C G Jung - Astrology - Indigenous Cultures - Metaphysical Perspectives - Spirituality/Seth

Our View

Leura Link - Our Blue Mountains Village.
This site connects you to Blue Mountains Net.

Page progressively updated - Last updated September  2006

Quotable Quote  - Commentary - Human Rights/Social Justice

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Raven Landing

We are Rodney and Nicola Ravenswood and we have lived for 19 years in the Blue Mountains, 110 km west of Sydney, Australia. We presently live in Leura, a small village of around 3000 people which is one of a chain of small towns along the Great Western Highway through the Blue Mountains. The view above was our local view from a point only 2 minutes walk from home, until we recently moved from Katoomba, the next door village, after ten years. To view some other local scenery go to:

Local Scenes


Rodney was born (Rodney Cole) in Perth, Western Australia (13/08/1950), moved to Sydney in 1982 and the Blue Mountains in 1897, has a B. App. Sc Physics, and has been in practice as a  Jungian psychotherapist and psychological astrologer for 18 years, (see Astrological Information, and Professional Services pages) and teacher . He plays golf for recreation.

Nicola was  born in 1955 and raised in the South Island of New Zealand. For thirteen years she raised  and rehabilitated native wildlife, mainly birds, with Rod's help. Currently she is developing her creative impulses through various media while maintaining a strong connection to her feathered family. Nick has for many years struggled with challenges to her health and Rod  has lovingly taken on the role of carer.
Above are photos of Nicola and Rod( taken in 1990), and Rod (taken in 2000).

Currently we live in north Leura in a home which has a wonderful outlook over a small valley at the front and through our garden into native bush at the back. in . We call our house "Arrunga" which is from an aboriginal language and means "sanctuary". It is both our sanctuary and a have for the birds we have rehabilitated and come to experience as so central to our sense of a meaningful life.

We recently retired after 13 years from rehabilitating native wildlife, mainly birds but still have an aviary in our backyard and many a flying visitor around our neighbourhood. This intimate involvement with creatures while very rewarding comes at a great cost and the time has come to open up new opportunities for us to spent time in nature free from such heavy responsibility.

    Below is a photo of the steps leading up to the back door of our house. This is the                                                            entrance we most use and is also used by people coming ot consult Rod.

Buddha Steps
It seems the local birds worked out through our rehabilitation activities that we run a "safe house' for birds. From time to time sick wild birds seem to turn up and hang around for support feeding until they're well or occasionally to die.One of our longest term rehabilitations was of young Australian Raven (Corvus coronoides), named Jorge (pronunciation is Spanish). We did not know how long Jorge would be with us but when he left after16  months he left an ongoing legacy which still continues 4 years later. The local Raven family which came to visit and socialise him on an almost daily basis continues to visit us and is an ongoing legacy of the extraordinary gift of this relationship with a special being. Once Jorge left the locals began to bring in their two 5 month old young to feed at our place. Now 4 years on they are here still with another young one, Loki.  This is amazing behaviour for human shy Ravens.

  Below is a photo of Jorge and Rod.

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We have both been profoundly affected by our experiences of rehabilitating native birds which has left us with a very different relationship to ourselves and our creature sisters and brothers with whom we share our lives and our planet. We have also been brought to a different relationship to the wild birds that are around us so much
(See Stories of Our Friends the Birds.)
backyardmist


We have a mutual interest in a metaphysical world view which includes the psychological perspectives of C G Jung, the works of Jane Roberts and Seth as well as the world views of indigenous cultures world wide. Our website is dedicated to a dialogue and commentary about the current world situation within these perspectives.

In our view a metaphysical and psychological understanding of life and reality, including humanity's place in the `scheme of things', is essential to our individual and collective well being, and indeed survival.

For us this means that the purpose and meaning in life cannot be fully known or expressed within the rationalistic materialist world view prevalent in modern Western life. We hold the view that the psyche, or non-physical dimension of reality, underpins physical or incarnate existence. And we hold that the psyche is not an amorphous or undefined reality but a realm or dimension.  It is also the source and "a priori" to all physical existence which in the Jungian view holds the primordial images or archetypes which determine the nature of existence both individual and collective at the physical level. This we contend must be taken into account in any fruitful attempt to recover the sense of individual meaning in life which so many now seem to lack. We believe these matters are essential to dealing with the urgent problems of our modern world situation: for an example see our responses to 11September 2001:.
  1. An Open Letter to Oprah Winfrey (Nick)
  2. A Brief Jungian Analysis of 11 September 2001 (Rodney)

for as C G Jung remarked:

"the salvation of the world consists in the salvation of the individual soul".

