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Thea Euryphaessa

@theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social

780 followers 14 following 1.6K posts

Writer 📚 | Quotes | Depth/Jungian Psychology | Hero's Journey | Author of 'Running into Myself' and follow-up, 'Growing into MySelf' Long press the hashtag #MyBookShelf on app/click on desktop to search my posts for books I've shared.

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Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · Nov 19

I've decided Bluesky is where I'll share my favourite books, starting with this: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘤 𝘛𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘵 by Juliet Sharman-Burke and astrologer and Jungian, Liz Greene. This is actually a box set which includes cards with characters from Greek myth.

A rich, educative tarot deck.

#mybookshelf #booksky

Thea's hand holding up a copy of 'The Mythic Tarot' box set by Juliet Sharman-Burke and Liz Greene, in front of a bookshelf with flowers and fairy lights.

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Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 1d

I want to know
if you are prepared to live in a world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand.

— David Whyte, 'Self-Portrait' [from 𝘍𝘪𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘩]

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 2d

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Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 2d

On the necessity of sacrifice in psychospiritual transformation:

'To make the new energy available, sacrifice and surrender, a destructuring of the old resistant patterns, is called for'.

On the psychological level, transformation and sacrifice imply a giving up of some aspect of 'I am', 'I have' or 'I can', claims and habits, a renouncing of some cherished needs, convictions or illusions. It may call for a relativisation of one's superior psychological function in favour of the less developed 'inferior' function. A thinking type may have to renounce exclusive reliance upon the intellect in favour of feeling and emotion. A feeling type may have to learn to subordinate or at least coordinate emotional responses with thought and reason. An overly active, driving and controlling person may have to learn a degree of receptivity, yielding and surrender which, to her or him, may feel like passivity; a passive person may have to become more actively responsible for his or her own life or therapeutic management.

By Jungian, Edward C. Whitmont from his book, 'The Alchemy of Healing: Psyche and Soma'.

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 3d

On the smothering mother.

When a woman is identified exclusively with the role of mother, then her individual personality—symbolically, the body—is diminished and one sees only the role. In addition, when the mother role dominates, other people and even objects become children to be cared for. The individuality of the woman and that of the other person suffer because of the limitation of vision within the role: everyone and everything that is not mother becomes child.

From Donald Lee Williams' book, 'Border Crossings: Carlos Castaneda's Path of Knowledge'.

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 3d

'All the information in the world does not of itself accumulate into wisdom'.

Knowledge is the gathering of information. It consists in knowing about 'the ten thousand things', as the Buddhists poetically call it. It involves 'having the facts straight'. This is beneficial to have. But all the information in the world does not of itself accumulate into wisdom. In fact, as the Franciscan St. Bonaventure noted, "Wisdom is confusing to the proud and often evident to the lowly". If you observe wise people, you see that they actually lose a certain interest in gathering more and more information, books, and news. These can clutter what is already a clear field, open sight, and simple presence to the moment. When I return from my Lenten hermitage, for about two or three months I have no interest in reading, and then I slowly fall back into it. We already know far more than Jesus or Buddha ever knew, but the great difference is that they knew what they did know from a different level and in a different way. The same powerful Scripture text that brings a loving person to even greater love will be mangled and misused by a fearful or egocentric person.

By Richard Rohr from his book, 'The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See'.

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Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 4d

On the bottomless pit of greed.

If having is the basis of my sense of identity because 'I am what I have', the wish to have must lead to the desire to have much, to have more, to have most. In other words, greed is the natural outcome of the having orientation. It can be the greed of the miser or the greed of the profit hunter or the greed of the womaniser or the man chaser. Whatever constitutes their greed, the greedy can never have enough, can never be 'satisfied'. In contrast to physiological needs, such as hunger, that have definite satiation points due to the physiology of the body, mental greed—and all greed is mental, even if it is satisfied via the body—has no satiation point, since its consummation does not fill the inner emptiness, boredom, loneliness, and depression it is meant to overcome.

