#psychichygiene

[jungiananalysis]

The Archetype

C.G. Jung, The Collected Works, Vol. 9i, para. 173-4.

The archetype is really far less a scientific problem than an urgent question of psychic hygiene. Even if all proofs of the existence of archetypes were lacking, and all the clever people in the world succeeded in convincing us that such a thing could not possibly exist, we would have to invent them forthwith in order to keep our highest and most important values from disappearing into the unconscious. For when these fall into the unconscious the whole elemental force of the original experience is lost. What then appears in its place is fixation on the mother-imago; and when this has been sufficiently rationalized and “corrected,” we are tied fast to human reason and condemned from then on to believe exclusively in what is rational. That is a virtue and an advantage on the one hand, but on the other a limitation and impoverishment, for it brings us nearer to the bleakness of doctrinairism and “enlightenment.” This Déesse Raison emits a deceptive light which illuminates only what we know already, but spreads a darkness over all those things which it would be most needful for us to know and become conscious of. The more independent “reason” pretends to be, the more it turns into sheer intellectuality which puts doctrine in the place of reality and shows us man not as he is but how it wants him to be.

Whether he understands them or not, man must remain conscious of the world of the archetypes, because in it he is still a part of Nature and is connected with his own roots. A view of the world or a social order that cuts him off from the primordial images of life not only is no culture at all but, in increasing degree, is a prison or a stable. If the primordial images remain conscious in some form or other, the energy that belongs to them can flow freely into man. But when it is no longer possible to maintain contact with them, then the tremendous sum of energy stored up in these images, which is also the source of the fascination underlying the infantile parental complex, falls back into the unconscious. The unconscious then becomes charged with a force that acts as an irresistible vis a tergo to whatever view or idea or tendency our intellect may choose to dangle enticingly before our desiring eyes. In this way man is delivered over to his conscious side, and reason becomes the arbiter of right and wrong, of  good and evil. I am far from wishing to belittle the divine gift of reason, man’s highest faculty. But in the role of absolute tyrant it has no meaning —no more than light would have in a world where its counterpart, darkness, was absent. Man would do well to heed the wise counsel of the mother and obey the inexorable law of nature which sets limits to every being. He ought never to forget that the world exists only because opposing forces are held in equilibrium. So, too, the rational is counterbalanced by the irrational, and what is planned and purposed by what is.

[magickalmenagerie]

I was uncomfortable enough that I got up and asked if it was the spirit and why. I deduced an explanation that it was trying to help me reach the astral so we could communicated without my feeling so tired. Does this sound reasonable? Should I be worried the spirit isn't being honest? Help!?

Well, this has a wide and varied range of possibility. In order to really tell which scenario is coming up, it is a matter of reading the energy and connecting with the spirit/entity you are interacting with. 

So I will list a few rules, and a few scenarios. 

1.) If you do not know the name of the entity, do not communicate with it. 

     - I am putting this as a rule of thumb because if you can’t connect well enough to get a name, it is probably better you do not do divination with this spirit being that it is unbound

      - A spirit naming itself, or providing a name, is often times a show of good will and formality, also, it is an exchange that lets the spirit know if you are strong enough to communicate as well, some spirits will leave if you cannot get their name correct, so the fact that it has not left if you do not know its name is troublesome. You could be exploited for your energy, as it sounds you may be (hard to tell because we do not know the details of your sessions, it may be perfectly reasonable to be tired) since this formality would indicate a lack of experience if one could not correctly call the spirit by the given name. 

2.) Do not attempt astral projection if you do not practice psychic hygiene and have a fairly good understanding of divination, meditation, and visualization practices. 

     - True astral projection is nothing to play around with, but many times we hear people referring to a change in vibration or what they perceive as astral traveling, that is not the case; astral travel is intentional and deliberate, if something is ‘taking you into astral’ actually….that is a problem. However, this may be a message indicating they are trying to raise your vibration. If the spirit is playing off of your knowledge, then you may not have the vocabulary they need in order to communicate with you. Checking messages with a tarot deck, and learning signs and symbols, as well as associations and reading books about witchcraft and mediumship may help you get a better grasp on who you are talking to and how to reach them. (A spirit sending you a dense amount of energy to push your vibration up would feel slightly creepy and that could be one cause of this scenario as well.) 

3.) Ground and shield before and after magickal activity. 

