For some time now, I have been receiving messages from the unconscious through dreams and symbolic events, urging me to pay more attention to my relationship with my body. I am being asked to nurture it and develop the physical skills that I have neglected. To improve the way I breathe, stand, play, rest, and move within the world.
I often find it challenging to manage the urge to transform more quickly. I know from experience that genuine transformation happens gradually, through small steps taken over long periods. New habits do not become second nature until they are earned through much struggle. Yet I recognize in me a strong instinct to accomplish more, faster, and to improve continuously. Instead of letting this urgency sink into the shadow and possess me, I try to meet it as a psychic figure I can speak with. When I acknowledge both its demand and my human limits, and the fact that transformation has its own pace, something in me softens and I feel relief. The simple, though not easy, act of recognizing and engaging this instinct grants me more patience and strength to endure the slow, repetitive work of becoming.
The most graceful moments in my life happen when I surrender to time and accept the slow tempo of maturation. At those moments I feel a deep trust within. When I remember that psyche ripens like the body, its mirror image, not like a flash of insight, I can breathe more deeply, slowly, and with gratitude. Recognizing this process reminds me that individuation and authenticity unfold slowly and with much struggle. No shortcuts.
Taking more time and attention to nurture my relationship with my body is essential for where I am on my path now. It involves creating a strong, healthy vessel that can serve as a foundation for the energies and consciousness I am being entrusted with. When the student is ready the teacher arrives, and in my life that teacher often speaks first through the body, since I lead with intuition and sensing is my inferior, less developed function. Without recognizing my own limitations, I cannot connect with the infinite possibilities that lie ahead of me.
I often remind myself to stop and appreciate where I am in my life right now. While a part of me is always focused on where I want to go and the path I’m being guided towards, another part acknowledges that the individual I am and the journey I'm on now, were once just a dream. What was once an inner image has condensed into a life with actual muscles, lungs, relationships, and responsibilities. That, too, is grace.
A word I love is circumambulation. The spiral way of psychic progress. Never a straight line. We go forward and backward. We find the answer, and then we lose the question. Soon, another question arises, and another answer is sought. Progress in one area can lead to regression in another, driven by a one-sided focus that neglects the whole. We circle around a center we can never fully know, and this circling is the very form of individuation. Of nature.
It feels like an orchestra where one plays many instruments and must simultaneously maintain a moral-aesthetic attitude while paying close attention to the conductor. Following his signals. Some align with the player's intention, while others are surprising and shocking. One never knows where the creation leads, what the actual song is, or what will be at the end of the show. Some days I feel like the clumsy student, missing entries and playing off-key. Other days, it is as if something greater takes the lead, and I am simply played. On the best days, it is a conscious correspondence in which we play together with much joy.
In this inner music, I often feel the tension between my small self and something larger that wants to live through it. Jung put words to this tension more clearly than anyone I know. I would like to share with you several paragraphs from his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, starting on page 325:
"The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life. Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance.
Thus we demand that the world grant us recognition for qualities which we regard as personal possessions: our talent or our beauty. The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy.
If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change. In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted.
In our relationships to other men, too, the crucial question is whether an element of boundlessness is expressed in the relationship. The feeling for the infinite, however, can be attained only if we are bounded to the utmost. The greatest limitation for man is the “self”; it is manifested in the experience: “I am only that.” Only consciousness of our narrow confinement in the self forms the link to the limitlessness of the unconscious. In such awareness we experience ourselves concurrently as limited and eternal, as both the one and the other.
In knowing ourselves to be unique in our personal combination that is, ultimately limited, we possess also the capacity for becoming conscious of the infinite. But only then.
In an era which has concentrated exclusively upon extension of living space and increase of rational knowledge at all costs, it is a supreme challenge to ask man to become conscious of his uniqueness and his limitation. Uniqueness and limitation are synonymous. Without them, no perception of the unlimited is possible and, consequently, no coming to consciousness either, merely a delusory identity with it which takes the form of intoxication with large numbers and an avidity for political power.
Our age has shifted all emphasis to the here and now, and thus brought about a daemonization of man and his world. The phenomenon of dictators and all the misery they have wrought springs from the fact that man has been robbed of transcendence by the shortsightedness of the super-intellectuals. Like them, he has fallen a victim to unconsciousness.
But man's task is the exact opposite: to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. Neither should he persist in his unconsciousness, nor remain identical with the unconscious elements of his being, thus evading his destiny, which is to create more and more consciousness.
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. It may even be assumed that just as the unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness affects the unconscious."
This quote from Jung sums up the central theme of my life for many years now. I know I am walking a spiral path. I get closer, and then I find myself farther. I build up certainty, and then I find myself reaching in the dark. There are times when I acknowledge my limits and feel the beautiful smallness of being a human, and others when I sense, for a brief moment, the boundlessness that looks through these same brown eyes.
At the deepest part of myself, I know that the infinite is nearer than near, and that it wishes to be known in a creative dialogue. My task is to let this one psychophysical being that I am, become a vessel, an instrument, and to patiently learn how to play my part in the larger orchestra that is already playing. If the purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being, then my humble share of that work is to let the light pass through this particular psyche-body, at this limited pace, on this spiral path.
Thank you for listening. I hope something here resonated with you, shed light on an invisible spot, and helped your next step forward become a little clearer. If you would like to meet and explore the unconscious together, whether around a specific life struggle, relationship conflict, or time of transformation, I would love to meet you there and discover a way that has not yet been visible. thejungianaion.com/meetingindepth
The Jungian Aion
For some time now, I have been receiving messages from the unconscious through dreams and symbolic events, urging me to pay more attention to my relationship with my body. I am being asked to nurture it and develop the physical skills that I have neglected. To improve the way I breathe, stand, play, rest, and move within the world.
