Friends,
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Pat & Marsha
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“Show me a sane man, and I will cure him for you.” — Carl Jung,
Two-plus years of COVID and more than a month of the Ukraine war have blown a hole through my sanity.
Try as we will to insulate ourselves from all this bad news, it’s landing squarely in the middle our living rooms.
I, for one, have lost my sense of balance. I’ve been caught in a cycle of outrage that’s robbed me of any sense equanimity. It feels as if the fate of the world rests in the hands of one man, which feels at the same time both breathtakingly unreal and all too real.
In times when feelings are running so high it’s easy to turn to the dark side, to “rage scroll” and contemplate fighting fire with fire. But, as we well know, that only makes matters worse.
So rather than look for an answer outside myself I’m thinking perhaps it’s better that I look inward, like I did when I sobered up.
That was a similarly dark time for me. I had convinced myself someone or something was keeping light from me. Never did it dawn on me that I’d gotten lost in my own shadow. I was a master at detecting the darkness in others, but never seeing it in myself. And yet it would be in embracing my shadow that light would be brought into my dark world.
When I was working the 12 Steps I happened upon the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist, Carl Jung. So many of his quotes have stood the test of time for me that it feels like going back to the basics to read them now. I know each of you have your own ways of getting grounded. For what it’s worth, in these difficult times, here a few of Jung’s:
- The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.
- The greatest problems of life are not meant to be solved, just outgrown.
- We are not what happened to us, we are what we choose to become.
- Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness.
- Nobody who moves among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.
- For better to come, good must stand aside.
- The shoe that fits one person pinches another.
- There is no recipe for living that suits all cases.
- The first part of life is forming a healthy ego, the second letting go of it.
- Thinking is difficult; that’s why most people judge.
- What irritates us about others is the key to understanding of ourselves.
- The healthy man does not torture others.
- We cannot change anything unless we accept it.
- Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.
- Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
What if I should discover that the poorest of the beggars and the most impudent of offenders are all within me; and that I stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I, myself, am the enemy who must be loved.
- Wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.
- In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.
- Life really does begin at forty. Up until then, you are just doing research.
- It all depends on how you look at things, not how they are in themselves.
- There is no coming to consciousness without pain.
- Knowing your darkness is the way best to deal with another’s darkness.
- People will do anything to avoid facing their own souls.
- A man must pass through the inferno of his passions to overcome them.
- What you resist, persists.
- The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.
- You become enlightened by making the darkness conscious.
- The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.
- Shame is a soul-eating emotion.
- The work you can do is to withdraw the shadow you project on others.
- We meet ourselves in a thousand disguises on the path of life.
The great thing about finding a friend in yourself is that you’re enabled to go on long walks — with yourself — by yourself.
Times like these, we need such a friend, don’t we?
Just a thought…
Pat
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