The Eros theme

Thank you for sharing Psyche (and thanks again for pointing out this thread Windmill Knight). I think this is an important topic for me right now.

I read Unholy Hungers, but the concept of the Anima didn't click with me until I read this. I've been thinking about this off and on for the past few days.

The poem and painting that you posted today are very similar to a fantasy I had when I was just entering adolescence. I used to fantasize about girls who were in trouble, captives of some evil power, locked in a tower or a dungeon, etc. In my fantasies I would fight the "bad guys" and defeat them, free the grateful princess from her shackles and take her away with me. Then we would "live happily ever after", as king and queen, or as characters of whatever book I was reading at the time.

Sometimes I would imagine that my family moved to a new school, or a new girl came to my school and we were "perfect for each other". In this scenario the girl would get into some kind of trouble with other boys and I would rescue her.

Several girlfriends of mine have mentioned my "hero complex". I often try to "come to the rescue". I think this hero complex assumes that women need me to save them somehow, and it prevents me from opening up to them. Sometimes I project my vulnerability, kindness, gentleness, and other "soft" qualities onto women while trying to assume all "strong" qualities. Usually this has played out with the relationship kind of petering out because I feel unable to open up to her, and she ends up feeling hurt.

At other times I try to "open up" to a women and I think I end up projecting "strong" qualities onto her. If she is already independent I create a sort of "Amazon" or "warrior woman" who doesn't need or care about me (in my mind), and I end up acting extra needy. This dynamic ends with the women getting annoyed with me and telling me to shove off, and then I feel rejected, betrayed, unloved, sad, etc.

Its late here now, so I'm not going to write any more now. I put Women Who Run with the Wolves on order, and I think I'll review Unholy Hungers in light of this discussion. I'll try to write more later. Thanks again. :)
 
This makes me think, mmm, what I've seen in my life I did the same about projecting you know, waiting and searching someone ridiculously that could fit on the archetype, but I was as I have said, very smashed, I haven't said but I remember I was being some kind of sociopath, or something like that. Nevertheless I wanted lot of things, real friends, an intimate partner, a teacher, and then I got some knowledge from the material, then little from here and there, and the most powerfull thing, EE that I don't know if anyone live the effects like me, but afther doing EE I live extreme pain in my heart, like, not like being smashed or attacked, like cleaning myself, get over some issues. So then eventually, I got to this presence, and I don't even need an archetype, a teacher, friends, intimate partner, and I know what I didn't get those things, because I needed a lot to be alone and alone, to get over those lessons.

I have to admit, I got my mind got kind of divided, splice, I don't know how to say it, but I got to talk a lot with myself, like If thee was someone else, and maybe there it was, do you know who???? The teacher, friends, intmate partner and lot of things I wanted, so it is very true to find those things inside you.

And then I finished that inner and fantasy world, because I didn't need it, and I just need it. But suffering was a very part of it, sometimes I think suffer is so bad, but t helps a lot.

So my only advise would be to do EE program and maybe, find which things you need, which you don't. It's like wanting to find you polar opposite (if you really have one), and you get obsessed with, but then you think about it and you find that you never ever need someone, saving you, taking you or something like that.

Other example I have is like when I am angry, I get to imagine myself hurting someone who hurt me or getting revenge, because in some way I don't need to really do that in life, but then I was absorbed everytime from that fantasy inner world of darkness and what I did to get over it, i was to forgive and to evade and keep on.

And thanks to this, I am believing it has other forms of use.
 
obyvatel said:
EmeraldHope said:
Here is an excellent paper on Cupid/Psyche from the Carl Jung Dallas site. As an addition to Psyche's information above, it was very rewarding to read.

http://www.jungdallas.org/CUPIDANDPSYCHE-ed.pdf
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Thanks for the link EmeraldHope. It was a very interesting read.
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Indeed. Many thanks EmeralHope.

And thank you Psyche for clarifying my doubt.

Psyche said:
The author uses daimons to distinguish it from real demons. The daimon will be like a primitive defense mechanism, not a real case of possession.
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It is also how I understood it.

Today I came across a passage in "Women who run with the wolves" that fits nicely with what we are discussing in this thread. It concerns a specific defense mechanism, which is that of identifying with the archetype. Although the author is talking about women, it is applicable to both sexes.

