Tina Keller: “The Radiant One”
Tina Keller: “The Radiant One”
Message One morning as I awoke there was an incredible joy in me because the message “you are children of God” had taken on full reality.
This truth transformed everything.
It means that there is in me and in others a divine heredity.
We are not only creatures slowly evolving from our animal ancestors, but to be human means that in some way divine power, that which we call “God,” has planted a seed in us that has in it divine potentials.
It is not so important what I do, but it matters that I furnish in my life the best conditions for the divine seed to grow.
I have been feeling for some time that a growth process is taking place in me, even during my sleep.
There were mornings when I woke feeling that a conflict had been going on in my sleep but that it was not as yet resolved.
I felt tired and unsatisfied.
On other mornings I would awaken feeling satisfied and at peace, as if something had been accomplished.
Then came this special morning with the radiant message and its reality.
What can I do to follow up the radiant message?
To my great regret, the full radiance is gradually getting lost, but I cherish its memory and I want to follow up its implications.
I see how my orientation must change and I recognize how one-sided my thinking was.
The opposites belong together, but by habit I still want to separate them.
We learned to think by comparison and opposition.
My reason is offended at the very idea of the combination of opposites.
A recent dream reminded me how as a child I had had an experience of a combination of opposites.
I was around eleven or twelve years old when I was to have my tonsils out.
I was terribly afraid of the operation and of being put to sleep.
In despair I cried out, “I cannot.”
There was a very competent nurse who put her arm firmly around me and with great kindness but unshakable firmness gave me the necessary confidence.
My recent dream showed a similar situation giving me confidence that I will be similarly helped in my present difficulties as I am preparing for death.
At once I “see” the masculine figure who appeared in my imagination and who has stayed with me these many years.
“Leonard” would help me in the new orientation as he is bringing to me those necessary qualities that my one-sided education had repressed.
If I had been asked what it meant for me to be good I would probably have answered that it meant pleasing people.
In my upbringing, obedience and adjustment were required while self-assurance, independence and the ability to say “no” were repressed.
“Leonard” brings up these qualities and I am gradually assimilating them.
By the new orientation as I try for more self knowledge, “Leonard” showed me my tendency to leave things vague and how in this way I was escaping reality.
I must face reality.
I must want to know myself and for this “Leonard” keeps at me.
Getting a general impression of myself I first saw how there were endless beginnings that lacked continuation.
I am getting a demonstration of this as I look through my books and papers.
There is so very much I have forgotten, read so superficially that when I re-read, it is a new discovery.
In many ways I was superficial, but that also helped me achieve, not hesitate before big tasks.
I needed this superficiality for my studies where otherwise I would have gotten too discouraged.
I have spoken of feeling a process of growth going on.
Of course such a process includes losing and gaining.
There were constant new beginnings and endings.
Sometimes painful partings led to joyful openings.
When we had to move to Geneva from Zurich I was torn away from my close association with the Jungian circle.
Yet very quickly I felt the wider atmosphere of Geneva and its international organizations.
After a long time of intensive preoccupation with my inner development, it was very enriching to come in contact with world wide concerns.
I had a most enriching contact with a Quaker group that asked me to speak to them about Jungian psychology.
The children had left home and were all married, living their own independent lives.
My marriage ended when my husband died.
It was not easy when he fell ill in California, where our elder son lives, to leave my practice and my belongings for immigration to a foreign country.
Yet my years in California were a new opening and a great enrichment.
In all these experiences I had a feeling of this being my destiny.
In each change some inner feeling of destiny led me on; I did not have to force myself.
Even now in the decision to return from California to live in Switzerland and the decision to enter an old age home, which are restrictions, I feel guided by “my destiny.”
The radiant message about being “children of God” transcends psychology.
- G. Jung had shown how from the unconscious new elements constantly flow into the conscious.
He had shown me the reality of the inner life and it is thanks to C. G. Jung’s teaching that my association with “Leonard” has been an enrichment, not a
disturbance.
But it is most important that I discuss with him and do not let him rule me.
