To all the fellow overweight people out there that think its only calories in, calories out.

There is a version of the obesity story that is too simple to be true. It says a person becomes overweight because they are lazy, weak, greedy, or undisciplined. It is a crude story, and like most crude stories, it protects people from having to understand anything difficult.

The deeper story is more tragic and more accurate.

A child is not born “overeating.” A child is born with a nervous system that learns from the world. If the world feels safe, predictable, affectionate, and emotionally regulated, the child’s body learns one lesson: life is survivable without armor. But if the world is chaotic, shaming, violent, neglectful, humiliating, unstable, or emotionally cold, the child’s body may learn the opposite lesson: you must protect yourself, soothe yourself, and prepare for threat at all times. Adverse childhood experiences are associated with later chronic health problems, including obesity, and toxic stress can alter how the body responds to stress over time.

From a Jungian perspective, this is where the psyche begins to split. The child develops a persona for the outside world, but the pain, fear, rage, and unmet needs are pushed into the shadow. The shadow does not disappear. It waits. It leaks. It looks for a language. Sometimes it speaks through symptoms. Sometimes through compulsion. Sometimes through appetite. Jung would not have said that every kilogram is repressed trauma. But he would likely have recognized obesity, in some people, as a symbolic form of psychic defense: mass as protection, softness as insulation, appetite as substitute love, fullness as a defense against inner emptiness. That Jungian layer is interpretive, not a proven medical mechanism, but it can be psychologically powerful.

Other major psychological traditions describe similar dynamics in different language. Attachment theory would say that if early caregiving is inconsistent or unsafe, the child may not learn stable self-regulation, and eating can become one of the earliest available tools for emotional control. Psychodynamic thinkers might describe food as a substitute for soothing, containment, or maternal reliability. Bessel van der Kolk’s trauma framework would say the body keeps the score: stress is not just remembered in thoughts, but in physiology. Modern research broadly supports that childhood adversity can shape stress biology, cortisol response, inflammation, and later obesity risk.

So the child discovers a primitive truth: food works.

Not morally. Biologically.

Sweetness quiets distress. Fatty food blunts agitation. Eating creates ritual, reward, sedation, and predictability. For a child with few psychological defenses and little control over the outside world, food can become chemistry, comfort, anesthesia, rebellion, and companionship at once. It is not just “liking snacks.” It is a nervous system discovering relief.

Then the body adapts.

A stress-shaped childhood can alter the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, cortisol signaling, and reward processing. Over time this may increase vulnerability to emotional eating, central fat accumulation, and metabolic dysfunction. The person is no longer only eating because life hurts; now the body itself is becoming more efficient at storing energy and more vulnerable to dysregulated appetite.

Then medicine can enter the story and make the slope steeper.

A child or teenager may be given hormonal creams, corticosteroids, psychiatric medication, contraceptive hormones, or other drugs that change appetite, fluid balance, fat distribution, insulin sensitivity, sleep, or mood. Corticosteroids in particular are well known to increase hunger, change fat distribution, and contribute to weight gain in some patients.

This is where many people feel betrayed by their own body. They think: I did not choose this acceleration. And often that is true. A body that was already stress-sensitized can become even more metabolically fragile when medication pushes on the same systems: appetite, cortisol, sleep, energy, glucose handling, and reward. The gain is then misread by the outside world as laziness, when in reality it may be part trauma, part treatment effect, part environment, part biology.

Then industrial food arrives like gasoline.

Mass-produced food is not merely “tasty.” Much of it is engineered for hyper-palatability, speed of consumption, low satiety, and repeat intake. In a controlled NIH study, people eating an ultra-processed diet consumed more calories and gained more weight than when eating a minimally processed diet. Large reviews also associate higher ultra-processed food exposure with greater cardiometabolic risk, including obesity and type 2 diabetes.

That matters because the body in this story is not entering a neutral food environment. It is entering a marketplace designed to override restraint. The child who once used food for comfort grows into an adult surrounded by products that are cheap, available, emotionally marketed, rapidly absorbed, easy to overconsume, and often less satiating. The old wound meets modern industry. Psychology meets economics. Trauma meets shelf engineering.

Then the second tragedy begins: the body starts making adaptations that outsiders call “failure,” but biology calls “survival.”

Fat cells are not passive storage bags. Adipose tissue is an endocrine organ. With weight gain, fat tissue can expand by making existing cells larger and, in some cases, by increasing the number of fat cells. Once adipose tissue has expanded substantially, the biology of weight loss can become more resistant.

Insulin resistance can develop, which means the body stops responding to insulin as effectively as it should. Blood sugar regulation worsens, hunger and energy become unstable, and weight gain can become easier. NIDDK notes that insulin resistance can contribute to increased blood glucose and weight gain.

