In the wrangling tangle of life in the wilderness, for every creature or organism that exists, life presents daunting challenges. For many species, these challenges are primarily about survival, finding food, safe haven to rest, opportunities to find a mate, and protecting their young in order to ensure the next generation a fighting chance. Even … Continue reading Challenges of Life
"The truly sacred attitude toward life is in no sense an escape from the sense of nothingness that assails us when we are left alone with ourselves...the sacred attitude is one which does not recoil from our own inner emptiness, but rather penetrates into it with awe and reverence, and with the awareness of mystery. … Continue reading The Awareness of Mystery
"The individual who is not anchored in God can offer no resistance on the strength of his own resources, to the physical and moral sway of the world. For this man needs the evidence of his own inner, transcendent experience..." --Carl Gustav Jung from one of his last major works, "The Undiscovered Self: Present and … Continue reading Soul, Spirit, Heart, and Mind
It is with some humility, surprise, and measured delight that I acknowledge the accumulation of over 50,000 blog views here on John's Consciousness. While I generally find it surprising that any greater-than-normal number of visitors stop by to read here in a day or within a particular week or month as the statistics report, this … Continue reading 50,000 Blog Visits
When I close my eyes after looking at the photo above, I can still smell the late summer air as we played together on the open fields at Valley Forge National Park. I can still feel the sun on my face. I can hear again the squeals of delight from my "little sisters," as they … Continue reading The Golden Days of Youth
Recently discovered painting by Van Gogh entitled "Cypress Sky and Country." "Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved." -- Helen Keller Reckoning Love's Labor Lost by JJHIII24 You never intended to lose the thread Of the labor … Continue reading Trial and Suffering
man in a dark forest - © andreiuc88 "No experimental methodology ever has or ever will succeed in capturing the essence of the human soul, or even so much as tracing out an approximately faithful picture of its complex manifestations." "My life is a story of the self-realization of the unconscious. It is not the … Continue reading The Spiritual Inner Side of This Life
"Sixsmith, I climb the steps of the Scott monument every morning and all becomes clear. Wish I could make you see this brightness. Don’t worry, all is well. All is so perfectly, damnably well. I understand now that boundaries between noise and sound are conventions. All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended. One may … Continue reading Transcending Boundaries
"There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." -- C. G. Jung from CW 12, par. 126 and “The Philosophical Tree” (1945). In … Continue reading Dreamscape
"Artwork by Daniel B. Holeman " http://www.AwakenVisions.com "The inner self is not part of our being, like a motor in a car. It is our entire substantial reality itself, on its highest and most personal and most existential level. It is like life, and it is life: it is our spiritual life when it is … Continue reading The Inner Experience
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