Imaginal Journal
Imagination is Medicine
Rilke on Dragons
We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for its not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors. If it has abysses, these abysses belong to us. If there are dangers, we must try to love them, and only if we could arrange our lives in accordance with the principle that tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us to be alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience.
How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races – the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are only princesses waiting for us to act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises before you larger than any you’ve ever seen, if an anxiety like light and cloud shadows moves over your hands and everything that you do. You must realize that something has happened to you. Life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hands and will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
The Guest House by Rumi
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
By Rumi
(From The Essential Rumi, version by Coleman Barks)
Individuation
“To become—in Jung’s terms—individuated, to live as a released individual, one has to know how and when to put on and to put off the masks of one’s various life roles. ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do,’ and when at home, do not keep on the mask of the role you play in the Senate chamber. But this, finally, is not easy, since some of the masks cut deep. They include judgment and moral values. They include one’s pride, ambition, and achievement. They include one’s infatuations. It is a common thing to be overly impressed by and attached to masks, either some mask of one’s own or the mana-masks of others. The work of individuation, however, demands that one should not be compulsively affected in this way. The aim of individuation requires that one should find and then learn to live out of one’s own center, in control of one’s for and against. And this cannot be achieved by enacting and responding to any general masquerade of fixed roles.”
Frances Ha
Frances Ha. Director, Noah Baumbach Writer, Greta Gerwig
A Heroine’s journey to selfhood through twinship.
You & I by Local Natives
You and I, we were always strong
It was enough to keep me on
Believe me.And I woke up with my green eyes blue
And all I think about is you
And it feels
When did your love,
When did your love go cold?
The closer I get, the farther I have to go
To places we don't know
To places we don't know
To places we don't know
To places we don't knowIn all this light, all I feel is dark
Had the sun without its warmth
I'm freezing
When did your love, when did your love go cold?
The closer I get, the farther I have to go
To places we don't know
To places we don't know
To places we don't know
To places we don't know
Songwriters: Kelcey Paul Ayer / Matthew James Frazier / Ryan Clinton Hahn / Taylor David RiceYou & I lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Ceremony by New Order
This is why events unnerve me
They find it all, a different story
Notice whom for wheels are turning
Turn again and turn towards this time
All she asks is the strength to hold me
Then again the same old story
World will travel, oh so quickly
Travel first and lean towards this time
Oh, I'll break them down, no mercy shown
Heaven knows, it's got to be this time
Watching her, these things she said
The times she cried
Too frail to wake this time
Oh I'll break them down, no mercy shown
Heaven knows, it's got to be this time
Avenues all lined with trees
Picture me and then you start watching
Watching forever
Forever
Watching love grow, forever
Letting me know, forever
Written by Bernard Sumner, Ian Kevin Curtis, Peter Hook, Stephen Paul David Morris • Copyright © Universal Music Publishing Group
Oroboros
“Life lives on life. This is the sense of the symbol of the Ouroboros, the serpent biting its tail. Everything that lives lives on the death of something else. Your own body will be food for something else. Anyone who denies this, anyone who holds back, is out of order. Death is an act of giving.”