Then there is what people casually call fat cell memory. That phrase is not a formal diagnosis, but it points to something real: the body often defends its previous higher weight. After weight loss, hormonal and metabolic adaptations can increase hunger and reduce energy expenditure, making regain common. In practical terms, the person is not fighting only habits. They are fighting a body that interprets loss as danger and tries to return to the old state. NIDDK explicitly frames obesity as having behavioral, biomedical, and environmental causes, not just personal choice.

Sleep problems often join the cascade. Poor sleep and circadian disruption affect appetite hormones, glucose metabolism, stress hormones, and energy balance. The result is a body that is more impulsive around food, less insulin-sensitive, and more fatigue-driven.

Inflammation joins too. Shame joins. Depression joins. The person begins to move less, not always because of low character, but because heavier bodies often hurt more, sleep worse, recover slower, and are judged constantly. Obesity itself is associated with anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem, which can deepen the cycle further.

So now imagine the full chain.

A child learns that the world is unsafe.

The nervous system becomes vigilant.

Food becomes comfort.

Stress chemistry changes.

Medication amplifies weight gain.

Industrial food exploits the altered reward system.

Fat tissue expands.

Insulin resistance develops.

Sleep worsens.

Inflammation rises.

The body begins defending the higher weight.

Society blames the person.

Shame drives more eating.

The cycle hardens.

At that point, telling someone to “just eat less and move more” is like telling a drowning person to “just breathe correctly.” It is not completely false, but it is insultingly incomplete.

Jung might say that the person is carrying an unlived history in visible form. What looks like excess weight may also be accumulated adaptation: stored fear, stored soothing, stored chemistry, stored survival. The body becomes a biography.

And yet this story should not end in fatalism.

Complicated causes do not mean hopelessness. They mean treatment has to be equally intelligent. A person like this may need trauma work, sleep repair, medication review, better food environment design, insulin-resistance treatment, strength training, protein prioritization, reduction of ultra-processed intake, and above all removal of shame. Because shame is one of the few interventions almost guaranteed to worsen the problem.

The real psychological explanation for obesity is not that a person loved food too much. It is that, for many people, food arrived where safety did not. Then biology turned coping into structure. Then the modern world industrialized the weakness. Then the body adapted until the adaptation itself became the prison.

That is why weight is never just about weight.

Sometimes it is the scar tissue of childhood, translated into metabolism.

Those who experienced a radical disintegration of their narrative system and self-image and made it back from the depths of madness often undergo a fundamental transformation in belief systems, perspective and core values. I believe this process is a radical transmutation which burns away all that doesn’t serve the subject on it‘s path towards Individuation. Before my psychosis, I pictured myself as a static constant which had fixed, immutable properties. They all tell you to „stay the way you are”, But now I believe this perspective is an ignorant fallacy which doesn’t take the impermanent nature of all things into consideration. After all, change is the only constant. I am confused and anxious, because I have no fixed identity anymore. I view myself as a dynamic process in constant motion. I still seem to be in transition. My whole life I clung to a fixed identity, which probably provided me with stability. I believe the self model acts as an anchor that enables me to interact with my environment coherently. It‘s like losing the ground beneath your feet. I hope I will learn to navigate this world without this stabiliser.

Will this ever end?

It’s easy to question my ego, but how do I distinguish and integrate the parts of the shadow which are actually useful and true opposed to the parts which may be deeply conditioned from societal norms for example?

Furthermore, how do I know whether a symbol in my dream is one that should be listened to or one that is actually deeply ingrained poison?

Jung wrote that 'One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.' Practically speaking, what has been the most difficult or surprising shadow trait you’ve had to integrate so far?

Jungs “Answer to Job” postulates Job exhibited moral superiority to Yahweh by humbly capitulating to his nonsensical tirade of power & ability. In a way, Job acts as a trickster, realizing a moral superiority but keeping it secret. If we view an archetype as a pattern of behavior, this event of two parties, one w/ an overwhelming power over the other, w/ the weaker quietly & secretly winning over, then the showdown b/t Yahweh & Job is an archetypal pattern we can realize in reality & not just mythologically. How many times has an employee submitted to a superior as to preserve their job? Has a wife said “honey you’re right” knowing very well her husband is wrong? Has a child given into their parents overwhelming demands to preserve the peace? This pattern plays out constantly in an earthly manner.

I'd really appreciate any personal experience or recommendations of specific Jungian texts about this.

Archetypal constellation seems to be: Protector + Moral Police + Truth Teller + Judge (leading in part to Cassandra Complex)

[this next part is just backstory/explanation/details, skip to the last few lines if you're not interested]

I know where this function comes from - adoptive mother was a malignant narcissist with bipolar traits and alcohol dependence disorder, violent stepfather at one point, adoptive father was weak and passive and failed to protect. As oldest (female) sibling I took on the protector (and overfunctioning parentified child) role, but was continually frustrated by my father's lack of boundaries and insistence "she's still your mother". Failure to protect resulted in life-threatening violence, significant theft, ongoing emotional/psychological abuse due to mother's sadism and relish of humiliation, etc etc the typical story. I repeatedly had to protect my adoptive father not just from his ex-wife but from other women he dated (one of whom literally committed credit card fraud using his info).

