Quotes from Robert A. Johnson

But when Aphrodite is confronting her daughter-in-law she is jealous, competitive and determined to set out hurdles for Psyche at every turn.

People were startled to hear that if we don't go to the spirit, the spirit comes to us as neurosis. This is the immediate, practical connection between psychology and religion in our time.

For a young woman to cope with her mother-in-law's power system is to attain feminine maturity.

Aphrodite often shows her tyrannical side and thinks her word is law.

Aphrodite energy is a valuable quality. She is in the service of personal development and wields her terrible power to make those around her grow. When it is time for growth, the old ways and the

Much of the turmoil for a modern woman is the collision between her Aphrodite nature and her Psyche nature.

Researchers estimate that in an average family household, twenty-eight servants would be needed to accomplish only one part of the work that is taken care of by our mechanical aids. What a wonderful age!

Curiously, people resist the noble aspects of their shadow more strenuously than they hide the dark sides. To draw the skeletons out of the closet is relatively easy, but to own the gold in the shadow is terrifying. It is more disrupting to find that you have a profound nobility of character than to find out you are a bum.

You must understand that when you approach the unconscious you are dealing with one the most powerful and autonomous forces in human experience.

To own one's own shadow is to reach a holy place—an inner center—not attainable in any other way. To fail this is to fail one's own sainthood and to miss the purpose of life.

If a direct, uncomplicated, simple relationship offers us happiness, we won't accept it. It is "too simple," "too dull." We are trained to respect only what is inflated, hyperintense, high-pressured, big and complicated.

The unconscious is a marvelous universe of unseen energies, forces, forms of intelligence—even distinct personalities—that live within us. It is a much larger realm than most of us realize, one that has a complete life of its own running parallel to the ordinary life we live day to day. The unconscious is the secret source of much of our thought, feeling, and behavior. It influences us in ways that are all the more powerful because unsuspected.

When a marriage begins the partners are like two discrete circles overlapping a little. The division between the two is great and each has specific tasks. As the marriage partners grow older, each learns a bit of the other's genius, and finally the two circles overlap more and more.

Proverbs in many languages point out these three levels of consciousness. One story, for instance, relates that the simple man comes home in the evening wondering what's for dinner, the complex man comes home pondering the imponderables of fate, and the enlightened man comes home wondering what's for dinner.

I must state again: Nothing exists in our human dimension without its opposite close by.

We haven't evolved much further in our own century. Our religion is romance: We locate the divine world in physical people—the people with whom we fall in love.

To fall in love is to project the most noble part of one's being onto another human being (..) the divinity we see in others is truly there, but we don't have the right to see it until we have taken away our own projections. (..) in-loveness obliterates the humanity of the beloved. One does a curious kind of insult to another by falling in love with him, for we are really looking at our own projection of God, not at the other person.

The gold is related to our higher calling, and this can be hard to accept at certain stages in life. Ignoring the gold can be as damaging as ignoring the dark side of the psyche, and some people may suffer a severe shock or illness before they learn how to let the gold out. Indeed, this kind of intense experience my be necessary to show us that an important part of us is lying dormant or unused.

Perhaps one of the greatest jokes of my life is that I first went to India to be spiritualized, and I came home humanized.

In tribal cultures, shamans or healers often experience an illness that gives them the insight they need to heal themselves and then bring wisdom to their people. We are still operating with the archetype of the wounded healer who has learned to cure himself and find the gold in his experience.

The ego and the shadow come from the same source and exactly balance each other. To make light is to make shadow; one cannot exist without the other.

a woman has control over her feelings and inner world, a capacity unknown to most men. She can enter at will a deep place within herself where healing and balance are restored.

The only alternative to torture is art" George Bernard Shaw. This means we will engage in our creativity or have to face its alternative brutality.

The tendency to see one's shadow "out there" in one's neighbor or in another race or culture is the most dangerous aspect of the modern psyche. It is not the monsters of the world who make such chaos but the collective shadow to which every one of us has contributed.