How to Integrate Your Shadow – The Dark Side is Unrealized Potential

How to Integrate Your Shadow – The Dark Side is Unrealized Potential

“Good does not become better by being exaggerated, but worse, and a small evil becomes a big one through being disregarded and repressed. The shadow is very much a part of human nature, and it is only at night that no shadows exist.” (Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion)

Carl Jung stressed that an individual’s proper goal is wholeness, not perfection. The path to a greater character, to a more effectual approach to life, lies in integrating those elements of our psyche that for too long have been repressed and denied – the elements that make up what Jung called our unconscious shadow side. What is it that most people deny and repress into their shadow? All that is deemed bad or immoral by society, all that is frowned upon by our family or peers, all the traits that when initially expressed were ridiculed, shunned, or met with punishment.

But given that no moral code is perfect and no family or peer group is ideal, in adapting to the social world we not only repressed destructive elements of our personality such as our unbridled sexuality, anger and untamed animal impulses, but we also repressed positive and life promoting characteristics. Perhaps our assertiveness was frowned upon, our early attempts at creativity ridiculed, or maybe our competitiveness or ambition was felt by those close to us to be a threat. As a result of repressing elements of our personality into our shadow we were made tame, obedient, predictable – perhaps likeable – but at the cost of our vitality and psychological wholeness. In this essay, we are going to explore how to integrate our shadow, and analyze the connection between our shadow and greatness of self. For as Edward Whitmont wrote:

“The shadow, when it is realized, is the source of renewal…When there is an impasse, and sterile time in our lives, despite an adequate ego development – we must look to the dark, hitherto unacceptable side which has been at our conscious disposal.” (Edward Whitmont, Meeting the Shadow)

To begin, we must examine how our “dark, hitherto, unacceptable side” can be a key to unlock our potential. For doesn’t conventional wisdom warn us that our dark side consists of a wickedness we need to overcome? But the connection between the integration of our shadow and the development of a greater character becomes clear when we understand Jung’s assertion that the integration of the shadow leads to self-reliance.

“…this integration [of the shadow]…leads to disobedience and disgust, but also to self-reliance, without which individuation is unthinkable.” (Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion)

In becoming aware of the shadow, first as an intellectual concept, and then via introspection and reflection we seek to discover what our own personal shadow consists of, we awaken to a moral conflict, to the troubling idea that a portion of our personality is at odds with contemporary morality and with what our family, peers, and society judge as good and evil. In the attempt to protect our personality, this recognition can motivate us to take a stance with Nietzsche “beyond good and evil”, and to examine the morality we have been socialized into. In undergoing such an examination, we are likely to discover how much hypocrisy, complacency, and fear underlies many of the moral injunctions we obey, and furthermore, that ridicule and moral condemnation are often driven by envy. In response to this realization, we may feel the need to behave in ways less in line with the dominant moral code of our day, ways considered “evil” by social morality. It is not that we want to become “evil”  in the sense of turning criminal or committing heinous acts against our fellow man, but “evil” in the sense of detaching ourselves from what we see as the flaws in our moral code so we can reconnect with the parts of our personality  we lost in our shadow long ago. As Erich Neumann, a student of Jung’s, explained:   

“The psychological analysis of any normal development will make it clear that, if he is to grow up, it is not merely unavoidable but actually essential that the individual should do and assimilate a certain amount of evil, and that he should be able to overcome the conflicts involved in this process. The achievement of independence involves the capacity of the ego not only to adopt the values of the collective but also to secure the fulfillment of those needs of the individual which run counter to collective values – and this entails doing evil.” (Erich Neumann, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic)

Most people are horrified at the thought of questioning, or heaven forbid, breaking the moral code they were socialized into. They believe the value judgments good and evil imposed on them by their schooling, parents, peers, and society, are written into the fabric of reality itself. They do not understand that a morality, like a society, can be sick and in need of overcoming. And so, for the common man and woman the existence of the shadow poses too great a threat to their fragile self-image, a self-image that was constructed over years of adjusting to who they thought others expected and wanted them to be. But in never mustering up the courage to confront the elements of one’s shadow it does not go away. Rather, it puts one in the unfortunate position of susceptibility to possession by its destructive side, to following in the tragic footsteps of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. For in public, most people are conscientious, moral, and moderate. But behind closed doors and in the comfort of hearth and home, their shadow at times turns them into marionettes – unconscious victims of addictions, strange compulsions, fits of irrational anger, and myriad of other, self-destructive behaviors. 

“Man has to realize that he possesses a shadow which is the dark side of his own personality…if only for the reason that he is so often overwhelmed by it. (Erich Neumann, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic)

Or as Carl Jung warned:

By not being aware of having a shadow, you declare a part of your personality to be non-existent. Then it enters the kingdom of the non-existent, which swells up and takes on enormous proportions…If you get rid of qualities you don’t like by denying them, you become more and more unaware of what you are, you declare yourself more and more non-existent, and your devils will grow fatter and fatter.” (Carl Jung, Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930)

As denying our shadow only renders us prone to possession by its destructive side, integrating our shadow into our conscious personality is crucial for our well-being. To gain some insight regarding how to do this, we are going to focus on the integration of one shadow characteristic many of us desperately need to integrate: that being, our aggression. In modern society, the word aggression typically stimulates thoughts of violence and destruction. In other words, we focus only on one side of the aggressive coin. For there is a healthy form of aggression that is imperative not only to our psychological health, but our survival. This form of aggression fuels our sense of self-ownership, emboldens us in the face of fear, and ignites the drive to explore and master the world outside us and within.  

