Ouroboros
From Carl Jung'sFrom Egypt's and the North Africa/Middle-East's uprisings and revolution to Carnival and Mardi Gras in such cities as Rio, Sydney, Venice, and New Orleans, the quest for primal unity and Dionysian ecstasy coincides this year with the arrival of springtime and the approach of the Vernal Equinox. A Tidal Wave is arising from the Collective Unconscious. 2011 is becoming a year of upheaval.
Last night I watched the Jung themed episode of the UK version of Skins in which key character Tony fucks his beautiful Jungian Anima and finds wholeness for himself and his loved ones. It is a remarkable 46 minutes as full of meaning and rich symbolism as Jung's Man and his Symbols.
(I know this is hard to believe- I was amazed)
(Watch it yourself-- though you won't know a few details.)
(I know this is hard to believe- I was amazed)
(Watch it yourself-- though you won't know a few details.)
There is a new film soon to appear about Jung and Freud-- A Dangerous Method
If it generates new interest in Jung, so much the better, though I wonder how much it will expand over the provocative relationship the 30-year-old Jung had with his creative, voluptuous 18- year- old patient Sabina.
Today, I have read about Octavio Paz and reviewed material on Marx and the existentialists, especially Sartre. Along with Simone De Beauvoir, they all write of the alienation and dread the modern world has brought. Here is the heart of what is amiss in the world and that Jung recognized so well-- We have been cut off from the essence of life, we are cut off from nature ecologically, from life by our meaningless jobs or our need for money, from one another ethnically, from our collective unconscious wholeness by our lost and competitive egos. We crave festivals, drunkenness, drugs, oblivion to remove the alienation and loneliness of life in a materialistic world ruled by greed and war.
Such has been our condition since the industrial age, worsening in the emptiness of the Eisenhower years and the wrong-headed war in Viet Nam. The Beats, Ginsberg, Kerouac, poets, song writers, artists have all seen the alienation and spent their lives trying to reconnect us with our holistic center, our Buddha Natures, Our beatitude. It takes art, poetry and music to bring us to our authenticity. And I still wonder whether it is possible to go beyond isolated communes of awareness, little gardens of Epicurean wisdom, to an expanded state of global consciousness that will save us from our doom.
For now, for the first week of March, a glass of champagne, Michael Cunningham's new novel, and ten glorious days with no obligations other than a hike in the woods along the trails of Cloudland Canyon.
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