inspiration – Guy James

Self-esteem is the cause of our shame

Guy — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 10:49:50 +0000

“We all place ourselves at various levels, and we are constantly falling from these heights. It is the falls we are ashamed of. Self-esteem is the cause of our shame, of our fall. It is this self-esteem that must be understood, and not the fall. If there is no pedestal on which you have put yourself, how can there be any fall? Why have you put yourself on a pedestal called self-esteem, human dignity, the ideal, and so on? If you can understand this, then there will be no shame of the past; it will have completely gone. You will be what you are without the pedestal. If the pedestal is not there, the height that makes you look down or look up, then you are what you have always avoided. It is this avoidance of what is, of what you are, that brings about confusion and antagonism, shame and resentment. You do not have to tell me or another what you are, but be aware of what you are, whatever it is, pleasant or unpleasant: live with it without justifying or resisting it. Live with it without naming it; for the very term is a condemnation or an identification. Live with it without fear, for fear prevents communion, and without communion you cannot live with it. To be in communion is to love. Without love, you cannot wipe out the past; with love, there is no past.” – J. Krishnamurti

(Thanks Krissie!)

On the Borderland.

Guy — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 19:57:13 +0000

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?

—T.S. Eliot, from The Waste Land, 1922.

(Image by Amy Morgenweck)

On the Borderland..

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable

Guy — Sat, 22 May 2010 12:16:37 +0000

“The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.”
Carl Jung

The following is a letter which Dr. Carl Jung wrote…

Guy — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 08:12:00 +0000

…to a friend who had suffered the loss of a young child:

Dear Adam,

I am sorry you are so miserable. “Depression” means literally “being forced downward.” This can happen even when you don’t consciously have any feeling at all of being “on top.” So I wouldn’t dismiss this hypothesis out of hand …

I would seek out one or two people who seemed amiable and would make myself useful to them … I would raise animals and plants and find joy in their thriving. I would surround myself with beauty —- no matter how primitive and artless —- objects, colors, sounds. I would eat and drink well.

When the darkness grows denser, I would penetrate to its very core and ground, and would not rest until amid the pain an light appeared to me, for in excessu affectus Nature reverses herself. I would turn in rage against myself and with the heat of my rage I would melt my lead. I would renounce everything and engage in the lowest activities should my depression drive me to violence. I would wrestle with the dark angel until he dislocated my hip. For he is also the light and the blue sky which he withholds from me.

Anyway, that is what I would do. What others would do is another question, which I cannot answer. But for you too there is an instinct either to back out of it or to go down to the depths. But no half-measures or half-heartedness.

With cordial wishes,
As ever, C.G.Jung

from: Heart Mind Spirit