James Hollis Quotes & Sayings

What I refuse to face within myself will meet me in the exterior world through you, not as you are, but as I have so construed you. — James Hollis

To leave the comforts of home, the mother world, one must have some place to go. Admittedly, the rites of passage of traditional cultures were to initiate the youth into a simpler society, a more homogenous culture than ours. As well, their interest lay not in the individuation of the person but in the integration of the unformed person into the collective definition of tribal masculinity. Still, take away such psychically charged images of identity, take away the wisdom of the elders, take away the community of men, and one has the modern world. — James Hollis

To experience some healing within yourself, and to contribute healing to the world, you are summoned to wade through the muck from time to time. — James Hollis

The capacity for growth depends on one's ability to internalize and to take personal responsibility. If we forever see our life as a problem caused by others, a problem to be "solved," then no change will occur. — James Hollis

The truth about intimate relationships is that they can never be any better than our relationship with ourselves. — James Hollis

When men feel the wound that cannot heal, they either bury themselves in woman's arms and ask her for healing, which she cannot provide, or they hide themselves in macho pride and enforced loneliness. — James Hollis

As children we listened to the sound of the sea still echoing in the shell we picked up by the shore. That ancestral roar links us to the great sea which surges within us as well. — James Hollis

Today, as we have seen, fascism and communism are discredited, but are replaced by a paraphilic consumer culture driven by fantasy, desperately in search of distractions and escalating sensations, and a fundamentalist culture wherein the rigors of a private journey are shunned in favor of an ideology that, at the expense of the paradoxes and complexities of truth, favors one-sided resolutions, black-and-white values, and a privileging of one's own complexes as the norm for others. — James Hollis

In short, the greatest gift of relationship proves to be that as the result of encountering each other, we are obliged to grow larger than we had planned. — James Hollis

The paradox of individuation is that we best serve intimate relationship by becoming sufficiently developed in ourselves that we do not need to feed off others. — James Hollis

Walnut Trees of Altenburg: The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of the earth and the galaxy of the stars, but that in this prison we can fashion images of ourselves sufficiently powerful to deny our nothingness.2 — James Hollis

One of the bridges between sexes, to be sure, is sex. But men, too often feeling deficient in discourse, place too much emphasis on intercourse. — James Hollis

The world is more magical, less predictable, more autonomous, less controllable, more varied, less simple, more infinite, less knowable, more wonderfully troubling than we could have imagined being able to tolerate when we were young. — James Hollis

Is not our chief neurosis - by which I mean our estrangement from nature - our desire to hold fast to what is forever transforming, to freeze the familiar, to submit motion to stasis, to solicit immortality through rigidity. — James Hollis

The purpose of therapy is not to remove suffering but to move through it to an enlarged consciousness that can sustain the polarity of painful opposites. — James Hollis

A neurosis is wherever we are allied against our true nature. — James Hollis

The truth is, all of life is a grand, blooming ambiguity. — James Hollis

In the second half of life, the questions become: 'Who, apart from the roles you play, are you? What does the soul ask of you? Do you have the wherewithal to shift course, to deconstruct your painfully achieved identity, risking failure, marginalization and loss of collective approval?' No small task. — James Hollis

Doubt is a profound and effective spiritual motivation. Without doubt, no truism is transcended, no new knowledge found, no expansion of the imagination possible. Doubt is unsettling to the ego and those who are drawn to ideologies that promise the dispelling of doubt by preferring certainties never grow. — James Hollis

A fear-driven spirituality will always diminish rather than enlarge. — James Hollis

Fundamentalism is a form of mental illness that seeks to repress anxiety, ambiguity, and ambivalence. The more mature the personality structure, the greater the capacity of the person, and the culture, to tolerate the anxiety, ambiguity, and ambivalence that are a necessary and unavoidable dimension of our lives. — James Hollis

The sons shaped their feet with the shoes of their fathers. To the plight of their mothers, the daughters surrendered their dreams." - "THE RIVER," LARRY D. THOMAS — James Hollis

The act of consciousness is central; otherwise we are overrun by the complexes. The hero in each of us is required to answer the call of individuation. We must turn away from the cacaphony of the outerworld to hear the inner voice. When we can dare to live its promptings, then we achieve personhood. We may become strangers to those who thought they knew us, but at least we are no longer strangers to ourselves. — James Hollis

