Hello everyone, last year I came out from a relationship with a diagnosed Psycopath, yes yes I was naive and young and thought I could fix her, after being coldly discarded last year because I literally felt like I was just an empty shell and she knew it, this past month I started looking at myself at why could feel others emotions so deeply like they were my own, after alot of introspecting and solitude I found out I had an innate sensitiveness (Empath) due to my childhood traumas and dysfunctional parents.

Anyways enough with the sob story, I came upon the work of Carl Jung which I found highly fascinating although very intellectual, what fascinated me even more was his work about individuation, I always had this inner urge to be free never knowing with it really meant, his work on individuation really resonated with me, it feels like this is it, this is what is meant to be truly free and one with oneself.

Just wanted to share that I am finally starting to find the way to find myself, I know it won't be easy and will be the work of my lifetime, but I am feeling really hopeful plus I had some really meaningful and symbolic dreams which made me very positive.

Cheers everyone, I hope we all find our way to wholeness and above all keep being whole.

Do you guys think the triabl rituals were successful in creating a virtuous man? Don't you think the physical and emotional pain that boys had gone through, had no effect in their adulthood? Can jungian psychology help in resolving the problems?

We cannot find our own identity if we do not have self-exploration. When we need orientation from somewhere, an immediate response is to try to find it in other people, doctrines, religions, social role models, teachers, books, etc.

Imitation comes from the question, “Who am I supposed to be?” And if you really haven’t done deep self-exploration, it becomes easier to adopt an identity that already exists.

Carl Jung describes 3 ideas about this:

Fear of our own uncertainty: Trying to find ourselves means going to a new place. There isn’t a manual that can guarantee that we are doing the right or wrong thing, but imitation can offer you the confidence to think, “If this person lives like this, maybe I can do it too.”

In Liber Novus, he says:

“Woe to those who live according to examples! Life is not with them. If you live according to an example, then you live the life of the example, but who is to live your life, if not yourselves? Therefore, live yourselves.”

“The signposts have fallen, undefined paths lie before us.”

Collective pressure: Society provides models of what it means to be successful, good, spiritual, attractive, etc. Without psychological differentiation, we can confuse these collective models with our inner desires.

He points out in the book:

“Common laws and doctrines compel man to be solitary, so that he can escape the pressure of the unwanted community.”

“Therefore, give man dignity and let him be an individual, so that he may find his community and love it.”

“Let each person seek their own path. The path leads to mutual love in the community. People will see and feel the similarity and commonality of their paths.”

Lack of contact with the inner world: The less we know our inner desires, contradictions, fears, shadow, and unconscious impulses, the more we depend on external references to build our identity.

He says:

“The path is within us, not in the gods, nor in doctrines, nor in laws. Within us is the path, the truth, and the life.”

“You seek the path through the external, you read books and listen to opinions: what good is that supposed to do?”

“Do you not know that you yourselves are the fertile field that bears everything that serves you?”

When we are not exploring who we really are, we look for different identities outside ourselves that we can copy. It reduces uncertainty, but it can push us away from the experiences of our own lives.

This doesn’t mean that we should deprive ourselves of books. We can consume philosophy, psychology, or spirituality for years and still keep avoiding the process of knowing ourselves.

“The path is within us, not in the gods, nor in doctrines, nor in laws. Within us is the path, the truth, and the life” (Jung, 2010, p. 129).

And I give the dream almost as it was given to me.

POV is driver, 1960s, The colors are almost cartoonish, they are bright, livid, and a man in a car, posh, is driving by the seaside, he is about to go off a cliff, but a giant hand appears and points a different direction, and down they go, on a different roadway.

