He (one of Jung’s dream mentors) said I treated thoughts as if I generated them myself, but in his view thoughts were like animals in the forest, or birds in the air, and added, ‘If you should see people in the room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them.’

Carl Jung - Confrontation with the Unconscious

About a year ago I was on my run around Grey Lynn park, and there was a garage sale with a ‘free’ pile. On top of the pile was a compilation of Carl Jung’s writings. I took it home and tried to read it, but I instantly got lost, so I threw it on the pile.

About a month ago I ran out of things to read, so out of desperation (reading is my best hope of falling asleep at night) I tried the Carl Jung book again. To my surprise, this time I found it engrossing, and more importantly, I found that after three pages I was out cold. So I’m getting through it slowly.

It’s fascinating to have this guy writing empirically in one moment, and then the next moment talking about how he discovered his findings from the spirits who talk to him in dreams.

One of the many words Jung introduced to english was ‘synchronicity.’ The frightening thing was, as soon as I started reading him, I began seeing his name everywhere - on news stories, in the school newsletter where I work, cited as the influence for movies I was watching, etc. Last year I read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way , and I now realise most of that was lifted out of Jung.

This the way that people end up subscribing to those irritating semi-magical theories about life by their 30s. I’m on a slippery slope.