FROM APPLE FARM WRITER, Mary Theis
Mary is a therapist living in the Chicago area.
I remember Apple Farm Founder Jane Bishop saying that we should pay attention to the news and understand what is going on in the world. I can’t do that right now. I get too upset. One thing I can do is maintain my relationships with my siblings who voted for Donald Trump. And lately I have been interested in understanding where they are coming from. When I talk with them, they sound very rational. I can’t find any cracks in their logic – in what they are saying. So I just listen and also tell them what I think and feel about the situation. Our positive connection has been restored in this way, in fact even deepened.
I cannot go along with my Quaker Friends. Many of them feel that we must do all we can to oppose what is happening. That is not my way. I don’t believe that Trump et al are the cause of the terrible rifts in our society. I believe that those rifts were there all along and they are being exposed and allowed to have more effect by the current political situation. This chaos is happening all over the world.
A few years ago a friend, who knows nothing about C. J. Jung, went to just one Jungian talk. His takeaway from that talk is that there is nothing created without destruction. I think this is true. I think we are entering further into the chaos and destruction that is necessary before the new foundation is laid.
I have been reading Depth Psychology and a New Ethic by Erich Neumann. I’m not sure when it was written, but it was translated into English in 1969. Neumann says (Pg 29) that “…external collective developments are decades behind the development of the individual, which is like a kind of avant-garde of the collective and is concerned at a far earlier stage with the problems which subsequently catch the attention of the collective as a whole.
It is not difficult to understand why positive attempts at a solution appear earlier and are more easily recognizable in the development of the individual than in that of the collective…..In order to survive at all, he needs, as a matter not of arbitrary choice but of urgent necessity, the aid of the forces of the deep unconscious; in them and in himself he may be able to find new ways, new forms of life, new values and new guiding symbols.”
Mary is a therapist living in the Chicago area.
I remember Apple Farm Founder Jane Bishop saying that we should pay attention to the news and understand what is going on in the world. I can’t do that right now. I get too upset. One thing I can do is maintain my relationships with my siblings who voted for Donald Trump. And lately I have been interested in understanding where they are coming from. When I talk with them, they sound very rational. I can’t find any cracks in their logic – in what they are saying. So I just listen and also tell them what I think and feel about the situation. Our positive connection has been restored in this way, in fact even deepened.
I cannot go along with my Quaker Friends. Many of them feel that we must do all we can to oppose what is happening. That is not my way. I don’t believe that Trump et al are the cause of the terrible rifts in our society. I believe that those rifts were there all along and they are being exposed and allowed to have more effect by the current political situation. This chaos is happening all over the world.
A few years ago a friend, who knows nothing about C. J. Jung, went to just one Jungian talk. His takeaway from that talk is that there is nothing created without destruction. I think this is true. I think we are entering further into the chaos and destruction that is necessary before the new foundation is laid.
I have been reading Depth Psychology and a New Ethic by Erich Neumann. I’m not sure when it was written, but it was translated into English in 1969. Neumann says (Pg 29) that “…external collective developments are decades behind the development of the individual, which is like a kind of avant-garde of the collective and is concerned at a far earlier stage with the problems which subsequently catch the attention of the collective as a whole.
It is not difficult to understand why positive attempts at a solution appear earlier and are more easily recognizable in the development of the individual than in that of the collective…..In order to survive at all, he needs, as a matter not of arbitrary choice but of urgent necessity, the aid of the forces of the deep unconscious; in them and in himself he may be able to find new ways, new forms of life, new values and new guiding symbols.”
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