As a very young woman, Karen was diagnosed with a serious form of cancer. She describes in graphic terms how psychologically isolating that experience was for her.
Most of my friends were worrying about exams at school while I was paralyzed with fear that my next CT scan would light up with cancer. We couldn’t relate.
When Others Have No Idea
What a profoundly difficult experience for someone to encounter. Yet, there are many people who have experiences of this kind, which make that person aware of aspects of life of which many other people have no idea. An illness, yes, or a child born with a disability, a parent with an addiction, a major economic setback or family bankruptcy in an affluent community — the list is endless. There are many, many different types of experiences that can change a person’s consciousness. The problem can be that, when we have those experiences, especially if they involve deep pain or insight, it may make it very difficult for others to connect or understand.
The Fundamental Need to Reach Out and Connect
When someone is at a point like this, it can be essential for that person to connect with someone who sincerely strives to understand, and who listensmost carefully to his or her story, in all its uniqueness. Oftentimes, we also need to hear ourselves talk about such experiences, with a receptive witness, to get beyond aloneness. This is because we truly need to know that our experience, while uniquely ours, is something human, something that others can relate to, understand and appreciate. Entering into real psychotherapy can bring this dimension of reality and acknowledgement to our experience, connecting us powerfully to the entire human race, while leaving us standing in our unique human dignity. That’s the power of depth psychotherapy.
I welcome your inquiries and comments.
Wishing you deep and fundamental human connection on your journey to wholeness,
Jungian psychotherapy tends not to talk much about “the typical person”. However, someone I respect a lot recently sent me a link to a very clever video on what humans have and do not have in common. It’s produced by the National Geographic Society, and entitled “7 Billion: Are You Typical?” It’s a very well put-together, engaging video about “the world’s most typical person”:
Typical
The concept of “the world’s most typical person” invites some really careful thinking. All of us seem inclined to compare ourselves to the “typical person”. It seems to me that there are some interesting ways in which we do this. I think we both look for the ways in which we are like such a typical person, and the ways in which we are unlike him or her. We often do want to establish what we have in common with such a person. We want to feel some bond of shared humanity. But we also want to find ways in which we are individuals.
How Do You Compare?
How do you compare to the “most typical person” in this video? He is a 28 year old Han Chinese male. Perhaps you feel, as I do, that “The most typical person in the world is not like me, in many respects.” But are there some deeper ways in which you and this “typical person” are alike? Put more basically, what is it that gives you your particular identity? What makes any of us unique individuals? I think it’s something beyond whatever categories or traits are compared. There’s a kind of mystery in that.
It’s All There, In Us
What makes us “atypical”, or unique? There are many, many things, when we reflect.
It would be a big mistake to see the 9 million “most typical” humans referred to in the film as all “the same”. Every one of them will have a myriad of unique personal factors. For instance: different family of origin; different socio-economic background; different genetic make-up; and, different life history. These are just four of a huge array of factors that make a person the complex, unrepeatable event that they are.
Questions for You, as a “Typical Atypical” Individual
What makes you the unique human that you are?
What do you feel are the key things about you that shape your particular identity?
What are the groups of people with whom you feel a common human link?
Are there things that you feel you have in common with all human beings?
What are the mysteries that you experience in yourself? The things that form part of your identity that you maybe can’t fully understand or explain?
Beyond Categories, There is the Mystery That We Are
This last thing, the exploration of the mystery of the self, is the special realm of psychotherapy and depth psychology. For many, opening up the unexplored territory in the self, and living it out, is essential to having a meaningful life. For many, as life progresses, this journey takes on more and more importance. For such individuals, entering something like Jungian analysis may be essential.
May your journey to wholeness connect you meaningfully to others, but above all, to your unique self, Brian Collinson, Psychotherapist & Jungian Analyst
Jungian psychotherapy and Jungian analysis put a high value on the uniqueness of the individual, and on the treasure that is the inmost Self. Jungians see symbolic reflection of the motif of the Self as hidden treasure in many texts from the world’s artistic, religious, spiritual and philosophical traditions. For instance, in the Gospel of Matthew, and also in the gnostic Gospel of Thomas, there is the famous parable comparing the “kingdom of Heaven” to a hidden treasure. A Jungian psychological interpretation of this saying would portray the “kingdom of Heaven” as, broadly speaking, a symbol of the Self:
‘The kingdom of Heaven is like treasure hidden in a field
which someone has found; He hides it again,
goes off in his joy, sells everything he owns and buys the field.