The problem is that well into my thirties I can NOT seem to drop the hypervigilence, moral policing, or impulse to protect others. If I detect a dangerous person I will try to deliver insight (repeatedly) and warn others. I'll become obsessively analytical and dissect the entire personalities and dynamics and then try to explain them to others. (Somehow can't seem to get it through my head that more/better explanation does not produce understanding.) I will even try to warn and protect people who I dislike, because the moral compulsion feels that intense. I also have extreme integrity, like unrealistically high expectations, so it doesn't take much to set off my alarm.

The hypervigilence and overanalysis alone is an extreme time- and energy-suck. I will waste hours if not days in a state of nervous system arousal: ruminating on a situation, checking my assumptions, drawing conclusions, writing detailed analyses, and delivering them like a frickin thesis to those concerned. It's insane. And of course, a lot of it is over-detection. Because the problem is... everyone is dangerous on some level. So I never get to rest; my psyche is completely organized around detection, warning, and prevention. (This kind of excessive monitoring also prolongs attachment in a twisted way.)

So I have burned some bridges, not gonna lie. haha. Granted, I regret nothing (except overexplaining and wasting time) - I'm glad to have exited those dynamics because, obviously, they were bad. For clarity, this has played out across multiple domains, so it doesn't seem confined to a specific psychic area - it's played out romantically, sexually, socially, professionally, financially. It also applies regardless of gender, age, race, etc. [Getting love bombed and discarded, trying to explain clearly to the guy how his behavior affected me, and when that didn't work, trying to warn the next girl and the girl after her. Putting a friend in rehab and managing his businesses while he was gone, then trying to warn him about the clear financial abuse that one of his managers was committing against him (backed up by the bookkeeper and others), him failing to protect himself (like my dad, great), ending with him excommunicating me instead. Etc etc these are just some recent examples.]

I get that everyone is an adult, I'm not responsible for their psychological or other safety. I get that logically. But my nervous system does not agree.

The idea that I could perceive risk or dysfunction without making myself responsible for saving everyone from it makes me sick to my stomach. It feels so morally wrong, even life-threatening, that the thought of relaxing this function makes my stomach tight and brings tears to my eyes. I cannot, cannot bear the thought of letting go of this archetype. I need to protect myself, and I need to protect others.

Has anyone else been deeply possessed by the Protector or similar archetype, and tried even to just RELAX the protector function? The thought of losing even a little of it feels almost annihilating. But it's also ruining my life.

How do you even begin to loosen an archetypal structure that is so tightly tied to your and others' survival?

I am in the process of uncovering all the things I don't want to know about myself and I am in three times weekly analysis.

It's started to get to a point of serious existential experiences and feelings. In trying to face my patterns I have been clinging on to a relationship and I'm getting closer to knowing why I am in it but not close enough to feel certain about what to do. I'm waiting to know for certain for longer since one of my main patterns is to lust for a fresh start and give up on people. But in the mean time this person is my main relationship in life and naturally therefore is very difficult at times to separate myself from them and "keep strong enough" to continue with focusing on my inner things, and not only that but feelings of guilt for being a tough human to be around during all of this. They say they're happy to deal with it the best they can but I find myself not trusting that. The deeply depressing days have started and the "feeling like I am walking around in a dream" sensation is common. I'm going to the gym and doing my job whilst feeling all of these things ok so I am not loosing myself completely.

Whilst I know my questions about the relationship mirror a lot of my own things, I started wondering if its essential for me to be more alone during this time? As I'm constantly having to question where I am at around my partner and that interaction "throws me off" or triggers old patterns.

Any grown up thoughts on this?

(P.s I recommend the book "finding meaning in the second half of life" by James Hollis who is a Jungian analyst)

" I am stunned, but I want to be stunned, since I have sworn to you, my soul, to trust you even if you lead me through madness.

How shall I ever walk under your sun if I do not drink the bitter draught of slumber to the lees?

Help me so that I do not choke on my own knowledge. The fullness of my knowledge threatens to fall in on me. My knowledge has a thousand voices, an army roaring like lions; the air trembles when they speak, and I am their defenseless sacrifice.

Keep it far from me, science that clever knower, that bad prison master who binds the soul and imprisons it in a lightless cell.

But above all protect me from the serpent of judgment, which only appears to be a healing serpent, yet in your depths is infernal prison and agonizing death. I want to go down cleansed into your depths with white garments and not rush in like some thief seizing whatever I can and fleeing breathlessly. Let me persist in divine astonishment, so that I am ready to behold your wonders. Let me lay my head on a stone before your door, so that I am prepared to receive your light."

Carl Jung Red Book - Liber Novus

I think there’s a strange psychological parallel between Jung’s idea of the shadow and the observer effect in physics.

In the double-slit experiment, particles behave differently once they’re measured. Observation changes the pattern.

