Meditation on Becoming Individuated (With Help from Two Master Thinkers)

The other day I went to a local library book sale where a lot of old or un-needed books were for sale. They were priced at next to nothing, and setup in two big tents and a large storage room with shelves. Exactly the kind of thing I love. It was not quite a madhouse but it wasn't far from it. People shuffling past, bumping sometimes, squeezing through other people, trying to get the best view of the books that were offered. I managed to get a bunch of science fiction novels I have wanted to read but never did, Hebert's - Dune series (of course I found every volume but the first one). I also found a couple of Joseph Campbell books and a Carlos Castaneda that I did not have. Two of my all-time favorite authors and providers of fascinating knowledge. It's like finding literary gold nuggets for almost free. Flipping through a book by Campbell I found the following sentence:

"To become-in Jung's terms-individuated, to live as a released individual, one has to know how and when to put on and to put off the masks of one's various life roles." (Joseph Campbell)

This is from page 68 of Myths to Live By, (Joseph Campbell, 1972) and I really was drawn to this page because it involves two of my favorite thinkers of all time; Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung. The things I have been drawn to in life that truly interest me as far as shaping my world view have been amongst many others, these two men. It is like this, my own personal instinctual sense of reality, really resonated with the things that they wrote and taught. I mean yes, they have shaped my world-view, but I would not of even been interested in them in the first place had I not had my own sense of the world that corresponded with the things I was reading.

I went to a Catholic church for 18 years and none of it resonated nearly as much as things I read from them, for example. (Jung and Campbell). You can sit me in church all you want (as a child), but it doesn't mean that it sparks that thing inside of me that resonates with what I call the natural flow of life. Life is set to certain natural laws and patterns and correlates with all other living things. The more one lives in understanding of these patterns the more life will 'make sense' (at least it does for me). Before I get off track I want to also quote the part of the next passage where Campbell quotes Carl Jung:

 "In the last analysis, every life is the realization of a whole, that is, of a self, for which reason this realization can be called individualization. All life is bound to individual carriers who realize it, and it is simply inconceivable without them. But every carrier is charged with an individual destiny and destination, and the realization of this alone makes sense of life."  (Carl Jung)

 This resonates with me because I feel like this is something I have been struggling with my whole life. (If you have not read Joseph Campbell I highly suggest going and buying the book). On one hand - finding those things that 'make sense of life', (like reading Jung and Campbell for me as described above). On another hand - the ability to not only, first of all, be aware of your own spectrum of emotions and reactions, and intentions, but to employ them socially at your will with relative ease. And to have a different set for different roles (a different mask like Campbell says). I mean it has taken me my entire life to get to the point where I can even understand the concepts laid out in this discussion (awareness of my emotions, personality, and intentions, awareness of my fears and desires, and the ability to mold those things into various 'masks' well).

To me Jung's and Campbell's definition of individuated is in the sense of developing and understanding the inner self. Jung uses the word destiny, but I take it to mean not in a fateful sense, but that there is a map of unrealized potential that is unique and different for everyone. How you choose to fulfill that potential is completely up to your own decisions and free will in life. It's like a flower seed. Inside that seed is a genetic map of the perfect potential of that plant that no other seed quite has. Factors like soil, shade or sun, water level etc. play a role as to the fate of the plant.

Becoming individuated could also be equated to Campbell's famous term - 'following your bliss'. Studying and perpetuating the things that get you the most excited, that reverberate the most inside you and compel you. It is the thing that affects any creative person or knowledge seeker I think, that feeling that says 'I like this' or 'this is exciting' that feeling in your chest of excitement and energy. Finding that and running with it is key to becoming individuated.

Jumbled Faces

Jumbled Faces, drawing by Ed T. © 2008

This sketchbook entry of mine dates from a few years ago and is from the same book as other recent entries featured here at Modern Art Quotes. Like a lot of artists and people in general, I am sometimes drawn (pun intended) to drawing faces. As humans, face recognition played a vital role in our evolution as a species. Astronomer and author Carl Sagan proposed that humans are hard-wired from infancy to recognize the human face. There is even a technical term for this behavior: Pareidolia.