Matthew 13:44, The New Jerusalem Bible
The motif of the Self as hidden treasure also permeates alchemy, that esoteric pre-scientific approach to matter and the world, in which Jung took such an interest in the later part of his life. The goal that the alchemists sought was not to create ordinary gold from lead, but to create something called “the philosophers’ stone”, an absolutely incorruptible and indestructible substance.
Jung acknowledges that, from a scientific point of view, the way the alchemists went after this goal made no sense, but what gripped him was the underlying symbolism. Jung saw in the “philosophers’s stone” a potent symbol of the Self, in this case, hidden in matter and awaiting discovery, a treasure guarded in secrecy by the alchemists. Jung believed that some of the later alchemists such as Gerhard Dorn came to realize that what they were seeking in their alchemical work was not a physical, but a psychological reality, and that it was that reality that the symbol of the philosphers’ stone or “son of the philosophers” as it was sometimes called was pointing.
The Core of the Self
At the base of all this symbolization there lies a profound and precious truth about human existence. It is a truth about the nature of the human self. At the core of each of us, there is that element in us, an awareness, that is unique and precious, that defines what we most fundamentally are. Sometimes that is represented symbollically as a hidden treasure, sometimes as a gemstone, sometimes in a variety of other ways.
This is the core of ourselves, symbollically represented. And there is a bit of a paradox about its nature. Certainly, symbollically, it is often presented as something that is so precious because it is incorruptible, even indestructible. Yet, there is a danger concerning the self to which symbol and myth point. It seems that it is possible for us to lose this treasure, to have it taken away. Somehow it needs to be guarded and treated with vigilance — like the individual in the parable who joyfully finds the treasure, but then hides it carefully again, until such time as he can go and buy the land in which it’s buried.
Self Protection, Self Possession
This issue of the core of the self, protecting it and keeping it, is one that I meet with on a very regular basis in psychotherapy practice. It is something with which, in one way or another, very many people. It is a sad truth that very many people have learned, one way or another, and very often early in life, that their self — their true uniqueness — can be stolen or devalued by others
Sometimes, people learn this lesson as a result of the guilting, shame or ridicule of those who are close to them. Sometimes what happens really does look like a theft of the self: for instance, a young person will get the message very directly that a parent or other significant person cannot tolerate or deal with who the young person really is, and so that person (often unconsciously) manufactures a false self tp placate the other. Sometimes a person will give themselves whole-heartedly in relationships — and then find her- or himself deeply betrayed.
Learning to Hide the Self Away
As a consequence, these people learn — sometimes unbelievably well — that the true self has to be hidden away, that they cannot dare reveal who they really are to the people closest to them. It is then very easy for this lesson to get generalized out to take in the whole world. It can be come a reflex to feel that nobody wants me, or wants to know who I really am. Then the only way I get through life is to “keep my head down”, in despair, and just try and keep my joys, my needs — anything at all about me — from getting noticed, and that any encounter of another with me will only result in guilt, rejection and shame.
As is very often the case, it seems to me, when you are looking for someone to express some aspect of modern consciousness, you very often cannot do better than the Beatles. Here they are, singing a song that is profoundly “on the money” about the need to hide the true self — “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away“.
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Getting the Self Back
For such an individual, getting the self back, and spontaneously living out of it, is a key priority. The reason for that is that, without that sense of acting and reacting out of our actual self, our life simply doesn’t feel real to us.
Psychotherapy with the right therapist may be an essential part of this self-recovery. An effective psychotherapeutic approach will allow you to get at the deeper reasons for hiding the self. Many of those reasons may reside in the unconscious, and it may be that only as a person uses the therapy as a “laboratory” for exploring him- or herself, that they can begin to develop a sense and a comfort for what it is to live out of the self.
Most people at one time or another have had to wrestle with the feeling that who and what they are is not acceptable to others. Has that feeling ever been a part of your experience? If you would be willing to share your experiences, either in a comment or an email, I would welcome the opportunity to share and dialogue with you.
