Archives
“If we don’t go to the spirit, the spirit comes to us as neurosis.”
Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work (Page 10)
“In modern Western society we have reached a point at which we try to get by without acknowledging the inner life at all. We act as though there were no unconscious, no realm of the soul, as though we could live full lives by fixating ourselves completely on the external, material world. We try to deal with all the issues of life by external means—making more money, getting more power, starting a love affair, or ‘accomplishing something’ in the material world. But we discover to our surprise that the inner world is a reality that we ultimately have to face.”
Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work (Page 10)
“No more roundabout discussion of what makes a good man. Be one!”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 99)
“The disaster that has overtaken the modern world is the complete splitting off of the conscious mind from its roots in the unconscious. All the forms of interaction with the unconscious that nourished our ancestors—dreams, vision, ritual, and religious experience—are largely lost to us, dismissed by the modern mind as primitive or superstitious. Thus in our pride and hubris, our faith in our unassailable reason, we cut ourselves off from our origins in the unconscious and form the from the deepest parts of ourselves.”
Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work (Page 10)
“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.”
Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work (Page 9)
“Each of us is building a life, building an edifice. Within each person the plan and the basic structure are established in a deep place in the unconscious. But we need to consult the unconscious and cooperate with it in order to realize the full potential that is built into us. And we have to face the challenges and painful changes that the process of inner growth always brings.”
Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work (Page 7)
“Happiness is a mental habit, a mental attitude, and if it is not learned and practiced in the present it is never experienced. It cannot be made contingent upon solving some external problem. When one problem is solved, another appears to take its place. Life is a series of problems. If you are to be happy at all, you must be happy — period! Not happy ‘because of.’”
Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics
“Human beings have been doing the same things for eons. And the wisest minds who ever lived wrote down the best of what they figured out. If you want to stay informed, if you want to learn how to prepare for an uncertain future—forget about breaking news articles, forget about refreshing your twitter feed, forget about the arguing talking heads on CNN. Instead, drink deeply from the great texts of history. Learn from the distant past, from the wisest minds who ever lived. Search very old books to find your best new ideas.”
Ryan Holiday, Daily Stoic Blog
“The unconscious manifests itself through a language of symbols. It is not only in our involuntary or compulsive behavior that we can see the unconscious. It has two natural pathways for bridging the gap and speaking to the conscious mind: One is by dreams; the other is through the imagination. Both of these are highly refined channels of communication that the psyche has developed so that the unconscious and conscious levels may speak to one another and work together.”
Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work (Page 4)