By Erich Fromm from his book, 'To Have or To Be?'

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 5d

'... the whole cabal'

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Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 5d

For anyone who insists on maintaining a 'nice' persona at all costs, know that there's a price to pay:

'We are constantly mistreating our shadow selves, insisting on one sort of perfection or another, and it usually has something to do with an impeccable self-image or persona'.

We generally have rather strict and ideal requirements in mind and seldom allow much consideration for that side of ourselves which springs more from nature and instinct than from the need to perform and conform. This other, apparently 'inferior' side has its own needs, requirements, and agenda, which are necessary for our health and well-being. We would do well to make our peace with this part, not by giving in to crudely impulsive and primitive-emotional behaviour, but by consciously and deliberately giving up our inflated insistence on being so perfect and honourable. Such perfectionism itself springs from the childish need to please authority figures whom we either fear or admire. We want desperately to belong and fit in with a collective type of self-respect in society.
But from the shadow's point of view, 'good behaviour' seems to be a form of cruelest punishment, and a heavy price is paid within ourselves.

By Jungian psychotherapist, John Perkins from his book, 'The Forbidden Self'.

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Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 6d

[C]omplying reflexively with the will of others, without genuine reflectivity, leads to a loss of integrity in our dealings with them. If I am repeatedly nice and compliant, rather than authentic, then I have ceased to be a person with values.

— James Hollis, Why Good People Do Bad Things

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 8d

Le Grice continues:

The idea conveyed here, to put it simply, is that you have to let go of the lesser to receive the greater. You have to relinquish the little world of the ego in which you were master and ruler in order to enter the larger world of the greater psyche in which you are a rank novice, knowing nothing, stumbling from one misfortune to another, one difficult psychological state to another. This is a humbling experience. "Many who are first shall be last" (Matthew 19:30), to put this reversal in the familiar words of the Bible.

— Keiron Le Grice, The Rebirth of the Hero

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 8d

Keiron Le Grice on how "it is a painful transition from the ordinary personal world of the ego to the transpersonal dimension of life and an encounter with the ominous powers of the unconscious".

In this new world, you have to deal with potent energies, archetypal images, and powerful instincts that need to be recognised and controlled. You are up against the tyranny of your own ego. You find yourself in a difficult psychological landscape where you must pass through all kinds of trials and hazards. There is little wonder, then, that part of us would like to avoid all of this and remain in the sleepy comfortable world of childhood with its known horizons, familiar patterns, and securities. The ordinary, personal part of us does not want the extra level of suffering and intensity—this is the personal 'little world' not letting you go to begin your transpersonal adventure. In the New Testament (Luke 13:28), Jesus declares that at the end of the world there will be much "weeping and gnashing of teeth", which conveys the same idea.

By Keiron Le Grice from his book, 'The Rebirth of the Hero: Mythology as a Guide to Spiritual Transformation'.

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Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 9d

Carl Jung on how the experience of the Self is always a defeat for the ego.

The self, in its efforts at self-realisation, reaches out beyond the ego-personality on all sides; because of its all-encompassing nature it is brighter and darker than the ego, and accordingly confronts it with problems which it would like to avoid. Either one's moral courage fails, or one's insight, or both, until in the end fate decides. The ego never lacks moral and rational counterarguments, which one cannot and should not set aside so long as it is possible to hold on to them. For you only feel yourself on the right road when the conflicts of duty seem to have resolved themselves, and you have become the victim of a decision made over your head or in defiance of the heart. From this we can see the numinous power of the self, which can hardly be experienced in any other way. For this reason the experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego.

By Carl G. Jung, 'Mysterium Coniunctionis, Collected Work's 14'.

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Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 12d

More from Edward Whitmont on the relationship between ego and Self.