Wishing you a fuller and fuller encounter with your deepest treasure, the Self, as you move forward on your personal journey to wholeness,
Brian Collinson, Psychotherapist & Jungian Analyst
1-905-337-3946
PHOTO CREDIT: Rembrandt “Parable of the hidden treasure” [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Depth psychotherapy such as Jungian analysis knows that it’s not at all uncommon for the psyche to be particularly active with dreams at the end of the year, and at the beginning of a New Year. Years are divisions of time which are artificially and, to some extent, arbitrarily created by humans. Still they form important divisions in time, that the unconscious often seems to recognize in some form or other. Individuals can sometimes have astonishing dreams at this time, or other experiences which show that the inner depths of the person are active, as we look forward into the open New Year, which waits like a newly painted room for each of us to fill it with our lives.
I think most of us find ourselves thinking about the year, and in a broader way, about our lives, at this time of year. I certainly find myself thinking about what’s really important in my own life, what really matters to me as I move forward into the rest of my life.
Finite and Precious
Now that I’ve reached a certain age, each passing milestone, like the successive New Years, is a reminder that life is finite, and that it is precious, SUch times are a confrontation with questions about what is truly meaningful in my life, and about the nature of my true identity. As I think back over the year, and over all my years, I find myself asking, “Am I more aware of myself than I was? Who am I, in the light of what I’ve experienced now?”
The Archetype of Renewal
However, there is even more than this. As Stephenson Bond has shown in his book The Archetype of Renewal, the New Year’s season is deeply associated with the the archetypal theme of renewal, expressed through the mythological association of the New Year with the death and renewal of the King in traditions such as that of ancient Babylon. As individuals, at the New Year are confronted with the problem of the death and renewal of our own conscious attitude, with the very deep level question of “What is meaningful for me now?” and “On what foundation can I base my life, as I move forward into it?”
Toward An Individual Foundation
There was a time when the answers to these questions were ready-made for many in our culture. In our time, for many — and I certainly include myself in this number — pre-made answers of the kind afforded by organized religion or other social institutions will not suffice. I need my own connection to realities that will sustain me through the journey of the rest of my life. Often this individual foundation is only found through depth psychotherapy or Jungian analysis. It’s always found through in-depth confrontation and exploration of the self. As Jung himself put it:
All coercion ultimately proves to be nothing but an obstacle to the highest and most decisive experience of all, which is to be alone with [one’s] own self. The patient must be thus alone if he is to find out what supports [one] when [one] can no longer support [oneself]. Only this experience can give [one] an indestructible foundation…. The way to the goal seems chaotic and interminable at first, and only gradually do the signs increase that it is leading anywhere.
C. G. Jung, Collected Works 12, Psychology and Alchemy , paras. 32-33
What Is the New Year Bringing to You?
Have you had a dream this New Year’s? Or another experience in which you really encountered yourself or the unconscious? I’d be very interested in your experience and would really welcome your comments, either below, or via confidential email.
Wishing you a deep and lasting foundation on your personal journey to wholeness, and a very happy, prosperous and soulful New Year.
Brian Collinson, Psychotherapist & Jungian Analyst
Does Jungian psychotherapy with its emphasis on the Self have anything to do with job search? I emphatically believe that it does. I recently came upon the following remark online. It seems to me that it is pretty representative of a whole approach to searching for work within our society at the present time:
“A job search is a sales & marketing exercise with you as the product.
Are you wrapped to seduce a decision maker?”
Frankly, I find this kind of remark offensive. Now, clearly, there’s a huge self-marketing component to finding a job. But is that all that a job search is, a “Sales and marketing exercise”? And is that all that we can hope for, to be “wrapped to seduce a decision maker”? Certainly, I think if I were a woman, I would find such a suggestion to be blatently demeaning and repulsive. (Actually, I do anyway.)
Does Job Search Mean Being a Chameleon?
If all that we can expect for and hope for from a job search is to fit ourselves, chameleon-like, to the expectations of some decision-maker who has all the power and choice, when we have none — then God help us. This seems to me like nothing so much as a working life that is trapped within the expectations of the false self. A life that doesn’t allow for what a Jungian psychotherapy would call individuation. Surely there must be a possible way to pursue a job search that has more connection with soul!
Job Search and Depth in the Self
The issue of job search actually takes us right inside some deep inner questions, if we let it. If we are open, it will lead us to ask questions like: “What is it that I really, most deeply, want to do?”; “What is most meaningful to me?”; and, “What is my vocation?”. To even begin to answer those questions, a person must start to get to know themselves. In other words, a job search is not just a job search. Every time we encounter job search, if we’re to find something that’s going to work for us, it must necessarily turn into Self search. To find what we need to know about ourselves, to encounter those dimensions of the Self that we need to take into account in a job search, it may well be that the journey leads us into psychotherapy, if we are truly to come to individual, rather than canned, answers. This is especially true at mid-life or later.