“Leonard” brings the elements I need for wholeness, but I must bring my part also.
I feel as if I were being transformed, as if even my consciousness were changing.
I can only accept the process which is a religious process, although it has nothing to do with theology.
Very gradually I learned that my naive childhood religion that had continued far into adulthood was expressed in out-dated rational and one-sided terms.
I had clung to orthodox formulations trying to believe, but suffering from anxiety.
I then realized that anything we try to formulate in this area is inadequate, because what we call “God” belongs to another reality, which goes quite beyond our understanding.
So I no more try to understand, but gradually inside me there grew a feeling of confidence in some unknowable power to whom I am related.
I object to the way churches insist on our being miserable sinners.
It discourages people and brings resignation.
I know evil is a reality, but it is also a mystery and in the teaching about sin, there are many misunderstandings.
For my part, I can only say that when I hear and feel the radiant message about being children of God, I am awed and have a great desire to be worthy.
There seems to be a false idea about man having to achieve.
As children of God, something greater is taking hold of us.
In psychotherapy one meets persons who are caught in some negative tendency.
It looks as if they should be able to correct it, yet there is a strange incapacity.
Gradually the person may come to the insight that something in her or him dings to this situation, is afraid of becoming normal.
When we look at ourselves closely we can see how often we are unable to put into practice our best intentions.
We need to become aware of our limitations and respect these.
We may then turn inward and pray for help.
It is much more important what kind of attitude one has than what one does.
It is the inner attitude of a person that makes the same action good or bad.
Two teachers may punish their pupils and it will have a quite different effect.
The one who loves children is felt as just and not resented; the other, who is full of personal bitterness and resentment, is felt as cruel and unjust.
In fact to become loving one needs to experience love; it is happy people who bring happiness to others.
The radiant message would bring us happiness.
There exist persons who seem to have been taken over by some greater power and are able to mediate this in their lives.
It is inspiring to read about such persons.
It is most visible in those we call artists.
We stand before some mystery which however shows us a reality.
In small ways I can feel such a reality.
When I accepted that I am before an “unknowable God” gradually there grew inside me a confidence and a knowledge quite beyond words.
Also the feeling that my life was guided by a destiny.
Of course I tried to obey that destiny, to follow the signs I could notice and as I tried to follow a greater design, life became meaningful and satisfying.
Of course achievement is important.
As the artist has to work hard at his technique, so also we have to work hard toward acquiring the knowledge and the qualities we need for what we are meant to be.
I believe that every person can, as he or she sincerely asks himself, find what he really is meant to do and enjoys doing.
There have been many false ideas about going against one’s wishes.
I think that which one is really fitted for is also what one enjoys doing and continues to enjoy. In something one enjoys one is most likely to be creative.
But achievement is not the ultimate goal.
We need to come in contact with another dimension.
We need help by superhuman forces which we cannot command, only pray for.
So we need also the opposite of achievement, times of non-doing and receptivity, where we are fully open to what may come. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoirs, 133-137
Memoirs of Tina Keller Quotations
I came to experience sex as an ecstasy and I just knew that this was a religious sacrament. Joy, including the body and its pleasure, became for me part of religion.- Tina Keller-Jenny, Tina Keller Memoirs, Page 116
Belonging to a materialistic age, I overvalue quantity. If my time is full, and I have an impression of achievement and even pressure, I get satisfaction. But inwardly I know that if I have plenty of leisure to satisfy my introverted side, my work is of better quality. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 155
I have never heard Jung present his views in a better way than on this occasion, and I believe the very sincere concern of the Quakers created this excellent atmosphere to which Dr. Jung responded. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 98.
