Hmm. I see. I agree with Jung then, it takes time to get your head sorted out. Well, not time perhaps, but a certain amount of experience, and progressive reaction to that experience neurologically to flatten out the kinks. Lol, I’m not perfect, but I’m better now at 50 that I was at 25 for sure. I was always a bit of a cold fish tbh. Or maybe not, maybe just a typical British “do not blub in public” type. I do seem to tear up quietly in sentimental films quite frequently so there’s that. Thinking-wise and opinion-wise I’m very cold. I used to think that was a good thing, but now I’m not so sure, the world doesn’t spin around logic, precision, or even common sense so putting ideas into effect, or even talking people around to my (eminently sensible) point of view, is insanely frustrating lol.
Right. So wholeness itself is the archetypal image whereby the individual develops into a fully differentiated balanced and unified personality. At least that’s the ideal image and the direction which development takes. The goal of a completely differentiated balanced and unified human being is rarely if ever reached. It’s represented by figures like Jesus and Buddha. The striving for self realization is inborn. Some influence of this archetype is unavoidable but it’s expression and how successful one may be in realizing its aim varies.
The “Shadow” thread on the psychology forum is relevant to this thread as the integration of the Shadow into conscious is part of the individuation process that aims at wholeness. I noticed that you refer to a Jordan Peterson trope in your signature line. Peterson is a Jungian with a profound understanding of the individuation process.
Felix, a question: To what degree do you think individuals actively shape themselves in life, and to what degree do you believe they are shaped by circumstance…?
[size=50]Sorry - rl stuff - you can do the heavy lifting lol.[/size]
If you include factors of both nature and nurture under the circumstance category, and by “shaping themselves” you mean freely choosing, then it seems very little. But we are not closed systems. Perception and self-consciousness enter into the feedback loop as determining factors. Rather than thinking of myself as freely choosing, it makes more sense to me to think of my conscious ego as in dialogue with my unconscious psyche.
We’ll need a context of course. 
See above. There’s already a context.
We think pretty much the same then. I think perhaps the only thing we can actively do is a) accept that we cannot change ourselves from the inside out - we cannot easily ‘think ourselves better’ and then b) actively try to expose ourselves to beneficial experience. Read widely is a good start, seek out the companionship of people who seem to be eh, ‘good’ for want of a better word. Discard or distance ourselves from bad influences as much as is possible, human or otherwise.
Your method seems to be exclusively extroverted to me. Wholeness requires balance and the conjunction of opposites. So, an introverted approach seems necessary as well. The process of realizing wholeness–individuation–is primarily the soul’s project rather than that of the conscious ego. But, Jung and his followers sought to facilitate the process by focusing on the spontaneous images of the subject’s dreams, hypnogogic hallucinations, reveries and active imagination. They sought to make the unconscious conscious. Alan Watts said, like doughnuts, we have two “outsides” : an outer outside confronting the outer world, and an inner outside confronting the inner world. It seems to me that for wholeness we need to actualize in both directions. For years I was living in a more introverted direction until the past year when I had an opportunity for more extroverted development. I took it and was able to live out potentials I hadn’t realized before. So I interpret that as the Self leading me toward greater balance.
Yeah, you’re right. We need both. Two outsides. I like that idea.
We are so super-agreeable 
. So ok. Where do we go from here…? I feel like we both just observed the sky was blue. Then agreed it was blue.
It would take a mega-load of super-agreeableness to counterbalance the super-antagonism toward religion that dominates this forum.
I see the path of individuation with its symbolic goal of wholeness as a means of recovering a personal religion which is irrefutable because it’s grounded in the spontaneous images of one’s own mind. It’s primarily phenomenological not theoretical. It’s subjective not objective.
Archetypal imagery may or may not connect with ultimate reality. But it is most definitely and undeniably my experience.
Wholeness may or may not be the actual goal of a lifetime process of individuation. But it is an image of that. I can see it in my “mind’s eye”.
Before they were known as archetypal symbols, the images that come to us in dreams and reveries were known as gods and goddesses and the heroes of world mythology. Then they were philosophized into abstractions. Finally they were banished from the disenchanted world of modern scientism.
At night these images can still reign in the dreaming mind. By day they are the hallucinations and delusions of psychopathology.