The modern family is one in which the divergent values of our separate souls are supported, valued, encouraged. Diversity is not just tolerated, it is affirmed as the radical gift of relationship. Conflict is mediated with accepting love despite disagreement, and no one carries the assigned burden of becoming something other than what they are. — James Hollis

Though inland far we be, Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither. William Wordsworth, — James Hollis

There is some debate in professional circles about whether the so-called "midlife crisis" exists. — James Hollis

Death is only one way of dying; living partially, living fearfully, is our more common, daily collusion with death. — James Hollis

When one has let go of that great hidden agenda that drives humanity and its varied histories, then one can begin to encounter the immensity of one's own soul. If we are courageous enough to say, "Not this person, nor any other, can ultimately give me what I want; only I can," then we are free to celebrate a relationship for what it can give. — James Hollis

Jung has so eloquently written of this biblical admonition: Acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one's whole outlook on life. That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ - all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea the very fiend himself - that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved - what then?48 — James Hollis

The transient vacuities of our cultural icons - success, peace, happiness, and distraction - pale before the question of whether or not one experiences this life as meaningful. — James Hollis

We are all meaning-seeking, meaning creating creatures and when we experience the loss of meaning, we suffer. — James Hollis

How different the world would be if each parent could say to the child: "Who you are is terrific, all you are meant to be. And who you are, as you are, is loved by all of us. You have a source within, which is the soul, and it will express itself to you through what we call desire. Always respect the well-being of the other, but live your own journey, serve that desire, risk being that which wishes to enter the world through you, and you will always have our love, even if your path takes you away from us." Such persons would then have a powerful tool to enable them to change their lives when it was not working out for them. Such persons would be able to make difficult decisions, mindful always of the impact on others, but also determined to live the life intended by the gods who brought us here. — James Hollis

Learning to live with ambiguity is learning to live with how life really is, full of complexities and strange surprises..: — James Hollis

The search for fusion regularly gives rise to various symptoms. Our own psyche knows what is right for us, knows what is developmentally demanded. When we use the Other to avoid our own task, we may be able to fool ourselves for awhile, but the soul will not be mocked. It will express its protest in physical ailments, activated complexes and disturbing dreams. The soul wishes its fullest expression; it is here, as Rumi expressed it, 'for its own joy.'
Let's continue the fantasy of finding an Other willing to carry our individuation task for us. Well, in time, that Other would grow to resent us, even though he or she was a willing signatory to the silent contract. That resentment would leak into the relationship and corrode it. No one is angrier that someone doing 'the right thing' and secretly wishing for something else. — James Hollis

What would happen to our lives, our world, if the parent could unconditionally affirm the child, saying in so many words: You are precious to us; you will always have our love and support; you are here to be who you are; try never to hurt another, but never stop trying to become yourself as fully as you can; when you fall and fail, you are still loved by us and welcomed to us, but you are also here to leave us, and to go onward toward your own destiny without having to worry about pleasing us. — James Hollis

Surely the greatest tragedy for men in regard to the feminine principle is that their fear alienates them from their own anima, the principle of relatedness, feeling and connection to the life force. This alienation from self obliges alienation from other men as well. Often their only connection with each other comes through superficial talk about outer events, such as sports and politics. — James Hollis

How many of those who are insecure seek power over others as a compensation for inadequacy and wind up bringing consequences down upon their heads and those around them? How many hide out in their lives, resist the summons to show up, or live fugitive lives, jealous, projecting onto others, and then wonder why nothing ever really feels quite right. How many proffer compliance with the other, buying peace at the price of soul, and wind up with neither? — James Hollis

Third choice was to strike off toward some new projection - a new job, a better (different) relationship, a seductive ideology, or sometimes to drift into some unconscious "self-treatment plan" such as an addiction or an affair. — James Hollis

In moments of spiritual crisis we naturally fall back upon what worked for us, or seemed to work, heretofore. Sometimes this shows up through the reassertion of our old values in belligerent, testy ways. Regression of any kind is just such a return to old presumptions, often after they have been shown to be insufficient for the complexity of larger questions. The virtue of the old presumptions is that they once worked, or seemed to work, and therein lies if not certainty, then nostalgia for a previous, presumptive security. In our private lives, we frequently fall back upon our old roles. — James Hollis