Dr. Jung said, “Follow that which is alive in you and it will lead you to God, even if it seems to go in another direction.” ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 152
This kind of group [Oxford Group] life is not good for me and I must avoid it. For a few days, when I felt so estranged from myself, insanity seemed threatening. Remembering Dr. Jung’s teaching brought me back to normality. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 147
While in Geneva I also had the privilege of doing psychological work with Professor Charles Baudouin. He is well known for his book on Suggestion and Autosuggestion (1920) that is translated into many languages. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 131
When I first heard C. G. Jung speak, there was an echo in me. He seemed to have discovered things I needed to hear although I could not have said why I was so fascinated. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 134
It becomes clear that just following nature does not lead to what humans are meant to become. There is in humans an urge to think, to put in order, an urge to create. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 136
But the so-called “inferior function” seems not to be available unless the person goes through a crisis. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 170
I had put Mary on a pedestal, and she had now proved to me that she was human with human weaknesses. Dr. Jung had said that it was the worst one could do to a person to place her on a pedestal! ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 176
In the course of the years I realize that only such crucial pain can bring fundamental transformation. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 176
I went to Zurich to see Toni Wolff who as always was willing to help. But the sessions with her were empty; her words did not reach me and my grief was beyond words. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 178
As I left Toni Wolff after the last of those fruitless interviews, she intuitively mentioned “the great Mother.” “You seem to have come to the problem of the ‘great Mother,”‘ she said… Yet once again her intuition had led her in the right direction. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 179
When anger came it was like a cleansing wind. There was nothing to regret or restore. I had to realize that I had done my best. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 185
It was also through Dr. Jung’s attitude that I was now able to accept my feelings of anger without self criticism. Out of the anger grew a healthy resolution to prove myself by doing good work. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para186
I had to experience that even the best intentions of Toni Wolff could not reach me. Only so was I open to the Earthmother’s healing. You may say the Earthmother is an imagination, and yet it was a very real experience. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para187
Results of psychotherapy are often quite unpredictable. Each person is different and so is the effect of the interaction of an individual with a therapist. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 124
Dr. Jung had shown me that it was quite useless to reason or puzzle about “God” with the intellect. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para186
Toni Wolff was Jung’s close collaborator. She was certainly part of that process of search and discovery, when everything seemed still fluid and formulations were tentatively being sought. Wherever the Jungs were, Toni Wolff was there also. She participated with her whole being during her whole life in Jung’s world. Tina Keller, The Memoir of Tina Keller-Jenny, Page 28.
Like Dr. Bircher I had been disappointed with official medicine. Much time was spent in establishing a diagnosis, but then treatment consisted mostly in alleviating symptoms. When a destructive process had once set in, official medicine has no means to reverse the process. Sometimes fundamentally changing a person’s nutrition and habits, Dr. Bircher was able to help a chronic invalid regain real health. When an incurable illness had set in, the way the patient was accompanied on his way towards death was also impressive, for then psychotherapy was given priority, and again special nutrition was sometimes able to reduce pain and discomfort. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 117
In former centuries many marriage partners lived in such associations where each person was part of a functioning whole. Personal relationship was much less important than the functioning whole which was kept stable, as each adapted to a common goal. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 171
I tried to help my patients find themselves and open to the growth process. More and more I tried to eliminate the patterns of the doctor-patient relationship. The work must be a collaboration, and in the measure that I came closer to wholeness myself, I was also better able to put responsibility onto the patient. I want to consider my work more like the work of a gardener, and I am concerned with finding the best conditions for growth.
The human being is a living growing whole, wherein all parts and functions are related. A diagnosis cannot be clearly established. If we can provide good conditions for growth, malfunctioning will gradually correct itself. A child at birth has many possibilities, and of these only a selected part is allowed to develop according to the parents’ mentality and culture.
In our changing world many undeveloped urges cause trouble because they need to be developed also and used. I would in my therapy room provide an atmosphere as if it were a playroom where “the child” in an adult may again be a child for a while and experience and thus develop unused faculties. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 126
I am gradually learning, on my way of becoming, that there is a definite core of self and that I have outgrown my inner divisions. There is now a central goal, in which I feel my conscious and unconscious wills are united. I am noticing how often living is easy, as if everything was collaborating, for instance the opposites of acting and non-doing. Also quite often, outer circumstances seem to come surprisingly as needed. I am often astonished how things fall into place without my doing. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 139
Unless we feel ourselves to be part of an organic whole, our concern for individual development has a tendency to become self-centered. We need both a feeling of solidarity as well as the feeling of self-value. They must complement each other. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 140
Belonging to a materialistic age, I overvalue quantity. If my time is full, and I have an impression of achievement and even pressure, I get satisfaction. But inwardly I know that if I have plenty of leisure to satisfy my introverted side, my work is of better quality. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 155
I have never heard Jung present his views in a better way than on this occasion, and I believe the very sincere concern of the Quakers created this excellent atmosphere to which Dr. Jung responded. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 98.