I often find it challenging to manage the urge to transform more quickly. I know from experience that genuine transformation happens gradually, through small steps taken over long periods. New habits do not become second nature until they are earned through much struggle. Yet I recognize in me a strong instinct to accomplish more, faster, and to improve continuously. Instead of letting this urgency sink into the shadow and possess me, I try to meet it as a psychic figure I can speak with. When I acknowledge both its demand and my human limits, and the fact that transformation has its own pace, something in me softens and I feel relief. The simple, though not easy, act of recognizing and engaging this instinct grants me more patience and strength to endure the slow, repetitive work of becoming.
The most graceful moments in my life happen when I surrender to time and accept the slow tempo of maturation. At those moments I feel a deep trust within. When I remember that psyche ripens like the body, its mirror image, not like a flash of insight, I can breathe more deeply, slowly, and with gratitude. Recognizing this process reminds me that individuation and authenticity unfold slowly and with much struggle. No shortcuts.
Taking more time and attention to nurture my relationship with my body is essential for where I am on my path now. It involves creating a strong, healthy vessel that can serve as a foundation for the energies and consciousness I am being entrusted with. When the student is ready the teacher arrives, and in my life that teacher often speaks first through the body, since I lead with intuition and sensing is my inferior, less developed function. Without recognizing my own limitations, I cannot connect with the infinite possibilities that lie ahead of me.
I often remind myself to stop and appreciate where I am in my life right now. While a part of me is always focused on where I want to go and the path I’m being guided towards, another part acknowledges that the individual I am and the journey I'm on now, were once just a dream. What was once an inner image has condensed into a life with actual muscles, lungs, relationships, and responsibilities. That, too, is grace.
A word I love is circumambulation. The spiral way of psychic progress.
Never a straight line. We go forward and backward. We find the answer, and then we lose the question. Soon, another question arises, and another answer is sought. Progress in one area can lead to regression in another, driven by a one-sided focus that neglects the whole. We circle around a center we can never fully know, and this circling is the very form of individuation. Of nature.
It feels like an orchestra where one plays many instruments and must simultaneously maintain a moral-aesthetic attitude while paying close attention to the conductor. Following his signals. Some align with the player's intention, while others are surprising and shocking. One never knows where the creation leads, what the actual song is, or what will be at the end of the show. Some days I feel like the clumsy student, missing entries and playing off-key. Other days, it is as if something greater takes the lead, and I am simply played. On the best days, it is a conscious correspondence in which we play together with much joy.
In this inner music, I often feel the tension between my small self and something larger that wants to live through it. Jung put words to this tension more clearly than anyone I know. I would like to share with you several paragraphs from his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, starting on page 325:
"The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life. Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance.
Thus we demand that the world grant us recognition for qualities which we regard as personal possessions: our talent or our beauty. The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy.
If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change. In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted.
In our relationships to other men, too, the crucial question is whether an element of boundlessness is expressed in the relationship. The feeling for the infinite, however, can be attained only if we are bounded to the utmost. The greatest limitation for man is the “self”; it is manifested in the experience: “I am only that.” Only consciousness of our narrow confinement in the self forms the link to the limitlessness of the unconscious. In such awareness we experience ourselves concurrently as limited and eternal, as both the one and the other.
In knowing ourselves to be unique in our personal combination that is, ultimately limited, we possess also the capacity for becoming conscious of the infinite. But only then.
In an era which has concentrated exclusively upon extension of living space and increase of rational knowledge at all costs, it is a supreme challenge to ask man to become conscious of his uniqueness and his limitation. Uniqueness and limitation are synonymous. Without them, no perception of the unlimited is possible and, consequently, no coming to consciousness either, merely a delusory identity with it which takes the form of intoxication with large numbers and an avidity for political power.
Our age has shifted all emphasis to the here and now, and thus brought about a daemonization of man and his world. The phenomenon of dictators and all the misery they have wrought springs from the fact that man has been robbed of transcendence by the shortsightedness of the super-intellectuals. Like them, he has fallen a victim to unconsciousness.
But man's task is the exact opposite: to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. Neither should he persist in his unconsciousness, nor remain identical with the unconscious elements of his being, thus evading his destiny, which is to create more and more consciousness.
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. It may even be assumed that just as the unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness affects the unconscious."
This quote from Jung sums up the central theme of my life for many years now. I know I am walking a spiral path. I get closer, and then I find myself farther. I build up certainty, and then I find myself reaching in the dark. There are times when I acknowledge my limits and feel the beautiful smallness of being a human, and others when I sense, for a brief moment, the boundlessness that looks through these same brown eyes.
At the deepest part of myself, I know that the infinite is nearer than near, and that it wishes to be known in a creative dialogue. My task is to let this one psychophysical being that I am, become a vessel, an instrument, and to patiently learn how to play my part in the larger orchestra that is already playing. If the purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being, then my humble share of that work is to let the light pass through this particular psyche-body, at this limited pace, on this spiral path.
Thank you for listening. I hope something here resonated with you, shed light on an invisible spot, and helped your next step forward become a little clearer.
If you would like to meet and explore the unconscious together, whether around a specific life struggle, relationship conflict, or time of transformation, I would love to meet you there and discover a way that has not yet been visible.
thejungianaion.com/meetingindepth
With love and gratitude,
Avi
1 week ago | [YT] | 426