{"id":12174,"date":"2014-06-11T10:57:16","date_gmt":"2014-06-11T14:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/outlawpsych.com\/outlawpsych\/?p=12174"},"modified":"2015-03-20T09:18:15","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T13:18:15","slug":"individuation-and-the-conflict-of-opposites-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outlawpsych.com\/outlawpsych\/individuation-and-the-conflict-of-opposites-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Individuation and the Conflict of Opposites II"},"content":{"rendered":"
A Mid-Life Perspective: Conversations With The Unconscious<\/em><\/strong><\/address>\n

Up to this point, ego has been turning in circles in its efforts to relieve the tension created by new contents pushing into consciousness. Page 88 continues this roundabout process which now leads to the first real attempt to establish a dialogue with the unconscious; the religious function has reached a pressure and intensity that can no longer be repressed. As the story of Job illustrates, this conflict is not resolved through external relations or collective forms.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/address>\n
THE DARK PRINCE<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/address>\n
\u00a0It’s not a flight of fancy — it’s a real opposition;
\nHis individuality prepared its recognition.
\nHe’s stumbled on the purpose of internal tension:
\nTo redefine and separate his thinking from the herd.
\nThe individual is grounded in its reinvention \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/address>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Of the rigid values the collective has incurred.<\/address>\n
It’s the burden of the past and the future it creates;
\nIt puts a man at odds with what his soul relates.
\nThough by its own design it will ultimately lead
\nThis man to re-evaluate the nature of his need.<\/address>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 But his conflict must be further etched into relief<\/address>\n
Before he can examine it in more detail.<\/address>\n
He must court relations with the god beneath his grief<\/address>\n
For any chance to see the man behind the veil.<\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n
THE ODDLY SHAPED MAN<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/address>\n
\u00a0How will I get to know you?\u00a0 What depth must I reach?
\nWhat fearful things will I do?\u00a0 What laws must I breach?
\nYou sit in darkness hid beneath the very thought
\nThe light of knowledge fancied it could make appear.
\nIndirect emotions that but half-imagined brought
\nYour half-imagined purposes so faintly near
\nAre suddenly redoubled in a flood of dark concern
\nFor the power you’ve awakened through the strange veneer
\nOf images my thought can only half-discern.
\nOld unfathomed riddles lie before me still
\nStaring starkly at the weakness I disdain;
\nMocking the illusion of my conscious will
\nAs I yet pretend to master what I can’t explain.
\nIn fitful ways your mystery is living through me;<\/address>\n
No wiser for it I am much less wise against it.<\/address>\n
Are self-disdain and misery the light you’ve given to me
\nTo illumine my fantasies had I but sensed it?
\nTo cast a glow on shadow-worlds that hide your grace<\/address>\n
From a man-child’s half-perception of reality?
\nWho only made himself unfit for your embrace
\nBy clinging to a make-believe morality?
\nAll your ways frighten me I cower and evade
\nYet time and again misery exceeds my fear;
\nAnd the little light in me that once a heaven made
\nAgain must suffer its bright world to disappear.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/address>\n
You seemed insane though it was I who didn’t understand;
\nI fear I’m failing still and you will lose your patience.
\nThere seems no let in all the crazy things you’ve planned<\/address>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 To symbolize the sickness of my aberrations.<\/address>\n
You’re only guiding me I know this in my brain —
\nYet what a gaping wound now bleeds within in my heart!
\nThough I know it’s not your guidance filling me with pain
\nBut my own desire sundering my life apart.
\nI can’t know your purpose through the fantasies I’m seeing;
\nYour piercing admonitions are my only light.
\nIf somehow I could peer inside the deep well of being
\nI’d surely see the marvel of my own pretentious sight.
\nYour monstrous grace and its privilege I must entreat
\nFor the only useful product it creates in me; \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/address>\n
Otherwise obscured by the harlequin of self-deceit<\/address>\n
Ever stealing round the walls of thought’s credulity.<\/address>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Can I touch you in time?\u00a0 In mind’s distant sphere?<\/address>\n
When you tear these lovely veils of pretense from my eyes?
\nWill you be there?\u00a0 Or only darkness circumscribe my fear
\nAnd my thinking then replace you with another form of lies?
\nI felt you once around the corpse of my dearest friend
\nAnd somehow through my agony you gave relief;
\nThough just enough for me to grimly apprehend
\nA wondrous thing beneath my agony and grief.
\nI know not how these enigmatic things occur —
\nYour living paradox is safe from modern thought.
\nAs stupid and unwitting as my own intentions were
\nI then was only following what I was taught.
\nI’m sorry for it now — it was the only way I knew;<\/address>\n
I feel its wrongness secreted within my soul.<\/address>\n
But, for all the mystery in everything you do
\nI fear my misery’s the only thing I know.<\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n
THE DARK PRINCE<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/address>\n
Through Time and effort he will soon begin to see:
\nWhat draws this image to the surface is<\/em> his misery.
\nBut he must step outside the circle of his Christian past
\nAnd resist his childish notions of the Devil;
\nFor the psychic chains they represent now bind him fast
\nAnd prohibit him from searching on a deeper level.<\/address>\n
Though he long ago pronounced such things a fairytale<\/address>\n
They still form the basis of his valuations.
\nThis defines the very point where intellect will fail:<\/address>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 The Christian myth describes emotional foundations.<\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n
A Mid-Life Perspective: Conversations With The Unconscious\u00a0<\/a><\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Mid-Life Perspective: Conversations With The Unconscious Up to this point, ego has been turning in circles in its efforts to relieve the tension created by new contents pushing into consciousness. Page 88 continues this roundabout process which now leads … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[1292,409,1320,1315,1319,876,469,1323],"class_list":["post-12174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychology","tag-a-mid-life-perspective-conversations-with-the-unconscious","tag-coming-to-terms-with-the-unconscious","tag-dialogue-with-the-unconscious","tag-half-perceptions-of-reality","tag-psychic-reality-and-sense-perception","tag-religious-functions","tag-the-conflict-of-opposites","tag-the-irrationality-of-the-psyche"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outlawpsych.com\/outlawpsych\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outlawpsych.com\/outlawpsych\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outlawpsych.com\/outlawpsych\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outlawpsych.com\/outlawpsych\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outlawpsych.com\/outlawpsych\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12174"}],"version-history":[{"count":129,"href":"https:\/\/outlawpsych.com\/outlawpsych\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13534,"href":"https:\/\/outlawpsych.com\/outlawpsych\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12174\/revisions\/13534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outlawpsych.com\/outlawpsych\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outlawpsych.com\/outlawpsych\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outlawpsych.com\/outlawpsych\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}