   -If you are a wide open baked potato, the toppings are going to pile on. You don’t want to over crowd your energy be leaving an open call out there for spirits to respond to. In fact, you may be interacting with many different spirits and at different times unknowingly. So, make sure you ground and shield before and after every magickal thing you do, especially when talking to spirits. 

Pro-Tip: I have forgotten to do this and gone to bed while Carmen was still awake doing summonings and had spirits walk into my dreams. You would not have told me before bed that that was possible, but when I woke up, I knew who was there and so I got up and asked Carmen, who was actively summoning the very spirits. While they were just curious about my dreams, they were not supposed to be there. Needless to say, I shield my bed before sleep with a protective bubble if I have done heavy work that day. That way I don’t have one of those jumpy wake up sessions, or problems falling asleep because I feel the boogie-man staring at me in the corner. 

4.) When in doubt, cleanse it out. 

   - You better bet!!!  

So, I do not know about your practices or how you do things, but I hope everything is okay and you are feeling better now!!! We did take awhile to answer this one, so I hope this helps anyone in the future. 

If you still have issues send us an email or direct message and we will ask you some questions to get a better idea of your situation. 

Love and Light - Curtis 

[jungiananalysis]

Yoga as Psychic Hygiene

C.G. Jung, The Collected Works, Vol. 11, para 866.

I will remain silent on the subject of what yoga means for India, because I cannot presume to judge something I do not know from personal experience. I can, however, say something about what it means for the West. Our lack of direction borders on psychic anarchy. Therefore, any religious or philosophical practice amounts to a psychological discipline; in other words, it is a method of psychic hygiene. The numerous purely physical procedures of yoga are a physiological hygiene as well, which is far superior to ordinary gymnastics or breathing exercises in that it is not merely mechanistic and scientific but, at the same time, philosophical. In its training of the parts of the body, it unites them with the whole of the mind and spirit, as is quite clear, for instance, in the prānayāma exercises, where prāna is both the breath and the universal dynamics of the cosmos. When the doing of the individual is at the same time a cosmic happening, the elation of the body (innervation) becomes one with the elation of the spirit (the universal idea), and from this there arises a living whole which no technique, however scientific, can hope to produce. Yoga practice is unthinkable, and would also be ineffectual, without the ideas on which it is based. It works the physical and the spiritual into one another in an extraordinarily complete way

[jungiananalysis]

Second Half of Life

C.G. Jung, The Collected Works, Vol. 8, para. 792.

As a doctor I am convinced that it is hygienic—if I may use the word—to discover in death a goal towards which one can strive, and that shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose. I therefore consider that all religions with a supramundane goal are eminently reasonable from the point of view of psychic hygiene. When I live in a house which I know will fall about my head within the next two weeks, all my vital functions will be impaired by this thought; but if on the contrary I feel myself to be safe, I can dwell there in a normal and comfortable way. From the standpoint of psychotherapy it would therefore be desirable to think of death as only a transition, as part of a life process whose extent and duration are beyond our knowledge

[jungiananalysis]

The Compensation of the Unconscious

C.G. Jung, The Collected Works, Vol. 9ii, para. 40.

The autonomy of the collective unconscious expresses itself in the figures of anima and animus. They personify those of its contents which, when withdrawn from projection, can be integrated into consciousness. To this extent, both figures represent functions which filter the contents of the collective unconscious through to the conscious mind. They appear or behave as such, however, only so long as the tendencies of the conscious and unconscious do not diverge too greatly. Should any tension arise, these functions, harmless till then, confront the conscious mind in personified form and behave rather like systems split off from the personality, or like part souls. This comparison is inadequate in so far as nothing previously belonging to the ego-personality has split off from it; on the contrary, the two figures represent a disturbing accretion. The reason for their behaving in this way is that though the contents of anima and animus can be integrated they themselves cannot, since they are archetypes. As such they are the foundation stones of the psychic structure, which in its totality exceeds the limits of consciousness and therefore can never become the object of direct cognition. Though the effects of anima and animus can be made conscious, they themselves are factors transcending consciousness and beyond the reach of perception and volition. Hence they remain autonomous despite the integration of their contents, and for this reason they should be borne constantly in mind. This is extremely important from the therapeutic standpoint, because constant observation pays the unconscious a tribute that more or less guarantees its co-operation. The unconscious as we know can never be “done with” once and for all. It is, in fact, one of the most important tasks of psychic hygiene to pay continual  attention to the symptomatology of unconscious contents and processes, for the good reason that the conscious mind is always in danger of becoming one-sided, of keeping to well-worn paths and getting stuck in blind alleys. The complementary and compensating function of the unconscious ensures that these dangers, which are especially great in neurosis, can in some measure be avoided. It is only under ideal conditions, when life is still simple and unconscious enough to follow the serpentine path of instinct without hesitation or misgiving, that the compensation works with entire success. The more civilized, the more conscious and complicated a man is, the less he is able to follow his instincts. His complicated living conditions and the influence of his environment are so strong that they drown the quiet voice of nature. Opinions, beliefs, theories, and collective tendencies appear in its stead and back up all the aberrations of the conscious mind. Deliberate attention should then be given to the unconscious so that the compensation can set to work. Hence it is especially important to picture the archetypes of the unconscious not as a rushing phantasmagoria of fugitive images but as constant, autonomous factors, which indeed they are.

