Sam,
"the role my dad plays as chief arbiter and determinant of my ego identity".

A perfect example of how this study applies. And I find it all too often to be the case. Fathers seem to be the parent that is most often insufficient in proper guidance, acceptance and love in a child's early life. Not just with boys but girls also. Is this due to the 'masculine' tendencies from the beginning of man's evolution? Homo Sapien males were primarily responsible for killing animals for food and protecting the tribe. It was left to the females to care for the young {as it has been ever since}. What would the world be like today if Neanderthals had won out over Homo Sapiens? Less brain power and more muscle? And what about the influence of the psyche, an unconscious one at that, of the feminine aspect? I have begun to believe the denial of this most important trait {feminine} is why the world is so much in conflict in the 21st century, and has been throughout history. Inquiring minds need to know.

On the subject of the feminine and early life influences in later life. My mother, a true heroine, raised me and my three sisters. As an adult in later life I find myself depending more on those feminine aspects of creativity and spirituality, and more specifically the intuitive mind. Is this something that naturally comes about in men as we enter the 'twilight years'? Or is it that I was raised with so many females in my early life that the feminine aspect has taken hold? Or is it just a coincidence? Probably a little of each although the more I think of it the more I can see the patriarchal male 'softening' in later years and those anima characteristics showing themselves more. That would mean the 'soul image' would be evolving for most men. I do believe the feminine aspect to be the greater than the masculine, if left to its own device and not held back because of our patriarchal societies. Even in our christian religion there are the noticeable opposites. God is definitely masculine and patriarchal. Yet Jesus lived from his feminine aspects {caring, loving, accepting, etc.}. Of course when we look to mythology it becomes evident why God is so patriarchal/masculine {read Joseph Campbell's Transformations of Myth Through Time to get a quick education on this subject}. Yet in the East there is more of a balance of masculine/feminine, gods and goddesses.

It is ironic that the world is slowly discovering the 'natural' aspects of the feminine playing a bigger role in everyday life. But unfortunately it is the expense to the decline of the earth, global warming and the mass destruction of the natural aspects that provide that delicate balance required for life. I once read that the late Carl Sagan, and Jacques Cousteau, both believed it to be too late to turn the tide in the earth's decline. Powerful voices who should know.

---

There is a caveat to life that I must mention that is true no matter how good the life is. In Buddhist, which is a psychology and not a religion, there are the Four Noble Truths. The first of these truths is 'Life is suffering. Most suffering in life is brought on by our own actions. But suffering is a natural aspect of life since death is also a natural part of life. We all have relatives, friends, neighbors, even pets who are important to life. All life comes o an end. That is a part of nature. But we humans with our highly emotional minds endure suffering because of death more so than any other animal. I always remind myself of this caveat to life because there will always be the 'transitions' of those we love. I have more recently experienced this fact with the passing of my oldest cat, and the impending transition of another beloved cat. To some these are just animals. But they are and have been a big part of my life for so many years. I 'suffer' when I lose anyone of them.

My heroine mother is in her late 70s. I try not to think of such things, but on the other hand I believe important one do so to prepare thyself.

And there it is again. Those 'feminine' aspects coming to the surface in my life. My emotions are strong when I think of my 'feline family'. In the end it does seem those feminine aspects become more and more dominant in later life. Natural progression of the psyche? It is such a shame that it takes death, whether it be a loved one or the planet, to make us realize the importance of these feminine qualities. The world would be, would have been, a better place if it was matriarchy instead of patriarchy that was the controlling agent in life. What could have been, what should have been. Seems that is the story of life, human and universal.

Jerry

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Jerry,
So many associations come to mind that I hardly know how to organize them. It is funny that with these authors, whichever one is reading at the time, one becomes pretty steeped in it all, and their particular ideas become the single key to the great mystery. In regards to patriarchy and suffering, they are as you know central themes in the work we are engaged in.

Perhaps the Jewish, Christian, Mythraic revolutions were too violent in their reaction to the feminine pagan mother goddess world. It is very difficult and of course paradoxical to give voice to both sides at the same time. Yet even jung defended christianity early on in 1912 when he said that it developed out of the need of a people vegetating in spiritual darkness, and that we cannot easily understand the storms of the libido that swept through the Rome of the Caesars. That said, the natural world suffered no small loss of reputation by being so desecrated, and seems to have been in the business of undermining such a violation of her loss of participation ever since.

Campbell said that to the hunter gathering tribes of the early jewish related people, the great mother was considered the great abomination. Apparently St. Paul exhorted men against marriage, and early church father Tertullian said that woman "earthy actual woman awakened to her nature was "the devil's door."

Yet these were only one of many competing views. They just happened to have been the ones that won out, largely.

