Carl Jung’s Meaning of My Life

The poem (in the next blog) I felt to post tonight is about another person who inspired my life. I am thinking how to describe this experience. In 1992 I started to experience a shift in my consciousness. I came from a background that was atheist. I was starting to question the idea of heaven and hell and I realised that this for me, was love and fear. I never resonated with the concept of a devil, for me I couldn’t see a god being anything other than love. Anyway, I moved to London with my husband Paul. I started to have vivid dreams there. So vivid that they felt real, a half waking state. I remember one dream where I could see my arm reach up and touch a vine coming through a sun roof of the car, I consciously moved my arm in the dream, that perhaps was my first feeling of the conscious and subconscious working together. I still remember that dream today. I started to record my dreams and had many creative dreams. One dream which proved to be a premonition was a guy at a large public transport place, he was stocky with a white shirt and curly hair. He was walking up what seemed like an aisle, I remember him look at a salt and pepper shaker. I then saw men in British Rail jackets (orange) and I saw a person on the floor with blood, I then looked at the people’s faces for reaction, they were very shocked. Well, in real life about one week later I was at Farringdon station in London and I was catching the train, I saw a person on the floor with blood, the person had been stabbed. I saw British Rail persons with jackets, I looked up to see the faces and they were impassive. I didn’t interpret this as not caring, but not showing their feelings, the dream showed me. That is the power of dreams. Recording my dreams was my first attempt to dredge up my subconscious mind. I did this instinctively, I was just finding myself fascinated.

Anyway, I found a very profound psychoanalyst that impacted on my life, unfortunately he was no longer alive, but he had a profound impact on my future. I first read a book mentioning the works of Carl Jung and Toynbee and was instantly connecting to the ideas. I found myself drawn to Jung the founder of analytical psychology. I then found another book called ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. I found Carl Jung compelling and regarded his intellect as extremely sharp and deep. What fascinated me about him was the fact he was a psychoanalyst who was exploring the subconscious and metaphysics. I was drawn to his intellect, it was very grounded and detailed. Very interesting. Carl Jung is known for his work exploring the psyche (soul) and spirit (pneuma/Self). He spoke of the growth of inner and outer life on various levels of consciousness (altered states, dreams, prayer, ponderings, inner voice, emotional life etc.). Moreover, he was known for his dream analysis. He studied eastern and western psychology inclusive of alchemy, astrology, sociology, literature and the arts. He was fascinated by symbols. Of course dreams were a series of symbols, interpretation is the tricky part, that is definitely the image of shifting sand in my mind. He talked about a process of individuation and the integrating of opposites including conscious with sub-conscious. He spoke of the collective unconscious, archetypes and synchronicity. He was interested in connecting us to the instinct bases of our existance. He saw myth as the revelation of the divine life of man. Myths arise from the primordial ideas of humanity. An interesting quote by Jung stated ‘that it is as if my work reached out beyond philosophy and theology. You could say it begins behind both of them.’ The collective unconscious is omnipresent. Jung said he had learned not just knowledge but insight into his own nature. Most of what he learned came from his errors and defeats. He also talked about being receptive to whatever came good or bad, they are forever alternating. He came to accept his own true nature as both negative and positive and through that everything became alive for him. He realised he couldn’t force things the way he thought. It was to embrace and accept. Today Jung is still impacting people through the commonly used Myers-Briggs Type Indicator developed from Jungian psychology.

What I find interesting as I convey this to you, was that I found Jung through synchronicity. I was in London, had no idea who Jung was, but found that first book. Then I remember being in the Lucis Trust and I found a book called the I Ching (Chinese trigrams for divination), I opened it and saw Carl Jung’s name, in the introduction. For a few weeks I think, I just would open a book and there was Carl Jung in it. I am not flicking pages, just open it up there he is.  I couldn’t ignore the signals and I remember laughing at it. Synchronicity talks about something repeatedly coming up in different ways.  Jung describes an example of synchronicity where he first dreams of a fish, then he sees a patient and she speaks of a dream about fish, Jung then notices a fish jumped up on the sea wall and finally he has fish for dinner. This would be an example of synchronicity. So I felt I was being inspired through synchronicity to look into Jung. I read quite a few of his books and it was he who led me through the door of metaphysics into the real world. At the time this happened I was having amazing dreams, so it was timely or as I have said, as a reality, meant to be and not chance.

