For about a year or so I have been delving into the works of Carl Jung. I first read about him when I was 16 years old but wasn’t quite sure of what I was reading at the time. Sadly I had only access to indirect works and quotes but nothing direct. Concepts like The Collective Unconscious (as it was described to me then) seemed too much like religious thinking and magic, and at that time in my life I was strongly Atheist. Ironically I was also reading everything I could by Nietzsche, which reinforced much of where my mind was at the time.
Nearly two decades later, through the online content of Jordan Peterson, I rediscovered Carl Jung in detail and was surprised by the powerful connection between Jung and Nietzsche. Naturally I reread all that I owned and more. This sent me down a rabbit hole of psychoanalysis, meditative works of Yogis and Buddhists, Gnosticism, and more. Seeing the world from an orthogonal point of view without discarding anything I already knew from objective materialism was an enlightening realization.
From the middle of 2018 I’ve decided to undertake seriously the practices of meditation and dream interpretation through guided control. I also decided to pursue all of this without any help of drugs or hallucinogenics. I’m not certain what my goal is, beyond exploring a significant part of myself and what may indeed be the Collective Unconscious of humanity. I’m focusing on looking for symbols, but hopefully I don’t invent them from my imagination in the process. This will be amateurish without a doubt but perhaps I’ll discover far more about the Shadow of myself and of humanity in the process.
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