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Michael,
Apologies for taking slightly over two months to reply – unconscionably rude and inexcusable, I’m afraid. It’s just been that sort of life recently
Philip K Dick came up at a gathering of old school mates recently and now as then I whole-heartedly recommend Emmanuel Carrere’s “biography” which is entitled “I am Alive and You are Dead”. Really very, very good at conjuring the spirit of Dick’s thought and writings (although less a fact-driven biography).
I definitely see many parallels between what Dick wrote and topics that are central to Psychic Questing (including as you rightly speculate the ability to somehow create/influence the future).
I’d be delighted to see any text posted you can find posted here. We should also explore some experiments that could potentially leverage some of his insights.
Glad to be back,
Simon
gpreet wrote:how could one make certain that the next time this happens they know it will be a premonition?[/size][/color][/size][/size]Hi there gpreet,
One of my mentors has the idea of everything genuine being “signed in triplicate”. Thus, if the person has an isolated premonition or hunch then it may be safe to ignore it but if a couple of other “coincidental” or synchronistic prompts point in the same direction then it may be a sign that the premonition is going to be an accurate one.
I’m not sure that’s a particularly scientific answer but it might be worth seeing if the premonitions conform to that pattern.
supernaturalist wrote:Hello Josie,Josie wrote:Who says you’re uneducated??Well, I do if we’re talking about Jung and psychology in general. I am better educated in other areas.
Hi Michael,
I wouldn’t worry – I have a degree in Psychology and I’d say that in the three years we probably didn’t spend more than 5 days on Jung. Everything that’s made me the post-Jungian that I am today
was extracurricular.Josie’s mention of Hillman (above) is pertinent and his book, The Soul’s Code, is good – although I found it almost too biological at times. In other words it seemed to me that he was saying that, like the acorn, our vocation blueprint was “hardwired” into us and that we simply had to give in to its psychological imperative and it would take us where we should go.
The much more subtle (and to my mind “truer”) approach is beautifully expounded by James Hollis in his book “Creating a Life”. One passage in the opening chapter, which I quote to whoever is foolish to stand still near me for long enough, has been cited by several people as the thing that stuck in their mind and caused them to move job/change their lifestyle. It goes:
Quote:The more you are like others, the more secure you will feel, yet the more your heart will ache, the more your dreams will be troubled and the more your soul will slip off into silences. Finally, one day, you will have forgotten that you have a soul – you will rise, drive through the traffic, arrive at work, and not remember how you got there.His basic theory is that whatever you do the first half of your life will be a big, unavoidable mess and the second half is where you start to unpick it all and find your vocation.
Even he, however, doesn’t give practical techniques for the necessary “discourse with the soul” (other than undergoing Jungian psychotherapy which I guess is a high-cost option).
For this, I have been looking at Robert Johnson’s book called “Inner Work” which is all about Active Imagination (and Dreams). This is why I was originally intrigued by Josie’s synchronistic mention of Guided Imagery. (You might be pleased to know, Michael, that one of the chapters is entitled “Active Imagination as Mythic Journey”).
Apart from practical advice on how to go about Active Imagination, one of the really interesting ideas in the Johnson book is how he advises that what we discover in our internal milieu be taken and concretized in the material, outside world. He refers to this as “the Ritual”. He writes:
Quote:We could state as a general principal that whenever you do any form of inner work and bring it to an insight or resolution, you should do something to make it concrete. Either do a physical ritual or, if appropriate, do something that will integrate it into the fabric of your practical daily life.Hmmm….sounds familiar
Josie wrote:In order to determine our “meaning”, we must first learn to have discourse with the soul.Hi Josie – that’s it! That’s exactly what I’m getting at. In my terminology I would say that in order to determine our vocation we must first learn to have discourse with the (higher) Self – but that’s only semantics and you’ve articulated exactly what I’m trying to get at. My instinct/intuition tells me that psychic questing is a great way to do this discourse but I need to build up the argument for exactly why this is the case. However, that’s for another day
I will come back to this post and pick up on some of your other points too. Later, Simon.Hi Josie,
Many thanks for your replies (haven’t read the full article you linked but it looks excellent). The Jung-Goethe biological link is particularly important and I’d quite forgotten that information. I love to quote Daniel Pinchbeck on this: “I suspect I am working through some business left over from my heritage, as if mystical yearnings run, like rogue genes, in family trees.” Jung himself talks about (I think in Memories, Dreams, Reflections) the ghosts of ancestors looking over your shoulder to see how you tackle the same challenges that occur over and over in families.