Clarissa P. Estés in Women who run with the wolves said:
The "be all things to all people" complex attacks a woman's adequacy, urging her to act as though she is the "great healer". But for a human to attempt to enact an archetype is rather like attempting to be God. This is not possible to achieve in actuality, and the effort put forth to attempt such is completely draining and very destructive to the psyche.
While an archetype can withstand the projections of human men and women, humans can not withstand being treated as though thy are themselves an archetype and therefore invulnerable and inexhaustible. When a woman is asked/expected to enact the untiring archetype of the great healer, we see her going down for the count in burdensome and negatively perfectionistic roles. When asked to step into the luxurious confines of the archetypal robes of any ideal, it is best to look off into the distance, shake your head, and keep walking toward home.
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Home, in the context of where the above is inserted, symbolizes the return to one's nature, one's soul.
 
Psyche said:
Gertrudes said:
I would be grateful for some help in clarifying a few thoughts on Psyche's post though: am I understanding correctly in inferring that archetypes become demons (or daimons) when their universal energy is not acknowledged within us (by lack of knowledge, trauma, and so on), and we misuse its energy by projecting it outside of us, repressing it, or embodying that archetype in full identification?
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Hi Gertrudes, what you said is pretty much it, although I would like to clarify it during the weekend when I'll have more time. The author uses daimons to distinguish it from real demons. The daimon will be like a primitive defense mechanism, not a real case of possession. I actually didn't scanned that part of the book, that is why it might be confusing. Nevertheless, I wanted to make some parts of the book available because I knew it would help someone, somewhere.
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I'd like to add that for the ancient Greeks a 'daimon' was not necessarily evil. For example, Socrates said that he had a 'daimon guide', who helped him with discernment. It seems that by this he just meant his natural instinct for the truth, and not really an independent entity (but that's open to interpretation). So generally speaking, a daimon is just a spirit or a god. I think that the negative connotation of the word came later with Christianity's 'war on pagans'.

The problem is, like the text says, that this daimon (which in the book I understood to be the specific incarnation of an archetype in any given person's mind), evil or not, takes over somebody's life and becomes an obsession. Because it is not fully recognized and integrated as part of one's own psyche, it is out of control and manifests in fantasies, dreams and projections, tormenting the host and causing innumerable problems. That's how I interpreted it.

It is indeed like a primitive defense mechanism. Or a very insidious program. What the text adds is the idea that it can be archetypical and as such carries a weight and energy that goes beyond the mind of the individual. It is also a piece of the Self and its reintegration requires recognizing this, in a similar way in which the shadow needs to be recognized as our own.

Or so I think.

Gertrudes said:
In the Ra Material books from Don Elkins and Carla Rueckert, more precisely book 4, archetypes, their origin and nature are discussed through their manifestation in the tarot. If I remember or even understood what was proposed in that book correctly, your idea of a "psychic ocean" presents similarities with Ra's suggestion of a great Archetypal Mind that would be intrinsic to what the entity called our specific Logos. Logos being, to simplify it to the extreme, what created our own 3D world.
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Interesting, thanks!
 
Hope this isn't too :offtopic:, but here is a beautiful setting of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci". I was inspired by the picture you posted, Psyche. Thanks for starting this thread, it has a whole lot for me to think about.

_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feHPN3CZ9Oo
 
Psyche said:
The daimon will be like a primitive defense mechanism
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Thought I should include more background into this concept of the daimon as a primitive defense mechanism.

Daimons can be both protectors and persecutors as a part of a self-care system ("primitive defense mechanisms" that seek to protect the wounded self). It is as if all efforts are invested in preserving what is left of the wounded self. It supplies a protective world (Eros' crystal palace) so the wounded self can survive reality. It is described that the daimon-lover is what the Self looks like when it is ingrown - turned back on itself, unclaimed by human awareness:

The Inner World of Trauma said:
Before going on with our story, it seems important to underscore the truly dangerous aspects of those self-sustaining illusions which grow luxuriantly in what we might call the crystal palace of the daimon-lover, where Eros takes Psyche and where he imprisons her "in the dark" for a long time. Entering this psychological "space" is equivalent to entering an altered state of consciousness [dissociation]. This is why all witches and daimons are "spell-casters." If this "narcissistic" energy is appropriated by the ego, as it inevitably is to some extent, then a very refractory kind of inflation results [...] People caught in this web are paradoxically both incredibly needy and proudly self-sufficient at the same time, impotent and omnipotent both - a "divine or royal person" and a "baby" simultaneously. This imperious infantilism is the dark side of the daimonic's influence over the ego [...]

