I may make some comments on this quote later. This cropped up in a book I've been reading and it was too funny to refrain fram sharing. I'm curious what your reactions are to it, good or bad, happy or angry.
One summer day when Carl Jung was a twelve-year-old schoolboy in Basel , Switzerland, he fell to admiring the cathedral in the town square. In his autobiography he recalls his train of thought:
"The sky was gloriously blue, the day one of radiant sunshine. The roof of the cathedral glittered, the sun sparkling from the new, brightly glazed tiles. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the sight, and thought: “The world is beautiful and the church is beautiful, and God made all this and sits above it far away in the blue sky on a golden throne and … .” Here came a great hole in my thoughts, and a choking sensation. I felt numbed, and knew only: “Don’t go on thinking now! Something terrible is coming … .” "
The boy could feel some dangerous image presenting itself and fought to keep it from entering his mind. For several days, in fact, he struggled with all sorts of metaphysical confusions about whether or not God, who controls all things, could allow him to think a thought he shouldn’t think. Finally, having worked himself around to believing that God wanted him to have the forbidden thought, he relented:
"I gathered all my courage, as though I were about to leap forthwith into hell- fire, and let the thought come. I saw before me the cathedral, the blue sky. God sits on His golden throne, high above the world— and from under the throne an enormous turd falls upon the sparkling new roof, shatters it, and breaks the walls of the cathedral asunder."
Shared from "Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art" by Lewis Hyde
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