Anyway, one year later my mother came into money through the death of my grandmother. I convinced her to travel out of Australia for the first time in her life, I invited her to come to the UK. At the time I was finding the UK difficult and actually wanted to go home, but I decided to stay for her. I found the attitudes quite negative and the class system was apparent to me. We Australians are pretty casual, if we want to talk to a boss, we just go up and ask.  In the UK I found protocol, often you would be answered through a third person. I found them hard to understand. I saw quite a bit of mental illness on the street. I was finding it quite isolating, even though Paul was with me, I found it a lonely society, there was the right way of doing things.  If you don’t fit in, there is the boat to Australia. Anyway, even though I was feeling a bit down about living there, I really wanted mum to travel so decided to stay another year. Paul and I would move to Market Harborough in the Midlands for my new research job.

My mum came and we decided to drive around Europe in a campervan. I did have my challenges with mum, she was on medication and was challenging, however we pushed through and had a very memorable trip.  It really opened her eyes. With the campervan we all caught the ferry from Dover to Calais, then we went to Belgium, Germany and then to Switzerland. My only desire on this trip was to visit Bollingen in Switzerland which was the town where Jung lived. His house was on the shore of Obersee basin of lake Zurich. We parked the campervan out the front of his house and my mother and step father waited there.

Paul and I went onto the property. I could see his house which is known as Jung’s Bollingen Tower. He had built a small castle, this was built over a period of 12 years. I remember him getting in special stones to build the place. He found the building a way of grounding himself mentally, as the work he was doing took him out of his mind.  The building was a symbolic representation in stone of his understanding of the structure of the psyche. In my poetry I often write about the philosopher’s stone, this indeed is an example of that. He stated that he went there to gain solitude, to become and I quote “what I was, what I am and what I will be”. The past present and future all in the one space. Interesting idea.  He had no electricity or running water, his intention was to be simple. The silence surrounded him there, he lived in modest harmony with nature. He watched life come and go.

According to Wikipedia, in 1950, on the occasion of his 75th birthday, Jung set up a stone cube on the lakeshore, just west of the tower, inscribing it on three sides. One side contains a quote of the Rosarium philosophorum, hic lapis exilis extat, pretio quoque vilis, spernitur a stultis, amatur plus ab edoctis (“this stone is poor, and cheap in price; it is disdained by fools, but it is loved all the more by the wise”), and the dedication IN MEMORIAM NAT[ivitati]S DIEI LXXV C G JUNG EX GRAT[itudine] FEC[it] ET POS[uit] A[nn]O MCML “in memory of his 75th birthday C.G. Jung out of gratitude made and set up [this stone], in the year 1950.”  

In Bollingen Jung did a lot of his painting, writing and sculpture, this place enabled him to do his work effectively.  This site was off limits to the public. I didn’t know that at the time.

Anyway, Paul and I walked around the property. I sat where Carl Jung sat and just imagined him reflecting whilst looking at Lake Zurich. I saw the symbols that he had carved into the castle walls and peppered around the site. I understood that the tower represented the ego. It is funny as I write this today, I realise this was a sacred site, having been to many around the world. I actually feel it as I am writing. He evoked many high energies in this place. I realise I was meant to go there, perhaps this was to help me to awaken.  I definitely felt the urge to go there and I did wonder why I needed to, he was no longer alive, well that question is answered now. 

I walked through a forested area and I believe I found his grave, although I could be wrong, it was a mound and I knew Carl would never mark the grave, as they are only testimonials to the living, when the physical body goes it goes, however the spirit is eternal, he knows that is not his last resting place. I walked further reflecting and then to my surprise a guy turns up with his two alsatian dogs. I got a bit of a fright. Turns out mum had already spoken to this guy and told him I came from Australia and was a fan of Carl Jung’s. I asked him if he was the caretaker and he said yes. My inner feeling was that he was not, that he was family. I looked in Carl’s bibliography and yes indeed I had met the grandson.

I felt I needed to go there to make Carl Jung real for me. The dream state is very vague and hard to remain grounded as it is another world different to what we perceive as the real world as it is the world of myth and symbols. In truth it is the latter world that is more real, that becomes apparent as your life becomes moved by the unseen more, by inner feelings, intuition and loving intentions. Interesting to think or indeed feel of it that way.

I will finish with a last quote that just inspired me to add it in to this blog. I really get what he is saying. I have lived it. “By bearing the opposites we can expose ourselves to live in our humanity … We have to realise the evil is in us; we have to risk life to get into life, then it takes on a color, otherwise we may as well read a book”. The mirror image of evil is live (reverse it). So I say to you, even whilst reading my blog, live it and prove to yourself. Don’t be an observer of life, throw yourself into it with depth and become fearless. I am so glad I did everything I wanted to do, it took courage at times, but life is short. I am not going to live in regret. Neither will you, that is why you are here now. You want to live deeply. So see this is a stepping stone to your own philosophers stone.

So it appears both Jung and Lao Tzu were my earliest teachers. I still feel their influence today.

So my next blog will be the poem I wrote inspired by Carl Jung.

Sweet dreams