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Thea Euryphaessa

@theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social

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 · 13h ago

Rousing words from Joseph Campbell.

Are you up to your given destiny? That is the challenge of Hamlet's troubled question. The ultimate nature of the experience of life is that toil and pleasure, sorrow and joy, are inseparably mixed in it. The very will to life that brought one to light, however, was a will to come even through pain into this world; else one never would have got here. And that is the notion underlying the Oriental idea of reincarnation.

Since you came to birth in this world at this time, in this place, and with this particular destiny, it was this indeed that you wanted and required for your own ultimate illumination. That was a great big wonderful thing that you thereupon brought to pass: not the 'you', of course, that you now suppose yourself to be, but the 'you' that was already there before you were born and which even now is keeping your heart beating and your lungs breathing and doing for you all those complicated things inside that are your life. You are not now to lose your nerve! Go on through with it and play your own game all the way!

Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 3d ago

Your stage mask [𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘢] is not bad, evil, or necessarily egocentric; it is just not 'true'. It is manufactured and sustained unconsciously by your mind; but it can and will die, as all fictions must die. — Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

Persona and shadow are correlative terms. Your shadow is what you refuse to see about yourself, and what you do not want others to see. The more you have cultivated and protected a chosen persona, the more shadow work you will need to do. Be especially careful therefore of any idealised role or self-image, like that of minister, mother, doctor, nice person, professor, moral believer, or president of this or that. These are huge personas to live up to, and they trap many people in lifelong delusion. The more you are attached to and unaware of such a protected self-image, the more shadow self you will very likely have. Conversely, the more you live out of your shadow self, the less capable you are of recognising the persona you are trying to protect and project. It is like a double blindness keeping you from seeing — and being — your best and deepest self.

— Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 3d ago

Just been reminded of a fantastic psychospiritual heroic journey in the guise of Marlon Brando's character, Terry Mallory in the 1954 movie, 'On the Waterfront'. Outstanding film with themes that are still as relevant today.

A still of Marlon Brando, standing in front of a group of men, from the 1954 movie, 'On the Waterfront'.

Thea Euryphaessa@theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 4d ago

Heroism in myth is to do with sacrifice; in psychological terms, one sacrifices the former egoic identity that a new, deeper identity might be born. The ultimate act of the heroic journey is the death and rebirth of the hero into a new life. — Keiron Le Grice, The Rebirth of the Hero

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 4d ago

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · last wk.

As someone once pointed out to me, when you become conscious, the first thing you discover is why you stayed unconscious all those years. Being conscious means you really have to feel what you feel, which is frequently very vulnerable and raw. — Pema Chödrön

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · last wk.

On loneliness.

Loneliness is one expression of our rootlessness. Many people in our day, separated from tradition and often cast out by society, are alone with no myths to guide them, no unquestioned rites to welcome them into community, no sacraments to initiate them into the holy-and so there is rarely anything holy. The loneliness of mythlessness is the deepest and least assuageable of all. Unrelated to the past, unconnected with the future, we hang as if in mid-air. We are like the shades Odysseus meets in the underworld, crying for news about the people up in the world but unable themselves to feel anything.

Rollo May, The Cry for Myth

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 2w ago

On how pursuing meaningful creative interests can change our lives in the most inspiring and positive of ways.

I have seen that myself again and again-that it is useful to show someone the animus or the shadow or some other complex, to have it out in 'washing dirty linen', but it is very often best just to help people to find the essential meaning of their lives, what they are there for. When they become interested in that, they completely lose interest in petty nonsense. When the main water of life in a human being is flowing again, when there is, for instance, some meaningful creative interest, then one no longer has time to spend hours on the phone to one's sister or brother or a friend to complain that she or he has been wrong. One just hasn't the time, and therefore one is much more inclined to think, "Oh well, let it be. Never mind. It may be my fault, so let's make peace." Because life is flowing again. When one finds the essential meaning of one's life, this has a purifying effect upon one's 'dirty linen' affairs.

By Marie-Louise von Franz from her book, 'Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales'.

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 2w ago

We spend years building our lives on rotten foundations. It takes years to build new foundations for a new life. — Marion Woodman, Dreams: Language of the Soul

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 2w ago

David Adams Leeming on the meaning of myth. 🧵 1/2

C. G. Jung wrote: "the primitive mentality does not invent myths, it experiences them. Myths are original revelations of the pre-conscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings . . . ."

