James Hollis : The Meaning of Life (Quotes)
Dernière mise à jour : 22 janv.
Quotations
“The transient vacuities of our cultural icons — success, peace, happiness, and distraction — pale before the question of whether or not one experiences this life as meaningful.”
Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life
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"The goal of individuation is wholeness, not the triumph of the ego."
The Middle Passage
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“Education derives from the verb educe, which means “to draw forth from within.”
The original teaching method of Socrates has been largely displaced by professorial deference to received scholarly authority. By and large, our students are taught how to
take exams but not to think, write, or find their own path.”
Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life
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“Fear of our own depths is the enemy.”
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“The hero in each of us is required to answer the call of individuation. We must turn away from the cacaphony of the outerworld to hear the inner voice. When we can dare to live its promptings, then we achieve personhood. We may become strangers to those who thought they knew us, but at least we are no longer strangers to ourselves.”
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"It is hard enough to live our own lives, and everyone is better served if we concentrate on our own individuation rather than getting stuck in the agendas of others."
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“Balancing one’s obligations to others and the obligation to oneself is admittedly difficult, but it is essential to try.”
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“In the end we will only be transformed when we can recognize and accept the fact that there is a will within each of us, quite outside the range of conscious control, a will which knows what is right for us, which is repeatedly reporting to us via our bodies, emotions, and dreams, and is incessantly encouraging our healing and wholeness.”
Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life
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“The paradox of individuation is that we best serve intimate relationship by becoming sufficiently developed in ourselves that we do not need to feed off others.”
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“Underlying symptoms that typify the Midlife Passage is the assumption that we shall be saved by finding and connecting with someone or something new in the outer world. Alas, for the drowning midlife sailor there are no such life preservers. We are in the sea-surge of the soul, along with many others to be sure, but needing to swim under our own power.
The truth is simply that what we must know will come from within. If we can align our lives with that truth, no matter how difficult the abrasions of the world, we will feel healing, hope and new life. The experience of early childhood, and later of our culture, alienated us from ourselves. We can only get back on course by reconnecting with our inner truths.”
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“If the meaning of life is directly related to the scope of consciousness and personal development, then the invasions of the shadow at midlife are necessary and potentially healing. The more I know about myself, the more of my potential I can incarnate, the more variegated the tones and hues of my personality will be and the richer my experience of life.”
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“One of the grandest of those illusions is that happiness is a real state which one can discover and live permanently. Sadly, our lot more often is to wallow in the swamplands of the soul, victimized by sundry dismal denizens: loneliness, loss, grief, doubt, depression, despair, anxiety, guilt and betrayal, for starters. But, fortunately, the ego is not the all-powerful commander it presumes to be. The psyche has a purposiveness which lies beyond the powers of conscious control, and our task is to live through these states and find their meaning."
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"Grief, for example, is the occasion for acknowledging the value of that which has been experienced. Because it has been experienced, it cannot be wholly lost. It is retained in the bones and in the memory, to serve and guide the life to come. Or take doubt. Necessity has been called the mother of invention, but doubt is. Doubt may be threatening in its openness, but doubt nonetheless opens. All great advances in human understanding have come out of doubt. Even depression carries a useful message, that something vital has been ‘pressed down'."
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“Thus, a concern for individuation is not narcissistic; it is the best way to serve society and support the individuation of others. The world is not served by those who are alienated from the themselves and others, nor by those who in their pain bring pain to others. Individuation, as a set of guiding images which constitute the goal and the process at the same time, serves the person who in turn contributes to the culture. ‘The goal is important only as an idea,’ writes Jung. ‘The essential thing is the opus which leads to the goal : that is the goal of a lifetime.’”
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“The artist is near the fire all the time. Anyone who has attempted to be genuinely creative knows what hard work it is, how suffering is unavoidable, and yet how satisfying can be the sense of process and completion.” The Middle Passage
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“It takes courage to face one’s emotional states directly and to dialogue with them.
But therein lies the key to personal integrity. In the swamplands of the soul there is meaning and the call to enlarge consciousness. To take this on is the greatest responsibility in life. We alone can grasp the ship’s wheel. And when we do, the terror is compensated
by meaning, by dignity, by purpose.”