Reading C.G. Jung’s Red Book and using it as a tool for digging deeper in my life, thought, and various practices.
I mentioned Jung at the end of the last post, but that was more than three months ago. I have since been drawn in by the vortex of his Liber Novus (The Red Book). The gigantic facsimile edition has graced our home for almost five years, ever since I read this tantalizing pre-publication article in The New York Times. (Two paragraphs rendered unreadable in this version are here.) I was able to read a little of the book, but I eventually found the size and weight too unwieldy to handle. Recently I discovered its more conveniently sized companion, The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition, which arrived in the mail last Tuesday, along with Reading the Red Book by Sanford Drob. I have a lot of momentum into reading The Red Book after listening to all of Lance Owens’ lectures and starting to read C.G. Jung: A Biography in Books, which I bought on Owens’ recommendation. It seems I am being called by the Spirit of the Depths to overcome the Spirit of This Time 🙂
In his 1990 book of essays The Practice of the Wild, Gary Snyder says, “Creatures who have traveled with us through the ages are now apparently doomed, as their habitat–and the old, old habitat of humans–falls before the slow-motion explosion of expanding world economies. If the lad or lass is among us who knows where the secret heart of this Growth-Monster is hidden, let them please tell us where to shoot the arrow that will slow it down.”
I so wanted to be that lad! Every time I have read that line over the years I took it as a personal challenge.
One of the first things I saw this morning was Joan Halifax’s Facebook update: “So happy to be home here at Upaya. Clear skies, fresh air, sunshine, deep quiet. What a blessing. Today will be aimless”.
Continue reading Day before my 70th birthday →
Earthling
Human Being
Student of Life
Working my way toward an earthy, humane, non-sectarian, inclusive spirituality
Husband, father, son, brother, friend
Retired high-school teacher librarian
Voracious, omnivorous reader
Lifelong drummer
Music lover
Aspiring writer
Intention to cultivate bodhicitta
I have discovered a pattern to what I am drawn to read beside books about Buddhism, and drawn to write about, beside the stories of my life.
I want to briefly describe the various views of what kind of shift of consciousness is necessary for healing our world, according to some of the global visionaries I have been reading.
Thomas Berry
Lester Brown
Noam Chomsky
John Bellamy Foster
Al Gore
Paul Hawken
David Korten
Joel Kovel
Michael Lerner
Joanna Macy
Bill McKibben
Larry Rasmussen
Nancy Roof
Otto Scharmer
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Immanuel Wallerstein