Jungian mystic here

Jungian mystic here.

If you have any problems of a "paranormal" nature, I'll be here for the next hour or so to assist you with advice. Before anyone says ">>>x is thataway", bear in mind that the Jungian interpretation of the so-called supernatural is entirely psychological. That doesn't make these things non-real; in many ways it makes them more real, since they operate on the level of archetype rather than the more mundane level of representational reality.

Shitposting will be ignored. Please do not respond to shitposters. I will endeavour to answer questions in detail, so if you post a question it may take me some time to respond.

No interest? Ah well.

What's your mbti?

INTP. Why?

Jungian mystic really? Its too early for this shit dude and you're wasting your life. Faggot.

...

I know I said I'd ignore shitposting, but there's potential here for a teachable moment. I don't think you know what mysticism is. In the Aristotlian model, there are three ways of obtaining knowledge: empiricism, rationalism, and revelation. The application of pure empiricism is science, the application of pure rationalism is philosophy, and the application of pure revelation is mysticism. Mysticism, then, refers to the use of non-conscious mental processes for obtaining knowledge about both ourselves and our world. Intuition, for example, is the most common manifestation of mysticism.

No one has any questions for me about paranormal problems they're having?

Is weed paranormal?

How does Jung's concept of the Shadow differ from Freud's concept of the Id?

We don't have any Jungian psychology in our training, and even our psychodynamic training is limited. I mostly use CBT and systemic approaches, but sometimes formulate psychodynamically, because the unconscious clearly affects my clients behaviour at times.

It can be. The reason psychoactive drugs work is because they mimic chemicals tied to receptors present in the brain. You can use drugs to "hack" the brain. Since it's been demomstrated that the brain manufactures several types of cannabinoids, then yes, weed can be used for paranormal purposes. In fact, McKenna believed that the Old Testament characters were actually coded references to different types of psychoactive mushrooms.

I don't see how that is "paranormal" in any particular way? Totally agree with you about endocannabinoids, like anandamide, but don't see what is paranormal about this?

The Shadow serves two functions: it's both the negative image cast by the conscious mind, and also a truer representation of the Self. In the Freudian model, the id proposes and the superego suppresses socially unacceptable drives from the conscious awareness of the ego. The Shadow, on the other hand, is a manifestation of denial. A person who identifies as being honest, for example, probably isn't. A genuinely honest person has no need to recognize themselves as such, while a person who is essentially dishonest must suppress thoughts of their own dishonesty with a counter-thought of the opposite. So our day-to-day conscious awareness of ourselves is generally the opposite of our true nature. Hence why Satan, Loki, and other Shadow archetypes are associated with dishonesty (and why the Devil card in Tarot also represents inherent dishonesty, usually to one's own self).

My experience with CBT is limited to Ellis's RET, but I've found it useful in helping to break through those evasion structures which protect our denial of our truest selves.

Had a run in with Jung last month, I had to write a report about depth analysis topic and Jung seemed like the most interesting one of the bunch. Now, I am planning on continuing down the road of neuro science, I let go of my therapeutic ambitions when I fell in love with rigor of biological underlies of psyche, still Jung interested me very much, I even started writing down my dreams again.
Two questions:
What is your proffesional experience, are you an enthusiast of licensed Jungian?
Which book would you recommend to me? I did my report from VIS to Jung, just to get an overview though I definitely want to get more into his theories. I'm thinking of going with Man and his symbol for starters, though good reasoned recommendation could change that plan.

It's why I put "paranormal" in quotation marks in the OP. If a thing exists, I believe it's natural by definition. I use the phrase "paranormal" colloquially, to avoid the implication that I'm some kind of materialist.

OK, so the shadow is more an example of denied and repressed desires of the id, rather than those of which we might become consciously aware? Thanks for the explanation.

I like RET, we're going on an REBT weekend in august. It fits in nicely with a CBT framework.

What's your day job OP? Am assuming its not paranormal Jungian detective?

I've been a mystic for more than 20 years and I'm a professional tarot reader. I make clear to all querents before a reading that what I do isn't supernatural, that it's based on the phenomenon of apophenia, and is a form of applied psychology. A surprising number of people walk out when they realize that the purpose of the reading is to delve into the subconscious mind, and that I'm not going to tell them they're going to meet a tall, dark stranger and get a promotion at work.

And yes, Man and his Symbols is a good place to start. I'd also recommend Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces. And if you're interested in understanding where biochemistry and the subconscious mind intersect, I strongly recommend Julian Jaynes' Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind and Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind.

Except that it's possible to learn to manifest the Shadow. There are Jungian exercises referred to as "active imagination" which can be used to access the non-conscious mind directly. Every character in your dreams is a subset of your own personality; there is a part of your brain capable of manufacturing these non-self identities. Through a variety of shamanic techniques, it's possible to train yourself to embody the Shadow as an entity, and to manifest this entity. Of course, there's a level of danger in this since these archetypal entities are more powerful than our own manufactures conscious identities and we can lose ourselves in the role. In fact, Jung believed that this is exactly what happened to Hitler: he manifested the Shadow so strongly and for so long that he became in essence a god. People listened to him because he spoke with their own inner voice of the Shadow, but at the cost of the loss of his own identity (and sanity).

