The Red Book By Carl G. Jung
Carl Jung saw this book more as his documenting of an experiment, rather than a journal or dream journal. Jung discusses his individuation process which to him was the key to consciousness development. The achievement of personality was just that, an achievement which doesn’t come easily.
Jung documents his experiences doing what he called “active imaginations” where he would enter a dream like waking state, where he would let his mind wander into a phantasy and he would act out the role of a character in this play. He would lose himself in the moment to a degree that allowed it to all be real to him. Real enough to actually extract useful information from the characters that he met in these phantasies. One of these being Philemon. He viewed these are aspects of his subconscious, reaching out to him in personified wrappings, to interact and engage with him.
After reading this book I practiced this technique for myself. It really spoke to me because not long before reading this book I was becoming aware of a new allergy which caused my forehead, temples and other face muscles to swell. At the same time I was having jaw issues and there was extra strain on those same muscles around my temples. Work had been really stressful and I was just beginning to study integral theory. So I had a lot on my plate. One night, not long before getting The Red Book, I had a dream, it was a very vivid dream, and I was in a bootcamp, standing in line as this very intimidating female Sargent yelled in my face. She yelled, in my face, that I needed to do something about my face muscles, that I needed to figure out how the bleep to relax those muscles or I was going to be in big trouble.
I woke up having no idea what that dream was all about. But then not long after, I had inflamed those muscles to the point where I had to go to the hospital. I was fine but I realized that I had to start paying more conscious attention to those muscles and my jaw. I was going to have to make sure I wasn’t clenching, grinding, and that I was focusing on relaxing them when meditating. I had to bring them into my awareness to do this. This book made me realize that from Jung’s perspective, the drill Sargent was my subconscious, personified into a character I’m my dream to give me information that I now had to take very seriously.
For Jung consciousness development involved bringing things from the unconscious part of the psyche, into a person’s conscious awareness. The more of yourself that you become aware of, the more in control you become. This is what I am to help people with in my coaching sessions.