Dr. Jung said, “Follow that which is alive in you and it will lead you to God, even if it seems to go in another direction.” ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 152
This kind of group [Oxford Group] life is not good for me and I must avoid it. For a few days, when I felt so estranged from myself, insanity seemed threatening. Remembering Dr. Jung’s teaching brought me back to normality. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 147
While in Geneva I also had the privilege of doing psychological work with Professor Charles Baudouin. He is well known for his book on Suggestion and Autosuggestion (1920) that is translated into many languages. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 131
When I first heard C. G. Jung speak, there was an echo in me. He seemed to have discovered things I needed to hear although I could not have said why I was so fascinated. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 134
It becomes clear that just following nature does not lead to what humans are meant to become. There is in humans an urge to think, to put in order, an urge to create. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 136
But the so-called “inferior function” seems not to be available unless the person goes through a crisis. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 170
I had put Mary on a pedestal, and she had now proved to me that she was human with human weaknesses. Dr. Jung had said that it was the worst one could do to a person to place her on a pedestal! ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 176
In the course of the years I realize that only such crucial pain can bring fundamental transformation. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 176
I went to Zurich to see Toni Wolff who as always was willing to help. But the sessions with her were empty; her words did not reach me and my grief was beyond words. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 178
As I left Toni Wolff after the last of those fruitless interviews, she intuitively mentioned “the great Mother.” “You seem to have come to the problem of the ‘great Mother,”‘ she said… Yet once again her intuition had led her in the right direction. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 179
When anger came it was like a cleansing wind. There was nothing to regret or restore. I had to realize that I had done my best. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 185
It was also through Dr. Jung’s attitude that I was now able to accept my feelings of anger without self criticism. Out of the anger grew a healthy resolution to prove myself by doing good work. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para186
I had to experience that even the best intentions of Toni Wolff could not reach me. Only so was I open to the Earthmother’s healing. You may say the Earthmother is an imagination, and yet it was a very real experience. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 187
Results of psychotherapy are often quite unpredictable. Each person is different and so is the effect of the interaction of an individual with a therapist. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 124
Dr. Jung had shown me that it was quite useless to reason or puzzle about “God” with the intellect. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 186
Many years ago Dr. Jung loaned me The Betty Book by Stewart Edward White. This book and the series of books following it have meant very much to me, and I keep rereading them. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 220
It seems to me now that only as I learned to live in my body did the psychological development also become real and alive. All I had intellectually understood had to be assimilated as I learned to live in my body. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 224
As I am trying to show, body awareness can bring great enrichment to life and could be an enormous help toward fuller life experience for many modern persons who are inclined toward a one-sided intellectualism. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 232
I believe Dr. Jung was not really interested in that Institute. Some of the collaborators, however, were very anxious that there be a foundation carrying Dr. Jung’s name as a protection of their professional status. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 189
So one finds amongst people who believe that they are unselfish and altruistic, unconscious cruelty and tyranny. I have seen cases where well meaning persons seem to become a real danger for those at their mercy. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 264
I became more and more aware that I needed to develop the strong and hard qualities. Also I must become able to think clearly and realistically, to decide and be precise and not vague in what I say. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 265
The work I did with Toni Wolff however stands apart, and the basic attitude of Dr. Jung made possible all that became helpful. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 265
As for sixteen years I had been the only Jungian psychotherapist in Geneva, and as Dr. Jung had often sent patients to me, I naturally asked him to recommend me to the Jung Institute in Zurich, as analyst. Mrs. Jung1 and Dr. Meier, 2 who were on the board, had assured me that of course I would collaborate. But Dr. Jung refused to recommend me. He wrote a letter saying that he was now old and did not wish to interfere in matters of the Institute.