Professionally, I do tarot readings. And I'm also a union organizer.

No more questions?

Interesting approach to tarot and to mysticism in general, you sound like a cool dude.
Thank you for the recommendations, added them to my reading list.

Thanks OP. Interesting

What are some things you have learned through these methods so far?

What significance is there to the form a recurring dream figure takes?

For a goodly portion of my life, I lived entirely in the male; that is, I was strictly logical and held contempt for everything emotional and spiritual. As time passed, my behaviour became more and more self-destructive until I was engaging in life-threatening behaviour, falling down stairs and taking ridiculous personal risks. Having studied the Freudian psychoanalytic model, I began recording and analyzing my dreams. As I became more in touch with what my dreams -- and thus my subconscious mind -- were trying to tell me, I realized that I had become a house turned against itself. I was locked in a life-or-death struggle with my own subconscious and a loser no matter who won.

That was the start of my journey into mysticism. I began releasing the rigid conscious control over myself to discover that my subconscious had been bleeding out all over the place without my awareness. Ironically, giving my subconscious more voice in my life actually resulted in it becoming *less* active in influencing my behaviour.

Now when I do my tarot readings, I put myself into a light trance and allow my subconscious to do the reading for me. I trust my non-conscious self with possession of my body and my voice, and have come to embrace the female side of myself. That's an incredible gift which has paid off in more ways than I can easily recount.

I don't know if you'd count this as "paranormal", but I've been having some really fucked up dreams lately. For example, I recently had a dream that there was a demon perched in my open window staring at me with a huge smile. I have hypnapompic hallucinations all the time, too, but this one seemed a lot more real. Any jungian explanations for this sort of thing?

Freud did experiments where he had people write down their dreams immediately upon waking, then again at regular intervals thereafter. What he found is that people's recollection of dreams changed without their conscious awareness as time passed. Chances are good that this "recurring character" is not actually in the dream, but in your interpretation of the dream -- which is why it's important. That is, if you're meeting this character again and again, you know that it bears a subconscious significance to you simply because it's your subconscious which is inserting it into your conscious recollections irrespective of its actual present or non-presence in the dream.

But I suspect what you're really asking is not what significance it has, but how you can determine what meaning you should be deriving from the constant presence of this figure, and that's something which is a little bit harder to figure out, at least consciously.

Before I answer, can you tell me if you have any experience with lucid dreaming? And whether or not you have a dream guide?

Yes, I have limited lucid dreaming ability (~7 per month). I don't believe I have met any guide yet.

It's important to remember that every character you encounter in a dream is *you*. It represents some part or sub-part of your own identity. That's not to say that all parts of your own identity are especially friendly; some are downright hostile. Still, there are certain archetypal symbols which reliably turn up in everyone's dreams, and houses are one of the most significant. Houses represent the mind. In fact, Jung discovered his concept of the collective unconscious by exploring a house in a dream and finding a sub-basement below the subconscious basement in the house. A demon in the window, especially if it seems malevolent, seems like it has some important but perhaps unwelcome information for you.

I can teach you some techniques for communicating with this subconscious process -- literally a daemon -- but the question is really whether you want to know. If you were entirely copacetic with it, you wouldn't need a demon to pester you with it; you'd already know it.

So how about it: do you really want to know?

All paranormal phenomena can be explained as information from the implicit learning system developing slowly but not entirely into the explicit learning system, but not firmly enough to hold objective rational external causes, just subjective relative internal correlations

My own dream guide manifested to me initially as a recurring character. During the period where I was beginning to negotiate a peace treaty with my subconscious, Christinia Applegate kept appearing in my dreams. She was always wry, sarcastic, and gently teasing about my unwillingness to cooperate with my dreams. Eventually, as I began to get better at lucid dreaming, I recognized that Christina was the Anima, my own female nature, and she was there to help me understand my subconscious which, thanks to a lifetime of abuse and hostility, had become toxic and angry. She would appear in my dreams to give me encouragement, and would sometimes even come just to go for long nocturnal walks with me through my own sleeping mind as we discussed my progress. Eventually it got to the point where, if I didn't understand a dream, instead of constantly pestering dream characters and asking them what they represent (which they hate, by the way -- it's like standing up in the middle of a play and demanding to know what the actors symbolize), I wait until the dream is over and then find myself in a large, ornate, empty theatre with a bucket of popcorn and Christina Applegate sitting beside me. The velvet curtains slide open and the dream replays on the screen while Christina and I discuss the symbols and their meanings.

It's a little bit embarrassing that my subconscious regards Christina Applegate as the idealized, perfect female form, but I've learned to cut my subconscious some slack.

If there's a character which is recurring, it would help to have a dream guide to help you interpret it. If you can induce a lucid dream, my suggestion is to ask for a dream guide, a portion of your own identity set aside for helping you to interpret your dreams. Even Jung himself has a demon that he used to talk with on walks in the woods, and who helped him to develop his psychological model.