Love: Jungian style

“People were hermaphrodites until God split them in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”
~ Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I’m reminded of the Jungian concept of men having a feminine aspect, referred to as the anima; and women having a masculine aspect, referred to as the animus. The theory being that “all” human beings are composed of both masculine and feminine essences, with one essence being the consciously dominant one in an individual, and the other being relatively unconscious, “appearing” as the qualities one desires or despises in others. In Jungian psychology, this is the basic mechanism of attraction: the recognition of the other half of ourselves in others, facilitated through projection and imagination. The illusion being that what you search for or recognize is outside of yourself, when it is really the opposite, less conscious side of your inner nature – the masculine or feminine – seeking consciousness through your interaction with others.

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Sudden change

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

People and situations may seem to change in a moment’s time. However, more often than not, subtle changes were already occurring over a much longer period of time, slowly gaining momentum towards a final dramatic shift. These subtle changes often go unnoticed by us, until finally crossing a threshold and turning our world upside down within a moment’s time.

The great puzzle

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.”
~ Douglas Adams

The belief that we can ever know the purpose of the universe – the totality of it all – is human arrogance. Nothing ever disappears or is replaced, other than our dead-end ideas. The purpose of the universe, of a single life itself, is like an endless spiral of mysteries; an infinity of oddly shaped pieces awaiting our exploration and placement, some of which elude any reasonable fit to anything else. The puzzle of existence remains unfinished.

Revelation

“Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor”
~ Alexis Carrel

It is a painstaking process to remove the extraneous bits of marble that accumulate over time, but there is joy in revealing the beautiful sculpture to be found within. One’s true identity is a continuous act of revelation, not a remaking of anything. We are made in God’s image!

Systems versus nature

“Capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction. No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.”
~ W. E. B. Du Bois

Selfishness and selflessness anchor the opposite ends of our individual and collective human nature. Despite our most noble intentions, selfishness will always rear its ugly head to some degree, through every conceivable system and type of organization, from the most greed oriented company to the most Utopian vision of society. There is no escaping this reality.

Recognizing and managing the inherently selfish aspects of our human nature, is the key to minimizing their toxic effects. However, scapegoating the economic and political systems we’ve created as irreparably flawed, is often just another excuse for keeping the egocentric aspects of human nature in the shadows, where they inflict the most insidious forms of damage.

Ironically, it seems that our human behavior is more inflexible than the systems we’ve created to tame it. To reform anything for the betterment of humankind, we need to first reform ourselves.