To become a person does not necessarily mean to be well adjusted, well adapted, approved of by others. It means to become who you are. We are meant to become more eccentric, more peculiar, more odd. We are not meant just to fit in. We are here to be different. We are here to be the individual. — James Hollis

This is an example of what Jung called "the regressive restoration of the persona," namely, the re-identification with a former position, role, ideology because it offers a predictable content, security, and script. In the face of the new and uncertain, we often return to the old place, which is why we so often stop growing. (It has become clear to me, for example, that aging itself does not bring wisdom. It often brings regression to childishness, dependency, and bitterness over lost opportunities. — James Hollis

As the child once fantasized that its wishes governed the world, and the youth fantasized that heroism could manage to do it all, so the person in the second half of life is obliged to come to a more sober wisdom based on a humbled sense of personal limitations and the inscrutability of the world. — James Hollis

Men today cannot claim their identity via culture because they are obliged to find other uninitiated males as their models or succumb to the empty values of a materialistic society. Again, before healing may begin, men must acknowledge the reality of what lies within. Among those confusing emotions is a deep grief for the loss of the personal father as companion, model and support, and a deep hunger for the fathers as a source of wisdom, solace and inspiration. — James Hollis

David McKay, 1900. Wolfe, Thomas. Look Homeward, Angel. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1929. Yeats, William Butler. A Vision — James Hollis

We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide exempla for others. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being. As the gods intended, we are here to become more and more ourselves. — James Hollis

The goal of individuation is wholeness, as much as we can accomplish, not the triumph of the ego. — James Hollis

We serve the world by finding out what feeds us, and, having been fed, then share our gifts with others. — James Hollis

That of which we are not aware, owns us. — James Hollis

The only requisite to entry into the Middle Passage is to have discovered that one does not know who one is, that there are no rescuers, no Mommy or Daddy, and that one's fellow travelers will do well to survive themselves. — James Hollis

Anger is generally seen as an unwelcome presence in our midst, however natural it may be. Although each person, and each society, is charged with how anger is to be appropriately channeled, the denial of anger, or its continuous repression, is a deep source of our psychopathology and will invariably seek its expression in a less healthful fashion. — James Hollis

To be mindful of our fragile fate each day, in a non-morbid acknowledgment, helps us remember what is important in our life and what is not, what matters, really, and what does not. — James Hollis

(It has become clear to me, for example, that aging itself does not bring wisdom. It often brings regression to childishness, dependency, and bitterness over lost opportunities. Only those who are still intellectually, emotionally, spiritually growing inherit the richness of aging.) — James Hollis

Doubt is unsettling to the ego, and those who are drawn to ideologies that promise the dispelling of doubt by proffering certainties will never grow. In seeking certainty they are courting the death of the soul, whose nature is forever churning possibility, forever seeking the larger, forever riding the melting edge of certainty's glacier. — James Hollis

Our society has long treated men as machines, as bodies expendable in the name of progress or profit. Men have overruled their pain and soul's delight, taught to think of themselves as "mechanisms". Such an estrangement wounds very deeply; it has gone on so long and is so taken for granted that healing individuals, let alone a whole gender, is a dubious undertaking. But the beat goes on, the Saturnian shadow lives, the only game in town, and shame on the defector. The wounding is institutionalized and sanctified, and men unwittingly collude in their own crucifixion. — James Hollis

The "gift" of tragedy is not destruction, but humility — James Hollis

Fear of our own depths is the enemy. — James Hollis

If we are not willing to risk all, again, then we are precluded from intimacy. — James Hollis

Those who say that they know what kind of art they like, or what kind of god, or what kind of moral structure are saying that they like what kind of art, god, structure they know, that is that which makes them feel more comfortable. Being pried free of spiritual constraint is the gift doubt brings. The suppression of doubt ensures that we are left with a partial truth, a one-sided value, a prejudicial narrowing of the richness that life has to bring. — James Hollis

the task is not to find the object115 but to live the journey, with passion, and risk, and commitment, and danger. — James Hollis

In the end, we are only tiny frightened animals, doing our best to survive amid other tiny frightened animals. — James Hollis

Destiny commands ... and imposes a sacred obligation to show up in the face of one's desire for a normal, casual life ... there are other forces afoot of which consciousness has only the dimmest of understandings ... — James Hollis