“Aggression is not necessarily destructive at all.” wrote the psychoanalyst Clara Thompson. “It springs from an innate tendency to grow and master life which seems to be characteristic of all living matter. Only when this life force is obstructed in its development do ingredients of anger, rage, or hate become connected with it. (Clara Thompson, Interpersonal Psychoanalysis)

Unfortunately, for many of us the life force of aggression was obstructed throughout our development. Our displays of aggression, whether constructive or otherwise, were not met with encouragement or understanding, but frowns, punishment, and even violence. And so, to adapt to our environment and minimize conflict, we learned to repress our aggression into our shadow side, and thereafter became susceptible to anger, rage, and hate. Based on decades of experience with patients, the psychotherapist Alexander Lowen observed that:

“Many individuals have an unconscious murderous rage which they feel they must keep buried out of fear of its destructive potential…Such rage is like an unexploded bomb which one dares not touch.” (Alexander Lowen, Joy)

If we have repressed our aggression into our shadow, how can we integrate it in a way that alleviates our anger and propels us towards wholeness and greatness of character? The following passage provides some pertinent warnings and clues: 

“There is no generally effective technique for assimilating the shadow. It is more like diplomacy or statesmanship and it is always an individual matter. First one has to accept and take seriously the existence of the shadow. Second, one has to become aware of its qualities and intentions. This happens through conscientious attention to moods, fantasies and impulses. Third, a long process of negotiation is unavoidable.” (Daryl Sharp, Jung Lexicon)

After we take seriously the existence of the shadow, we next need to pay close attention to our moods and fantasies. Do we experience a simmering anger for no apparent reason? Maybe we have recurring fantasies born of resentment, bitterness, self-hate – the desire for destruction or revenge? In either case, it is likely we have not adequately integrated our aggression into our conscious personality. To initiate this integration process, we can seek safe, controlled, and productive outlets within which we start acting with more aggression. The most obvious outlet is to find a competitive sport, martial art, or exercise regime whereby we can begin to reconnect to our aggressive instincts. But we can also, for example, work on becoming more assertive in our behavior, more decisive in our choices, more declarative and protective of our personal boundaries, or more inclined to stand our ground when tested by our co-workers, family, or peers. As Jung explained: 

“…this integration [of the shadow] cannot take place and be put to a useful purpose unless one can admit the tendencies bound up with the shadow and allow them some measure of realization – tempered, of course, with the necessary criticism.” (Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion)

As we undergo this process, we need to be careful not to overcompensate in our behavior.

“Of all evil I deem you capable:” wrote Nietzsche. “Therefore I want the good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.” (Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

For the goal in integrating our aggression is not to become a bad person, but to get in touch with the repressed energies and potentials needed to sculpt a great and powerful character. We want to become capable of acting with force, not to be forceful; potentially dangerous, not a violent criminal; but able to stand up for ourselves and what we believe in, not vicious and mean. 

If we can extrapolate the integration method just outlined, and use it to integrate other shadow characteristics – perhaps those tied to our sexuality, our creativity, our ambition or desire for power – we will start to notice our personality transform in a myriad of dramatic ways. We will become more grounded, more secure in our skin, more independent in our moral judgments, more courageous and self-reliant. In short, in integrating our shadow we will move towards the ideal of psychological wholeness and this is the ideal that produces the greatness of character that is sorely missing in this modern world.

“The acceptance of the shadow involves a growth in depth into the ground of one’s own being…a new depth and rootedness and stability is born.” (Erich Neumann, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic)

The Academy of Ideas

https://academyofideas.com/2020/02/how-to-integrate-your-shadow/

He is Dreaming Now

He is Dreaming Now

Tonight's subject is: “He is Dreaming Now.” The Bible begins, as far as man is concerned: “And the Lord God caused a great deep sleep to fall upon man, and he slept. And then the Lord God formed woman out of man, and then he told man that he must leave everything and cleave to his wife until they become one” − one body, one spirit, just one. That is the beginning of our story.

In Lewis Carroll's book, Alice Through The Looking Glass, all these great writers take the same theme; all the great poets, they do it. And here we find this one little…well, a little dialogue: “Come and look at him,” the brothers cried. And they each took one hand of Alice and led her up to where the King was sleeping. “He is dreaming now,” said Tweedle Dee. “And what do you think he is dreaming about?” Alice said: “No one can guess that.” “Why, about you!” said Tweedle Dee, triumphantly. “And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you would be?”

Where would you be when you are the creation of the King who is dreaming, if he dared to leave off dreaming about you until he completed his purpose? For the Lord God has sworn: “As I have planned so shall it be and as I have purposed so shall it stand.” “And My will shall not turn back until I have executed and accomplished the intents of My mind. In the latter days you will understand it clearly.”

What is his purpose? “He has made known unto us the mystery of His Will, according to His purpose which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time.” So what is this plan; what is this purpose? His plan − He is so in love with His creation that exists only for Him and not for itself; like an author − the play and all the characters they exist only for the author. They have no existence outside of the author. But He so loves His creation, He wants the creation to exist for itself. And there is only one way that it can exist for itself, for now it only is an animated body, the whole vast creation and He desires that it cease to be the poem existing only for Himself, but to exist for itself. And there is only one day and one way that He can do it. He can do it only by dying and becoming His poem. Only as He dies and becomes you, will you live for yourself. “So unless I die,” said He, “thou canst not live. But if I die I shall arise again and thou with Me.” So God dies − actually dies, and becomes His poem; He becomes you. And now you must dream the dream of death as he dreams it. 

The poets speak of it as “the dream of life.” I rather go with Blake and say: “My Emanation yet my Wife till the sleep of Death is over.” Shelley calls it “the dream of life"

He hath awaken’d from the dream of life; 

'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep 

With phantoms an unprofitable strife,

But I will go with Blake. They are all great, but this is the dream of death where everything comes into being. It appears, it waxes, it wanes, and it vanishes. When the dream is over, man, individually, will awake. And when he awakes he is the dreamer that is God the creator.

