Inner Work

Joel Felipe, Unsplash

Jung observed that most of the neurosis, the feeling of fragmentation, the vacuum of meaning, in modern lives, results from this isolation of the ego-mind from the unconscious. As conscious beings we all go about with a vague sense that we have lost a part of ourselves, that something that once belonged to us is missing.

Our isolation from the unconscious is synonymous with our isolation from our souls, from the life of the spirit. It results in the loss of our religious life, for it is in the unconscious that we find our individual conception of God and experience our deities. The religious function — this inborn demand for meaning and inner experience — is cut off from the rest of the inner life. And it can only force its way back into our lives through neurosis, inner conflicts, and psychological symptoms that demand our attention.”

~ Robert Johnson, Inner Work

I’m fortunate to have been able to live long and make the full measure of mistakes I could eventually benefit from. My mistakes were stupid and painful but they didn’t kill me. At this point in my life I can review them at my leisure, astonished at my inveterate cluelessness. Jung points out how introverted intuitives are always focussed on the future, always optimistic, but can’t ever get their feet on the ground. That’s me, flying boy that I have always been.