A BIG chunk, deeper, bigger and more profound and more confounding!

Here are a few things that stood out for us.

As we go deeper into the distinction between symbol and image, between interpretation and being in an embodied image, what we want  is the “internal logic of the images”, not our our logic/our understanding of the images. Again, waiting to allow them to reveal themselves as we experience them as Other with it’s own “LOGIC”. 

or “waiting for the fruits” of the madness.

“We are real and not symbols.” (Elijah talking to Jung in reference to himself and Salome.)

Robbie: "This most famous answer which I think is the beginning of a whole new psychology, the beginning of the psychology I most subscribe to and the beginning of the psychology where Jung becomes most original." 

Elijah says that “you may  call us symbols for the same reason that you can also call your fellow men symbols [the way we talk about projecting onto others/seeing others as aspects of ourselves], if you wish to.  But we are just as real as your fellow man.”

I like how Robbie equates symbolizing with colonizing.  So interpreting dreams is like colonizing the dream world. Wow! Embodied Imagination as de-colonizing the imaginal world. We are social activists!

The distinction of thought as Other (as phenomenon) a “forest of thoughts” , especially confusing or difficult thoughts, allows me to not identify with my thoughts and to approach them in a stance of not knowing as well so they can reveal their “internal logic”. 

Also when Jung is deep in the second image scared, astonished and confused, Elijah asks him, “if it were not your law to be here, how would you be here?” Robbie explains the translation of “law” to be something innate (like purpose) (inner necessity) --how uncovering your law becomes Jung's individuation.  

Then Elijah continues with “it burned deep inside you.” and then talks about how hard it can be to acknowledge ones yearning.

This whole conversation makes me think of my own dreams and how the Embodied Imagination work with them can help reveal my life’s purpose, not as in an answer (interpretation) but being willing to experience the distonic elements especially and be with them, or as we say “practice” the dream through the various elements worked in the dream as a composite.

Which then continues in the ending of this book when Jung says, “The mystery showed me in images what I should afterward live.  I did not possess any of those boons that the mystery showed me, for I still had to earn all of them.”

Oh wow, so it looks like a dream , even worked deeply, is only the beginning, to try to find the “meaning”  is like trying to “possess the boons.”

And even when the “boons” begin to reveal themselves it is still a constant revelation as when Elijah tells Jung,

“Your work is fulfilled here.  Other things will come.  Seek untiringly, and above all write exactly what you see.”

Even in sharing these thoughts I see an attempt to make meaning, so maybe just to hold them as Other, that they may continue to reveal.

Chris and Janet