Living Your Unlived Life Quotes

“Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote that “the greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of the parents,” by which he meant that where and how our caretakers were stuck in their development becomes an internal paradigm for us also to be stuck. Frequently we find ourselves dealing with a parent’s unresolved issues. At times we may replicate the patterns of our ancestors, or we may rebel and attempt to do the opposite. Interestingly, antagonism to the influences of parents binds just as tightly as compliance. Either way, antecedents confine and limit us. Perhaps this fact is behind the ancient biblical admonition that the sins of a man shall be visited “upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.” We”
― Robert A. Johnson, Living Your Unlived Life: Coping with Unrealized Dreams and Fulfilling Your Purpose in the Second Half of Life

“The word suffer in its original sense means “to allow,” such as in one of Shakespeare’s dramas when a courtier says, “I suffer you to speak before the king.” So to suffer creatively is simply to allow what is, to stop fighting it, and instead to affirm your life. Creative suffering is allowing what is and saying “yes!” Such experience is redemptive in that it leads to healing and self-knowledge. If you can honestly assess what is true in your life, looking at it with objectivity and intelligence, you are getting closer to enlightenment, as your escape mechanism is diminished. By stating what is at any moment, with complete honesty and sincerity, you become conscious of it. When”
― Robert A. Johnson, Living Your Unlived Life: Coping with Unrealized Dreams and Fulfilling Your Purpose in the Second Half of Life

“There is a joke in which Satan is talking with one of his fallen angels while looking at the foibles of humans on the earth. “What should we do?” implores the helper. “See there, a human has gotten hold of a piece of truth!” Unperturbed, the Prince of Darkness replies, “Don’t worry, these humans will try to institutionalize it, and then it will belong to us again.” By midlife your identity is the institutionalization of your past. You have good reason to be attached to it, but it is not all of who you are meant to be. By reflexively living in the past you miss the fullness of the present. The movement of energy into structure (having an ego) is necessary for life to cohere. We need form, yet we are best served when the conscious personality is capable of ongoing course correction through dialogue with the dynamic unconscious.”
― Robert A. Johnson, Living Your Unlived Life: Coping with Unrealized Dreams and Fulfilling Your Purpose in the Second Half of Life

“Most psychotherapies are designed to patch up wounded people and then throw them back into the battle of oppositions. They guide people in how to become better adapted socially: more adept at making money, more highly disciplined, more dutiful, more economically productive. Even when such therapy is successful and gets an individual back out into the rat race again, you can watch them wither over time under the weight of it all. In”
― Robert A. Johnson, Living Your Unlived Life: Coping with Unrealized Dreams and Fulfilling Your Purpose in the Second Half of Life

“ماآنقدر مشغول زندگی کردن باقی عمرمان هستیم که نمیپرسیم چکونه آن را تجربه می کنیم و در نتیجه از بیشتر چیزها غافلل میمانیم.”
― رابرت الکس جانسون, Living Your Unlived Life: Coping with Unrealized Dreams and Fulfilling Your Purpose in the Second Half of Life

“I must state again: Nothing exists in our human dimension without its opposite close by.”
― Robert A. Johnson, Living Your Unlived Life: Coping with Unrealized Dreams and Fulfilling Your Purpose in the Second Half of Life

“The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche explored the burden of the unlived that is not reclaimed: Zarathustra goes to the grave with the unfulfilled dreams of his youth. He speaks to them as if they were ghosts who have betrayed him bitterly. They struck up a dance and then spoiled the music. Did the past make his path so weighty? Did his unlived life impede him and consign him to a life that seems not to pass?”
― Robert A. Johnson, Living Your Unlived Life: Coping with Unrealized Dreams and Fulfilling Your Purpose in the Second Half of Life

“Only awareness of your shadow qualities can help you to find an appropriate place for your unredeemed darkness and thereby create a more satisfying experience. To not do this work is to remain trapped in the tedium, loneliness, agitations, and disappointments of a circumscribed life rather than awakening to your higher calling.”
― Robert A. Johnson, Living Your Unlived Life: Coping with Unrealized Dreams and Fulfilling Your Purpose in the Second Half of Life