The path of Life from Carl Jung

We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.

The best political, social and spiritual work we can do is to remove the projection of our shadow onto others.

In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of the individual. This alone makes history, here alone do the great transformations take place, and the whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately springs as a gigantic summation from these hidden sources in individuals.

But, if you have nothing at all to create, then perhaps you create yourself.

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.

A creative person has little power over his own life. He is not free. He is captive and driven by his demons.

Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.

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

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens into that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was a conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.

The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.

It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going.

My whole being was seeking for something still unknown which might confer meaning upon the banality of life.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life. Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interests upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance. Thus we demand that the world grant us recognition for qualities which we regard as personal possessions: our talent or our beauty. The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy. If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a Shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected and is liable to burst forth suddenly in a moment of unawareness. At all events, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.

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. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

The greatest burden of the child is the un-lived life of the parent.

There are plenty of people who are not yet born, they all seem to be here, they walk about, but as matter of fact, they are not yet born because they are behind a glass wall, they are still in the womb.
~ Carl Jung, from the Kundalini Seminars

Personality is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others thinks one is.
~ Carl Jung

Excerpt from, Concerning Rebirth
Collected Works 9i, para 221

The Shadow Is A Moral Problem

The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort.

To become conscious of It involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real.

This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and It therefore, as a rule, meets with considerable resistance. Indeed, self-knowledge as a psychotherapeutic measure frequently requires much painstaking work extending over a long period. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 14

~ Carl Jung, A Compendium of Notable Quotes

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