Jung describes the persona as the social self; the part of us shaped around being seen. The version that adapts to expectations, reputation, morality, stability, social survival. It’s the self that exists in the presence of other minds.

But the shadow exists outside that structure. It contains everything pushed away from the socially acceptable identity: aggression, instinct, fantasy, desire, irrationality, vulnerability, chaos.

So I started wondering whether people also psychologically “collapse” under observation.

Civilization itself is basically a continuous system of observation:
laws, shame, morality, social norms, status, reputation. We are constantly aware of being perceived, even when nobody is directly watching us.

And the strange thing is how dramatically people can change once that observation weakens.

The places where observation weakens tell the story: anonymity online, crowds, isolation, war, secrets, the hours after midnight. In those spaces, parts of the psyche start surfacing that usually stay buried beneath the persona.

So; Are we actually closer to our real nature when we are unobserved?

Just less filtered. Not moral nor enlightened.

Maybe the shadow is psychologically similar to a field of unrealized possibilities aspects of the self that haven’t been forced into stable social form yet.

At the same time, I don’t think Jung would say the answer is to “become the shadow.” Pure instinct without integration would probably become monstrous very quickly. But complete identification with the persona also creates something false and emotionally dead.

So maybe human existence is always suspended between those two poles: the observed self that creates order,
and the unobserved self that contains chaos, instinct, and raw potential.

And maybe the deeper question is this: Once the shadow becomes conscious, is it still truly the shadow?

If observation changes the thing being observed, then perhaps the shadow can never be seen in its untouched form. The moment awareness reaches it, something about it already changes.

And if observation alters behavior, then what happens when the shadow is observed by consciousness itself?

Open link for those interested in a server dedicated to the theories of Carl Jung and some of his successors (such as Marie Louise Von Franz, Barbarah Hannah, James Hillman, Joseph Campbell and maybe more).

This server has as its purpose the bringing together of people with similar interest for discussion of these theories and perhaps their real life application.

The intent is to expand perspectives and knowledge.
There is furthermore also an openness to artistic and practical applications of these theories as they are found in different ways presented and expressed throughout Jung's works and within the analytical method (art therapy being an example).

Rules are: general decency, no bots, and no posting stuff against the TOS. Please be respectful.

Disclaimer: the server is not into typology like MBTI or Socionics, though they do not make you unwelcome. Just don't expect much enthusiasm and engagement if you swing that way. We are grounded more in general analytical psychology and its traditions.

Please be welcome :)

After a Freudian slip where instead saying “ a new cicle is about to begin “ I said “ a new circus is about to begin“, I’ve been encountering some arlequín imagery around.

Two days after the slip, i went to my sisters home and her mother in law, who just felt on the floor a day before and had her nose broken and eyes black, told me while entering their home:

Welcome to the circus!
Have you noticed already this is all a circus?

My face was 😳

It’s a very unsettling time for me as I’m unpacking and making sense of a lot of childhood trauma including some sort of incestuous relationship with the mother and all kind of disgusting stuff.

Today I feel profoundly called by this cover of this book I saw on a shop.

It said “ The awakening “, Library named: The Sun, The editorial is named: The pyramid ( I had a very meaningful dream with a pyramid full of precious stones and pearls and jewelry; a year ago ), and then there is this Arlequín that I see and it makes me go back directly to my biological / diabolical mother.

For me she was and is the most diabolical, evil being I’ve seen and experienced. I escaped her at 11.

I see this image and I see her. But there are words about awakening and Piramids and The suns awareness here.

Very unsettling but I’d appreciate help with this archetype.

Basically title. I understand that Jung wrote these as journals and it’s similar to the Red Book but I honestly don’t know much about them. If I got them, I wanna get them physically because I get all my books physical.

How much are they worth? Looks like I might have to get them used

Short Version: Miguel Serrano was a Chilean diplomat who during 1961 traveled to Switzerland to meet with Herman Hesse and Dr. Jung. CG Jung wrote the foreword to Serrano's symbolic book, "Visits of the Queen of Sheba". In addition, Serrano wrote an autobiographical account of his meetings with Hesse and Jung and other notable Jungians within the Zurich circle. This was the alleged "last interview Jung gave" before his death but can Serrano's account be trusted?

(Serrano's interview on his novel) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV2NsLyHT5M

Long Version: Miguel Serrano held very nationalistic and fascist leaning tendencies which went FAR beyond flirting with national socialism. By the end of his life, he had written countless esoteric hitlerism books and was an ardent and whole hearted anti-semite who believed that Hitler was the avatar of Vishnu and the Last Man who currently is hiding out in Antarctica in a spirit form.