The point is not to search for the physical or historical correlative of myth, but for the meaning which is intrinsic in the myth itself, for myths, like dreams, are psychically real. Indeed, myths might be called the dreams of mankind. Dreams serve as escape valves for individuals. They represent wishes and fears. Myths serve whole societies and . . . many societies at once in much the same manner. The priests or medicine men or shamans who feel and convey the myths are, as Geza Roheim has written, "the lightning conductors of common anxiety. They fight the demons so that others can hunt the prey and in general fight reality."

— David Adams Leeming, Mythology: The Voyage of the Hero

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 3w ago

It would be inaccurate to say . . . that an adventure has no purpose or a wandering no outcome. It is just that the purpose is never, in the end, what we thought it was. On the contrary, it is something that was unknowable, residing as it did in the wilds beyond our fences. #MyBookShelf #BookSky

A copy of Bayo Akomolafe's book, 'These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home' stood next to a white milk jug vase filled with pale pink wild roses.

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 3w ago

On spirituality as the art of transfiguration.

Spirituality is the art of transfiguration. We should not force ourselves to change by hammering our lives into any predetermined shape. We do not need to operate according to the idea of a predetermined programme or plan for our lives. Rather, we need to practise a new art of attention to the inner rhythm of our days and lives. This attention brings a new awareness of our own human and divine presence.

— Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 3w ago

Following the release of 'The Odyssey', here's Iain McGilchrist on the cultural importance of great stories and myths.

One of the reasons we are captivated by great plays and novels, narratives and myths, is that they allow us to stand back: to step away from the immediacy of experience, through what I call 'necessary distance', and see the complexities under which all human life labours. Such distance does not alienate, but, on the contrary, enables us to see ourselves with heightened awareness, and to empathise with those who stand for us—and for more than us. Great dramatic performances play out, in archetypal form, the intricacies of all human relationships and human motives, the conflicting demands of many-faceted love, of friendships, family and kin, of valued work, vocation, and the urge to create, the striving to preserve dignity and pride, and the lure of beauty towards things that are perhaps exciting, dangerous, deeply fulfilling and unendurable at once—not to mention loyalties to religious conviction, to a society's cohesion, to the need to avoid pain, and the call to confront evil, to belong to a society and to be a unique individual, to heal, to save and to give meaning to life. In short, they inculcate the practice of judgment.

— Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 3w ago

On what our wounds can teach us.

The woundings of our lives can cause the withdrawal of our substance, the leaching of our spirits. Or we can choose to see them as the slings and arrows that fortune provides to gouge us sufficiently full of holes that we may yet become holy. "Wisdom through suffering", Sophocles said, and millions have assented to this cold if accurate comfort. For it is in the trials of wounding that all our immature or shadowed parts rise to meet us, never to leave us until we are either flat-out defeated and ready to begin the path of wisdom or willing to take steps to redress our lesser selves.

— Jean Houston, A Mythic Life: Learning to Live Our Greater Story

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 3w ago

Jungian, James Hollis on eros as a guide on the psychospiritual path.

In the journey each of us lives, Eros is the guide of the quickened soul. Most of us learned early to distrust our desire, shy away from the large task that stands before us. Generally we seek comfort over enlargement, reassurance over risk, and seldom venture out beyond the predictable. Our dilemma is not that we are capable of both so much evil and so much self-denial, but that we are capable of so much spiritual pettiness. It may prove a 'terrible' thing to be summoned before the large, before the call of the numinous, but it is in those moments that we express our journey most fully.

— James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 3w ago

Some hard truths from Jung.

Hysterical self-deceivers, and ordinary ones too, have at all times understood the art of misusing everything so as to avoid the demands and duties of life, and above all to shirk the duty of confronting themselves. They pretend to be seekers after God in order not to have to face the truth that they are ordinary egoists.

— Carl G. Jung, Collected Works 13

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 4w ago

Jungian, Edward Edinger with a reminder to, 'be the change you wish to see in the world'.

There certainly are individuals whose life work and destiny require them to deal with political realities. That's the arena in which they live out their life. And each of us, trying to be as conscious as possible, must ask ourselves what our proper life arena is. If we decide that our life arena is politics, then we will be obliged to prepare ourselves to function effectively in that arena and live out our life there.
If, however, one's life arena is something else and yet one is in great distress at what is going on in the world, and one thinks, "Oh I ought to do something about it," my suggestion would be to think twice. Jung's conviction is that the most effective way to redeem or transform the world is first of all to transform the little piece of it that is oneself. And until that has been thoroughly accomplished, my thought would be that one isn't entitled to attempt the transformation of the outer world—unless, of course, one's work arena happens to be there.

