This was an article that Aline and I wrote back in October of 2014 on our Scribd page, but I wanted to post it here again, because it is still pertinent, especially in regards to envy. The “All Seeing Eye” is above all envious of beauty, and devours it thinking that it will make itself happy, abundant, and fulfilled.
“Nothing is more valuable to the evil one than his eye, since only through his eye can emptiness seize gleaming fullness.
Because the emptiness lacks fullness, it craves fullness and its shining power. And it drinks it in by means of its eye, which is able to grasp the beauty and unsullied radiance of fullness.
The emptiness is poor, and if it lacked its eye it would be hopeless.
It sees the most beautiful and wants to devour it in order to spoil it.
The devil knows what is beautiful, and hence he is the shadow of beauty and follows it everywhere, awaiting the moment when the beautiful, writhing great with child, seeks to give life to the God.
If your beauty grows, the dreadful worm will also creep up you, waiting for its prey.
Nothing is sacred to him except his eye, with which he sees the most beautiful.
He will never give up his eye. He is invulnerable, but nothing protects his eye; it is delicate and clear, adept at drinking in the eternal light. It wants you, the bright red light of your life.”
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Hell, Page 289
MIRRORS
The universe is mirrored, it always shows us who we are; we are the source that looks into the mirror, and the mirror simply reflects back to us who we are. We each have a piece of mirror in us, and a piece of source, we are made up of 50% of each. The vast polarity we see in the world, our personal lives, and especially our intimate relationships, shows us the polarities that are at war within us; aspects of ourselves that we hate, and when we understand our own darkness within, it no longer needs to be reflected by the mirror without; the mirror now gets to reflect the totality of who we are—love.
The challenge is found in distinguishing the boundaries between the source and the mirror, and not throwing a tantrum and breaking the mirror for what it is showing us, about us. The mirror is our feedback device that allows us to make course corrections, just as a properly working GPS or a speedometer in our cars provides us feedback; getting angry at it (blaming) for telling us the truth does not change the truth of the situation. Whereas the mirror reflects back to the Source what it looks like, projection is the Source blaming the mirror for reflecting what it is showing to them, about them.
Our world and lives becomes exceptionally miserable when we fail to see the external world as a reflection of our internal world, the external chaos and slavery is a wake up call to stop avoiding self-knowledge. We need the wake up call, because we say to ourselves, “we’re not that bad”, thus we need “that bad” in our life to finally wake us up to how we are inside, to wake us up to our own self-loathing. Waking up is not about seeing the truth of the lies going on externally to us, it is waking up to the lies that we are telling ourselves about ourselves, waking up to the lies that we project upon the mirror for what it is reflecting back to us – we are the Source of our own misery. Once we understand why we self-hate, and why we perpetuate the patterns of self-hate, we can finally forgive ourselves, and then we get to graduate to our next challenge, free from the past reflections and projections the self-hate created.
Life is about two things, the Source and the mirror, the Source what the mirror reflects. It is all about these two things; when you master the law of reflection, you now have the opportunity to reverse engineer your misery, which brings balance between your within/without – Self-mastery. Understanding the truth of the law of reflection is the beginning of self-knowledge, exploring it is the process of self-knowledge, and neutrality (balance) is the result of self-knowledge.
ONE EYE BLIND
What is the “All Seeing Eye”, the “one eye”, “evil eye”, etc., that permeates religion, the financial world, governments, mythology, secret societies, mystery schools, and pop culture?
In a word: EVIL.
“A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour.”
~Carl G. Jung, “The Philosophical Tree” (1945). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335
“It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses- and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism. The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself. But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster’s body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost. Having a dark suspicion of these grim possibilities, man turns a blind eye to the shadow-side of human nature. Blindly he strives against the salutary dogma of original sin, which is yet so prodigiously true. Yes, he even hesitates to admit the conflict of which he is so painfully aware.”
~Carl Jung, “On the Psychology of the Unconscious” (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.35
Evil is only so because the soul wielding it is blind to their internal state of being, if one eye is the symbol for externally projected awareness, then two eyes represents a being of balance, One who is capable of seeing both their internal and external worlds equally. The inside world is just as vast, important, and relevant as the outside world, but when only the outside is given attention, a person becomes imbalanced and consumptive, as Jung said, “It [the eye]sees the most beautiful and wants to devour it.” This consumptiveness is acted out as lust and jealousy, greed and sacrifice, villain and victim; and wherever there is a villain and victim, there is the need for an external savior to arise and rescue the victim.
To require a hero is to go further into the lie of self-delusion, it is to run further from your shadow within. Unfortunately though, this hero turns out to be as villainous, if not more, than the original villain. Why? Because all saviors are an external necessity caused by a person’s own lack of personal responsibility for their internal world, and the life that they are creating for themselves. The hero is a temporary bandage, but ultimately makes the wound larger instead of smaller; this is because the universal law of reflection will not allow a person to ever fully run away from themselves, for “wherever you go, there you are.” Heroes only arise to fill the void caused by those being irresponsible.
RECOGNIZING THE SHADOW
“However, the darkness does not look inward or within. The darkness is not inwardly self-reflective or contemplative. Just like the quote from the Red Book, the darkness only looks outward to controlling others, toward the material world, consuming beauty, because the darkness is empty. Thus there would be no desire to look within the emptiness and discover emptiness.”
~David Nova, author of the “Season of the Serpent” book series, DavidNova.com
Is there a way to defeat this vast conspiracy, this all seeing eye of evil that permeates every aspect of our culture and lives? Yes, there is a way, and it is through turning our sight within and peaking into that aspect of ourselves that we loathe, those pieces of ourselves that we usually project out onto others, through lust, jealousy, greed, and sacrifice, to avoid our own guilt and shame. We must utilize the mirrors in life and gaze upon our shadow; to see ourselves for who we really are, not what we have deluded ourselves into believing we are.
“Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” ~Carl Jung, “The Philosophical Tree” (1945). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335
Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected.
~Carl Jung, “Psychology and Religion” (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.131
We defeat the “all seeing eye” by opening both eyes; for one eye looks within, and our other eye looks without. Do you want to heal your family? Withdraw your projections, look within, and understand yourself. Do you want to heal your nation? Withdraw your projections, look within, and understand yourself. Do you want to heal your world? Withdraw your projections, look within, and understand yourself.
If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man has saddled himself with new problems and conflicts. He has become a serious problem to himself, as he is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong, and they must be fought against… Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done something real for the world. He has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day.
~Carl Jung, “Psychology and Religion” (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.140
There can be no change of the exterior mirror without first changing the interior Source that is being reflected by the exterior mirror; therefore, withdraw your projections, look within, and understand yourself. Work towards neutrality, and then be neutral.
