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1245179791.ogg

"I suddenly became strangely inebriated. The external world
became changed as in a dream. Objects appeared to gain inrelief;
they assumed unusual dimensions; and colors became more glowing.
Even self-perception and the sense of time were changed. When the
eyes were closed, colored pictures flashed past in a quickly changing
kaleidoscope. After a few hours, the not unpleasant inebriation,
which had been experienced whilst I was fully conscious, disappeared.
what had caused this condition?
- - Albert Hofmann
- - Laboratory Notes (1943)"

"As important as this “take-charge” attitude was, it was still only half the equation. In addition to learning how to take control and assume responsibility, a person also needs to learn when and how to let go, to surrender, to go with the flow and not resist or fight it. Letting go versus taking control - this is, of course, just another version of being versus doing, that primordial polarity of yin and yang that assumes a thousand different forms and is never exhausted… The individual realizes that, no matter how much suffering might occur, it doesn’t fundamentally affect his or her real being. Suffering comes and goes, but the person now possesses the “peace that surpasseth understanding.” The sage feels suffering, but it doesn’t “hurt.” Because the sage is aware of suffering, he or she is motivated by compassion, by the desire to help all those who suffer and think it’s real. Jung found that modern men and women can spontaneously produce virtually all of the main themes of the world’s mythic religions; they do so in dreams, in active imagination, in free association, and so on. From this he deduced that the basic mythic forms, which he called archetypes, are common in all people, are inherited by all people, and are carried in what he called the collective unconscious. As even Jung realized, it is necessary to move away from the archetypes, to differentiate from them, to be free of their power. This process he called individuation."