"Theoretically it should be possible to 'peel' the collective unconscious, layer by layer, until we came to the psychology of the worm, and even of the amoeba" - C.G. Jung, Collected Works.

Aside from the aesthetic fun of drawing faces, this drawing is also playing with that idea of the collective unconscious. I have had dreams before where I suspect that some of the players in the dream are not mere figments of my imagination, but are somehow really there. I am not saying this is a regular occurrence, but it does happen once in a while, which I don't think is unusual for people and their dreams, what do you think? And this might sound crazy to some people, - but I know I have stumbled into my cat's and dog's dreams once in a while on accident - I would never usually dream about chasing rodents, jumping around like an animal, or interacting with large wolf like creatures.

Thoughts on Dreaming and "The Dreamweaver"

I want to write about something that is a fascinating subject to me - the world of dreams. Dreaming is an immense and infinite subject, but I want to touch on a few key points at least. Dreams (the actual sleeping kind of dreams, not goals) can be many different things to many different people, the important thing to remember is that they are very subjective of course. Although some have tried to devise a 'standard' to understanding dreams, it is always a very unique and personal process.

Dreams can be your fantasies, your plans, your worries, simply a reaction to eating junk food, your wants and needs, a carry-over from your daily life, a form of telepathic communication, a way to gain insight into your mind, a portal to spiritual dimensions and many other things. Some people claim that they don't dream, but this is not true - everybody dreams, you may just not remember them. Keeping a notepad by the side of the bed is one way to start helping you to remember them, and the more you write day after day, the more of your dreams you will remember.

Speaking of dreaming practices, let me tell you about one of the most fascinating books I have honestly ever read - Carlos Castaneda's The Art of Dreaming. Back in the day, Dr. Castaneda was just an anthropological student searching for an authentic old-school teacher when he found Don Juan. Don Juan taught Carlos many things and he wrote it all down in a series of books. Among these teachings is one set aimed at understanding the lucid dreaming process more fully, which Carlos gives us in this book.

Lucid dreaming is the state of mind you reach when, in your dreams you know absolutely that it is a dream, remaining asleep but attaining a kind of half-conscious state in the dream. The more skill you have in your lucid dreaming the more conscious you are and the more control you have. As I said, the book is a set of practices for improving one's lucid dreaming skills, set inside of a narrative. Some people debate the existence of Castaneda's Don Juan, but whether it exactly happened the way he wrote it or not, the information he provides in this book and all of his books is simply mind-blowing.

"Judged by the subjective standards of orderly thoughts, orderly visual and auditory sensory input, orderly responses on my part, my experiences, for as long as they lasted, were as real as any situation in our daily world."

- Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming.

One way that Don Juan describes the dreamworld to Carlos is that he says it is like the skins of an onion. The more you peel the more you discover, and every layer is entirely different than the last. In the background of my sketch below you can see a kind of layered-gate or portal with a figure standing in front of it; he is The Dreamweaver. I did this around the time I was reading the book for the first time several years ago.

The Dreamweaver by Ed T. © 2008

One of the things that Don Juan prescribes to Carlos to help him enter the lucid dreaming state, is that he tells him to try and remember to look at his hands. Simply focus on this idea over and over as you fall asleep and in the dream if you remember to do that it can trigger lucid dreaming. Seeing your hand in the dream not only bridges the gap to your conscious mind (which you employed for this exact purpose) it forces you to focus and look at detail in the dream. So that's why The Dreamweaver's hand in my drawing is so big.

