Good Morning Digital Neighbors & Friends! Happy Thursday Supporters, Members and Lurkers on the lark! How about a few more quotes from Carl Jung? Carl has some good insights to share obviously as one who has observed, listened and reflected upon his own experience and that of others. On to the quotes!
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.
Religious, spiritual, believer in some High Power or certain there isn't one, kindling a light of meaning is far better than just making your way until you are worm chow. Striving to offer something better to the human experience, your own and those in your spere of influence & interaction is a path anyone can choose to pursue.
The pull to be self-absorbed is probably the biggest threat in this current chapter of human experience. I am sure it has been one of the main challenges we have faced for generations, maybe centuries or it has always been there. Never before has it been so easy to actualize. Self-absorption ends when the comforts of life evaporate. Once you run short on food, water and shelter, your sociability is apt to increase.
There's no coming to consciousness without pain.
The need for others, especially high level self-absorbed souls, will be a painful process. It is a far better thing to have struggled all your life and arrive at comfort rather than to have know nothing but comfort and to end in struggle. I worry that many more are on the later path rather than the former path. The fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper comes to mind, in the original fable the grasshopper is left to starve and die in the winter. Kinder versions & endings have been written, but I think we are headed in the direction of the original ending and its warnings for humanity. The Disney cartoon from the 30's is below. Worth a fun watch especially for us Olds.
And finally . . .
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
While I am a firm believer in the Light, one cannot appreciate it until they really wrestle with their personal darkness. You don't seek healing until you know how ill you actually are, nor do you seek understanding until you realize who little you know. While the darkness is often if not always frightening, on the other side of your adventure there is light. Also, one need not venture into the darkness without a little light to accompany them to a t least show the path a few steps ahead of you.
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
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XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
