Intensity And Consciousness

Horse from Tang Dynasty, China, 6–9th century AD

*

We Indian kids,

reservation-feral,

licked the same

salt licks licked

by the animals

and hoped

that coyote

and pony and elk

would enter

our marrow.

~ Sherman Alexie

*

Jung once told me that the unconscious itself was not dangerous.

There was only one real danger, he said, but that was a very serious one: panic!

The fear that grips a person when something very unexpected confronts him, or when he begins to be afraid of losing his footing in the conscious world, can upset him so much that it is really no wonder that so few people embark on the task. Indeed, it is necessary to have very secure roots and to be well established in the outer world before it is wise to make any such attempt.

We must remember that Jung was a married man with several children, with his own house and garden on the lake, and with unusual success in his profession, before he undertook his own ‘’ confrontation with the unconscious.’’

He points out in Memories, Dreams, Reflections that Nietzsche undertook the same journey…