soul
by baja · updated 6d ago
soul
by baja · updated 6d ago
The acorn theory proposes and I will bring evidence for the claim that you and I and every single person is born with a defining image. Individuality resides in a formal cause—to use old philosophical language going back to Aristotle. We each embody our own idea, in the language of Plato and Plotinus.
baja added 11d ago
For centuries we have searched for the right term for this “call.” The Romans named it your genius; the Greeks, your daimon; and the Christians your guardian angel. The Romantics, like Keats, said the call came from the heart, and Michelangelo’s intuitive eye saw an image in the heart of the person he was sculpting. The Neoplatonists referred to an
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You are born with a character; it is given; a gift, as the old stories say, from the guardians upon your birth.
baja added 11d ago
Your person is not a process or a development. You are that essential image that develops, if it does. As Picasso said, “I don’t develop; I am.”
baja added 11d ago
The theory of compensation that these figures supposedly exemplify begins with Alfred Adler, the third, least-known, and shortest-lived member of the great therapeutic triumvirate of Freud, Jung, Adler. His studies of gifted personalities universalized the idea of compensation into a basic law of human nature. His evidence, gathered in art schools
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Let me put in a nutshell what we may so far cautiously attribute to the acorn theory. It claims that each life is formed by its unique image, an image that is the essence of that life and calls it to a destiny. As the force of fate, this image acts as a personal daimon, an accompanying guide who remembers your calling.
baja added 6d ago
Life as images does not ask for family dynamics or genetic dispositions. Even before there are life stories, lives display themselves as images. They ask first to be seen. Even if each image is indeed pregnant with meanings and subject to dissecting analysis, should we jump to the meanings without appreciating the image, we have lost a pleasure tha
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The concept of this individualized soul-image has a long, complicated history; its appearance in cultures is diverse and widespread and the names for it are legion. Only our contemporary psychology and psychiatry omit it from their textbooks. The study and therapy of the psyche in our society ignore this factor, which other cultures regard as the k
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Organic images of growth follow the favorite symbol for human life, the tree, but I am turning that tree upside down. My model of growth has its roots in heaven and imagines a gradual descent downward toward human affairs. This is the Tree of the Kabbalah in the Jewish and also Christian mystical tradition.
baja added 6d ago