[The daimon-lover] is the seducer, the weaver of illusions and he demands total obedience. He tempts us into one more drink or one more candy-bar, or one more sexual adventure. His ministrations are always temporary soothing, as the gods' ambrosia is sweet, but they are never fully satisfying because the daimon-lover is an inner substitute for the original caretaking "other" needed in infancy, and the encapsulated space in the psyche under his (or her) self-care system is cut off from the real world. Therefore, he can offer only inflated substitutes for what is really wanted - which is the imaginal link between reality and fantasy, not fantasy as a soothing defense against reality. What the daimon-lover supplies is always based on a genuine need, but it never fulfills it, and the more one indulges in the substitute, the deeper the real need is obscured.

[...]

This compulsive preference for self soothing fantasy and a concomitant refusal to live within human reality and to suffer its limitations constellate the unconscious negatively and bring on the daimon.

[...]

We often find in psychotherapy with the victims of early trauma, a kind of inner addiction to fantasy which leaves them in a permanent state of melancholy. In these patients, aggressive energies which should be available for adaptation are thwarted in their outward expression and take the form of archaic self-attack and self-criticism. Thus, suffering from terrible and incessant inner persecution, these patients seek out "heavenly" states, such as fusional identification with others, or they "space out" into diffused undifferentiated states of melancholic self-soothing in order to stay unembodied and away from the traumatic effect. These patients often spent time alone crying, but their tears are a peculiar form of self-soothing. They are crying and holding themselves at the same time. They do not know how to cry with others. Sadness and wistful longing are a continual ache in their hearts. But none of this ever brings any empathy from outside because these patients often do not know what they are crying about and whenever they try to communicate it to others, it breaks down. It is all a very complicated, intricately nuanced sad story they are telling themselves but it remains self-contained, inflated, disembodied, and one-dimensional. And the tragic irony is that all this suffering is designed to prevent another kind of suffering - the suffering of coming into being in time and space which always entails a sacrifice of fantasy.
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Truly sad indeed.
 
Quote from Psyche:
Before going on with our story, it seems important to underscore the truly dangerous aspects of those self-sustaining illusions which grow luxuriantly in what we might call the crystal palace of the daimon-lover, where Eros takes Psyche and where he imprisons her "in the dark" for a long time. Entering this psychological "space" is equivalent to entering an altered state of consciousness [dissociation]. This is why all witches and daimons are "spell-casters." If this "narcissistic" energy is appropriated by the ego, as it inevitably is to some extent, then a very refractory kind of inflation results [...] People caught in this web are paradoxically both incredibly needy and proudly self-sufficient at the same time, impotent and omnipotent both - a "divine or royal person" and a "baby" simultaneously. This imperious infantilism is the dark side of the daimonic's influence over the ego [...]

[The daimon-lover] is the seducer, the weaver of illusions and he demands total obedience. He tempts us into one more drink or one more candy-bar, or one more sexual adventure. His ministrations are always temporary soothing, as the gods' ambrosia is sweet, but they are never fully satisfying because the daimon-lover is an inner substitute for the original caretaking "other" needed in infancy, and the encapsulated space in the psyche under his (or her) self-care system is cut off from the real world. Therefore, he can offer only inflated substitutes for what is really wanted - which is the imaginal link between reality and fantasy, not fantasy as a soothing defense against reality. What the daimon-lover supplies is always based on a genuine need, but it never fulfills it, and the more one indulges in the substitute, the deeper the real need is obscured.

[...]

This compulsive preference for self soothing fantasy and a concomitant refusal to live within human reality and to suffer its limitations constellate the unconscious negatively and bring on the daimon.

[...]