Yet by disconnecting us from the imagery of our own minds, modernity has rendered our lives meaningless.
So for a personal anecdote about two weeks before the coronavirus was declared a pandemic, I saw a visual image of me spending more time at home working on my house due to personal circumstances which I won’t disclose. Now with social distancing the new normal that’s just about all I can do and a major swath of the world’s population is mostly stuck at home as well.
Synchronicity or not, that was my experience. One that seems to be pushing me toward individuation and perhaps closer to wholeness.
Okay, religion gets a bad rap I think because questioning it, and then rejecting dogma, is probably everyone’s, or at least your common-or-garden internet philosopher’s, jumping off point. And from observation, most people never ever get beyond that. It’s like whoa, god is dead, behold ! I win philosophy !
So yeah, lotta flak. God knows I did my fair share.
Blame it on religion’s success lol. You don’t see threads with titles like “Odin is bollocks.” or “Wiccans are fools.” etc.
Bask in the glory of God’s ubiquity.
Moving on.
So, if personal individuation is partially a subjective journey into your own psychic landscape, and a bumpier, more random ride along the rollercoaster of life, presumably slightly more objective as reality will apply some quality control to our inner lives, then what is its ultimate goal, or even progressive goals…?
You can’t really judge your own “wholeness” without bias, conscious or unconscious, which would seem to leave you dependent on the judgement of others. Which again would have you tied almost wholly, to circumstance, at the mercy of the collective - external to your endevor.
In my belief that all archetypes have physical underpinnings I see the brain’s pursuit of homoeostasis of varied body parts as a metaphor for the search for wholeness. Holy means whole. “Purity of heart is to will one thing.”–Kierkegaard. That the drive to be whole has natural causes does not in any way deny its spiritual reality; it simply brings things down to Earth, to the reality all living beings experience.
I could tell you what Jung and the Jungians and the archetypal psychologists say in the books [I’ve read a bunch of them] and the videos[ I’ve watched a bunch]. But, here’s the thing about individuation is individual, and experiential. The task is to become aware of your own imagery. I studied cognitive behavioral psychotherapy which focused on awareness of the messages we tell ourselves. But, images underlie those messages. Jungian therapy is about becoming aware of them. And it’s not about interpreting them so much as it is about dialogue with them. They are autonomous sub-personalities. Thereby, you can integrate your conscious ego with your unconscious Self. They are the daemons or demons of religious mythology that inhabit our being. Last night in my dreams I was having intercourse with a girlfriend. She wasn’t really here. Could that be part of me–my anima, my feminine side, possessing me?
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
But underlying any symbol is a unity, that prefixes any Freudian interpretation of artifacts. This is too syncronistic to be merely be labeled as imaginary.
Morality was not created of dust.
Stated when Freud wanted to deny the latent homosexual implications of incessantly sucking on his cigar. If one of his patients were doing that, he wouldn’t have hesitated to interpret the cigar as a symbolic dick.
Duplicate post
Okay, sometimes dream sex with dream girlfriend is just dream sex with dream girlfriend.
I dunno, it all just seems too subjective/primitive to be of much use except for chatting up facebook girls who believe in chakras. Even if we end up being able to make some sense of our inner symbolic language, what’s it gonna say to us…? It sounds to me like these deamons are the remnants of prelinguistic times. The animal equivalent of thinking. Perhaps its the seat of Jordan Peterson’s proposed deep brain structures that resonate with some archetypal story tropes.
On the other hand however, perhaps it is also the language of the hunch. Which might be useful if you’re a pro poker player or an antiquities dealer.
Not every dream is revelatory. In this case my unconscious was telling me that this woman still has a hold on my soul.
But actually there’s more to it than that. Because of the dream comes to me in a kind of death and rebirth situation that has been created by the coronavirus the need for a quarantine and social distancing and a particular set of circumstances in which I can’t see my girlfriend. And in the first dream she was hovering over me naked like a spirit and I was looking up at her. She seemed like a heavenly being gazing down at me beatifically, a kind of mediator or a muse. And she has been that for me, the inspiration of songs and poems, etc. So on deeper reflection, the dream does have archetypal significance. The second dream was all about her vagina. Of course it was sexual, but it is also the organ of birth and, in this context, connotes rebirth. Death and rebirth is a recurring archetypal theme that is present in world mythology including Christianity.