Now, think of Alice and put yourself in the place of Alice −Alice Through The Looking Glass, the most fantastic play. And you are Alice, and he is telling you what he is going to do. Well, you weep because he is going to die that you may live. You don't want that sacrifice, but he tells you: “Unless I die thou canst not live,” then he makes you a promise: “But if I die I shall arise again and thou with me.” He makes that promise. Well, how would Alice know that this gift of God to herself, the great King who is dreaming, is complete? He tells Alice that He has a son, a glorious son, a youth just like Alice. He's not more than a teenager − twelve, thirteen, very fair, beautiful eyes, and beyond the measure of beauty. That's his son.

Then He tells Alice that you are going to have a son. And Alice tells him: “But how can this be, seeing I know not a man? I know no man.” Then he tells her: “The Holy Spirit will overshadow you and the son to be born of you will be called Holy, the Son of God. His name will be David,” he tells Alice, “it will be David.” And now we'll continue the dream. And so he continues the dream with Alice, sharing with Alice all the horrors of the world. He puts her through all the furnaces, because he has to if she is going to bear his name. “I have tried you in the furnaces of affliction, for my own sake, for my own sake I do it. For how should my name be profaned, my glory I will not give to another.” So he takes Alice through all the horrors of the world and then in the end, instead of thinking of Alice, He thinks from Alice.

I can think of you forever and forever and you are but shadows within my mind, flat surfaces depicting that which I would like you to be. But you are not that which I would like you to be until I die and live in you and turn you into a reality. How different the cubic reality is from the “dimension,” that is, the flat surface that depicts it. So Alice is simply within the imagination of the divine Imagination: only a flat surface, moving because He observes her. He animates her by being aware of her. But He so loves her, he will not let her go. He leaves everything and cleaves to Alice until he enters Alice and dwells within her and thinks from Alice, instead of thinking of Alice.

And then one day He awakes within Alice and Alice discovers she is the King that was dreaming. And then He brings confirmation of his gift and His promise to her. One day there is an explosion within Alice, and Alice sees standing before her this youth that He described, which was a boy − a handsome boy with beautiful eyes, ruddy, and fair of skin, and he stands before Alice and calls Alice: “My Father.” And Alice doesn't feel strange about it, although she's Alice, a girl, she doesn't feel strange that she is the parent of this wonderful son, who is the King's son. And the King had told her in the beginning: “That's how I will prove to you that I will die and rise in you. I will give you myself and the only way I could ever give you myself is to give you my most precious possession; and my most priceless possession is my son David.” 

One day, when I take you through all the trials of the world and prepare you to receive me, prepare you to receive my glory (“For I cannot give it to another.”) I have to bring you into a state where I can give you myself. And so one day He gives Alice himself, and then the son appears and calls Alice, “My Father.” And then − and only then − does Alice know that she is the King who was dreaming, and He was dreaming of Alice. And had He broken that “spell” before He completed his purpose, there would be no more Alice. It would have vanished as though it never were. But He swore in the beginning: “And the Lord God swore” that he would not break it until he had completed his purpose. So “The will of the Lord will not turn back until He has executed and accomplished the intents of His mind.” “In the latter days You will understand it perfectly.” “For as I have sworn, so shall it be. And as I have purposed so shall it stand.”

I am only quoting Scripture. If you have a good concordance, you will find every quote that I've made tonight is from Scripture. Those who do not have it − my last is from Isaiah, the 14th chapter: “As I have sworn so shall it be; as I have purposed, so shall it stand.” “My will shall not turn back until I have executed and accomplished the intents of my mind. In the latter days you will understand it perfectly.” That is from Jeremiah the 23rd [chapter]. All these are simply quotations. We are told: “Search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life.” Well, search the poets, too, for they are men of vision and they have made every effort to tell in their own wonderful way. For, as Tennyson said: “Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.” So you take your vision and make every effort, based upon your talent, to put it into the form of a story that man, accepting the story, will find it moving story, into his own being, it becomes a man. 

So here the story of the King who is dreaming and he is dreaming the most glorious play in the world, yet it's a horrible play. Listen to the radio tonight or the TV tonight or tomorrow morning’s paper, and see the horrors all over the world. Brother against brother − the whole thing is in conflict, and yet it is serving a divine purpose. Don't you lose the vision; don't get lost in the play. You remain faithful to the Promise: “Unless I die Thou canst not live, but if I die I shall arise again and Thou with Me. Wouldst Thou not One that would never die for Thee or ever die for One who had not died for Thee. And if God dieth not for Man and giveth not Himself Eternally for Man, Man could not Exist.”

So God died. And God's death is simply to cease thinking of you and to think from you, to occupy you − just as you occupy a house and think from it, if it is your home. So within you now God dwells. He died for you. His name is “I AM.” That's His name forever and forever. He has no other name, just “I AM.” He is your redeemer, turning you from a moving animated body into a life giving spirit. 

One day back in ‘54 I heard these words. Now, you will find it difficult to grasp it, but they have stayed with me since the vision. The vision was audio. And here a voice is speaking: “You do not move in waking any more than you move on your bed in sleep. It is all a movement of mind. The intensity is determined by the strength of the vortex you create. It is just like a whirlwind with a center of perfect stillness. You only believe that you move when you wake, as you think you move in sleep.” 

Where is God moving, save in Imagination? Where on earth is he moving where he is? He's all places; there is no place where God is not. So where is He moving? It's only a movement in mind. And the whole vast world moves because God moves within Himself. We are but animated bodies and He doesn't want the poem to exist only for him; He wants the poem to exist for itself. So here he dwells now in man and man thinks he is moving. I came here tonight in my friends’ car. I trust we'll go back tonight, and I will think: “Well, I moved. I moved from my home to here; I moved from here to my home,” and yet the voice that never has deceived me tells me I do not move in waking any more than I move on my bed in sleep.