We often find in psychotherapy with the victims of early trauma, a kind of inner addiction to fantasy which leaves them in a permanent state of melancholy. In these patients, aggressive energies which should be available for adaptation are thwarted in their outward expression and take the form of archaic self-attack and self-criticism. Thus, suffering from terrible and incessant inner persecution, these patients seek out "heavenly" states, such as fusional identification with others, or they "space out" into diffused undifferentiated states of melancholic self-soothing in order to stay unembodied and away from the traumatic effect. These patients often spent time alone crying, but their tears are a peculiar form of self-soothing. They are crying and holding themselves at the same time. They do not know how to cry with others. Sadness and wistful longing are a continual ache in their hearts. But none of this ever brings any empathy from outside because these patients often do not know what they are crying about and whenever they try to communicate it to others, it breaks down. It is all a very complicated, intricately nuanced sad story they are telling themselves but it remains self-contained, inflated, disembodied, and one-dimensional. And the tragic irony is that all this suffering is designed to prevent another kind of suffering - the suffering of coming into being in time and space which always entails a sacrifice of fantasy.
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I had a very big issue with this. I finally ' snapped" as a teenager and turned from a very sensitive ,caring, shy, polite, scared, hurt, dreamy, introverted, straight A, goody two shoes, "perfect" ( by my mother's standards")child into a rebellious, "do not need anything from anyone" , nothing hurts me, have no fear , there is nothing I cannot do ,alter ego, which was the protector of the wounded self. Prior to this, I used to make up friends, and story lines for each day so that life was like a " play". This way, when I could not be who I was, or the world did not make sense, or I was scared, I could justify it to myself. I had a secret under cover role each day.

As you can see from my example, the 2 parts are so different from each other that when the wounded self tries to heal, the protector becomes the prosecutor. And it is very true, that the alter ego was VERY self sufficient, but my wounded self, very needy and infantile. It has taken a lot of work to brings this all together. ( and I am not 100% there yet, lol)

I heard a song that describes this process so well. It still makes me cry when I hear it sometimes. I will post the lyrics here, because I think it is very accurate, as long as one does not get hung up on the terms and names used, as I am sure they cannot help but evoke a biblical connotation for some.


She was not one of them
She never had a friend
She was the one that got teased
She was not one of them
She always stands alone
Nobody gave her a chance
She was always pushed around
She was not one of them

She's is in love with the devil, She's is in love with Lucifer
This is her revenge for all the years of pain and tears
Fire is falling from the sky, she is burning down her past
She starts a new life, to hell with Jesus Christ


Her parents died by accident
She never felt in love with someone
Nobody understood her fear
And every night she cried for help
She prayed to God 'cause she was told to
But he never spoke to her
She felt so cold and left alone
But then the fallen angel came

And then the fallen angel came
To heal the pain inside of her
Her broken heart
She closed her eyes and saw
His goodness and the truth
She is not alone
He's always there

She is in love with the devil, she's is in love with Lucifer
This is her revenge for all the years of pain and tears
Fire is falling from the sky, she is burning down her past
She starts a new life, to hell with Jesus Christ
 
Thought I should include more background into this concept of the daimon as a primitive defense mechanism.

Daimons can be both protectors and persecutors as a part of a self-care system ("primitive defense mechanisms" that seek to protect the wounded self). It is as if all efforts are invested in preserving what is left of the wounded self. It supplies a protective world (Eros' crystal palace) so the wounded self can survive reality. It is described that the daimon-lover is what the Self looks like when it is ingrown - turned back on itself, unclaimed by human awareness:
Click to expand...

Thanks for this. It sounds a lot like the life history of my major programs. Ouch. I think I should get that book too.
 
Windmill knight said:
Thought I should include more background into this concept of the daimon as a primitive defense mechanism.

Daimons can be both protectors and persecutors as a part of a self-care system ("primitive defense mechanisms" that seek to protect the wounded self). It is as if all efforts are invested in preserving what is left of the wounded self. It supplies a protective world (Eros' crystal palace) so the wounded self can survive reality. It is described that the daimon-lover is what the Self looks like when it is ingrown - turned back on itself, unclaimed by human awareness:
Click to expand...