Moreover, even when there is a more balanced attitude on the part of the ego, the Self can be an enemy as much as a friend, since it is as if blind to space and time conditions. The ego must sometimes take a stand against the pressing demands of the Self. If the Self is to be manifested in the phenomenal world through the ego, if it is to have feet, so to speak, these feet must have a firm standpoint in a daily life which is hedged about with legal requirements to fulfill, reputations to maintain, and responsibilities to carry out at home and in the community, and of such matters the Self knows nothing. Sometimes the Self's urges can keep the ego from becoming strong enough to oppose it. The ego which listens too early to the voices of the deep (before it has established an adequate adaptation to outer reality) may fail to develop fully; then neither will the Self be adequately manifested.

By Jungian, Edward C. Whitmont from his book, 'The Symbolic Quest'.

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 12d

Jungian, Edward Whitmont on the relationship between ego and Self.

The drama of life seems to develop like a dialectical play between the initial one-sided starting position of ego-orientation—that which we find we 'are' when we have come to the first awareness of ourselves and the later opposing claims of the Self which pull in a new direction with the demand that we become what we are 'meant to be'. The pull of the Self toward rearrangement of the established pattern of the ego reaching out of a frame of reference which is quite at variance with it, is bound to be disturbing; it may even appear to be an inimical intrusion or a temptation and betrayal ("... and lead us not into temptation"). Jung's description is a vivid one:

As a totality, the self is by definition always a complexio oppositorum, and the more consciousness insists on its own luminous nature and lays claim to moral authority, the more the self will appear as something dark and menacing".

By Jungian, Edward C. Whitmont from his book, 'The Symbolic Quest'.

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Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 13d

[W]e yearn to experience through others what we fail to bring to realisation within ourselves.

— Edward C. Whitmont, The Symbolic Quest

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Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 13d

A beautiful passage from James Hollis on how we walk between worlds.

We continually walk between worlds—this conscious, tangible world, and another of which we are generally unaware. We are brought to the realisation of their conjoined presence only when they are profoundly discordant. Look out the office window and observe the people passing many floors below. They traverse a tangible world, in service to ego-oriented goals, but in what compelling energies, scripts, archaic dramas are they really swimming? Can we tell from outside? Do they ever stop and examine what drives them? Could we ever claim to know them when we know next to nothing about the search engines that dictate their choices? But our psyche always registers such discordant messages and overrules our ego—which believes it is in charge—by way of symptoms or troubling dreams, or even by prompting us to elect contrary choices that contradict our values or our self-interest.

By Jungian James Hollis from his book, 'What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life'.

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 15d

David Tacey on how New Age popular literature and American popular Jungianism has adapted 'sacred materials to profane goals, and . . . [used] spiritual narratives for boosting confidence, personal prestige and power'.

Typically, this game involves opening the reader to the prospect or possibility of making contact with the sacred, and then telling the reader that such contact can make them rich, famous, attractive, efficient, sexually virile and more successful at their jobs and marriages. The signature of the New Age, and what makes it profoundly non-spiritual, is that it always looks for what the individual can 'get out of' the sacred, rather than for what the individual might be able to contribute to the sacred, or to the human community as an expression of the sacred in time and space. In the New Age, the sacred exists for our personal use, delectation and delight, and we are to set the sacred to work for us. . . . There is no regulation of this popular market, and works that offer delusions and dangerous distortions of psychological theory can seemingly get away with murder, and all in the name of industry and capitalist enterprise.

— David Tacey, Jung and the New Age

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Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 18d

The spiritual dimension is an extremely significant dimension in the human psyche and also in life. If we suppress it, the way Western culture has been doing it, we will be paying a very serious toll for it. We are really acting against our deepest nature.

— Stanislav Grof

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 20d

All the self-examination that we do is valuable only as an introduction to our real selves as we live in the world. I firmly believe that none of us can be, or should be, so self-involved that the external world pales in importance in comparison with the inner world.

J.Singer—Boundaries of the Soul