It's all a movement of mind. Then he tells me it's like a whirlwind with a center of perfect stillness, and the intensity is determined by the vortex that I create; that I only believe that I move when I wake, as I think I move when I sleep. Well, I know I do not move during the night, save just move from one side to the other in bed. Wednesday morning, as I woke at 2:00 in the morning, I was having the most delightful time, and here the whole thing was as clear as crystal. I met my wife in 1936. I fell in love with her the very moment I saw [her.] She didn't with me, but she didn't know that she was going to be my wife. I knew it that very moment, I just knew it. I said: “You don't know it but you're going to be my wife.”

And I had no social, intellectual, financial, or any other background that you would turn and say: “All right, so he has this…none of those things.” But I still knew she was going to be my wife. But I tell you, I had…she was going to be my wife.

So Wednesday morning as I woke at 2:00 in the morning, I was having the most marvelous game with myself. My daughter was born in 1942; I met her mother in 1936; here now it is up to date: it is 1970. This is the time of the vision and here is my daughter. She is what her age is now: she almost will be twenty-eight. She knows that I am in love with this young lady who is twenty-nine. She heartily disapproves. I tell her: “That's your mother.” She doesn't know her mother, when her mother was twenty-nine. And I knew all these were states. 

You ask me why we go through hell in this world. To acquire a keyboard on which we will play tomorrow. Today it seems like a chromatic scale, one note after the other leading up to a huge keyboard. Tomorrow you will take two events widely separated in time and slide them together, and they will sound differently from the individual note when you encountered it, the individual experience. Then you will be able to move your mind into a larger focus and split it, as you would your fingers on a piano and hit − not two events widely separated in time, but hit five, hit ten. And you will take this fabulous keyboard of 6,000 years, acquiring notes, and you will play the most fantastic creation in the world.

So, here I took my daughter and I was having fun with her, and I am having the most glorious romance with her mother which she didn't know (the romance with her mother that was twenty-nine). I was excited as I was when I was young and in love with her when she was twenty-nine. My daughter, at twenty-seven, knows nothing of that mother, and she denies it. I say: “She's your mother,” and she doesn't know that at all. She says: “Nope, entirely different. That came years later.” And then I took the ships, I went to sea, and did all these things that I took my wife so often across the Caribbean on ships. We have flown several times, but many a time we took the ships. And all these things − and I'm playing them all together, having the most fantastic thing, knowing that each one was a state in itself and not related to anything unless I chose to relate it.

I could take all these states, and I played the most creative part, I was creating the most wonderful drama using only the experiences from the day I met my wife in 1936 up to the present moment. And I was playing the most fantastic thing, bringing in all kinds of suspicions from my daughter, and her father falling in love with this young girl. And I was enjoying every moment of it. She didn't know it; she was only a state in my world. And my wife, through all these years that she's been my wife, she's only a state, individual states, one after the other. That every moment of my life I am acquiring a new note on this fabulous keyboard, on which I will play tomorrow when I completely leave this garment. And life within me I will animate the entire thing. And will I then create out of that fabulous thing an Alice, that I will so fall in love with something coming out of that fabulous keyboard that I too, will do for Alice what He did for me?

I will say then to that that comes out of my creative power: “Unless I die Thou canst not live, but if I die I shall arise again and Thou with Me, Wouldest thou love one who never died for thee? Or ever die for one who had not died for thee? And unless God dies for Man and gives himself eternally for Man, Man could not exist.” So God dies. So you and I are creating now − or rather we are gathering together through our horrible and lovely experiences, for “joy and woe are woven fine, a garment for the soul divine.”

So we are gathering together a fabulous keyboard on which we will play tomorrow and produce that perfect one with whom we will fall in love, as told you in the very beginning of Genesis. And out of Him came Eve, and then he had to leave everything − his father, his mother, everything, and cleave to his wife until they became one. So you will create your wife out of what you will play from the keyboard that you are now acquiring. And you will bring forth your Eve, too; and you will so fall in love with that, that you do not wish her to exist only for you within that poem. You want her to exist for herself, and there is no way you can make her exist for herself unless you give yourself to her. So you die. You give up everything that you are − your creative power and your wisdom − and take the weakness and the limitations of the one that you brought forth out of your own being: “My emanation yet my wife till the sleep of death is past.”

Then you will understand what all these poets have been trying over and over again to tell us. Take the one of Emily Bronte. You've seen the picture and maybe you've read the book, Wuthering Heights. (The first time I saw Olivier was in that picture.) There's a character in it called Cathy. “I have dreamed in my life,” says Cathy, “dreams that have stayed with me ever after and changed my ideas. They have gone through and through me like wine through water and altered the color of my mind.” These are the very words of Emily Bronte. She wrote it. There was no Cathy, save in her Imagination − it was all in Emily Bronte. I can say with Bronte, the same thing happened to me. So how could I ever be what I was, after the vision, when the vision is more real than you are here now? Far more real, more alive. So, from vision to vision I have been compelled to change what formerly I believed. I could no longer accept the theories of men. They all sit down and write their theories. Karl Marx writes his theory. It's a little theory. It shakes the world, yes, but it doesn't mean it's true. And so another one writes another theory and another theory and so you have all kinds of theories in the world. But then my visions completely turn them completely over. Hasn't a thing to do with vision, with the reality of life. Hasn't a thing to do with it, even though they seem to shake the entire world.

So, let them shake the world. You remain faithful to the vision. If they haven't come, they’ll come. They come at the end of time. “In the end you will understand it clearly.” In the end. In the beginning it seemed you must go here and go there and go elsewhere to acquire all kinds of knowledge. Eat it as much as you want, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; in the end you will eat from the Tree of Life. And you will know what it really is; it's all within us. God became as I am that I may be as he is. Because he fell in love with his creation, I was part of his poem that existed only for God. And he so loved me, the character in his poem, that he wanted to give me independence and freedom. I only existed with him as an animated body to move and do as he willed, and independence means that I can do as I will. To do that, he had to give me himself, because He has life in Himself. 