Thanks for this. It sounds a lot like the life history of my major programs. Ouch. I think I should get that book too.
Click to expand...

FWIW, I feel the same way. It kind of helps to think about it as part of a "self-care system" though, it makes me feel less "messed up" somehow.

Psyche said:
The Inner World of Trauma said:
Before going on with our story, it seems important to underscore the truly dangerous aspects of those self-sustaining illusions which grow luxuriantly in what we might call the crystal palace of the daimon-lover, where Eros takes Psyche and where he imprisons her "in the dark" for a long time. Entering this psychological "space" is equivalent to entering an altered state of consciousness [dissociation]. This is why all witches and daimons are "spell-casters." If this "narcissistic" energy is appropriated by the ego, as it inevitably is to some extent, then a very refractory kind of inflation results [...] People caught in this web are paradoxically both incredibly needy and proudly self-sufficient at the same time, impotent and omnipotent both - a "divine or royal person" and a "baby" simultaneously. This imperious infantilism is the dark side of the daimonic's influence over the ego [...]

It is all a very complicated, intricately nuanced sad story they are telling themselves but it remains self-contained, inflated, disembodied, and one-dimensional. And the tragic irony is that all this suffering is designed to prevent another kind of suffering - the suffering of coming into being in time and space which always entails a sacrifice of fantasy.
Click to expand...
[...]

Truly sad indeed.
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Imperious infantilism is a good term for what I have been noticing in myself. I am easily wounded emotionally and I feel like a child most of the time, yet I am prone to stubbornly refuse to ask for help.

It is sad to think that I have spent the majority of my life suffering and fighting to hold onto a complicated defensive fantasy world.
 
quote from seamas
It kind of helps to think about it as part of a "self-care system" though, it makes me feel less "messed up" somehow.
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Agreed. I like this term better also.

It is a perfect explanation of how the feminine become captive.

Thanks Psyche , again, for the added information. It has helped me connect many more dots.
 
I have been reading this acouple of times in the hope of understanding more.

Now I understand that fantasy and imagination can be a bad thing. That it keeps one from coming into being in time and space if it is used as a shield against reality.

What I want to know is, is all fantasy and imagination bad? Or is what is in the 'Positive Dissociation thread hold?'

Positive Dissociation said:
The main thing is that daydreaming/dissociating/movies/games/books are
not intrinsically destructive. In fact, they can be very helpful. Such
states can be the wellspring of creative activities such as art, music,
discoveries, etc.

It seems to me that the significance of dissociating depends entirely on
what happens during that time - on the content - and, most importantly,
WHY it is being done.

Daydreaming, watching movies, playing games, reading, used as a form of
learn, experimentation and rehearsal of real-life issues that are played
out free from the constraints of reality, where we can give free rein to
our emotions and ideas so as to test them, wonder about them, and then
select good ones and make plans to implement them, seems to me to be
healthy and life-affirming.

Pathological dissociation serve no other purpose than to engulf us in a
fantasy world as an escape from real life and dealing with our issues.
Sure, it may restore our hope or "good feeling" momentarily, but when it
is over, we have no new thoughts about what to do next, how to do it,
how to bring our dissociative fantasy back with us into real-world
practical issues. We have stolen energy from somebody else's fantasy
instead of finding the wellspring of our own creativity.
Click to expand...

I mean just because sometimes one is taken away by fantasy or imagination, either because they find a certain subject interesting, so they look to explore it more in there heads, or to use imagination to explore issues in more depth in the psyche, is that a defense mechanism from facing the world?

My thinking on this is that, when you think or use the brain in an intensive way, you are temporarily disconnected from reality or develop a sort of tunnel vision. So am I right in assuming that this is only bad if it is acting as a shield against facing reality?

I find that sometimes, placed under certain conditions, my mind pushes to Dissociate inorder not to face the moment or either somehow the mind uses the 'moment' as a sort of 'muse.'

By muse, I mean that something in the moment could act as a sort of inspiration that would push the mind to dissociate temporarily either to log the thing for later use or simply just dive in, right there and then.

With regard to using fantasy or imagination to dissociate inorder not to face the moment, in my case I find that one situation might be a 'daimon' type thing going on. I am not sure so I will ask for input from other people.

