Jung: The Archetypal Influence

[Summerlander]

JUNG: THE ARCHETYPAL INFLUENCE

A consciousness which succumbs helplessly to all manner of suggestions, as Carl Jung once put it in his warning against humanity trying to cut loose from its archetypal foundations, risks neurotic disorientation; this consciousness, on a collective level, appears to describe the postmodernist attitude—where an entire generation is dismissive of lessons learned in the past and attempts to rewrite absolutely everything about the present. The Saviour is indeed lost. Jung was strikingly prescient and also on the money. I recall having watched a documentary years ago, daringly presupposing the migration of a missionary Christ throughout Asia and Africa because religious traditions, symbols and wisdom were strikingly similar at the intercontinental level. It absolutely discounted analytical psychology and archetypal influence on art and culture.

Archetypal dreams tend to have a profound emotional impact on the dreamer accompanied by vividness, but I truly believe that the clarity and vividness of dreams are not necessarily dependent upon the emotions they convey or how meaningful their content is to the dreamer. At least, not always, and has more to do with neurochemistry that we are still attempting to crack. It is analogous to what the neuroscientist Andrew Huberman pointed out on The Tim Ferriss Show: the masculinisation of the brain depends on a separate developmental pathway to the growth of the male genitalia.

This particular conclusion is entirely predicated on my experience with the practice of lucid dreaming. It is important to make and emphasise this distinction: lucid dreams—which are dreams in which dreamers know they are dreaming—can be both vivid or vague. In other words, a vivid dream can be devoid of lucidity and a lucid dream can be devoid of high definition. It is common for me, for instance, to encounter dark or faint environments when I induce wake-initiated lucid dreams, prompting me to subsequently employ sensory-amplification techniques in order to bring clarity and detail to my oneiric surroundings.

'Individuals who believe they are masters of their fate are, as a rule, the slaves of destiny.'~Carl G. Jung

'You're going to suffer anyway, no matter what, so why not go that extra mile and then relax instead of doing nothing and feeling guilty? It'll put the suffering in context and give it meaning.'~Jordan B. Peterson

'God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.'~the Serenity Prayer by Rheinhold Niebuhr