Now, he wants to give his son life in himself. To do that he had to give me himself and he is a father; and being the father he has to now give me his son, and it isn't Neville. He has an eternal son that he shares with the characters of his poem, making all the characters himself. For he is a protean being playing all the parts. And so, having given me himself, and he is a father, he must now give me his son, and his son stands before me and calls me “father,” and then I know that I am the King who was dreaming.

”So come and let us go and look at him,” said the brothers. “Oh, he is dreaming now and I wonder what he is dreaming about.” “But no one could know that.” “Why, about you,” said Tweedle Dee. “And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you think you would be?” But he will not leave off dreaming about you until his will has been accomplished. “For I will not turn back until I have executed an accomplished the intents of my mind.” Read it carefully, in the greatest book in the world, the Bible.

Let all the others speculate and carry on with all their nonsense. Today's great theory that may even prove itself in performance will be disproved tomorrow by some modification of that theory. Even though it proves itself, it'll be modified tomorrow. You can't modify the vision of God. It is forever; you'll never modify it. You don’t need a son called “David plus” or “David minus”; he is David, and there is no other son! You aren't going to find him called by any other name. There is no other way to the awakening as God the Father, no other way. For there is only one way and no other way. So let them all speculate and let them run around trying to find another way to the Father. Someone comes to town with a huge balloon of advertising and they all rush to hear what he has to say, and they get nothing but nonsense and an empty pocketbook. And then they come back and wonder: “Why hasn't it happened to me?” And you remain silent, for you know exactly what they've been doing. They have been running around from post to post and wonder “why it hasn't happened to me.” That's all over the Scriptures.

So I tell you: he is dreaming now and he's dreaming about you. And he will not break the dream. No one can arouse him until he completes his intention. His intention is to give himself to you, as though there were no other in the world − just you and God, and eventually only you, for you will be God. There is nothing in the world but that. 

Then having acquired this fabulous keyboard of experiences − oh, will you play! You'll play it beautifully and bring forth one that so captures you that you want to give your emanation her own life, to make your emanation exist within herself and not just for you, as the poem exists for the poet. And you, too, will lay your life down in her and cleave to her until you become one. 

Now, you dwell upon it, and let no one divert you. Oh, they can give you a thousand and one arguments. It makes no difference. After you have had a vision you are led by the vision, and you remain faithful to the vision. It would make no difference at all to you, although the world convolves as it is today, carrying signs this way and signs that way. And all brother against brother, as you've seen in the papers − don't think for one moment it's all in one direction. The country's completely divided. The vocal minority seems to be the majority. It's not the majority. On Wall Street today, a bunch of workers, construction workers with their helmets on, and they are protesting − not any war in Vietnam − protesting their pay. They want a raise in pay because of inflation. And then groups of these war protesters came by on Wall Street, and these fellows with their helmets − these strong, strapping men − became so incensed they jumped upon these fellows and beat them unmercifully, then unfurled the American flag − eight or ten flags, and with signs saying: “Impeach the Mayor, Lindsey,” − and walked with their American flags towards city hall. So they are not all protesting in one direction. 

There are unnumbered ideas in the world, and men live by their ideas. Let no one think by tomorrow morning’s paper…depending on the cut of the paper, how they're going to cut the news, for they all do it. They cut it based upon what the policy of the editorial setup is at the moment. But they do not know the world’s picture.

But you forget all of that nonsense, and you go about on this vision. God actually became you that you may become God. You dwell upon that and let the whole thing go past you. That is the story of Scripture. It's the story of every great imaginative writer in the world and all the truly great poets. They took the same theme from Scripture based upon their vision, and they tried to the best of their abilities to tell it, knowing as Tennyson knew, that: “Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.”

So you can tell it, and the lowly door will accept it in a most literal form, and they will live by it; it will simply cushion all blows. And eventually that truth will erupt in its true form within them, and they will see the truth of what was intended in the story. 

So you are the Alice of Alice Through The Looking Glass, and you were taken to see the King, and he was sound asleep dreaming, and you thought that no one knew what he was dreaming about. But one of the angels did. He's called Tweedle Dee − a nut. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum and the Mad Hatter − they’re all nuts. Well, those in the angelic world would appear nuts to the rational mind in this world. For the rational mind is going to live longer, and the only one who gets richer by the advice given by one who's talking about living longer, is the one who talks about it.

So you buy something because of highly publicized TV promotions. Someone highly publicized a little − what is called “Liquid Plumber.” And so I had some moment in my bathroom where the sink was all stopped up, so I got the Liquid Plumber. Poured it in, in abundance. It said it's heavier than water, and it would go all the way down and just eat up everything that is organic and will not hurt anything that is not organic, so I poured it in. Water still remained; it didn't go down. Called the plumber the next day. He couldn't come that day but he would come the next day. So it was forty-eight hours. So when he came the entire sink was eaten away by the Liquid Plumber. So I asked him: “Does this thing work?” He said: “It does for two people: the one who manufactures it, and the one who sells it.” [Laughter from the audience.] They are the only ones who profit by the Liquid Plumber. And so you turned on the TV and you saw it and you bought it. It is still on TV and I am sinning, because to sin by silence, when I should protest, makes cowards of us all. But I haven't protested to the station that advertises this nonsense and I haven't protested to the one, the place where I got it or to any one who manufactures it, so I am the silent sinner. Multiply me because of my embarrassment. Here is a sink completely eaten up by Liquid Plumber.

So that is the world in which we live. And so that same thing goes for selling any other product. And that product could be how to get rich. A man, a friend of mine, died two years ago. I went to his funeral. He left behind an unsold volume, but he sold many of them, How To Live Forever. (That was the title of his book.) Well, he knew that it couldn't catch up with him, because whenever he died, no one could question him. Perfectly all right. Another one tells you how to become a millionaire overnight and so he will sell it to the gullible. So he makes his little money and he still leaves the book. And he goes from one little place to another, selling his little nonsense. That's the world over.