Autumn sunsets are a feature of the area we live in - this one was autumn 2000 from Nick's study window.

Quotable Quote  - September 2006

"... we know the great deal with more about ourselves then we have normally cared to admit, except at the great moment of truth in our life, in Love and hate, at Perth and death.  Beyond these moments our life seems as if it is one great voyage away from the truths we all encompassed, have passed and our future, what we were and what we will return to be."

From "Death of a River Guide" by Richard Flanagan.

Go to The Collected Quotes


If you would like to offer us some feedback about any aspect of this site or would  like to

The Psychology and World View of C G Jung:

We are interested in what we see as the "Spirit of Jung". The metaphysical perspective in Jung's work and his notion of the `Symbolic Life'are
core  values in this approach.This is not simply Jungian psychology, which in its modern form is increasingly becoming an eclectic `post Jungian' approach.
C G Jung's work has a depth and metaphysical dimension which is not always apparent in some modern Jungian perspectives and we lament that for we
believe that the post modern/post  Jungian approaches with their reduction or outright eschewal of the metaphysical are unable to capture the essence of
Jung. For Jung the reality of the  psyche as an `a priori' to physical existence was central and underpinned his whole life's work.
To quote Jung for example:

".......it is not only possible but fairly probable even that psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing.
CW10 p215 para 418

"Only the symbolic life can express the need of the soul - the daily need of the soul, mind you!"
CW vol 18 p274 para 627

And for C G Jung the soul was not some vague aesthetic quality of life (or as he put it "some miserable vapour") but a profound psychic reality.

See other articles and sites relating to this.

Spirituality/Seth: Metaphysical Perspectives on Life and Reality

The metaphysical world view framed by Seth in the Seth books by Jane Roberts is extremely radical when viewed from our accepted scientific framework. It reminds us that much happens which is in fact not explicable and controllable by rationalistic means. Seth suggests that the genesis of physical reality is at the psychic, or Framework 2 level. He stresses the value of intuitive knowledge and creative activity in the attempt to live more fulfilling lives and to address the world' s urgent needs. There are many parallels between the insights offered by Seth and C G Jung which interest us greatly.
These are explored in A Comparison in Quotes.

 The Seth material offers a metaphysical perspective which is very different from much of the later  "New Age"channelled material about the nature of reality.  It  challenges commonly held views of the nature of life and the universe and the purpose of incarnation but not in a way that allows one to escape into "New Age" flights of fancy. It is important to approach all so called `Spirit'  or channelled material as you would approach any other, with an open but discriminating attitude. Like everything else there is `good' and `bad' material available and its up to each of us to decide for ourselves. No-one has a monopoly on the truth, and chanelled material is no more necessarily true because it is channelled, as many would like and some would have us believe.

Spirituality/Seth Homepage and other related sites.

An Astrological Critique of the New Age
Indigenous Cultures:

Indigenous cultures, as we understand them, all consider the source of life and physical reality as a psychic or mythic reality outside time and space as we
know it. This is in accord with both spiritual teachings and the work of C G Jung. We are interested in what indigenous cultures have to offer modern life and in the hidden indigenous soul in all of us which yearns for reunion with its source or "dreaming".

Aboriginal web sites, links to other indigenous sites (including Native American) and perspectives on the indigenous soul in all of us and indigenous cultures.

Go To Now

An important aspect of indigenous world views is that humans are seen as creatures of the world, involved with other life forms and with the land itself.
We are not seen as separate from our world and having power over it. Rather we are seen to have a role to play in the drama of creation which involves us
in an intimate relatiionship to our fellow creatures and the land as our life giving parent, what C G Jung called the "Symbolic Life". Some of this perspective
has been brought home to us experientially, by our work with native birds. Through this we now see ourselves very differently, much more as part of our environment in a real and not just theoretical way.

(See: Stories of Our Friends the Birds.)

Astrology:

Astrology is the psychic equivalent of the human genome project. Astrology is a sophisticated and complex system of mapping the human psyche.
It is a powerful tool for self understanding and self acceptance which can map the individual personality, its psychological strengths and weaknesses,
 psychic potential and karmic inheritance. As with genetic mapping in relation to the physical organism it suggests sets of innate patterns in the human
psyche, shared but with variations, by all of us.

See Astrology Pages for Astrological Articles and information, Professional Services and links to other Astrology sites of interest

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Raven Landing

Site originally created 29 May 1996 and continually updated - © Rodney Ravenswood 2006

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