Aren’t all the songs the same song? Aren’t all the books the same book? What I find in them, isn’t it what I need each time? Doesn’t my unconscious project what my conscious ego needs to see? My brain carefully selects the words I need to hear and removes the rest, which are no longer perceived. Years later, I listen to the same song and my brain alights on different words this time. Where they there before? How come I didn’t see them, listen to them?
If my brain is going to dissect each song and carefully sculpt with a scalpel the precise words I need to hear, does it matter which song I listen to? Are those songs just hooks, excuses for my unconscious to communicate? Like a word search puzzle. Even if I did see all the words, only some of them would resonate with me at a given time. And the words that are chosen so carefully would change every time I visit.
People ask why I would read the same book a second time. But it’s not the same book. Is it the same song? Does it taste the same? Does it say the same? It doesn’t. It is new. The words are the same, but I am not. What I need (or what my unconscious considers I need) is different. The words that jump out of the song for me, as if they were now alive, are different.
As I look for new songs on the internet, I wonder why I do this. Deep inside I know I will find the words I need wherever I look. Old songs and new. But I still feel the thrill of finding a new song that vibrates in the same wavelength as one of my inner strings. Like this one I found yesterday, and which inspired this post.
Surely you know that one can read a book many times—perhaps you almost know it by heart, and nevertheless it can be that, when you look again at the lines before you, certain things appear new or even new thoughts occur to you that you did not have before. Every word can work productively in your spirit. And finally if you have once left the book for a week and you take it up again after your spirit has experienced various different changes, then a number of things will dawn on you.
Carl G. Jung, The Red Book
And those people? Are they hooks too…? Just there to reflect my own inner being, good and evil, light and shadow. Only in others can I see myself.
Is that the role I play? I am but a mirror. What you see in what I write is not me. You see yourself reflected. You interpret some words in a way that they are useful to you, at a subconscious level, and ignore the rest, which are but garbage you don’t need right now. If there is anything here that you do like, that is yourself. I’m merely using my two hands to hold the mirror so that you can see yourself.
Those trees in the park, with their dark bark. They look like phantoms, standing tall on the grass. People walk around them, avoiding them naturally, casually. Our brain selectively erases them from our sight, to draw a clear path forward. But the trees are there… how can we not see them? We see what we need to see. What are we not seeing? What are we missing, right there? What would we see if we didn’t focus?
The Introverted Tree 