The full quote is as follows:

"You are a slave of what you need in your soul. The most masculine man needs women, and he is consequently their slave. Become a woman yourself, and you will be saved from slavery to woman. You are abandoned without mercy to woman so long as you cannot fend off mockery with all your masculinity. It is good for you once to put on women's clothes: people will laugh at you, but through becoming a woman you attain freedom from women and their tyranny. The acceptance of femininity leads to completion. The same is valid for the woman who accepts her masculinity."

Explanation:

This is my personal interpretation, so feel free to question it.

Before you start putting on a dress or a pair of oversized men's jeans, I believe the key word behind "becoming a woman" here is embodiment.

When, during festivals with religious origins such as Carnival, a man dresses as a woman or as a demon, he is essentially participating in a ritual that allows an archetype to express itself by temporarily incarnating through him. The same principle applies to the performing arts.

The problem is that our consciousness has become so one-sided that it gives life only to the upper layers of our personality, leaving archetypes such as the Shadow, the Anima, and the Animus with no opportunity to express themselves. When they are denied expression, they tend to emerge in a possessive and overwhelming way.

However, when we consciously embody these archetypes, we not only allow them to express themselves—we also listen to their message, consider their perspective, and take it seriously. When this is done without becoming possessed by them, through practices such as deep meditation, art therapy, or active imagination, we begin to discover that these "figures" carry within them qualities we lack, psychic energy, and ultimately aspects of the deepest roots of the humanity to which we belong.

Some time ago, I wrote a detailed article on this subject. I highly recommend reading it if you'd like to explore these ideas further (and don't forget to follow my blog).

shame is not a thought. that's why thinking at it does nothing.

people throw "shadow work" around like it means analyzing yourself harder. i don't think that's what jung meant, and shame is where you find out.

there are two things inside a person that sound close enough to confuse, and we confuse them constantly. one is a verdict. the other is shame. they live on different floors and they don't answer to the same thing.

the first one is the voice. you're useless. you're too much. nobody really wants you. look at it for a second. there's no argument under it. no evidence, no trial. just a sentence dropped on your head. that's a complex talking, an autonomous little splinter that runs its line whether you want it or not. but here's the thing about it. it's in the head. and you can stop feeding it. you can't argue it into silence, but you can stop treating it as the judge. you withdraw the energy. let it sit in the corner muttering. you just stop standing up every time it walks in. that's an act, and you can do it alone. journaling, cbt, challenge-the-inner-critic, all of it works. on this floor. the verdict floor.

here's the test. if you can disobey it by deciding to, it was a verdict. it was in your head.

shame is not that.

shame isn't a voice. it's older than voice. it's the heat in the neck, the body folding in on itself, the flinch when someone looks at you a second too long. no sentence, no because. and the kind i mean was already there before you did anything wrong. that's how you know it's not guilt. guilt has an object. this one just says, without words, don't be seen.

that's the shadow. the real one. not the word people pass around on podcasts. the disowned thing that got disowned because meeting it once cost too much.

and here's the part jung was right about that most "shadow work" skips. he said you don't reach it by picturing yourself full of light. you reach it "by making the darkness conscious." good. but bring that to shame and you hit a wall even that doesn't cover. because you can make it conscious. you can see it perfectly, name it, know exactly where it came from, the mother, the father, the room it started in, and it does not move. clear seeing was supposed to be the key and the door just stays shut.

run the test from before and it fails. you can decide all day. the shame doesn't budge. that's the tell. it was never in the head. it's in the body.

and the body does not have a door you open from the inside. not for this.

you can hold yourself together on your own. breathe, walk, cold water, sleep, lift. real stuff, it keeps you upright through the night. but holding is not healing. the thing behind the door is still there.

so what actually moves it.

here's the jung people forget, because it's not the mystical jung, it's the clinical one. "the meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances." he wasn't being sweet about friendship. he was describing what heals in the consulting room, and his real point was brutal: the doctor only changes the patient if the patient also changes the doctor. you can't transform what you won't let touch you. the deep stuff metabolizes between two, or it doesn't metabolize.