But what about dreams as an analytical tool? Not only are dreams a tool for understanding your self and your mind, they can be tools for understanding information in an entirely new way. For example, some mathematicians claim dreams can help them gain perspective and answers even to unsolvable equations. Dreams provide inspiration not only to problem-solvers but to artists, inventors, philosophers, writers, and anyone that has ever gained insight from a dream. The key being the unconscious mind's ability to process information in a much more abstract method than the conscious can ever hope to do. Take this quote from Carl Jung on the subject:

"The unconscious seems to be able to examine and to draw conclusions from facts, much as consciousness does. It can even use certain facts, and anticipate their possible results, just because we are not conscious of them."

- Carl Jung, Man and his symbols.

I once had a dream where there was this absurdly large cowboy, almost like in those Zippy cartoons where those large store icons come to life and talk to him. This giant cowboy went to shake my hand and proceeded to crush it. It didn't hurt but I woke up and remembered feeling shocked that it was happening. At the time, a fellow employee that I was working with at my job was studying dreams and psychology in college. He immediately aked if there was a situation I was feeling overwhelmed by. And in fact there was, I was planning on moving out of state for the first time soon, and was definitely concerned about leaving my home city.

I was amazed that the key to understanding the dream was so simple and that he got it so fast, and that it was very true. More true than I realized at the time even. Then I was feeling mostly just excitement and readiness. But months later, without going into too much detail, I did experience that realization of being overwhelmed by being in a completely new place with new people, I guess that's what you call culture shock?

So I hope you enjoyed my short journey into the world of dreams. Feel free to share your own dreams in the comments, or any insights you want to share about dreaming. If you have a longer entry, feel free to email it to me and I will post it here at Modern Art Quotes, make sure and include a link to your homepage if you want.

The Role of the Collective Unconscious in Expression

What is that inner voice that tells you if you like or don't like something? I mean the aesthetic quality of things, like when you look at a painting and like it or don't like it; what is that? I know as far as my own work goes I can look at the painting or drawing I am working on and immediately decide what I like and what I want to change. But where does that voice come from? What particular quality of a line, shape, or color hue makes it pleasing to my eye? Maybe words of wisdom from psychologist Carl Jung can shed some light on the subject:

"This re-immersion in the state of participation mystique is the secret of artistic creation and of the effect which great art has upon us, for at that level of experience it is no longer the weal or woe of the individual that counts, but the life of the collective. That is why every great work of art is objective and impersonal, and yet profoundly moving." - Carl Jung

I can identify with this idea in my work. A striving towards the 'collective unconscious'; the collected experience of generations of humankind. In the depths of each of us we are connected, and we are all the same. In creating and sharing my experiences and my art I realize this is true. In my non-representational artwork and style in general, I naturally strive towards expressing universal archetypes, symbols, form, color, meshed with my individual developed style. I purposefully steer away from having too much intention in my work, instead relying on that voice that 'knows' or feels rather what line, what form goes where. Maybe that is what that voice, that way of knowing, that 'style' is; a seeking of that universal understanding and system of processing and recognition, striving for the expression of the collective unconscious.

That is kind of any oxymoron though right? - Intending to express the unconscious in my work. How does one exactly approach that method of creation? How do you get to that release of direct conscious intention, and access that underlying unconscious reality? If you look at the work and methods of abstract expressionist Jackson Pollack I think we find at least some kind of answer. Take his famous 'drip' painting method, or what some call 'action painting' for example. His process of standing over the canvas and moving in it, gesturing with the arms to drip and fling the paint onto the surface below. In the attention paid to the action in the work, there opens up a place for that deeper underlying intention to come through.

"The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through." - Jackson Pollock

But that is only one method of accessing the unconscious. Luckily for us there is a myriad of experiences waiting to be expressed and shared. More ways of experiencing ourselves subjectively and therefore universally. Each of our experiences on this planet is unique, but great artwork expresses something deeply universal in all of us. It's that pulling towards universal understanding and expression that guides my work. Not to say that my work is great, but i try!

