| Care of the Soul - Thomas More |
 Care of the Soul: Thomas Moore Harper Collins: 1992. P32: ‘Part of our alchemical work with soul is to extract myth from the hard details of family history and memory on the principle that increase in imagination is always an increase in soul.’ P100: ‘Thinking mythologically, we might imagine our own pain, paranoid suspicions and jealous rages as a complaint from a god who is receiving insufficient attention.’ P110: ‘The marriage that Hera honors so fervently is not only the concrete relationship of man and woman, it is any kind of cionnection, emotional or cosmic. As Jung says, marriage is always an affair of the soul. Hera may also protect the union of distinct elements within a person or in society.’ P110: A man dreams about his wife and it is ‘his awareness of his “wife” – all that he is wedded to …’ P117: ‘Our task is to care for the soul, but it is also true that the soul cares for us. So the phrase “care of the soul” can be heard in two ways. In one sense, ,we do our best to honour whatever the soul presents to us; in the other, the soul is the subject who does the caring. Even in its’ pathology, and maybe especially then, the soul cares for us by offering a way out of narrow secularism. Its suffering can only be relieved by the reestablishment of a particular mythical sensibility. Therefore its suffering intiiates a move toward increased spirituality. Ironically, pathology can be a route to soulful religion.’ P135: ‘If we do not claim the soul’s power on our own behalf, we become its victims. We suffer our emotions rather than feel them working for us. We hold our thoughts and passions inward, disconnecting them from life, and then they stir up trouble from within, making us feel profoundly unsettled, or it seems, turning into illness.’ P161: ‘When we bring imagination to the body, we cant expect dictionary-type explanations and clear solutions to problems. A symbol is often defined and treated as though it were a superficial matching of two things, as in dream books that tell you that a snake is always a reference to sex. More profoundly thoug, a symbol is the act of throwing together two incongruous things and living in the tension that exists between them, watching the images that emerge from that tension. In this approach to symbol, there is no stopping point, no end to reflection, no single meaning and no clear instruction on what to do next.’ P161: ‘There can be no thesaurus of body imagery.’ P163: ‘Ferenczi’s (Freud’s noted Hungarian colleague) phrase “organ eroticism” suggests that the body’s parts not only function, they also take pleasure in what they do. One asks, not if is the organ working, but is it enjoying itself.’ P164: ‘The word disease means “not having yopur elbows in a relaxed position”. “ease” comes form the Latin ansatus “having handles … Disease means no elbows, no elbow room. Ease is a form of pleasure, disease is the loss of pleasure.’ P172: ‘… an ensouled body takes it’s life from the world’s body’ ‘As Ficino said, “The world lives and breathes and we can draw its spirit into us”. P225: ‘While mythology is a way of telling stories about felt experience that are not literal, ritual is an action that speaks to the mind and heart but doesn’t necessarily make sense in a literal context. In church people do not eat bread in order to feed their bodies but to nourish their souls.’ ‘It is worth noting that neurosis, and certainly psychosis, often takes the form of compulsive ritual … Could it be that neurotic rituals appear when imagination has been lost and the soul is no longer cared for? In other words, neurotic rituals could signify a loss of ritual in daily life that, if present, would keep the soul in imagination and away from literalism. Neurosis could be defined as a loss of imagination.’ P235: ‘The intellect wants a summary meaning … But the soul craves depth of reflection, many layers of meaning, nuances without end, references and allusions and prefigurations. All these enrich the texture of an image or story and please the soul by giving it much food for rumination.’ P241: ‘A tree, an animal, a stream, or a wooded grove can all be the focus of religious attention. The spirituality of a place might be marked with a well or a drawing on the ground or a pile of stones. [When we do this] we are honouring the special spirit that is attached to that place.’ P255: ‘The word response … is related to a Greek word that means “to pour libation to the gods.”’ P262: ‘As we become transparent, revealed for exactly who we are and not who we wish to be, then the mystery of human life as a whole glistens momentarily in the flash of incarnation.’ ‘Spiritual life does not truly advance by being separated either from the soul or from its intimacy with life. God, as well as man, is fulfilled when God humbles himself to take on human flesh. The theological doctrine of incarnation suggests that God validates human imperfection as having mysterious validity and value. Our depressions, jealousies, narcissim, and failures are not at odds with the spiritual life. Indeed they are essential to it. When tended, they prevent the spirit from zooming off into the ozone of perfectionism and spiritual pride. More important, they provide their own seeds of spiritual sensibility, which complement those that fall from the stars. The ultimate marriage of spirit and soul, animus and anima, is the wedding of heaven and earth, our highest ideals and ambitions united with our lowliest symptoms and complaints.’ P267: ‘The Renaissance magus understood that our soul, the mystery we glimpse when we look deeply into ourselves, is part of a larger soul, the soul of the world, anima mundi. This world soul affects each individual thing, whether natural or human made. You have a soul, the tree in front of your house has a soul, but so too does the car parked under the tree.’ P299: ‘The soul wants to be in touch with that deep place from which life flows, without translating it into familiar concepts.The best way to fulfill this desire is to give attention to the images that arise as independent beings from the springs of day to day imagination.’ ‘In order to be affected by a dream, it isn’t necessary to understand it or even mine it for meanings. Merely giving our attention to such imagery, granting its autonomy and mystery, goes a long way toward shifting the center of consciousness from understanding to response. To live in the presence of the daimonic is to obey inner laws and urgencies’ ‘animus … the Latin translation of daimon’ p304: ‘We care for the soul solely by honouring its expressions, by giving it time and opportunity to reveal itself, and by living life in a way that fosters the depth, interiority, and quality in which it flourishes. Soul is its own purpose and end.’
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