Saved by Mel and
Some harmful maneuvers include clinging to a child’s state of consciousness (“I refuse to grow up”), avoiding commitment either to a person or to an occupation (“So long as I do not enter the game, the clock has not begun to tick”), compulsive sexuality (“See how alive I am?”), keeping frenetically busy (“If I run fast enough, death can’t catch me”
... See moreNathaniel Branden • Honoring the Self: The Pyschology of Confidence and Respect
The image is that in a state of emergence – greed, envy, anxiety and of course desire – a gross autocratic oversimplification of the self takes over; and the paradoxical fact is that we then deaden ourselves in order to survive; survival, that is to say, is preferred to aliveness.
Adam Phillips • On Giving Up
What this means is that the detached person denying their needs will begin to exhibit less and less control over their behavior as their beast-self manifests more fully and searches for fulfillment.
Adam Smith • Exhausted Wives, Bewildered Husbands: Why your marriage is hurting, and how to blossom as a couple
Jung said that to avoid the “legitimate suffering” of being human, we inflict untold suffering on others, and finally actually bring more suffering on ourselves anyway. I find that to be profoundly true.
Richard Rohr • Wondrous Encounters : Scripture for Lent
Memories, Dreams, Reflections (A. Jaffé, Ed.). If we think that the ‘other’ is the only one who ‘needs’ to do this work, we are negating the very anatomy of psyche that belongs to every person on this planet. When we negate the presence of our shadow, we often project it onto the other and move into binaries thereby feeding the collective shadow.
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