In fact my particular starting point on all of this is from the perspective of “Vocation” (perhaps my own family’s issue
). In essence I see a modern society in which people are increasingly alienated. We are a fallen race. In some distant time, we feel, we lived in a state of blissful union with the universe but somehow we lost this connection and find ourselves strangers in a world full of suffering.Victor Frankl during his horrific experiences in the concentration camps realised that humans have a need for *meaning* that, amazingly, goes deeper than the core biological imperatives (e.g. survival). Meaning is what allows us to re-connect to the “blissful” state but meaning in a post-modern world is hard to come by when all the traditional meta-narratives have been “debunked” and we live in a state of permanent suspicion.
(Aside: This is why Mulder’s cry of “I want to believe” is so poignant in the X-Files. Also for an example of a narrative unfolding before our eyes where the tools and techniques of suspicious interpretation – “the hermeneutics of suspicion” – the Madeleine McCann case springs immediately to mind (not sure how much play this gets in the US – I guess a more US-oriented example would be the school of suspicion about the moon landings)).
Living in the privileged West, we have most of our basic needs taken care of, and are generally “empowered” to do what we want. We are all well-versed in the setting and attaining of personal goals – but what goals do we set that will give us this sense of meaning and connection? As the Sex Pistols memorably snarled: “Don’t know what I want but I know to get it!” Clearly, fame and fortune won’t do the trick – ask Britney or any one of the hundreds of celebrities who suddenly achieve their “fame and fortune” goals and are then left with a vacuum.
For me, then, “vocation”, which is a usefully unfashionable word and one I use in the looser sense of any personal calling, is the route to discover our own individual meaning. It is not tied to any single meta-narrative but is rather weaved through an eclectic patchwork of beliefs, experiences, relationships into a unique pattern. In this I guess my meaning is very close to Jung’s “Individuation” although the emphasis is more on the “call to individuation”.
Anyway (phew! I knew there was a relevant point in here somewhere), my hunch is that the Imagination is where you can experiment with your vocation (where, in fact, you can actually shape the material world around you to some extent – but that’s for another rant). Imagination is where the worlds of gods and man intersect – and psychic questing gives a framework for tackling the Imagination in a way that is likely to help us towards our vocation.
I appreciate that use of the word “imagination” in the context of psychic questing may make people think that I’m saying that psychic questing “is all made up” which is absolutely not the case (see my comments on affecting material reality above). When I use the word “imagination” I mean it in the sense of Jung/Goethe’s “Active Imagination” and, if I’ve understood you correctly, “Guided Imagery”. Sure it may start as a purely personal mental phenomenon but it quickly takes input from our immediate collective unconscious (the family challenges) and then from further afield. Again if I say that psychic questing is like a game of spiritual spin-the-bottle I mean that in the most constructive sense of a means of unblocking a stagnant situation and throwing you towards some interesting area which you would never have chosen to investigate yourself and which ultimately leads to a discovery that you would never have made.
Errr…I seem to have gone on a bit but hopefully that at least explains my focus on Imagination and Questing.
Does this make sense or have I lost the plot?
OK – I’ll stop soon, I promise!
Andrew Collins had a couple of copies of “The Black Alchemist Supplement” which he was selling for £30 each. As these seem to be very scarce (I can’t find them on sale anywhere else at present), this seems like a reasonable price for the “Questing completist”.