[jungiananalysis]

Psychic Hygiene in Symbol

Georg Gerster: Now that you have elucidated its background as an empirical investigator, the increasing popularity of the Christmas tree must rejoice your heart as a psychotherapist. I conjecture you would agree that Christmas trees are healthy —as a measure of psychic hygiene?

C.G. Jung: Your conjecture is correct. The archetypes are, so to speak, like many little appetites in us, and if, with the passing of time, they get nothing to eat, they start rumbling and upset everything. The Catholic Church takes this very seriously. Just now it is setting about reviving the old Easter customs. The abstract greeting "Christ is risen!" no longer satisfies the craving of the archetypes for images. So in order to set it at rest, they have had recourse to the hare-goddess, a fertility symbol. And lately the Church has reintroduced an ancient fire ceremony the Easter fire, the primordial fire, is lit not with matches but with flint and steel! A tremendously nourishing procedure for man's feelings. The inner man has to be fed—a fact that moderns, with their frivolous trust in reason, often overlook to their own harm. The Christmas tree is one of those customs which are food for the soul, nourishment for the inner man. And the more primordial the material they use, the more promising these customs are for the future.

[jungiananalysis]

Psychic Hygiene

C.G. Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, p. 44-46. 

Proper education is the best safeguard against psychic illness in its manifold forms, which we call neuroses. A schooling that is not too strict, and is actually what many people would call a bad one, is in my experience the best.  If that doesn't help, try to awaken the hidden artist who slumbers in every man. Give him a chance to bring to light the pictures he carries unpainted within himself, to free, the unwritten poems he has shut up inside him, and yet another source of psychic disturbances is removed. Even though the work he produces will hardly ever amount to anything technically and artistically, it has helped to cleanse and release his psyche.

The play of fantasy is also helped by religion, an indispensable auxiliary for the psychologist. Catholicism in particular, with its ceremonial and liturgy, gives fantasy a priceless support, for which reason I have found in my practice that believing Catholics suffer less from neurosis and are easier to cure than Protestants and Jews. For the need of religion, for its validity as a primary instinct of mankind, there are abundant proofs reaching back to the dawn of time. Then it was part of man's unconscious, now it is part of his conscious, psychic diet; to it the doctor must turn when he tries to lead the patient back to himself, to rid him of all the psychic trash that has been pumped into him, to leave more room for the free play of fantasy, to cultivate his open and hidden talents, to make him more balanced, to guide him by the great saying of the Greek poet: Become what you are.

How great the importance of psychic hygiene, how great the danger of psychic sickness, is evident from the fact that just as all sickness is a watered-down death, neurosis is nothing less than a watered-down suicide, which left to run its malignant course all too often leads to a lethal end. Out of the many cultural cripples one-sided cerebral thinking has produced, the psychoanalyst who approaches them not merely as medical specimens but as human beings should be able to bring them closer to nature, make them more natural, as nature wanted them to be and as they faced life thousands of years ago. If the gifts we are endowed with  break down before the tasks of life, if they wither away or run riot, we have only our flight from nature to blame, from the Golden Age of our furthest ancestors that returns to us only in dreams, a flight that leads to suppressed naturalness and to oppressive over-civilization of the psyche.

[tarikuta]

(Thee Uncondemning Monk)