I believe Dr. Jung was not really interested in that Institute. Some of the collaborators, however, were very anxious that there be a foundation carrying Dr. Jung’s name as a protection of their professional status. I heard indirectly that there was much rivalry and discord among the members of the directing board, and probably Dr. Jung did me a service in thus hindering me from collaboration. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 189
I have elsewhere spoken of my husband and of his good balance between body awareness and mental gifts. I had to gradually acquire what he had naturally and I would insist that it can be acquired, but it is a long and slow apprenticeship. When I stress that I followed my imagination, I want to say that there is no fixed recipe.
Each person must find time to really concentrate on his body needs and let go to enjoy lying on his back and just watching the breath come and go; to have the courage to be alone and inactive, if possible in nature, or somewhere you are comfortable and undisturbed. Let your imagination find some pleasurable memory where you felt you were authentically you, perhaps as a child, perhaps on a special vacation when alone, and recapture the atmosphere of such a special time. Enjoy it, come back to it another time, until you begin to feel what is authentically you.
From there you may find what your real needs are and how often you do things you do not really want to do. It is most important that we come back to the atmosphere small children sometimes still have and that real artists are trying to recapture and transmit. We need another attitude to life where we are part of it, enjoy it, and let life carry us along instinctively, sensitive to inner promptings. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 234
It was my destiny to meet Dr. Jung. Nothing can change the fact that I needed this enormous challenge in order to become the person I was meant to become. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 269
I think Dr. Jung gave me courage to accept risk and also to welcome the unknown. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 269
Dr. Jung was against my studies; he was holding back my impulsive drive, but I had to follow the inner guidance, even against Dr. Jung. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 269
Although Jung’s psychology freed me from many outworn, traditional conceptions, all that was most important in my life I recognize as being “beyond” psychology. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 275
I am afraid many of the young persons who are now allowed to follow their inclinations too freely, lack the strength of will to overcome obstacles when a goal really attracts them. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 277
I remembered how Jung had told me of his own beginnings, how he had listened very carefully to his patients and tried to make them find their own answers that arose from their own authentic depth. I am quite convinced that listening to the client is essential and it takes years of practice to improve such listening. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 283
Then Dr. Jung told me an experience of his own as an example. He was swimming in the lake; he was a very good swimmer. That time he was seized by a cramp and as he could not move his arms; it seemed as if he must drown. Suddenly he knew that the cramp was showing him that he was doing violence to himself in an area where evidently life wanted his acceptance. The moment he promised himself to let go of the self-discipline he was imposing upon himself, the cramp subsided and he could swim again. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 153
A very meditative movement my teacher taught me was what she called “inner swinging.” It could be in silence or with some rather slow music. I should do nothing but be receptive, feeling an inner rhythmic movement, as if I were a plant being moved by a gentle breeze. If it succeeds, it brings a real inner calm and is most satisfying. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 243
Seeing the pairs of opposites as relative and not as moral absolutes was a revelation. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 266
I have described before how Dr. Jung taught me to write “from the unconscious” and how this training became through the years a guiding compass which I could no more miss. I therefore owe to his teaching very efficient techniques for dealing with my difficulties. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 266
When some of his patients were in such an insoluble conflict, Dr. Jung as their doctor did not pretend to have an answer, he merely waited with the patient to see what would happen spontaneously. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Para 268
In those early days, when one arrived for the analytic hour, the so-called “red book” often stood open on an easel.3 In it Dr. Jung had been painting or had just finished a picture.
I remember Dr. Jung telling me: “Follow that which is alive in you.” ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Page 22
Dr. Jung wrote in his “black and red books” during emotional upheavals and during the period of discovery described his “visions” and then wrote dialogues and commentaries. I developed daily “dialogues.” ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoir, Page 24