“What is wrong in the world is also wrong in me.”
- Carl Jung
The above quote came from a talk I listened to by Alan Watts when he quoted a Jung lecture. The link is at the bottom of this post.
I have too often made the mistake of righteous, raging judgment under heavy emotional influence. When this happens, I can feel the anger as if it is physically twisting inside of my veins. It impacts my chest—heart center—and I am shaky and grieving and wrathful as my pulse rises and my mind is a black wall of incomprehension at the horrors of the world.
If you have never been impacted in this way by current events or even personal ones, this may not make sense to you. But if you have ever pointed a literal or metaphorical finger at another to blame them for something that is “wrong with the world,” (or just your life) the following still applies to you (as much as we would like to believe it doesn’t which is in itself most of the problem).
In those volatile moments when we are consumed with (rightful) emotion, all we really want is to project that mass of energy outward. In other words, who is to blame? Or maybe, who can we blame? Because it must be someone. We have to discharge the energy somehow and turning inward is usually the last thing on our mind.
The single biggest action I have taken that has made the most impact on changing my life is sharpening my ability to see my own faults.
To be clear, I fail at it all of the time. Daily, I would say.
But the process of trying is often referred to as shadow work. I believe, as Jung did when he coined the concept of the “shadow,” that this is the key to truly changing the world.1
I also think its absence in a digital space allows (encourages) the darkness we see spewed all over social media. This in particular comes from a very common practice of projecting the shadow. Equally as common, perhaps even more so, is doing this all unconsciously (see above on righteous judgment).
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” - Jung
On a micro level and to speak to something I am very familiar with, this plays out on a daily basis within the book world - the community of those actively involved online in reading, celebrating, and posting about books they love (or hate).
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