Following your own star means isolation, not knowing where to go
Why is it that so few people follow their own star? Why is the star such
a heavy burden?
Because following your own star means isolation, not knowing where to go, having to find out a completely new way for yourself instead of just going on the trodden path everybody else runs along.
That’s why there’s always been a tendency in humans to project the uniqueness and the greatness of their own inner self onto outer personalities and become the servants, the devoted servants, admirers, and imitators of outer personalities.
It is much easier to admire a great personality and become a pupil or follower of a guru or a religious prophet, or an admirer of a big, official personality – a President of the United States – or live your life for some military general whom you admire.
That is much easier than following your own star. ― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Way of the Dream, Page 50
The anima has many stages and embraces a great range of psychological facts. Jung said there were four major images of the anima: Eve, Helen, Mary, and Sophia, the wisdom of God.
Eve would be the biological woman, and when she appears as a man’s anima she would be biological sex, physical attraction, motherhood, the image of the ordinary attractive female.
Helen is on a higher stage. She would represent the hetaira of the Greeks, their form of the geisha. She represents cultivated women with whom one can have not only a sexual adventure, but also exchange poetry and have philosophical conversations.
She would be the spiritual companion companionship together with romantic sex. The next stage is the anima figure in Christianity.
She is the Virgin Mary, who is the highest form of spirituality, but a bit too one-sidedly high up.
The Virgin Mary is lacking the dark Eve side of woman, the earthy shadow side, the more biological, wider, more natural side of the anima.
So she is a bit too lofty an ideal. Therefore, the fourth stage, the wisdom of God, is, as Jung smilingly noted, a comedown, because wisdom is not such a virtuous spirituality.
Wisdom is closer to life. It is present when a man knows how to love women and knows how to relate to women and has wisdom at the same time, a wisdom which protects him from their devouring side.
The highest form of love is also something with a grain of salt in it.
What do you mean by that?
I won’t say.
Psychologically, how do you explain love?
I flatly refuse to explain that! It’s above me. ~Marie-Louise von Franz, The Way of the Dream, Page 108
https://carljungdepthpsychologysite.blog/2024/09/30/isolation/
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