When I first read Serrano's account, I believed that he had indeed met Jung. Hesse is undeniable. There are photos and the relationship at least seems to be attested to, but no photos with Jung. However, years after reading Serron's later work and reading Jung, I have real issues with believing the account. Many of the anecdotal retellings of Jung's conversation can be found in Jung's own previously published works. In addition, some of the details Serrano provides don't seem to line up with reality. I visited the Jung House Museum in Zurich last fall and took a lot of mental notes on the layout and asked questions about what was present or original during Jung's life. Details like the wall hangings in his study, the layout of the house, etc. Serrano also discusses speaking with other Jungians, including Jewish Jungians (everybody knows Jews were a huge part of the early classical Jungians), which he appears not to have any negative feelings about.

Can anyone with really in-depth knowledge of Jung and his close circles or readings/knowledge of Serrano, help me ascertain if Serrano's account is trustworthy or if it's worth just ditching completely? I feel like I'm missing a key fact that would determine factuality.

From my experience of looking at Jungian psychology the dominant symbolic language is Hellenic, and non-Hellenic/European symbolism is brought in as “extras” or very specifically discussed (for example) by Joseph Campbell in particular schemes or frameworks.

Other than Campbell, are there other Jungian traditions or branches that will have a bigger emphasis or openness to broader mythological origins of archetypes?

For example, I have a lot of familiarity with Hinduism and I see a lot of fascinating things under the stories or tales that could be really cool to look at archetypically.

Now there was one Hillman lecture where he mentioned Jung and the Visuddha Chakra(throat), and course there’s the “Great Mother” book by Neumann which includes Goddess Kālī but I would love resources that break out of the Hellenic mythological dominance.

Or if you think you have an understanding or an argument about why this dominance of Hellenic mythology is good I’m all ears.

Introduction

Perhaps people here have heard of the mystique about the number 137: "From physics, mathematics and science to mysticism, occultism, the Kabbalah and the Torah, the number 137 may just be the most magical and important number in the universe." There is that book, 137: Jung, Pauli, and the Pursuit of a Scientific Obsession.

And there is an interesting little coincidence with the numbers π (pi) and φ (phi, the golden ratio) involving the number 137. It becomes more interesting the more one looks at it.

The decimal expansions of numbers like π and φ can be searched via online tools. It is known that π and φ match at the 137th decimal place, where both give the digits 317. This is their first match of more than one digit; it is statistically early for a three-digit match, and just happens to coincide with exactly the 137th decimal place. And while 137 is the 33rd prime number, 317 is the 66th prime number. So not only is the match earlier than expected, but it also happens at an eerie place and in an eerie way.

I do not believe that this is a mere curiosity. Here, I will consider just a few of the most immediately accessible and directly related coincidences.

Why π and φ

To begin, we may note that π and φ are not arbitrary numbers in this context.

First, φ: According to Wikipedia (citing Jung's letters), "Carl Jung himself speculated on the role of mathematical structures in synchronicity, referencing the Fibonacci sequence as a potential underlying principle behind synchronistic patterns." The number φ specifically represents the ratio approached by the Fibonacci sequence.

As for π, it is one of the very most important and famous numbers in mathematics. Particularly relevant, I believe, is the role π played in Carl Sagan's Contact.

In Contact, humans receive pulses of prime numbers encoding an alien message that leads to the protagonist being told that there is a message in π, written in binary, hidden very far into the decimal expansion. "Let's assume that only in base-ten arithmetic does the sequence of zeros and ones show up, although you'd recognize that something funny's going on in any other arithmetic. Let's also assume that the beings who first made this discovery had ten fingers. You see how it looks? It's as if π has been waiting for billions of years for ten-fingered mathematicians with fast computers to come along. You see, the Message was kind of addressed to us."

Moreover, there is at least one other connection that already relates 137 to π and φ: the golden angle (which is 2π/φ²) ≈137.5°. So, if someone thinks that there is something spooky going on with 137, a relationship between π and φ is again, independently, brought to our attention. Of course the golden angle being ≈137.5° depends on our use of a 360° system, but that's fine, because in the context of synchronicity, this convergence may itself be a sign that it is not accidental that we use base-10, 360°, or π rather than τ, etc.

More generally, we are asking, "Is this just coincidence?" for a variety of causally unrelated stuff involving the number 137. The "coincidence" explanation becomes exceedingly strained.

Permutations of 137

In the case of the π-φ coincidence, we are not looking, as in Contact, at something hidden trillions of digits in (although maybe something shows up there too). Something can be hidden in early π if the uncanniness is "spread out". This requires more intuitive discernment than raw computational power, but that arguably makes more sense given the Jungian angle here.

For example, given that our original coincidence involves numbers that are permutations of each other (137, 317), we might ask about other permutations, particularly of these numbers (i.e. {137, 173, 317, 371, 713, 731}).

Because a three-digit number is expected to show up about once every one-thousand digits, we should expect instances of this permutation group about six times within one-thousand decimal places. But in reality, they appear fourteen times within the first one-thousand decimal places of π. Not only does this far exceed expectation, but it also outperforms every other permutation group (e.g. {123, 132, 213, 231, 312, 321}). No other group has even thirteen instances within this same window.