You go back to the book of books that will not change − it's the Bible. It's not history, it's not secular history. This is revelation from beginning to end. Hasn't a thing to do with secular history. All these characters are eternal states of consciousness, and you will meet them. And when you enter into that state, they become animated because of your entrance. You are the animating power of everything in the world. Now you are acquiring a keyboard. And you think of that chromatic scale, and suppose you could only play it in one direction, and would not miss one measure? It's all you can do. And then one day you discover you don't have to go on this way forever − you can jump. Or you can go back in time, and your fingers can split and you can hit two notes together. Sounds like the devil but you learn to still hit another one that sounds harmonious. And one day you become so proficient that you hit a note and though it's a discord, you learn how to resolve it. You can produce it and bring it into a dissonance. And you become the most expert on this keyboard.

Well now, think of life, 6,000 years of experiences building a keyboard, and each note is simply an experience in life. And you take all these experiences and you are the artist now, and what you bring out, out of that fabulous keyboard…And then you bring it out and you want it to exist for itself and not only for you. So, instead of playing on it forever and having all these things come out, these glorious things existing only for you and not for themselves, you do the same thing that God did for you. “So unless I die Thou canst not live, but if I die I shall arise again and Thou with Me.” And you give yourself to your own creation that it may exist for itself and not only for you.

Now let us go into the silence 

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Are there any questions please?

Q: After one is awakened and he has left the garment on earth and he returns home, what is he doing, what does he do?

A: What does he do? He creates, my dear, and contemplates this world of death. As Blake said it so beautifully: “Those in Great Eternity Who contemplate on Death said thus: What seems to be is to Those to Whom it seems to be and is productive of the most dreadful consequents to Those to Whom it seems to be, even of torments, despair and Eternal Death, but Divine Mercy steps beyond and Redeems Man in the Body Of Jesus.” They are part of the Brotherhood, the redeemed body, and contemplate this world, letting it be to those who want it to be.

Tonight, a man who has a billion dollars − oh, he can't think for one moment…he wouldn't for one moment think of death. He doesn't want to die; he wants to live here forever. Though the body gets older and older and weaker and weaker, he wants to live here forever with his billion dollars. He knows he has to leave it behind him, and he's breaking his brains not to, and wondering how to protect it in the right channel. And he builds himself portraits of himself, always glamorous portraits. Compare the original to the portrait − well you'd faint if you thought these two are the same. But he has to have that for posterity. He builds himself, like Stalin. Stalin had thousands and thousands, and Hitler had thousands and thousands of statues of themselves. They renamed the rivers, they renamed the cities. Stalingrad − now it's Volgograd. He wasn't yet cold when they renamed it for him. And all the rivers are renamed, and the fellows put the little things around their heads and broke the statues and smashed them. He never thought that would ever happen. 

A little fellow here in Santo Domingo, he did the same thing, too: Trujillo − that little tiny island − statues all over to Trujillo. He only stole about a billion out of the small island, and built up his own little reputation. So they all do it, they all do it. And people are still carried away with these stupid little leaders, and pick themselves up and like sheep they will follow anything. You know, if you took a sheep as the leader, at sea, and took the leader and threw the leader overboard, all the sheep would follow and jump overboard. That's a fact; that is a fact. Take the leader of the sheep, the belled one, throw him overboard, all the sheep will run and jump overboard. That's what man does. They’re just like sheep. But they don't know it.

Stop being the sheep and stop following and following just because it's a popular thing to do, and begin to simply dwell upon the eternal story and hope it will take place in you.

Any other questions please?

Q: You use that keyboard analogy. [Is that] what we're doing while we're here?

A: Why certainly my dear, every moment in time is a note. It's an experience and it is caught in eternity. You may not remember the entire day and all the little sequences of the day, but they're not lost. If you gave your time to it, you'd bring it back. There is a little practice of getting into bed and thinking of the day in reverse order. It's a very good way to go to sleep, may I tell you, because the mind tires so quickly if you take it in reverse. And by the time you get to where you started to undress, if you take all the details, you are sound asleep. Man thinks he can go all through the day. He goes through by jumping from cleaning his teeth to dinner. There is quite an interval between dinner and cleaning your teeth. If you took all the little details − and they're all individual notes on the keyboard − before you go just a matter of moments, the mind tires and off to bed you go, off to sleep. In the morning when we get up, we jump up, wash our face, and get ready for the day − and how many record the individual incidents of the day?

Neville Goddard Lecture 

Liquid Light

 Liquid Light

This room is not filled with air. it is filled that thinking Substance and as you think into it and speak into it, it vibrates. As you cause it to vibrate, you bring it into form.

Franklin Fillmore Farrington

“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”

- Nikola Tesla

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“In Him we live and move, and have our being.”

Psychically, this world appears as an ocean of light containing within itself all things, including man, as pulsating bodies enveloped in liquid light.

The Biblical story of the Flood is the state in which man lives. Man is actually inundated in an ocean of liquid light in which countless numbers of light-beings move.

The story of the Flood is really being enacted today. Man is the Ark containing within himself the male-female principles of every living thing. The dove or idea which is sent out to find dry land is man’s attempt to embody his ideas. Man’s ideas resemble birds in flight . . like the dove in the story, returning to man without finding a place to rest.

If man will not let such fruitless searches discourage him, one day the bird will return with a green sprig. After assuming the consciousness of the thing desired, he will be convinced that it is so; and he will feel and know that he is that which he has consciously appropriated, even though it is not yet confirmed by his senses. One day man will become so identified with his conception that he will know it to be himself, and he will declare,

“I AM”;

I AM that which I desire to be

“I AM that I AM”

He will find that, as he does so, he will begin to embody his desire (the dove or desire will this time find dry land), thereby realizing the mystery of the word made flesh. Everything in the world is a crystallization of this liquid light.

