Therefore, I do not view the self as an improvement project that begins with incompletion and evolves towards completion. The chaos does not need to be ordered. The entropy does not need to be reduced. The demons do not need to be tamed. The jagged edges don’t need to be smoothed out.
Tag: individuation
Later on, life forces us to make one-sided differentiations. But that is why we get lost to ourselves and have to learn, again, to find ourselves. When you are whole, you have discovered yourself once again, and you know what you have been all the time.
— Carl Jung
The whole social structure—which is to be competitive, aggressive, comparing oneself with another, accepting an ideology, a belief, and so on—is based on conflict, not only within oneself but also outwardly…
The bold emphasis above is mine. Reading the original article this phrase leapt out at me.
I find it difficult to articulate just how profound and transformative the shift from inner and outer conflict to inner and outer wholeness can be.
I’m no expert in these matters but, as a lay reader, I have long sensed a commonality between spiritual non-duality and Jung’s individuation.
I have a meditative/ contemplative practice and also had periods of psychotherapy. In spite of coming from different directions, for me at least, they converge on the same point – the recognition of and freedom from one’s own mind.
As my therapist once said as I was trying in vain for something to say to him: ‘If there’s no problem, there’s no problem.’
When the duality of subject and object dissolves conflict of any kind is impossible. As has been articulated for thousands of years in myriad different ways – whatever this is, is impossible to say, but it isn’t two.
There is only one way and that is your way; there is only one salvation and that is your salvation. Why are you looking around for help? Do you believe that help will come from outside? What is to come is created in you and from you. Hence look into yourself. Do not compare, do not measure. No other way is really yours. All other ways deceive and tempt you. You must fulfill the way that is in you.
– Carl Jung, The Red Book
What’s here now? 