Three things that (synchronistically?) fell into my world this week:
- Atsuko Watanabe, in The Abundance of Less by Andy Couturier:
“Most people spend their time relating entirely to things that are made solely for the purpose of keeping the economy spinning, of making money for someone, such as television and television shows, and eating food that’s not good for them. And to get that money, everyone throws away their own time that was free before, even if the work they do is not useful. Everyone around them thinks it’s natural and normal. Even though they’re incredibly busy on the physical, body level, moving around all the time, they are empty on the level of spirit.”
“So why do they do it, do you think?”
“Because they don’t stop to consider, Why is it that I as a human am alive?”
- James Hillman, The Soul’s Code, explaining an idea in Plato’s Republic:
The soul of each of us is given a unique daimon before we are born, and it has selected an image or pattern that we live on earth. This soul-companion, the daimon, guides us here; in the process of arrival, however, we forget all that took place and believe we come empty into this world. The daimon remembers what is in your image and belongs to your pattern, and therefore your daimon is the carrier of your destiny.
As explained by the greatest of later Platonists, Plotinus, we elected the body, the parents, the place, and the circumstances that suited the soul and that, as the myth says, belong to its necessity. This suggests that the circumstances, including my body and my parents whom I may curse, are my soul’s own choice–and I do not understand this because I have forgotten.
So that we do not forget, Plato tells the myth and, in the very last passage, says that by preserving the myth we may better preserve ourselves and prosper. In other words, the myth has a redemptive psychological function, and a psychology derived from it can inspire a life founded on it.
- Charles Eisenstein’s brief film, “The Fall”.