Sometimes, I find I can be in a situation and that in that situation, I feel somehow under the spotlight because of some form of 'injustice' or rather because of not being properly intergrated into the moment so as to feel left out. E.G. I'll give a stand out event, during my first few days in a new school I enrolled to, whenever I walked into the common room and alot of people were busy socialising with each other, alot of male-female socialising going on and because in those days I was scared to talk to females, an ongoing problem to some extent, I used to jump into imagination or dissociation to balance out that 'void' because there was a void that I felt and I had to compensate for it by dissociation. In this scenario, I was using dissociation as a method of avoiding a certain aspect of reality. This plays out in minor roles in certain other situations I might find myself in, for example, in the presense of authority I can dissociate just because I feel uncomfortable around authority figures... So is this the 'daimon' acting as persecutor or protector? Is this healthy or unhealthy?

Another thing that I find is the 'pull' of the 'daimon' is very strong or rather the 'daimon' is very compelling and it is almost impossible to not comply. In this way, most of the time I dissociate whenever the daimon comes calling. I am thinking of the 'daimon' as the call, the call to go to a certain compartment of the psyche, the crystal palace? I am not 100% sure because, I know I am a 'trauma' sufferer so I do have 'crystal palaces' in my psyche but what I dont know is how to proceed. To just ignore the 'daimon?' I feel in some cases the 'daimon' is a tool for growth, a tool of exploration, discovery and in others acts as a shield, keeping some parts hidden away or locked up, maybe due to trauma or something similar.
 
Windmill knight said:
Thought I should include more background into this concept of the daimon as a primitive defense mechanism.

Daimons can be both protectors and persecutors as a part of a self-care system ("primitive defense mechanisms" that seek to protect the wounded self). It is as if all efforts are invested in preserving what is left of the wounded self. It supplies a protective world (Eros' crystal palace) so the wounded self can survive reality. It is described that the daimon-lover is what the Self looks like when it is ingrown - turned back on itself, unclaimed by human awareness:
Click to expand...

Thanks for this. It sounds a lot like the life history of my major programs. Ouch. I think I should get that book too.
Click to expand...

I'll see if I can go through my notes and highlights of The Inner World of Trauma by Donald Kalsched next weekend and see if I can add something that might contribute to this thread. I think that paragraph pretty much sums it up, although there might be other concepts that apply to other kinds of projections. He goes through several myths or fairy tales and explains the same concepts of the self-care system in different situations. He actually quotes Marie-Louise von Franz, which I know has written a book about myths herself.

I didn't recommended Kalsched's book because I found it extremely dense in order to find very few precious insights here and there. I was put off by the whole overtly academic style of the book and its intellectual loops.

I think that Unholy Hungers, Women Who Run With the Wolves, Projection and Re-Collection by Marie-Louise von Franz are extremely helpful though. It is really helpful to read about myths and fairy tales in order to discover unconscious programs.
 
luke wilson said:
I have been reading this acouple of times in the hope of understanding more.

Now I understand that fantasy and imagination can be a bad thing. That it keeps one from coming into being in time and space if it is used as a shield against reality.

What I want to know is, is all fantasy and imagination bad? Or is what is in the 'Positive Dissociation thread hold?'

Positive Dissociation said:
The main thing is that daydreaming/dissociating/movies/games/books are
not intrinsically destructive. In fact, they can be very helpful. Such
states can be the wellspring of creative activities such as art, music,
discoveries, etc.

It seems to me that the significance of dissociating depends entirely on
what happens during that time - on the content - and, most importantly,
WHY it is being done.

Daydreaming, watching movies, playing games, reading, used as a form of
learn, experimentation and rehearsal of real-life issues that are played
out free from the constraints of reality, where we can give free rein to
our emotions and ideas so as to test them, wonder about them, and then
select good ones and make plans to implement them, seems to me to be
healthy and life-affirming.

Pathological dissociation serve no other purpose than to engulf us in a
fantasy world as an escape from real life and dealing with our issues.
Sure, it may restore our hope or "good feeling" momentarily, but when it
is over, we have no new thoughts about what to do next, how to do it,
how to bring our dissociative fantasy back with us into real-world
practical issues. We have stolen energy from somebody else's fantasy
instead of finding the wellspring of our own creativity.
Click to expand...

