July 2019: Freedom and Duty

Jung Group July 2019: Freedom and Duty - how do we live this pair of opposites?

Thank you for being part of a commitment to the inner life and to utterances from that deep place. As Thomas Moore says (and does), "the interior of things longs for expression in your words and images".

Our conversations constitute a kind of "Slouching towards Bethlehem" - from the poem "The Second Coming" by W. B. Yeats. (That is a might poem! See below) We feel inadequate, but in the trying to articulate we still arrive. We exercise and grow our soul-capacities in doing so.

Last night our group had a very thought-provoking discussion based on my paper "Amor Fati" - loving your fate, and that discussion provides a natural segue to "Freedom and Duty". This discussion will also be based on a paper that I have written and is available on my website.

This question of "freedom and duty" is not as clear-cut as might appear at first. "Duty" can appear to be onerous, and freedom desirable. However, is individuation a duty? Jung considered youth and old age as "duties"! Re the article to discover more.

I'd suggest that you select three particular points from the paper that appeal to you, and we will base our discussion on these points. However, despite our best efforts to create a linear discussion, we are likely to circumambulate our topic. Which is, of course, the better way for soulful conversation.

Let me know if you are intending to attend, so I can be sure to send you the invitation.

Looking forward to another stimulating discussion.

Kaye

W.B. Yeats

His 1920 poem, "The Second Coming"

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

"The interior of things longs for expression in your words and images."