As Campbell points out in the illustration of the crucified Orpheus in figure 9 in his book Masks of God, Creative Mythology, the two words on it were "Orpheus" (true man) and Bakkikos (true god). He stated that it represents the traditional idea of a transcended creator willingly participating in his OWN creation (life and death of life on earth). And that the earth in all its paradox is a manifestation of God's will.

Christianity must find itself in a bit of a contradiction when God both desires to experience his creation of man through Jesus, yet He is only the creator who is distinct and not the substance of the world. One wonders why our church fathers had to play such a trick as to insist on only God's goodness, and not just be very candid and open about his flawed creation. Pelagius denounced original sin and the notion that anyone else could die for one's sins. Even sin was considered a natural aspect of God's creation.

Abelard's work showed "an indifference to the distinction between natural and supernatural grace."

When the devil was once the "lord of the abyss" in his manifestations as Hades-Pluto and Poseidon-Neptune-Shiva, with their trident/pitchforks and animal bulls/cloven hooves and horns, the mystery of god's activity in and around us was not condemned.

Campbell: "Whereas in the Christian view the Devil, like God, is an independent personage "out there," what the mystes learned at this Orphic station was that the god of the creative sea, the moving tremendum of this world, was an aspect of himself, to be experienced within--exactly as in the Indian Tantric tradition, where all the gods and demons, heavens and hells, are discovered and displayed within us {(as you say...not religion but psychology)} --and this ground of being, which is both giver and taker of the forms that appear and disappear in space and time, though dark indeed, cannot be termed evil unless the world itself is to be so termed.

An odd passage from Jung's Neitzche seminar, of course only valid in the context in which he is speaking, when otherwise it is a damn confusing paradox: "...ultimately our morality is not an invention but an istinct. Yet it is the materialistic prejudice that once a man called Moses unfortunately climbed Mount Sinai,and there he felt queer, so he said: "Now you people must get it in the neck; I will show you what you must not do." And if Moses had not done that there would be no morality in the world at all: the instincts would blossom unashamed. Everywhere, in every country, there was a Moses; every decent nation has a Moses, and even if we cannot establish the historical existence of such a man, at least there are the laws, and very severe laws at that. And where did they cone from? They came from another instinct. Freud does not see that however, on account of the materialistic prejudice that there is nothing but human consciousness."

"The Kingdom of God is spread out upon the earth."

I think I'm running out of associations. I just want to add that I am always surprised at how the most honest attempts to understand still lead toward a cramp of consciousness, the exact conscious inflation that one is trying to dispel. I am surprised at the domination that my consciousness still imposes on anything it discriminates outside of itself. Fortunately for me, I have not even to risk the adventure alone.

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Excellent insights and references. The Masks of God by Campbell are a tall task indeed to consume. The detail Campbell gets into in these various myths shows his brilliance, to retain all the knowledge as he did and catalog it in such a way that we can understand. He loved telling a story and I think that is what really attracted most of us when we first met him, whatever form that may have been. He knows how to 'articulate', and that is a word that properly fits him, the message and yet keep your interest at a peek so you too are able to learn beyond just the story as told. All myths have metaphors that fit somewhere within the human psyche. A universal truth flows from the masses, the cultural norms, and have discernible patterns that are both intellectually as well as intuitively recognizable. Archetypes of the unconscious, universal truths, symbolic language, metaphorical references to the source from which they came.
To get someone to listen, let alone understand such language as I used above about universal truths takes a skilled orator and Campbell was as skilled as they get.

As for our Western religions and their refusal to acknowledge the power of the feminine. It is because of that power they made sure it was repressed. I believe early teachers of Western religion, long before Islam in 500AD which carriers it to even greater 'depths', recognized this truth applied not only with the attraction of the Goddess religions/myths but also within the human psyche. They knew the feminine psyche had the superior power and if left to grow would have overpowered the patriarchal system we have today. Being afraid of the Goddess is a really a fear of the power of the feminine psyche.
Intuitively speaking.

Be sure to read my post about Jung's study of childhood dreams. This is a relatively recent published book and fits right with the focus I have given in my thoughts on childhood issues, symbols in dreams, and personality traits. That post is Childhood Dreams by Carl Jung. This should be a most interetsing book.

Jerry

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I want to re-post this thread because of the importance it has in the exploration of the psyche and the dream. I often see childhood issues addressed in posted dreams. When those issues are presented to the dreamer, in my interpretations, they tend to fit with the dreamer's life. As Jung stated, if it fits the waking life.....

Understanding there are such early life imprinting, and the enormous influence they can possess {and can force onto the conscious mind/life}, and the dreamer discovering what those influences are, and a method to help resolve the emotional conflicts {Individuation Process}, that could be a major step in helping people resolve the deeper issues related to personal attitudes, behaviors and beliefs, in adult life.

We are moving so far from Freud's postulation that the dream is trying to censor the psyche, and to one that properly fits, the position Jung taught, that the dream is trying to reveal all that is within the unconscious. A therapeutic device created by nature.

Jerry

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