightened we can’t really discern whether someone is faking…