Is the Issue of Career or Vocation Prominent in Your Life at this Time? Or, Can You Recall a Time When it Was?
Sooner or later the question “What should I be doing with my life?” comes to occupy a prominent place in our lives. Perhaps it will do so numerous times over the course of a lifetime — this is not uncommon. Have you ever had an experience where job search turned into self or soul search? Have you ever been transformed by the experience of looking for a job, or just faced with very deep questions as a result? If you’ve had this kind of experience, and you were willing to comment below or send me a confidential email, I’d be thrilled to read it.
Wishing you a sense of meaning and vocation on your personal journey to wholeness,
Brian Collinson, Psychotherapist & Jungian Analyst
The Toronto Globe and Mail has been running a series of articles on “Work Life Balance”. There is one of these articles that I found myself reacting to rather strongly. The article is entitled “Work-Life Balance: Why Your Boss Should Care” . In particular, the article contains the following paragraph:
“Our inability to balance our jobs and our home life is costing corporate Canada as much as $10-billion a year in rising absenteeism, lost output, lower productivity, missed deadlines and grumpy customers, according to estimates by business professors Linda Duxbury of Carleton University and Christopher Higgins of the University of Western Ontario.”
Now, in fairness to this article, it is part of a series of articles that the Globe has been running, that all have somewhat different perspectives on work-life balance. It is also true that this article states that it focuses on the management perspective in a very up-front way. Nonetheless, I feel that, from the perspective of a therapist, this article loses sight of a number of important things.
Work Life Balance is an Individual Thing
First, it’s not the job of corporations to sort out the individual’s work-life balance issues, nor is it within the corporation’s competence. The task of a corporation is to make money for its shareholders, plain and simple. The large corporation, as much as the state, is an entity composed of masses of human beings. However, the matter of work-life balance is a matter that is important to individuals, and it is only on that individual level that the question of the right relationship of life and work can be solved.
Work Life Balance is Not Fundamentally an Economic Issue
Second, the study emphasizes the cost to employers of distorted work-life balance. However, it doesn’t appear that any corresponding analysis was done of the financial benefits to corporate Canada of people working hours that are weighted on the heavy end. If that calculation were done, and if it were established that there was a net financial benefit to corporate Canada in encouraging overwork, would that conclude the matter, making overwork a good thing? Unquestionably not. Otherwise, you have reduced the value of the individual’s life purely to their economic role.
Work-life issues are not properly analyzed in terms of financial cost-benefit or markets. They are only properly analyzed in terms of individual decisions, and in terms of what the individual values in his or her life.
Individuals Have to Take Responsibility for Their Own Lives
Individuals can’t offload their responsibility to find a personal solution to these issues to any corporation or other employer — or to any other collective entity. Individuals have to really take hold of this issue, take personal responsibility for it, and examinine it deeply in the light of their own deepest values. From the point of view of the therapist or Jungian analyst, the answers to those life questions are going to be fundamentally tied up with the individual’s understanding of his or her own personal identity, and with the story that the individual tells him or herself about her or his life — his or her own personal myth.
A Question of Identity
And that requires that individuals distinguish their work identity and social self — the roles they play, what Jung would call the persona — from their true identity, which rests upon the things that the individual most fundamentally values. The journey of psychotherapy is to go in search of what that true identity is, even when it may conflict in some ways with the standards and norms of society and family.
How Does This Affect You?
Are you wrestling with issues around balancing work and life? Have you faced particular times when this issue has come to the fore for you, and required decision, discernment or endurance? I would really welcome any of your comments or life stories, either as comments on this post or as confidential emails. I would really appreciate your thoughts and reflections.
Brian Collinson, Psychotherapist & Jungian Analyst
This is the third in my series of posts about resilience, and its role in the work of psychotherapy. In my last post, I wrote about personal experiences through which I was changed, and, through which the issue of resilience really came home to roost in my life. In this post, I would like to try and say something about the places in which I believe I really found some sources of resilience. As I stressed before, this is not to say that what I will describe is exactly “the answer”, for anyone other than me. The “answers” that any of us find are of necessity very individual, and if what I describe points anyone to move any further on their own individual path to being grounded in their own being, then I think that is all that I can hope to do.
