Rona Musings C. G. Jung

“There’s no coming to consciousness without pain.”

― Carl Gustav Jung

Whenever I am feeling particularly dark, I always circle back to Jung. To me, he was the master of mastering darkness of the soul. The night. The darkness within.

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

― Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy

I have been examining my darkness to make it conscious.

Somehow when the darkness is brought up and out, acknowledged, embraced, it no longer seems as ominous as before.

“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.”

― Carl Gustav Jung

I try to find meaning in my darkness. My secrets. My internal struggles.

“We cannot change anything unless we accept it.”
― Carl Gustav Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

I do not want to repeat past mistakes, but live the remainder of my days as my best life.

“No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”

― Carl Jung

My roots are based in the hell I have been through. I have rattled the gates of hell and I am not afraid.

“Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too. Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life…If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature…Be glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid becoming its victim. Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.”

― C.G. Jung, The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition

Recognize, admit, welcome, accept, rinse, and repeat.

“There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”

― Carl Gustav Jung

I know happy, am living in sad darkness. To find balance between the two is my goal.

“The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.”

― Carl Jung

Isn’t it sad that we tend to go inward to lose ego when life is on the declining side instead of the side of life when we are in our prime?

“The sad truth is that man’s real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites – day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil. We are not even sure that one will prevail against the other, that good will overcome evil, or joy defeat pain. Life is a battleground. It always has been and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end.”

― C.G. Jung

“Real liberation comes not from glossing over or repressing painful states of feeling, but only from experiencing them to the full.”

― C.G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

I will feel every feeling, think every thought, embrace the darkness, and the light. Which will win? I do not know. But I will endeavor to be liberated.

But there is hope:

“A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.”

― Carl Jung

I shouldn’t be terrorizing or disappointing anyone anytime soon…

XO Lisa