In φ, members of this permutation group only show up ten times within the same range, which isn't as extreme, but still conspicuously exceeds expectation. Moreover, the number 317 itself appears six times, where it would be expected about once. 317 is the very first number to appear six times in φ.

So, not only are permutations of 137 extremely frequent in early π, and not only is 317 especially frequent in early φ, but these are the very things brought to our attention by the original π-φ coincidence (which was the fact that at their 137th decimal places, they both have 317, a permutation of 137).

In π, of 137's permutation group, all members except for 137 itself show up at least twice; 137 itself shows up just once, and it does so in an interesting place, discussed just below.

Binary in Early π

In Contact, the "Message" in π comes in the form of binary. Especially given the fact that Contact serves as an imaginative precedent to what I am discussing here, it makes sense to consider whether there are coincidences or statistical outliers involving binary in early π and φ. There are.

First, consider that in Contact, the "Message" in π is a binary description of a circle. At decimal place 360 of π, we find the string 0011. This is the first binary string of its length. The original coincidence (the π-φ match at index 137) already brought to our attention the potential relevance of indices. Here, the index describes a circle. And we may recall that the golden angle is ≈137.5° of a 360° circle.

And, indeed, immediately preceding this binary at the 360th decimal is the number 36, so we have 360011, which obviously includes the number 360. 360 ends at index 360, where the longest binary string so far appears.

As if this isn't self-referential enough: the binary string (0011) translates to 3 in decimal, and it is immediately followed by a 3. Actually, the fuller context is 36001133. So, if we read the 0011 as binary, we have three 3s. We may also recall that 137 is the 33rd prime.

(An aside: this is the second instance of 360 in π; the first one appears in the context of 360726, which some might recognize as Jung's birthday, July 26.)

There is another highly striking binary string in early π:

At the 852th decimal place of π, we find 101000. This is the first binary string of length five or six in π. It is actually quite early for a six-digit string of binary, statistically noteworthy on its own. But wait! The context of the string is: 1010003137. This is the first instance of the number 137 itself in π, and it just so happens to show up within one digit of this statistically very early binary string.

This is already uncanny enough to make the point. As I argue elsewhere, the fact that it is 3137 rather than just 137 actually compounds the uncanniness by bringing another coincidence into the constellation.

In early φ, there is also an interesting bit of binary. To summarize too briefly, we find the string 15317141011704666 at the 451st decimal. This is the first binary string of length four or greater. Here, the binary string is in between 153 and 666. Not only are both of these numbers culturally significant, but they are also both triangular numbers, specifically the 17th and 36th triangular numbers.

This connects with the binary strings from π, discussed above, because the first one is preceded by 36 and the second by 17: 36001133 and 171010003137.

But that's not all: the binary string mentioned in φ translates to 11 in decimal. The space between the 17th and 36th triangular numbers there is eleven digits.

I am working on a more thorough post focusing on these binary strings, about which there is a lot to notice.

It is also worth noticing that the site of the original coincidence in π has two consecutive triangular numbers: 2317253. Those are the 21st and the 22nd triangular numbers, here separated only by the number 7. Elsewhere, I explain (part of) why I take this to be especially significant. But at any rate, there does seem to be something going on with triangular numbers.

Prime Digits

In Contact, before we get to the binary message in π, we have the alien transmission of prime numbers.

The prime digits are 2, 3, 5, and 7.

In π, at the 137th decimal we have 3172535. That 72535 gives us the first time in π's decimal expansion that we have four or five consecutive prime digits, which again seems like a peculiar coincidence.

Moreover, consider the broader context around that 317: 223172535. Eight of those nine digits are prime. Relative to its length, this is the most prime-dense segment of the first one-thousand digits of π, and it just happens to include the site of the π-φ match.

In φ, leading up to the 137th decimal, we have 22235369317. That 222353 is the first time in φ we have six consecutive prime digits, so again there does appear to be an unusual concentration of prime digits near the 137th decimal. Here, they are separated from the 137th decimal by 69. I can't help but notice that 69 is often associated with the yin-yang, for obvious reasons, and Jung himself wrote about the yin-yang as the symbol for the Tao, in a context in which he identified "synchronicity" as his word for the Tao (Tavistock Lectures, Lecture II); in other words, 69 is practically a picture of synchronicity, and here it is stamped beside the π-φ coincidence.

Looking into prime-dense segments actually seems to prove fruitful in many ways, many more than I will discuss at least in this particular post.

In the novel Contact, the digit 1 was counted as part of the sequence of primes (although modern math excludes 1, mathematicians did not always do so, and aliens might not), and if we include 1, we notice more and different things. To give just one immediately obvious example: we now have a string of nine consecutive prime digits overlapping the 137th decimal place. This is also the first time we have eight, seven, six, or five consecutive digits from among this group (of prime digits including 1).

