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f826c19
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Though no one notices at the time, in-loveness obliterates the humanity of the beloved. One does a curious kind of insult to another by falling in love with him, for we are really looking at our own projection of God, not at the other person. If two people are in love, they tread on star dust for a time and live happily ever after--that is so long as this experience of divinity has obliterated time for them. Only when they come down to eart..
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romantic-love
shadow
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Robert A. Johnson |
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cd07267
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it is almost always the case that whatever has wounded you will also be instrumental in your healing.
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psychoanalysis
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Robert A. Johnson |
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1bef066
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Most men get their deepest conviction of self-worth from a woman, wife, mother, or if they are highly conscious, from their own anima. The woman sees and shows the man his value by lighting the lamp.
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Robert A. Johnson |
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80a283d
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The message is unmistakable; our own healing proceeds from that overlap of what we call good and evil, light and dark. It is not that the light element alone does the healing; the place where light and dark begin to touch is where miracles arise. This middle place is a mandorla.
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Robert A. Johnson |
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10fa49d
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To consent to paradox is to consent to suffering that which is greater than the ego. The religious experience lies exactly at that point of insolubility where we feel we can proceed no further. This is an invitation to that which is greater than one's self.
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Robert A. Johnson |
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5988368
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Dante was standing near the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge that crosses the Arno River in Florence. It was just before 1300... Dante saw Beatrice standing on the bridge. He was a young man, she even younger, and that vision contained the whole of eternity for him. Dante did not speak to her and saw her very little. And then Beatrice died, carried off by plague. Dante was stricken with the loss of his vision. She was the connection between his soul..
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Robert A. Johnson |
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503a216
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Each age needs its own language for understanding enduring truths...The ancient world didn't have much of what we call reality; they lived, instead, by the slender threads. We have gained ego reality but have lost the mystical and religious functions that should guide our lives.
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Robert A. Johnson |
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4c7238e
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If you can touch your shadow--within form--and do something out of your ordinary pattern, a great deal of energy will flow from it.
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Robert A. Johnson |
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ffb5afd
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Generally, a mood will run its course in an inteligent man; if a woman doesn't puncture it prematurely, the man will puncture it himself. He will regain his senses somewhere along the way; he will say, "Now wait, we had better think about this." That is, if his wife hasn't said five minutes before, "Now, dear, don't you think we had better think about this?" Because then he won't, of course. If a woman is needling, it is doubly hard for a m..
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Robert A. Johnson |
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d4532ac
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First we must learn to think mythologically. Powerful things happen when we touch the thinking which myths, fairy tales, and our own dreams bring to us. The terms and settings of the old myths are strange; they seem archaic and distant to us, but if we listen to them carefully and take them seriously, we begin to hear and to understand.
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Robert A. Johnson |
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205ec2d
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Dr. Kunkel's teacher, Dr. Jung, believed that archetypes are blueprints of the basic human qualities we all share. The archetypes themselves are undefinable natural patterns or forces that shape life in all ages and places. They cannot be known directly, but archetypal themes and images appear in myth, fairy tales, dreams, and fantasies. We tend to think of ourselves as unique individuals, and to a great extent we are. But just as there are..
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Robert A. Johnson |
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3c2967e
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A man depends largely on woman for the light in the family as he is not well equipped at finding meaning for himself. Life is often dry and barren for him unless someone bestows meaning on life for him. With a few words, a woman can give meaning to a whole day's struggle and a man will be so grateful. A man knows and wants this; he will edge up to it, initiate little occasions so that a woman can shed some light for him. When he comes home ..
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Robert A. Johnson |
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02e3c22
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Children come into the world with that sense of celebration and delight in the awesomeness of life. Then we eat of that wonderful, terrible fruit depicted in the story of the Garden of Eden, and our lives become divided. In childhood we have innocent wholeness, which then is transformed into informed separateness. If one is lucky, a second transformation occurs later in life, a transformation into informed wholeness. A proverb puts it this ..
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Robert A. Johnson |
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7a52d78
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The mystery is this: there is one right thing and only one right thing to do at every moment. We can either follow or resist the slender threads.
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Robert A. Johnson |
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11ea012
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Whenever you have a clash of opposites in your being and neither will give way to the other (the bush will not be consumed and the fire will not stop), you can be certain that God is present. We dislike this experience intensely and avoid it at any cost; but if we can endure it, the conflict-without-resolution is a direct experience of God. A
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Robert A. Johnson |
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52e2b4e
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Modern western man has some basic misconceptions about the nature of happiness. The origin of the word is instructive: happiness stems from the root verb to happen, which implies that our happiness is what happens.