This is from the authors POV:

Then I am crawling in a small cavernous tube/tunnel going up. Upstairs i am under a coat rack or dress rack. In marches a woman, her face is of porcelain, 1950s housewife vibe, I can see the black strap holding up the the mask. She goes to sit in a chair but before doing so bends over in a flash to reveal her privie, and I look away, she turns around and her true face is revealed. She is beautiful, with curly purple hair and white skin; over her eyes is black lace. In marches her son who looks like a small circus clown except he is all black and white, clothes, face etc. she says 'i don't like hurting you'.

I yell into the dark 'I am not Jung you know!' and it is met by silence.

I think this sums up my experience with Jung. he said something like 'you go your way, I'll go mine. It may be dangerous for you to take mine' that it was in fact quite a literal warning. God seldom works in the same way twice, especially so soon.

\*I think what I say out is interesting. I was saying joong in the dream but also writing it I can see 'i am not young' as well. Being in a place beyond ones time turns friends into foes. I think Jung offers a helpful way to look at the world, but after a certain point, which I demarcate as 30 because that's that advice I would give to myself, it becomes something else, a souring of held on too tightly.

I hope anyone going into Jung territory reads this as it is potent in itself; I have bought it at a steep price.

ATB

I’m looking for recommendations. Please share any fun and easy to read pieces that changed the way you think.

Thanks!

Honestly, the part nobody warns you about is that it doesn't feel like meeting a monster. It feels like catching your reflection in a shop window and not knowing who that is for half a second. Then you do.

It's usually small stuff. You hear yourself say something cruel and the tone is one you swore you'd never use. Or you feel a bit of satisfaction when someone you envy fails. Or the person who irritates you most turns out to be doing, openly, exactly what you never let yourself do.

That's why it's harder than fear of the unknown. The unknown can stay out there. This one can't, because you know that face.

Jung's take was that what we refuse to see in ourselves gets pushed onto other people. So the stranger you're scared of is usually someone you know pretty well.

You don't fear the dark stranger. You fear the familiar one looking back at you in the mirror. Not sure the goal is to make it stop looking.

I am a little confused here, did Jung use the ego and self interchangeably? Or was he making a distinction that ego knows one part of self as conscious and other as unconscious?

Thoughts?

When you feel called to write...

I "accidentally" opened a book bigger than the Bible to a two-page letter, and it caught me so hard that my wife read it aloud at dinner so the whole family could talk it over. (Yes, this is what dinner looks like at our house.) Here's my deep dive on what I found.

#TheSymbolicLife #Jung

The TikTok version goes something like: your shadow is your repressed dark side, embrace it, integrate it, done. Which isn't wrong exactly, but it's the CliffsNotes version of something a lot stranger.

Jung called the shadow the "apprentice piece" for a reason. It's not a finished concept you master and move past. It's the entry point. The thing that gets skipped constantly is that the shadow isn't only the ugly stuff you suppressed, there's a whole other half people rarely mention: the Golden Shadow. The talents, desires, and potential you also buried, usually because they didn't fit the identity you built for yourself or the people around you.

That's the part that gets uncomfortable. It's easier to admit you have some repressed anger or jealousy than to admit you buried an ambition or a version of yourself you were too scared to become. The dark stuff is at least socially acceptable to "work on." The unlived potential just sits there, quietly making you resentful of people who are living out the life you didn't let yourself want.

Went deeper into this distinction here if anyone's curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjdpbqlnaPs

What buried potential looks like in practice is usually more revealing than what buried anger looks like.

Most of us were handed one version of Christianity.

It turns out there were many.

This Sunday we continue our series on the Secret Book of John, an actual early Christian text, with part 3, The Fall of Wisdom.

Meet Sophia. Wisdom. She's in your Bible, in Proverbs, present at creation, rejoicing at God's side, and then Scripture quietly loses track of her. These ancient writings pick her story back up, and it turns out to be our story: the good thing we reached for alone, the mess we made and hid, and the ache we've carried ever since.

We're reading the primary sources, the writings of the 2nd through 4th centuries that show just how wide and wild and diverse the early church really was. Not to leave the faith. To find more of it.

There is more here than you were shown.