Carl Gustav Jung on Astrology

I personally am not a full-fledged believer in astrology, but like Carl Jung I find the ideas behind it interesting. Here is a quote from him on the subject:

"We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more."

-Carl Gustav Jung

Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

I talk a little bit about astrology in relation to a drawing of mine in this post: Neptune Angel, (from my personal blog). As a young person especially; one cannot help but absorb one's surroundings. From the dialect and accent in your speech, to your family, friends, neighbors teachers, to the native plant-life and animals, on and on. Anyways, I always enjoy reading Jung and he is by far one of my all-time favorite thinkers. Check out this link for more information about his life and work: Carl Jung.

Carl Jung Quote on Vision

Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud were contemporaries of each other, but the ego-maniacal Freud's ruthless self-promotion won him a seemingly greater place in history. Today most people agree that Jung's theories have far more credence and influence than anything Freud ever wrote.

"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams, who looks inside awakes."

-Carl Jung

There's a lot to see in the outside world, but nothing more than what is inside you already. You can look out at what could be, what you want, what you think you need; but also know that everything you truly need is inside you. Realize that truth resides in the self of all people and to seek it will result in understanding and growth. For me this also ties in with that old saying, 'be careful what you wish for you just might get it'. If you spend too much time wishing for something different you have less time to explore what you do have. Trust your inner self, trust your instinct and your intuition.

Feeding the Cycle of Tragedy

So very true is the following quote from Carl Jung:

"It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going."

-Carl Gustav Jung

This relates to my comments on a passage from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World that I just posted. It's easier to go for the short cure instead of changing the future positively. You have to have a strong base to build on to make a better anything, wether it is a relationship, a building, an education, etc. And if it's appearant that what you're involved in is grossly misshapen or off-track, you need to have the courage to walk away and start over.

Carl Jung on Creativity

I really relate to the ideas presented in the following passage of Carl Jung's:

"...There are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of the creative fire. It is as though each of us were endowed at birth with a certain capital of energy. The strongest force in our make-up will seize and all but monopolize this energy, leaving so little over that nothing of value can come of it. In this way the creative force can drain the human impulses to such a degree that the personal ego must develop all sorts of bad qualities...in order to maintain the spark of life and to keep itself from being wholly bereft...[these negatives] of artists resembles that of illegitimate or neglected children who from their tenderest years must protect themselves from the destructive influence of people who have no love to give them--who develop bad qualities for that very purpose and later maintain an invincible egocentrism by remaining all their lives infantile and helpless or by actively offending against the moral code or the law."

(-Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, 1933.)

I identify with that idea of the creative self protecting itself; of striking out against people and situations which inhibit my creative self or monopolize my time. Even acting out in subconscious ways; The part of the self that seeks to create is another part of one's self with it's own needs which it will seek out in various ways. Has I said, I find this moving because it's so very true for myself. Read this article where I found the quote: How Art Creates the Artist.

Artists are the Molders of the Unconscious

Easily one of the greatest minds of the 20th century and one of my great heroes, C.G. Jung's approach to understanding life and spirituality is one of the biggest influences of my life, this is one of my favorite quotes from Jung:

"The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is 'man' in a higher sense - he is 'collective man,' a vehicle and molder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind."

(Carl Jung, Psychology and Literature, 1930)

I think an important word to look at in the preceding quote is 'vehicle'. Jung says the artist is not only a molder of the unconscious of mankind, but a vehicle for it as well. (Check out this website: The Dream Oracle by Dr. Hearne I found by Googling the phrase "vehicle for unconscious of mankind" it's very fascinating.)


Sometimes you might hear about this idea about artists, poets, musicians, and creative people in general, that they are more sensitive or too sensitive. Although stereotyping anyone for any reason isn't good practice, this idea isn't entirely untrue as a generalization about creative people. Anyways before I get sidetracked, my point is that this hyper-sensitivity attributed to some artists is validation for Jung's assertion that artists are, "molders of the unconscious psychic life of mankind."