[url:268mt4mt]http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/books/books_for_sale.htm[/url]
Sun and the Moon, the Hill and the Well (Paperback)
by Michael Alan Smith – Amazon.co.uk reseller looking for £23.99[url:2lk08eyu]http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/detail/offer-listing/-/0953046907/used/ref=sdp_usedb/202-5715541-9272626[/url]
Still nothing for Web Quest, though.
The Circle and the Square (Paperback) by Jack Gale – £5.25 (currently on Amazon.co.uk)
Aaargh – now look what you’ve started!
Nothing recent that I can find for “Web Quest” or “The Sun and the Moon: The Hill and the Well”.
Anyone got any others that I’ve missed?
Bega and the Sacred Ring – £45 (14th Dec 2007)
Hi Juptin,
If you’re interested in this an excellent way to monitor prices is to create a personal search on eBay (e.g. “psychic questing”) and then syndicate it to an RSS reader (see the RSS explanatory piece on this website for more info).
Skimming back over some recent entries of items that were actually sold (many are listed at inflated prices and never sell) I can provide the following finger-in-the-air reckoner but please back this up with your own research and remember that different editions and conditions will affect the price:
The Green Stone – £33 (18th Nov 2007)
The Eye of Fire – £10.50 (27th Nov 2007)
Seventh Sword (Hardback) – £ 19.99 (4th Nov 2007)
Seventh Sword (paperback) – no info
Black Alchemist (paperback – edition unknown) – £38 (8th Dec 2007)
The Second Coming (paperback – edition unknown) – £2.70 !!! (5th Nov 2007)If you have anything specific in mind post details and I’m sure you’ll get more comments as some members actively trade questing-related goods on eBay (e.g. Malc). If I have any more information on specific items I can pass that on as well.
Hope this helps – cheers, Simon
Hi Josie,
Can you give an example of Guided Imagery in this context?
I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts on this as I believe that there is a major thread of Psychic Questing relating to “the Imagination” that takes in concepts such as Guided Imagery/Active Imagination (Jung)/Objective Imagination (Goethe)/super-sensible congition (Steiner).
Thanks,
Simon
I note that Andrew Collins has given a short review of Paul Weston’s book on his website here: [url:2fzivstv]http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/news/reviews.htm[/url] . Amongst several other book reviews he also covers Yuri Leitch’s “Gwyn”.
Thanks for posting those links, Perceval. I look forward to catching up on the latest thinking in the AC camp as I missed QuestCon this year.
A minor coincidence. I was just flicking through the TV channels just now and I stopped on one which was showing a “Ghost Hunt”. Turns out the hunters were at Eastbury Manor House ([url:3hiulsfb]http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-eastburymanorhouse/[/url]) where the Gunpowder plot was apparently hatched. A clue in the trail?
Hi Josie and welcome to psychicQuesting.com. This is the exact right place for your question.
I have a pet theory that at a certain point the distinction between genealogical research and psychic questing begins to blur. My father has been carrying out some recently on both the history of the family and the history of the family home and it’s amazing how patterns repeat themselves down the generations. Usually, in the course of the research, all sorts of synchronicities and “psychic clues” will drop in – just like a more formal quest.
In fact I would go so far as to suggest (and I’m not sure if others will agree with me) that genealogoical research is sort of a “soft introduction” to psychic questing.
Anyway enough of my gabbing – as for your question, on a radio show a few years ago I heard Antonia Fraser being interviewed about her (then new) book on the Gunpowder Plot called “Faith and Treason”. It sounded very good and I made a mental note to read it – precisely because of the potential Meonia stone tie-in. I never did get around to it but it might throw up some more clues for you to follow. Here’s the link to it on Amazon (UK):
[url:3sntc6pe]http://www.amazon.co.uk/Faith-Treason-Story-Gunpowder-Plot/dp/0385471904/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196413960&sr=8-1[/url]
Maybe someone else who knows the areas you mention can point you to other sources of info.
Cheers,
Simon