Fortunately, Things Became Sufficiently Painful
When I left off my story, in my late 20s and early 30s, I was in the midst of making a lot of rash decisions, and taking a lot of risks. My anger, pain and despair were very near the surface, and I was volatile in the extreme. I do not believe that I was very easy on the people who were nearest to me at that time, and I was certainly “acting out” in some nasty ways. Fortunately, in my late 20s, things became painful and difficult enough that I realized that I needed to reach out for some highly skilled help, and I got into therapy with someone who was very highly skilled, and who got what was at stake. This was the first of a group of very good therapists, all of whom had a psychodynamic orientation, to whom I owe a very great debt, perhaps even my life.
Down Into Me
Through my 30s, much of my therapeutic work was involved with getting me out of my head, and down into my body and my emotions. A lot of the work focussed on things that had occurred in my earlier life. They also helped me to understand what it is to feel your own life, in every sense of the word. To be in your body. To really feel your own emotions. The work evolved in a more and more symbolic direction, and I was fortunate to have therapists, in particular Jungian analysts, who were able to help me come to some deep insights into my own being from my own patterns of behaviour, and from my dreams. They helped me greatly with the process of uncovering my own symbols, and my own personal myth. They knew how to work with the symbols that emerged from my dreams, and could help me to see how they eloquently express the reality of my particular selfhood and life. This is something very hard to espress in an intellectual way, but when it happens, it’s something you know.
Above All, They Really Listened
However, if I had to point to one single characteristic of this small group of therapists that helped me more than any other, it was this: they really, really knew how to listen. And in addition, they really, really knew how to ask questions. As I moved through my therapy, this intent listening — this belief of theirs that they had never heard my story from anyone before, and would never hear it from anyone again — really helped me to grasp the real nature of my own story, and to come to an ever better understanding of who and what I really am.
Acceptance
My therapeutic journey has enabled me to find a kind of acceptance of my life. An ability to feel that this life, as outwardly ordinary and unheroic as it may be, is unique, and that it is truly mine. To feel that, even in my suffering, there is a kind of rightness to my life, a rightness to being here in this time and this way, and to being alive. That my life is my life, me… and that I can accept that, and welcome it. For me, this means feeling rooted in my life, much more solid in it, than I have ever felt. Insofar as I can make any meaningful sense of psychologists’ use of the word “resilience”, this is it.
How Does All This Seem to You?
Are these experiences to which you can relate? I would really welcome any comments that you might have. Are reslience and feeling at home in your life things which concern you? If so, I would really welcome hearing from you.
Wishing you all good things on your journey to wholeness, and to your self,
Here is a video which I re-tweeted recently on Twitter. I decided to post it on my blog because I think that it gives a particularly revealing portrait of the psychiatrist CG Jung in his latter years. The video is taken from “Face to Face”, an excellent interview program hosted by John Freeman of the BBC in 1959.
In this interview, with the stage artfully set by Freeman, Jung describes something remarkable that he would later write about in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections . This was a sudden experience that came upon him in his 11th year, when he suddenly came to a simple, but remarkable awareness: “I exist“.
…and then I found that I had been in a mist, and I stepped out of it, and I knew that Iam. I am what I am.… Before I had been in a mist, not knowing to differentiate myself from things… As far as I can tell, nothing had happened beforehand that would explain this sudden coming to consciousness….
I find this remarkable. In relating this incident, Jung describes a very fateful moment in his life. Jung would spend the rest of his life, effectively caught up in the mysteries of consciousness, self-awareness and individual identity.
There is a great mystery here, something about which we take so much for granted. What is it to exist, as a person, as an “I”? What is it to be aware? Just who is this I, who is aware, and how is this I to relate to the rest of the universe, both externally, and in our boundless inner being?
It seems to me that this little snip of video, a fine example of the art of the interviewer, does exactly what a portrait should do. It opens up a window on the mystery and intricacy of the person portrayed. And it leads us on, to reflect on the nature of the unique mystery that is our own unique identity.
I’d welcome your comments and reflections on either Carl Jung or the whole subject of being aware of our own existence. Did you ever have a similar moment yourself, when you were suddenly aware that “I exist”?
Good wishes to all of you on your own personal journey to wholeness,
What is your attitude towards doing therapy? Is it something that you would ever consider? Is it something only for severely damaged people, or “sick” people? Or is it something that may be of importance for ordinary, everyday people? In recent years, many peoples’ attitudes have changed — a lot!
There was a time, not so many years ago, when going to a psychotherapist would have been a major stigma. If people knew that someone was going to see a “shrink”, to use that term, there would have been an attitude toward the individual which would have been positively demeaning. There would have been a whole series of conclusions drawn — many of them not very savoury — about the individual’s competency, maturity, “well-adjustedness”, and possibly even his or her sanity.
But now times have changed, and attitudes have changed with them. While you can certainly still find many people whose attitudes towards those who go to therapy would be miscoloured by prejudices and stereotypes, for most this is not the case. A lot of people are coming to realize that therapy — of the right type — can lead to a much more complete and fulfilling life, for people in general who are struggling with some of the normal processes of what Jungians call individuation, or the journey to wholeness.
I believe that this is particularly true of that form of therapy known as Jungian analysis. One of the characteristics of Jungian analysis is a fundamental affirmation of the uniqueness of each individual, in combination with the belief that each individual is on a unique journey to become the whole person that they carry as a latent potential within themselves. From a Jungian perspective, a great many people, perhaps the majority, could benefit from a thorough experience in therapy to help them clear away the roadblocks to becoming, and also to get a much clearer sense of who it is that they are, at the most fundamental level.
Certainly people come into Jungian analysis, often, because they have certain specific issues with which they want to deal. It is characteristically true that every human will encounter situations of wounding or conflict or loss of direction or orientation. That is simply part of the human condition. But what emerges in therapy, what constitutes the healing factor in it, is a growing awareness of the individual’s fundamental make-up, and of the journey upon which they have been embarked, all this time. Therapy, and Jungian analysis in particular, has the power to give a person a perspective that differs fundamentally on all kinds of levels from that with which the individual entered the therapeutic work. For many, therapy brings a depth to ordinary life that cannot be reached in any other way.
I’d welcome your comments and reflections on the role of therapy in our lives today. The position I’m taking is that therapy at the right time can benefit almost everyone. Do you agree with me, or do you have different perspective? Have you had any experiences with therapy, whether good or bad?
Wishing each of you the very best on your personal journey to wholeness,
Brian Collinson,Psychotherapist & Jungian Analyst
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We all like to feel that we know ourselves, and that we are fundamentally honest with ourselves, but is it so? Often we not only deceive other people — something we may or may not have very good reasons for doing. We also deceive ourselves. That is a problem, because sometimes deliberate not-wanting-to-know keeps us from being conscious of things that we really need to understand for our own individuation process.
To see what I mean, let’s consider one of the most common questions that is asked in this world. This question must surely also receive one of the highest proportions of deceptive responses worldwide:
“So… How are you?”
It is not merely that the answers given to the questioner in response to this question are knowingly false. It is, that on a deeper level, we very often are untruthful or inaccurate in what we allow ourselves to know in response to this question. If we were to reflect, we would realize that our answers are not only superficial, they are often untrue. For instance, we humans are quite capable of responding by telling people, “Fine, thank you!” when in fact we may be wrestling desperately with anxiety or depression. It is not merely that we are choosing to be deceptive of others. It is that we are choosing not to know — to deceive ourselves.
Sometimes the truth is very hard to look at, head on. We can become acutely aware of this when there are aspects of ourselves at which we would rather not look. For instance, it can sometimes take people a great deal of effort to look at their early life, and to acknowledge the ways in which it was filled with sadness. Or similarly, loyalty to parents may prevent a person from acknowledging that the relationship with that parent was, or is, a very difficult one. Again, because we often have such an ego investment in relationships, acknowledging that a marriage or a partnership may not be good for us may hold similar difficulties. Similarly, the capacity of individuals to rationalize or deny in situations of addiction or abuse are well known. And the whole realm of sexuality is frequently full of things that we would rather not admit to ourselves.
To set yourself on the course of being fundamentally honest with yourself is to set yourself on the path of encounter with the unconscious. In particular, being honest with oneself often sets one on a course for in-depth encounter with the shadow, in Jungian terms. In the next Part of this series, I will be examining this encounter with shadow in more depth.
Questions to Ask about Truth and Honesty in the Inner Life
What do I have a vested interest in believing about myself?
What do I have a vested interest in believing about other people in my life?
Are there things that I would really rather believe, that I have to admit are just not true?
I’d welcome your comments on this post, and on the whole subject of truth in our relationship to ourselves.
Wishing you every good thing on your personal journey to wholeness,