I mean just because sometimes one is taken away by fantasy or imagination, either because they find a certain subject interesting, so they look to explore it more in there heads, or to use imagination to explore issues in more depth in the psyche, is that a defense mechanism from facing the world?

My thinking on this is that, when you think or use the brain in an intensive way, you are temporarily disconnected from reality or develop a sort of tunnel vision. So am I right in assuming that this is only bad if it is acting as a shield against facing reality?

I find that sometimes, placed under certain conditions, my mind pushes to Dissociate inorder not to face the moment or either somehow the mind uses the 'moment' as a sort of 'muse.'

By muse, I mean that something in the moment could act as a sort of inspiration that would push the mind to dissociate temporarily either to log the thing for later use or simply just dive in, right there and then.

With regard to using fantasy or imagination to dissociate inorder not to face the moment, in my case I find that one situation might be a 'daimon' type thing going on. I am not sure so I will ask for input from other people.

Sometimes, I find I can be in a situation and that in that situation, I feel somehow under the spotlight because of some form of 'injustice' or rather because of not being properly intergrated into the moment so as to feel left out. E.G. I'll give a stand out event, during my first few days in a new school I enrolled to, whenever I walked into the common room and alot of people were busy socialising with each other, alot of male-female socialising going on and because in those days I was scared to talk to females, an ongoing problem to some extent, I used to jump into imagination or dissociation to balance out that 'void' because there was a void that I felt and I had to compensate for it by dissociation. In this scenario, I was using dissociation as a method of avoiding a certain aspect of reality. This plays out in minor roles in certain other situations I might find myself in, for example, in the presense of authority I can dissociate just because I feel uncomfortable around authority figures... So is this the 'daimon' acting as persecutor or protector? Is this healthy or unhealthy?

Another thing that I find is the 'pull' of the 'daimon' is very strong or rather the 'daimon' is very compelling and it is almost impossible to not comply. In this way, most of the time I dissociate whenever the daimon comes calling. I am thinking of the 'daimon' as the call, the call to go to a certain compartment of the psyche, the crystal palace? I am not 100% sure because, I know I am a 'trauma' sufferer so I do have 'crystal palaces' in my psyche but what I dont know is how to proceed. To just ignore the 'daimon?' I feel in some cases the 'daimon' is a tool for growth, a tool of exploration, discovery and in others acts as a shield, keeping some parts hidden away or locked up, maybe due to trauma or something similar.
Click to expand...

Luke,

I think it all comes down to the difference between inspiration or avoidance. At least it does for me. For example, reading myths to learn and spot programs is positive dissociation, while reading romance novels to avoid the fact that you are lonely and seeking an " ideal" mate is not.

For example, in your explanation as to how you disassociate when dealing with authority figures, the idea of the work would be to remain present in the body and allow the feeling, and not let the energy usurp the intellectual center. Of course this is hard to do without exploring a lot and getting to really know your true self. It is from the repeated failure to be able to do this that we find so many " i's'" and programs, as well as buried parts of our selves . As someone who has spent a great deal of life disassociated, I can say it is very hard indeed to do. I can do it quite well while doing some things, not well at all in a lot of other areas. But the key is, the areas you DO find yourself doing it in holds a deeper clue for you. So in that aspect you can look at it as inspiration , osit.

As one works with the materials here and the psychology books, one learns more and more. And as one learns more and more, one becomes present more and more often.
 
Thanks,

Does anyone know any good place to read up on mythology and how it relates to programs etc. Like for newbies...
 
luke wilson said:
Thanks,

Does anyone know any good place to read up on mythology and how it relates to programs etc. Like for newbies...
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Quote from Psyche:
I think that Unholy Hungers, Women Who Run With the Wolves, Projection and Re-Collection by Marie-Louise von Franz are extremely helpful though. It is really helpful to read about myths and fairy tales in order to discover unconscious programs.
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Thats is a good pace to start, Luke. There is not a quick answer or a quick fix. One step at a time- it is a journey. :) Carl Jung's work with archetypes also very good.
 
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