— Edward F. Edinger, The Mystery of the Coniunctio: Alchemical Image of Individuation

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 4w ago

Jung spot on here.

Each of us is equipped with a psychic disposition that limits our freedom in high degree and makes it practically illusory. Not only is 'freedom of the will' an incalculable problem philosophically, it is also a misnomer in the practical sense, for we seldom find anybody who is not influenced and indeed dominated by desires, habits, impulses, prejudices, resentments, and by every conceivable kind of complex. All these natural facts function exactly like an Olympus full of deities who want to be propitiated, served, feared and worshipped, not only by the individual owner of this assorted pantheon, but by everybody in his vicinity.

— Carl G. Jung, CW 11

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · 4w ago

A useful basket definition of the shadow is: that which I do not wish to be, that within myself with which I least desire to associate, that which I find frightening, anarchic and threatening to my self-image. — James Hollis, Creating a Life

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · last mo.

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner. Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity. Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · last mo.

There is no sense talking about 'being true to yourself' until you are sure what voice you are being true to. It takes hard work to differentiate the voices of the unconscious. — Marion Woodman

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · last mo.

Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn to tear you to pieces. — Jesus, Matthew 7:6

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · last mo.

A mind that is full of conclusions is a dead mind, it is not a living mind. A living mind is a free mind, learning, never concluding. — Krishnamurti

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · last mo.

If you've ever pulled a projection back from a partner in a relationship, then you'll know what Jungian, Marion Woodman says here is all too true.

Men are still inclined to project their perfect inner woman onto their partner, so they can't understand what's going on when the outer woman does something their inner woman would not do. It comes as a mighty shock and often the man insists, "That's not who you are." A projection is a very real thing. It's real energy. If I'm projecting onto a man my adoration of him, that energy is like crutches holding him up. My energy is supporting him. If I take that projection away, suddenly he's without crutches, so it's a terrifying moment in a relationship; he not only loses the image he thinks he loves but loses the powerful support of the projection. Conscious women are pulling back the adoring projection. It hurts but it's much healthier. It lets a man be who he is, a human being trying to find himself, just as the woman is. It allows for real love.

— Marion Woodman, Conscious Femininity

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · last mo.

The psyche is not unconscious. 𝘞𝘦 are . . . The psyche is constantly making intelligible statements. It's making dreams and symptoms, it's making fantasies and moods. It's extraordinarily intentional, purposive. — James Hillman, A Blue Fire

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · last mo.

When you don't pay attention to emotional signals, your body says, 'Okay, here are some physical signals for you.' If you don't pay attention to them either, you really are in deep trouble. — Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · last mo.

Do not cling to what is inferior, either in yourself or others. If a person or thought or practice is not in harmony with the principles of the Sage, quietly let go. — I Ching [17.2], Brian Browne Walker

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · last mo.

This necessary ego function called 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 is also the ability to say 'no' to our drives, to ourselves and to others. — Edward C. Whitmont, The Symbolic Quest

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · last mo.

The culture will steal you away from yourself every day, and you have to steal yourself back every night, you have to—and that goes for the body as well. — Clarissa Pinkola Estés, The Joyous Body

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · last mo.

On darkness, hidden growth, and the power of patience.

The darkness, the depression, that dreadful feeling of emptiness and cautious hope that a period of waiting extracts from us may also be understood as a period when creative energy must quietly accumulate. Deep down where it is dark and moist, in the hidden place, the germ will sprout. Only in darkness will it take root. Darkness, so often seen as negative, is clearly necessary to fertility and hidden growth. A great energy is building and growing where we cannot see it. All of life seems silent and asleep before the creative breakthrough.
In myths, the fields must lie fallow and receptive before the corn goddess will allow the grain to grow again. In our own experience, any great work of art, any real relationship, certainly any healthy baby, needs a period of silent, undercover becoming. The creative process makes one, essentially, pregnant.
The value of this time of lying fallow is not very popular in Western culture. We don't like darkness. We don't like to wait patiently for what is unseen to gather the energy necessary to come to light. And if we want something, we want it now. Instant gratification is our constitutional right. Waiting is something to be done away with.

— Gertrud Mueller Nelson, Here All Dwell Free: Stories to Heal the Wounded Feminine

Thea Euryphaessa @theaeuryphaessa.bsky.social · last mo.

We imagine the unconscious as something inside us ... But the unconscious can equally well be imagined outside of our bodies, out in the world, like a dark, wild forest through which we roam. There are equal measures of mystery in dreams and wilderness. — Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft