Kindle Notes & Highlights
Jung also believed that the contents of the unconscious are not restricted to repressed material. Rather, the unconscious resources an individual's life.
In The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious, he describes a process whereby a person can pay attention to how their unconscious life manifests itself in their conscious life. It will be a highly personal and tortuous experience. "There is no birth of consciousness without pain," he wrote. But with it, the individual can become more whole.
The natural language of the unconscious is not exact like mathematics; it is flexible like mythology.
"Out of discord comes the fairest harmony".
Jung in terms of his spiritual outlook, nonetheless averred that the happy individual feels himself "part of the stream of life, not a hard separate entity like a billiard ball, which can have no relation with other such entities except that of collision". Such a person knows themselves as a "citizen of the universe".
He has made his peace with God, he has sacrificed his own will, he has submitted himself to the will of God." It sounds passive, though in reality, such acceptance releases a new zest for life because the individual is no longer struggling alone, and is instead tapping "the meaning that quickens".
Rather he advised people to turn towards their fears, much as the mystics welcomed the dark night of the soul. This shadow is experienced as a foe, but it is really a friend because it contains clues as to what the individual lacks, rejects and distrusts.