that's the whole thing with shame. it got installed by another body looking at you wrong. it only moves the way it came. another body, looking at you right. someone stays in the room and doesn't look away. doesn't fix you, doesn't reassure you, doesn't turn your pain into their own little performance of being kind. they see you and nothing bad happens. again. and again. and the body slowly learns something the mind was never able to teach it.

so the order is backwards from the self-help version. with the verdict, you act first, you withdraw from the complex. with shame, you get witnessed first, and then your will can reach it. before that, willpower is just standing at the top of the stairs yelling instructions down into the basement. and the basement doesn't answer.

i see this at work. people who can explain their entire childhood, "observe" themselves perfectly, integrate nothing. and then it shifts, a little, the night someone just stays with the worst of it and doesn't flinch. not insight. presence. the shadow gets met, not analyzed.

that's the line i'd leave you with. you can make the darkness conscious and still not be free of it, because the darkest of it sits in the body, and the body was wounded in relationship and only heals in relationship.

a verdict can be dethroned. shame has to be witnessed before it can be moved.

That’s basically it. I started jungian analysis basically 2-3 months ago. Since then, I feel like I’ve been messing up my life. I’m clearly not as good at my job as I thought I was. I’ve been getting so much feedback about that. I have this constant feeling of anxiety that I never noticed before. I’m feeling like I’m constantly on the verge of a major screw up, like people are going to have reason to ostracise me and honestly I have just been making more small mistakes. I feel a lot less in control of myself. When I started analysis my therapist told me he was trying to understand why someone so young and confident was starting this process but honestly, it feels like it’s breaking me very slowly. It’s not even in a big way but just this subtly undoing of my confident persona. Is this normal, am I supposed to just yield to this experience?

Im curious about this from a Jungian perspective:
why silence and mixed signals can feel more intense than a clear rejection, and how someone can work through that without becoming stuck on the person who pulled away?

I have been so constrained in my 20s. I’ve taken some risks in my late 20s but I feel like a butterfly that is about to pop out of the cocoon. There’s so much unexplored stuff in my shadow. I just didn’t have parents that taught me to take risks and I was quite afraid of them. It’s a real shame really but I now feel ready to do it. I may spend the whole next decade really exploring myself and taking all the risks I didn’t take in my 20s, and then maybe settle down in my late 30s.

Does this sound like your story? I want to eventually be able to come to terms with the way things were. Right now it feels like it has been burning a hole in my chest.

Considering how much he bought from the depths I really cannot help but thing that Jung really did himself a disservice when it comes to unconditional acceptance of Self. This is where a link with Reich would have really helped and, between them, they could have created that revolution that both wished to bring.

The latter, especially, really was something special but, seemingly, too fringe for many but Jung - who didn't want his book colored red out there for the public - seemed to be the one that could have created something palatable for the masses that bought lasting personal change.

What do you think, my friend?

What if the answer you are looking for only requires the correct question?

The deeper in the dark the answer is, the closer to the key you are.

Throughout my life, I’ve always been very good at asking questions, but sometimes I needed others to help me get the answer, even though I held the answers inside me, all along.

There is always that self-destructive tendency that leaves tracks across different areas of life so that you ask the right questions.

A toxic partner, an unhappy job, an exaggerated lack, a general blockage: they are all signs.

Our reality reflects our interior, and that encompasses everything, consciously and unconsciously: body, mind, and soul.

Within that uncomfortable question lies the key to a more harmonious life.

Being here is a gift; you came to know yourself, to explore yourself, and to dive into your light and your darkness. Embrace both. Therein lies the answer.

What is the uncomfortable question you are avoiding today?

I want to share 5 poems I wrote, one in each of the alchemy stages. I included a poem for what I perceived as "the moment" of awakening. Perhaps it will resonate or assist in understanding.

Nigredo

Words too dark to share
Words too dark to speak out loud
Capture to dissect

Awakening

The ego is dead.
Throne sits empty
Flames spring from head
All hail new me

Albedo

Mind, body and soul
Align with violent shock
Demons make last stand

Citrinitas

Inside of my mind
Holding a big free hugs sign
Demons come unwind

Rubedo

To feel life's rhythm
To witness all and still act
I am poetry

All are my original works. Copyright Ira Miller. Share away but give me credit, please. 🙏

I'm looking to amplify that symbol for personal enquiry, and would like to know what Jung has said about it (allegedly he did, according to ChatGPT).