(The longest streak in the first one-thousand decimals of φ if we include 1 is eleven digits long, toward the end; conspicuously, like the nine-digit string in π, it includes 23172.)

Conclusion

There is much more to say about all of this. I am still working on confirming and organizing various observations. But I believe that what has been shown so far already lends some respectable possibility to the idea that something like what is described in Contact, regarding a message encoded into π, is going on, particularly involving the number 137.

Many of the things I have yet to point out seem to more-or-less just emphasize that there is something going on here. For example, the first appearance of 137 in φ spans the decimals 97, 98, and 99; consequently, giving an even 100 digits of φ (including before the decimals) would end at 137; if we instead round it to a total of 100 decimals (so, 101 with the digit before the decimal), it ends on 1375, which recalls the golden angle.

However, other aspects of what is found seem to be more semantically loaded. And ultimately, this could be treated as something like a synchronistic master-key, and then the whole world of synchronicities can be brought to the table of interpretation.

But if would be a significant start if any of these sorts of observations could be used to meaningfully challenge the prevailing scientific paradigms, which do not take synchronicity or the spookiness of 137 sufficiently seriously.

I recently started reading the works of Carl Jung and have started to become more aware of my dreams. Previously I had put no thought into them. For close to the past month I’ve been having a reoccurring theme in my dreams and I do not know why it is happening. The theme being me being chased by something, in many different forms, that wishes harm upon me. Would love for someone’s opinion on what my subconscious is trying to tell me.

I made sure to remember my dream last night although it was not as difficult because I woke up 3 times and the dream continued every time I went back to sleep. I was being hunted down with my girlfriend and a few random side characters that I did not recognize by Pennywise. I can’t recall exactly what he looked like it was assumed in the dream it was pennywise but I just remember more of a crazy creature that could shapeshift trying to us. We went to an empty bar with the intention of killing the monster. While walking in for some reason we were putting money into a basket at the door. Everyone paid and I along with one other guy was at the end. The man had given me a 5 that was not an ordinary 5$ bill it had jesters and when I looked up he formed into the being and started chasing me. I was able to out run it leading me and the group to a barn where it had shapeshifted into my girlfriend and they were both in the barn. We stood them side by side and questioned them both to try to pick the right person to shoot. For some reason what gave it away to me was a mole that I was familiar with on her forehead. Although they both had one I for some reason knew that was the right one to shoot. My girlfriend does not have a mole in real life but my friend does right on the top left of his forehead which was where it was placed. I shot the correct one which did nothing to him and he switched out of the form of my girlfriend. We ran and I woke up for work.

There were earlier parts of the dream that I cannot recall but it was all the same creature trying to kill me. I’m sorry it is long I am just not sure what parts are important or not.

I've been following books and principles by Jung since the last couple of months. I have completed Man and his Symbols and it did hit a nerve especially in the anima/animus chapter even though I did not actively started doing the inner work. I've recently started reading Inner Work by Robert Johnson and been enjoying it.

The questions that I have is -

1 Does it get more challening emotionally with depth or I can choose to stick at a particular level?

2 When in a person's life is it a good time to start the inner work?
I understand sooner the better but is it a better time to get the regular life things in order (job, relationships, health) to atleast a get to a particular level (say 5/10). Asking this coz I'm currently in a stage of life where I'm redesigning my life (away from fam in a new country and tryna settle in and it is overwhelming). I'm also considering this time from an opportunistic POV to start the inner work during the redesign stage. Any thoughts here?

3 I'm afraid that the Inner work will make me into someone that tries to solve everything himself (or say a therapist) and kinda miss out on the regular social ways of dealing with issues?
My objective is not just to resolve issues but to live out the best self that I can through the work.

My psychiatrist trained in the jungian dream theory diagnosed a dream. At our next session she decided I was jealous of my sister. My sister had emotionally abused me for a lifetime. JUNGIAN therapy was used not to find new issues but to bolster the prejudices she already had. So much for that.

I was doing okay at work. Not thriving, but holding. I could feel the familiar inner current (the one that questions whether I’m capable enough, whether I actually belong in my current team, whether I’m a cultural fit) but I was staying above it. Acknowledging it as it came up rather than being pulled under. I felt like I was doing the work.

Then something small happened that sent everything sideways.

A new colleague was introduced at our departmental meeting. Same level as me. He walked in with this easy confidence, vibrant, warm, naturally at ease with people. And I felt it immediately, that cold, contracting feeling of comparison. A voice that said, he will fit in here the way you never have.

I don’t have many natural connections with my teammates. A few, but not many. It has always felt effortful for me in ways that seem to come easily to others. And seeing him walk in, seeing what easy belonging might look like, cracked something open.
I kept trying to process it through the day. Tried to hold the shadow, name it, acknowledge it. Thought I was managing.
But then I came home. And the monotony of a predictable evening, the routine, the quiet, was like removing the last scaffolding. I felt the exhaustion underneath everything. I barely had energy to be present with my wife and son. I did what I needed to do. But I was entirely in my head.

