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Knowing Soul
“Descent into the underworld can happen at different stages in life.
The midlife descent often requires a whole reorientation of identity.
In the first half of life we live mainly in terms of doing. We find out who we are through going to school, pursuing a career, marrying, having children and raising them.
In the second half of life, we are pushed toward a deeper consciousness of who we are, an identity in terms of being, an identity based not on the ego but on the soul. The gap we pass through, sometimes lasting several years, is what is commonly known as the midlife crisis.”
- Marion Woodman
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…Ideas give us eyes, let us see. The word idea itself points to its intimacy with the visual metaphor of knowing, for it is related both to the Latin videre (to see) and the German wissen (to know). Ideas are ways of seeing and knowing, or knowing by means of insighting. Ideas allow us to envision, and by means of vision we can know. Psychological ideas are ways of seeing and knowing soul, so that a change in psychological ideas means a change in regard to soul and regard for soul.
…. By means of an idea we can see the idea cloaked in the passing parade. The implicit connection between having ideas to see with and seeing ideas themselves suggests that the more ideas we…