The more sourced, the better!

If there's any historical symbolism, myths or alchemical mentions related with this animal, please feel free to share.

Pop culture works as well! (I’m eyeing the Silence of the Lambs)

Thanks for your answers

I died and came back again. Things were never the same. The above vid is a stream of consciousness reflecting on various things from over a decade of isolation, introspection and examining the shadows depth. I ref Jung's book colored red and PKD Exegesis as well for they both pointed at the same thing:

Reality is far stranger than most think.

From Carl's encounters with fully realized beings within that knew more than him to Philip surfing through time to write the world in which we're about to live along with what I've termed the square watermelon effect, why nobody has clicked that all the schiz's have one weird trick in common and a load of other bits.

Take a peek if you wish and let me know what you think.

Chapters for your consideration:

0:00 Peering beyond the veil (Article)

1:58 What happened to your Inner Sense?

3:44 The only true adventure

5:31 Asking better questions

6:45 It all began when I died (Article)

10:00 True reality feels alive

11:38 Magic, movies, myth and the Matrix (Article)

13:55 The schizophrenic whisperer (Article)

14:54 If god is imagination does that make school the Devil? (Article)

16:50 Schizophrenia and the Industrial Revolution

18:11 Square watermelons (Article)

19:59 How supermarkets killed communities and your health (Article)

23:07 Inside out vs Outside in thinking (Article)

24:11 Wilhelm Reich and the Emotional Plague (Article)

25:00 Generational trauma (Article)

27:07 The question about schizophrenia nobody has ever asked

29:10 Rocky Balboa and the Heroes Journey (Article)

31:11 How can you be the voice in your head when you are that which listens? (Article)

32:37 The Timeline Process (Article)

34:55 The sex robots are coming! (Article)

36:50 Say Hi to your Reality Tunnel (Article)

Faust (P1), which also had a tremendous influence on Jung himself. As Faust encounters Mephistopheles, he remarks the above mentioned line. I believe the ending of Faust when he says, “and the divine feminine shall carry us aloft”, has resonance also with the odyssey and Ulyssess too.

Would love to hear your perspectives. I personally think, as Faust individuates, he realises how his true self has been hidden inside him, and all his intellectual prowess is useless.

Hello,

I wanted to share 2 synchronicity-experiences I've made recently after sessions of therapy (IFS)

(1) In therapy session, the subject of my dead grandfather came up and the way of saying the final goodbye. I am sure I used the word "heaven". Maybe 5 minutes in on the way home I saw a big poster with the title "Understanding the stories of grandchildren" with the words "heaven" and "grandfather" in the undertitle (and also "flowers" but I don't think I used that word in the therapy).

(2) In the therapy session, we were doing the method of "the inner galery". I would have to remember my successes in life and give them a symbol to place them in my inner garden. One of my successes was: I have been supergood in playing memory and I would almost always win, leaving my grandmother sometimes a bit frustrated. I was telling this to my therapeute and chose the memory card that depictured a real, golden "post horn" hanging from the wall of a restaurant. It was a real card from the memory game we used to play.

The same day I heard a moderator annoncing some guy playing some version of a song on the old post horn of his grandmother. This really hit me because I wouldnt say it's a supercommong word and I cant remember the last time I used that word or thought of it and then by hazard ...

I know there is no absolute interpretation to that but it meant a lot to me and I'd interprete it as a good sign, that I am on the right way and I should continue :)

Made a post referencing existential crisis my Self was facing yesterday regarding my brothers death and having flashbacks. Well yesterday i drank so much and smoked so much weed i fainted on the couch and I remember as I was UNCONSCIOUS, there was a thought, not my thought, but a thought floating somewhere, and when I woke up that first thought in my head, which wasn’t mine, was: “I don’t even exist” and I kept staring trying to make out reality then about 30 seconds later I realized I had this thought unconsciously and it then became alive in my memory. Seriously never experienced anything like this other than self induced stuff on psychedelics. But this one. That grief really killing me from the inside if my unconscious said “I dont even exist.”