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Robert A. Johnson |
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2cfc0c5
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The term projection is used by Jungians to mean that each of us places some quality of our own being onto something or someone else. Aspects of reality of which we are unconscious are projected onto the outer world, where we see them in terms of events and people outside of ourselves. This psychological process works like a projector in a movie theater: we take something that is within the projector and blow it up onto a screen or backdrop,..
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Robert A. Johnson |
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d53af47
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Later I inquired into the origin of the word happy and found that it derives from the verb to happen. In other words, happiness is to be found simply from observing what happens. If you cannot be happy at the prospect of lunch, you are not likely to find happiness anywhere. What happens is happiness.
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Robert A. Johnson |
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ca47215
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It wounded me enough to ground me, but not so much as to knock all the life out of me.
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Robert A. Johnson |
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1b51037
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The purpose of learning to work with the unconscious is not just to resolve our conflicts or deal with our neuroses. We find there a deep source of renewal, growth, strength, and wisdom. We connect with the source of our evolving character; we cooperate with the process whereby we bring the total self together; we learn to tap that rich lode of energy and intelligence that waits within.
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Robert A. Johnson |
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f1e0916
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There is a story of a spiritual seeker who one day came to his master and asked, "In the olden days it is said that there were people who walked and talked with God. Why doesn't this happen anymore?" The master replied, "Because nowadays no one will stoop so low."
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Robert A. Johnson |
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3f49f9d
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Very few women understand how great is the hunger in a man to be near femininity...(b)ut if a woman wishes to give a most precious gift to a man, if she would truly feed this masculine hunger (a hunger that he will seldom show but that is always there), she will be very, very feminine when her man is in a mood, so he can get his bearings and be a man again.
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Robert A. Johnson |
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293f451
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Culture can only function if we live out the unwanted elements symbolically. All healthy societies have a rich ceremonial life. Less healthy ones rely on unconscious expressions: war, violence, psychosomatic illness, neurotic suffering, and accidents are very low-grade ways of living out the shadow. Ceremony and ritual are a far more intelligent means of accomplishing the same thing. Ceremonies
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Robert A. Johnson |
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e6e72ed
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When some quality jumps from you onto another person, you have an opportunity; this is one of your best chances for an advance in consciousness. But you must differentiate carefully and not mix the gold with other levels of relationship. Gold is gold and that is enough. The Bible tells us, "Blessed are the pure in heart." Pure doesn't mean "good," it means "unmixed." Almost all psychological suffering results from a mixing of levels. I beli..
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Robert A. Johnson |
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beab144
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The object of life is not happiness, but to serve God or the Grail. All of the Grail quests are to serve God. If one understands this and drops his idiotic notion that the meaning of life is personal happiness, then one will find that elusive quality immediately at hand.
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Robert A. Johnson |
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5672b83
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Ozverinin kanunu sudur: Eger bir erkek yanlis duzeyde sahip oldugu seyden vazgecerse, bu ona dogru duzeyde iade edilir.
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Robert A. Johnson |
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a548754
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It was she who first introduced me to a book by Richard Morris Bucke called Cosmic Consciousness. While reading it I realized for the first time that other people, too, had contact with the Golden World. It gave me the first bit of a handhold on what had happened to me. Lessons were at Miss Rand's home in the late afternoon, and I often stayed for dinner. We would go on talking until 9 P.M., when her dog would courteously insist that it was..
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Robert A. Johnson |
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ba8368c
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The word suffer in its original sense means "to allow," such as in one of Shakespeare's dramas when a courtier says, "I suffer you to speak before the king." So to suffer creatively is simply to allow what is, to stop fighting it, and instead to affirm your life. Creative suffering is allowing what is and saying "yes!" Such experience is redemptive in that it leads to healing and self-knowledge. If you can honestly assess what is true in yo..
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Robert A. Johnson |
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e6e2d3a
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A man must consent to look to a foolish, innocent, adolescent part of himself for his cure. The inner fool is the only one who can touch his Fisher King wound.
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Robert A. Johnson |
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d6c4962
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All psychological suffering (or happiness, taken in its usual sense) is a matter of comparison.
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Robert A. Johnson |
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557d775
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Our story begins with the Grail castle, which is in serious trouble. The Fisher King, the king of the castle, has been wounded. His wounds are so severe that he cannot live, yet he is incapable of dying. He groans; he cries out; he suffers constantly. The whole land is in desolation, for a land mirrors the condition of its king, inwardly in a mythological dimension, as well as outwardly in the physical world. The cattle do not reproduce; th..
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Robert A. Johnson |
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28a3205
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Heaven and skid row are separated only by an act of consciousness.
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Robert A. Johnson |