"The ugly truth is that life of all humans is a consist of continuous contrary matters: day and night, birth and death, happiness and sadness, the good and the evil.
We don't know if one side of the matter would win the other one, the good wins the evil, happiness wins sadness: life is a battlefield. It was so in the past, it still is nowadays. If not so, life wouldn't exist."
Above is one of my favorite parts in The Red Book by C. G. Jung. 'Favorite' as 'the easiest' to associate. People having gone through ups and downs in life must have a similar take on it as the way he did. Understanding the fact that life is an endless but not meaningless fight. It's easy like A B C. But Picasso once said something like this, something that isn't an overdressing to me: "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." Sometimes, something as plain as the alphabet could require a person all his or her life only to understand its obviousness.
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C. G. Jung's journal is beyond average perception. When I bought this book, my first thought was to simplify the information and apply his conclusions on the daily basis. It took me a few paragraphs to get lost immediately and forget all about the simplification. Everything was in and out, pages to pages. Until he mentioned a special memory with someone or started to speak as normally as the quote above did my brain go back to functioning.
Chapter VI talked about Archétype in Dream Themes, which can be referred as a 'superior symbol'. In this chapter, C. G. Jung mentioned his friend, whose daughter gave him her dream journal consisting of deep understanding of birth and death of all kinds in Catholicism. Superior knowledge in rebirth and extinction that only a few professors know was projected in 9 out of 12 dreams she had. It left the father and the author speechless.
Jung wondered: "What made the daughter feel so important to make her dream journal a gift for father on Christmas?"
"These dreams were telling a terrifying side of death. Perception as such must have been possessed by the old, those who look back. It can't be for a normal child who's supposed to look forward. Her life is like a worship to youth."
Jung sensed something unavoidably destructive was coming for her. He was right. Something fatal was coming. The daughter passed away after a year before coming of her teen age.
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My mother survived a heart attack when I was 13. She told me in 'the deciding moment', she found herself in front of Buddha smiling at her and said "You'll pass this door." Several years later, in her dying days, she also said she kept dreaming of Buddha smiling and nodding gently at her, that her time was coming. It was right. But I don't mean to be supersticious. With my mother's case, I assume that she was overthinking and religion played a big role in her life. The context of her dreams was far more different than the child's, yet led to the same thing.
It left me with a conclusion: dreams are dreams, but dreams are not dreams.
The perception of 'A is A, but A is not A' is familiar among well-known scientists, artists and so on. However, I don't consider myself as such. My point is, The Red Book has elevated that kind of perception I had to another level with precious knowledge. It left me with a stronger willingness to see things with its variety, not to forget to come back at the beginning and connect all the dots.
If you're still a little trembled by the daughter's story, I can give you my dream journal to wash off your concern.
Friday 13th January 2017Our studio manager asked me if I wanted to earn more money and I said “I’m happy where I am right now” while knowing it was a lie.
I was diagnosed with kidney failure but informed later by someone that the diagnosis was wrong. My elder sister was very unpleased and said doctors always made such terrible mistakes, the only thing they could do was explaining. (During the happening of this dream, a part of me assumed my elder sister was thinking “They couldn’t even say sorry.”)
Friday 20th January 2017I found a pair of shoes I really liked with my colleague. After trying the shoes, they turned out to be open-toe, which is something I strongly dislike in real life. I insisted on changing the style but my colleague and the sales advisor kept making me wear the shoes.
Sasha Obama appeared out of nowhere and I saw her teeth without the bracelets. I couldn’t help noticing the teeth.
Sunday 22th January 2017Everything was so tedious in this math class. No lights and almost no students. The clock struck time out and I headed home. On my way to the gate, I realized I forgot my coat and scarf. I came up to the fourth floor just to find out the math class was surprisingly full and all lights were on. Awkwardly, I stepped in. A teacher, who was attending as a student, handed me my scarf. I couldn’t help feeling embarrassed for leaving the class early though I genuinely believed it had ended. On the black board, I could see they were learning something not advanced that I could have caught up with if I had joined. Someone gave me a flower made of green bean sprouts. On the stairway to the third floor, I looked at the flower in my hand and threw it away.
It was a lucky game with prizes. Someone asked if the participants with journalist cards would receive an advantage in playing and someone else said yes. They would have more turns and the prizes would be more valuable. A creature, half human half moose, juggled in front of me. I was in our house’s bathroom the whole time. A window was open.
Tuesday 24th January 2017Emma Stone rose from the ocean and flew above everyone. She planned to escape with the two terrorist students from Harvard and impute their crime on me. I shouted to people but no one bought it.
In another scene, Emma Stone asked someone if the roof above them had a sky-high ladder. She climbed up towards the clouds but a person was chasing her. This time, people knew she had something to do with the terrorist students.
I asked my friend to hang out at my favorite place but she said no. I opened a huge jar of M&M, picked a handful of them into another jar and started to eat, non-stop.
Saturday 27th January 2017I was sitting in the waiting room of a hospital. A young man in black approached me. He insisted on telling me a joke but I continuously felt disturbed. Fortunately, it was my turn to register. As I went to the registry booth, Aleida Diaz from Orange is the New Black read my scan and said I had severe heart valve regurgitation. Red, another character, overheard the result and seemed upset. Some people faked a smile to keep me positive.
I went back to the waiting room again. The man in black was gone. This time, I found myself sitting with my secondary school best friend. We were having tea and matcha cookies. My colleagues came by. They weren’t pleased to see me at the hospital instead of at work.
After thinking for a while, I rushed to the kitchen where Red worked and asked her if she knew a good cardiologist and where to get a good scan. She wrote down an address and gave me some highly important small white medicine. I put them in my shirt pocket carefully.
People at home tried to steal my medicine. A younger sister approached me during my sleep. I woke up quickly and fought her hard. I broke her legs, arms and eventually her neck, which killed her immediately. A dog appeared and tried to do the same thing. I slit its throat. Then, a father showed up, acted like he wanted to help but turned out to be evil. Too terrified, I ran. Suddenly, I found myself jumping off a cliff with my medicine still in hand. Up there, the daughter, the dog and the father were watching me fall. I didn’t die but fell into a cave full of food and water. I decided to live there until running out of the medicine. Until then, I’d be ready to see the doctor that Red suggested and begin to treat my condition.
Still concerned? I'll tell you one last thing. When I told the daughter's story to my younger sister, she felt just like you. She told me most of her dreams were based on daily life basis: "Normal things, you know." I suppose she did so to assure me that there was nothing to worry about. Thus, let's take new knowledge as something pulling, highly attractive, but not as a big grayish mass that clouds our judgement.Sunday 29th January 2017I dreamt that one of my eyes have worms. At first, it was a little white something. Then it turned into a wormy creature. I tried to push its way to the end of my eye and pulled it out. Two more worms appeared. All three of them were forming a straight line from the upper-left eyelid corner to the downer-right of my eye.
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