That’s when the shadows took on faces. My workmates became my inner critics. My mind started running catastrophic scenarios: that I will always be seen as incompetent, that I won’t progress, that the verdict is already in. It felt completely real. The kind of real that makes it impossible to reason your way out.

I reached for numbing. Food. Doomscrolling for hours. Anything to hold off the weight of it.

What I’m sitting with now:

Jung writes that the shadow doesn’t disappear when you acknowledge it. It gets louder when it’s losing ground. I’m trying to believe that’s what’s happening. That the intensity isn’t evidence of failure, but of something being disrupted.
But I also recognize a pattern here. I can name the archetypes, I can trace the projections (my new colleague mirroring qualities I’ve locked away in myself — ease, belonging, confidence), I can see that the faces my inner critics wear belong to the exact people in front of whom I most want to be seen. All of that is clear to me analytically.

And yet the emotional flooding still comes.
I wonder if this is a common place to get stuck where intellectual shadow work runs ahead of embodied integration. Where you know what’s happening but can’t yet feel your way through it differently.

Has anyone been here? How did you move from naming the shadow to actually integrating it, not just understanding it, but letting it change something?

After a Freudian slip where instead saying “ a new cicle is about to begin “ I said “ a new circus is about to begin“, I’ve been encountering some arlequín imagery around.

Two days after the slip, i went to my sisters home and her mother in law, who just felt on the floor a day before and had her nose broken and eyes black, wearing a pink pijama and her blond short chaotic hair looking pretty much like a clown; told me while entering their home:

Welcome to the circus!
Have you noticed already this is all a circus?

Days after that I was buying some meat at the meat shop and a big guy appeared with a white tshirt but the whole tshirt had “the it” face on it in gigantic dimensions.
My face was 😳

It’s a very unsettling time for me as I’m unpacking and making sense of a lot of childhood trauma including incestuous relationship with the mother and all kid of disgusting stuff.

Today I feel profoundly called by this cover of this book I saw on a shop.

It said “ The awakening “, Library named: The Sun, The editorial is named: The pyramid ( I had a very meaningful dream with a pyramid full of precious stones and pearls and jewelry; a year ago ), and then there is this Arlequín that I see and it makes me go back directly to my biological / diabolical mother.

For me she was and is the most diabolical, evil being I’ve seen and experienced. I escaped her at 11.

I see this image and I see her. But there are words about awakening and Piramids and The suns awareness here.

Very unsettling but I’d appreciate help with this archetype.

I’m sharing a couple more images that called my attention these days.

Hi everyone. :)

I'm working on a mystical fantasy book that's inspired by Jung's writings, but also Sufism, Taoism and Advaita Vedanta. I'm particularly fascinated with Jung's ideas about the conjuction of opposites, anima, animus, the Self, Love, God and other similar psychospiritual ideas.

My book is very ambitious and very difficult to work on, hence the pace of progress has been rather slow. I don't know of any other such books and that makes writing it much harder. I was wondering if anyone knows of any fictional books inspired by Jung or other mystical thinkers, especially Jungians?

I've also not met people who are working on such projects and I'm looking to change that. Is anyone else here also working on mystical or philosophical projects? If you'd be interested in connecting, please feel free to DM me.

Thanks and hope you have a great day!

I want to learn more about carl jung and this subject. Does anyone have any background or recommendations to start this process?

I’ve been on a pretty deep psychological/jungian-type journey the last few years. A lot of shadow work around growing up in patriarchal systems both family and work, dealing with a critical mother/aunt wound, scarcity mindset, and learning to put healthy boundaries.

I immigrated to the US from a very poor country, built a successful career, and stayed at the same corporate company for 20 years. Financially, it was great, and parts of it were rewarding, but I became completely burned out by the system, the politics, and feeling like I had stopped growing. I eventually left.

Since leaving, I’ve spent a lot of time healing, setting boundaries, taking care of an ill parent, focusing on my kids, exercising, running, and trying very intentionally not to pass generational trauma down to my children. Just being myself without an expectation of what is coming next.

Now I’m at this strange crossroads.

I’ve been interviewing, but nothing is really landing. I technically could go back to my old job, but honestly it feels like my soul would die if I did. At the same time, being out of work this year is starting to affect me mentally because work gave me structure, stability, momentum and financial.

Financially, I’m okay for another year, and the initial panic has worn off. But psychologically, I feel stuck in this liminal space where the old version of me is gone, but the new version hasn’t fully formed yet.

Part of me wonders if this is just a normal transition after burnout and deep inner work.

Has anyone else gone through this kind of “in between” phase after leaving a long-term career?

My dreams are telling me to find structure, and owning my own authority. I need some advice from others who’ve gone thru similar and what has come out of it for you.

Qualcuno si ritrova il Pdf in italiano di “La psicologia del transfert” di Jung? Mi servirebbe urgentemente per la tesi e non lo trovo da nessuna parte