“I AM the light of the world”

Your awareness of being is the liquid light of the world, which crystallizes into the conceptions you have of yourself.

Your unconditioned awareness of being first conceived itself in liquid light (which is the initial velocity of the universe).

All things, from the highest to the lowest vibrations or expressions of life, are nothing more than the different vibrations of velocities of this initial velocity; gold, silver, iron, wood, flesh etc., are only different expressions or velocities of this one substance-liquid light.

All things are crystallized liquid light; the differentiation or infinity of expression is caused by the conceiver’s desire to know himself.

Your conception of yourself automatically determines the velocity necessary to express that which you have conceived yourself to be.

The world is an ocean of liquid light in countless different states of crystallization.

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Neville Goddard,

Your Faith is your Fortune

Criticism When You’ve Had a Bad Childhood

Criticism When You’ve Had a Bad Childhood

Criticism is never easy. To learn that others judge us to be foolish, perverse, ugly or unpleasant is one of the most challenging aspects of any life. However, the impact of criticism is hugely variable – and depends ultimately on a rather unexpected detail: what sort of childhood we have had. The clue to whether criticism will be experienced as merely unpleasant or wholly catastrophic lies in what happened to us many decades ago in the hands of our earliest caregivers.

What is meant by a ‘bad childhood’ is here a matter, rather simply, of love. An infant arrives in the world with a very limited capacity to endure their own being. It is the tolerance, enthusiasm and forgiveness of another person that gradually acclimatizes us to existence. Our caregivers’ characteristic way of looking at us becomes the way we consider ourselves. It is by being loved by another that we acquire the art of looking sympathetically on our cracked and troublesome beings. It is simply not in our remit to believe in ourselves on our own. 

We are utterly reliant on an inner sense of having been valued inordinately by another person at the start as a protection against the subsequent neglect of the world. We don’t need to be loved by many, one will do, and twelve years might be enough, sixteen ideally, but without it the eternal admiration of millions won’t ever be able to convince us of our goodness. And with such a love, the scorn of millions won’t ever need to be fatal. 

Bad childhoods have an unfortunate tendency to drive us to seek out situations in which there is a theoretical possibility of receiving outsized approval – which also means, along the way, a high risk of encountering outsized disapproval. The emotionally deprived return, almost manically to the question, never really settled of: ‘Do I deserve to exist?’ And this is why they typically put unusual effort into attempts to be famous and visibly successful. But of course the world at large will never give the emotionally nervous the unqualified confirmation they seek; there will always be dissenters and critics, people too bashed about by their own past to be able to be kind to others, and it is to these voices that those with bad childhoods will be attuned, however enthusiastic the crowd might be. We can observe, along the way, that the chief marker of being a good parent is that one’s child simply has zero interest in being liked by large numbers of strangers.

We do not all hear the same thing when we are criticized. Some of us, the lucky ones, hear just the surface message from the here and now: that our work fell short of expectations, that we must try harder with our assignments, that our book, film or song wasn’t excellent. This can be bearable. But the more wounded among us hear far more. Criticism takes them straight back to the primordial injury. An attack now becomes entwined with the attacks of the past and grows enormous and unmanageable in its intensity. The boss or unfriendly colleague becomes the parent who let us down. Everything is pulled into question. Not only was the work subpar, we are a wretch, an undeserved being, a piece of excrement, the worst person in the world, for that is how it felt, back then, in the fragile, defenseless infant mind. 

Knowing more about our tricky childhoods provides us with a vital line of defense against the effects of criticism. It means that we can be on our guard, when we are attacked, against raising the stakes unnecessarily. We can learn to separate out the verdict of today from the emotional verdict we are carrying around with us and always seeking to confirm with the use of current events.

 We can learn that, however sad the attacks we are facing, they are as nothing next to the real tragedy and the effective cause of our sadness: that things went wrong back then. And so we can direct our attention to where it really belongs; away from today’s critics and towards the unconvinced parent of yesteryear. We can forgive ourselves for being, in this area, through no fault of our own, fatefully sensitive – and, in essence, mentally unwell. 

We cannot stop the attacks of the world, but we can – through an exploration of our histories – change what they mean to us.

We can also, importantly, get a second chance: we can go back and correct the original verdict of the world. We can take measures to expose ourselves to the gaze of friends or, more ideally, of a talented therapist who can hold up a more benign mirror and teach us a lesson that should have been gifted us from the start; that like every human, whatever our flaws, we deserve to be here.

Sources

The School of Life

https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/criticism-when-youve-had-a-bad-childhood/?utm_source=You%2520Tube&utm_medium=You%2520Tube%2520-%2520Criticism%2520When%2520You%2527ve%2520Had%2520a%2520Bad%2520Childhood%2520-%2520Video%2520Description%2520-%2520TBOL%2520Article&utm_campaign=You%2520Tube%2520-%2520Criticism%2520When%2520You%2527ve%2520Had%2520a%2520Bad%2520Childhood%2520-%2520Video%2520Description%2520-%2520TBOL%2520Article

The One Subject You Really Need to Study: Your Own Childhood

The One Subject You Really Need to Study: Your Own Childhood

There is perhaps no greater priority in childhood than to acquire an education: it’s in the early years that we have to push ourselves with special vigour to learn the lessons, and acquire the experience, that will help us successfully manoeuvre around the pitfalls of adult life. By studying hard and intelligently, we’ll have the best chance of avoiding a middle-age of confusion and resignation, regret and sorrow. The clue to a successful adult life – we’re repeatedly told – lies in childhood education.

It’s for this reason that we send weary children out into the world on dark winter mornings with full rucksacks in order to spend the day studying coordinate geometry and indefinite articles, the social impact of religious and economic changes under Edward VI and the place of Aristotle’s philosophy in Dante’s Inferno.

But there is one very striking detail to note in our approach. The one subject that almost certainly has the most to teach us in terms of its capacity to help us skirt adult dangers and guide us to fulfilment, the subject that far more than any other has the decisive power to liberate us, this subject is not taught in any school or college anywhere on the planet. A further irony is that this unstudied subject is one that we nevertheless live through every day of our early years, it is part of our palpable experience, unfolding all around us, as invisible as air and as hard to touch as time. The missing subject is, of course, our childhood itself. 

We can sum up its importance like this: our chances of leading a fulfilled adult life depend overwhelmingly on our knowledge of, and engagement with, the nature of our own childhoods, for it is in this period that the dominant share of our adult identity is moulded and our characteristic expectations and responses set. We will spend some 25,000 hours in the company of our parents by the age of eighteen, a span which ends up determining how we think of relationships and of sex, how we approach work, ambition and success, what we think of ourselves (especially whether we can like or must abhor who we are), what we should assume of strangers and friends and how much happiness we believe we deserve and could plausibly attain.

More tragically, and without anyone necessarily having meant ill, our childhoods will have been, to put it nicely, complicated. The expectations that will have formed in those years about who we are, what relationships can be like and what the world might want to give us will have been marked by a range of what could be termed ‘distortions’ – departures from reality and an ideal of mental health and maturity. Something or indeed many things will have gone slightly wrong or developed in questionable directions – leaving us in areas less than we might have been and more scared and cowed than is practical. We may, for example, have picked up a sense that being sexual was incompatible with being a good person; or that we had to lie about our interests in order to be loved. We could have acquired an impression that succeeding would incite the rivalry of a parent. Or that we would need always to be funny and lighthearted so as to buoy up a depressive adult we adored but feared for.

From our experiences, we will then acquire expectations, internal ‘scripts’ and patterns of behaviour that we play out unknowingly across adulthood. Certain key people didn’t take us seriously back then: now we tend to believe (but don’t notice ourselves believing) that no one can. We needed to try to fix an adult on whom we depended: now we are drawn (but don’t realize we are drawn) to rescuing all those we love. We admired a parent who didn’t care much for us: now we repeatedly (but unconsciously) throw ourselves at distant and indifferent candidates. 

One of the problems of our childhoods is that they are usually surrounded by a misleading implication that they might have been sane. What goes on in the kitchen and in the car, on holidays and in the bedroom can seem beyond remark or reflection. For a long time, we have nothing to compare our life against. It’s just reality in our eyes, rather than a very peculiar desperately harmful version of it filled with unique slants and outright dangers. For many years, it can seem almost normal that dad lies slumped in his chair in quiet despair, that mum is often crying or that we’ve been labelled the unworthy one. It can seem normal that every challenge is a catastrophe or that every hope is destroyed by cynicism. There’s nothing to alert us to the oddity of a seven year old having to cheer up a parent because of the difficulties of her relationship with the other parent. Unfortunately, the last thing that the oddest parents will ever tell you is that they are odd; the most bizzare adults are most heavily invested in thinking of themselves, and being known to others as normal. It’s in the nature of madness to strive very hard not to be thought about.

This drift towards unthinking normalization is compounded by children’s natural urge to think well of their parents, even at the cost of looking after their own interests. It is always – strangely – preferable for a child to think of themselves as unworthy and deficient than to acknowledge their parent as unstable and unfair.

The legacy of a difficult childhood – by which one really means a typical childhood – spreads into every corner of adult life. For decades, it can seem as though unhappiness and grief are the norm. It may take until a person is deep into adulthood, and might have messed up their career substantially or gone through a string of frustrating relationships, that they may become able to think about the connection between what happened to them in the past and how they are living as grown ups. Slowly, they may see the debt that their habit of trying to fix their adult lovers owes to a dynamic with an alcoholic mother. Over many hours of discussion, they may realize that there need be no conflict between being successful and being a good person – contrary to what a disappointed father had once imputed.

It may have to take the presence of a kindly and intelligent therapist to hold a mirror to this childhood and so bring it to life as a subject that can be reflected upon. ‘That must have been very hard…’ or ‘There could have been another way of doing that…’ the therapist might venture as we tell them – and it might be the first time we’ve ever done so with anyone – of conversations and events that unfolded decades before.

The focus of present education lies in understanding the outer world. The system tells us that we will finally and optimally have succeeded when we grasp the laws of the universe and the history of humanity. But in order properly to thrive, we will also need to know something far closer to home. Without a proper understanding of childhood, it won’t matter how many fortunes we have made, how stellar our reputation or outwardly cheerful our families, we will be doomed to founder on the rocks of our own psychological complexities; we will probably be sunk by anxiety, lack of trust, dread, paranoia, rage and self-loathing, those widespread legacies of distorted and misunderstood pasts. 

Well meaning people sometimes wonder, with considerable hope, if Freud has not after all by now been proved ‘wrong’. The tricky and humiliating answer is that he never will be, in the substance of his insight. His eternal contribution has been to alert us to the many ways in which adult emotional lives sit on top of childhood experiences – and how we are made sick by not knowing our own histories. In a saner world, we would be left in no doubt – and even partially alerted while we were living through them – that our childhoods held the secrets to our identities. We would know that the one subject we need to excel at above all is one not yet flagged up by the school system called ‘My Childhood’, and the sign that we have graduated in the topic with honours is when at last we can know and think non-defensively about how we are (in small ways and large) a little mad, and what exactly in the distant past might have made us so.

Sources

The School of Life

https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/the-one-subject-you-really-need-to-study-your-own-childhood/?utm_source=You%20Tube&utm_medium=You%20Tube%20-%20The%20One%20Subject%20You%20Really%20Need%20to%20Study:%20Your%20Own%20Childhood%20-%20video%20description%20-%20TBOL%20Article&utm_campaign=You%20Tube%20-%20The%20One%20Subject%20You%20Really%20Need%20to%20Study:%20Your%20Own%20Childhood%20-%20video%20description%20-%20TBOL%20Article