To live oneself means to be one’s own task
To live oneself means: to be one’s own task. Never say that it is a pleasure to live oneself It will be no joy but a long suffering, since you must become your own creator. If you want to create yourself then you do not begin with the best and the highest, but with the worst and the deepest. Therefore say that you are reluctant to live yourself The flowing together of the stream of life is not joy but pain, since it is power against power, guilt, and shatters the sanctified.
The image of the mother of God with the child that I foresee, indicates to me the mystery of the transformation. If forethinking and pleasure unite in me, a third arises from them, the divine son, who is the supreme meaning, the symbol, the passing over into a new creation. I do not myself become the supreme meaning or the symbol, but the symbol becomes in me such that it has its substance, and I mine. Thus I stand like Peter in worship before the miracle of the transformation and the becoming real of the God in me ~Carl Jung; Red Book, Pages 249-250
Carl Jung on Man’s Real Task.
Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume 2, 1951-1961
In each aeon there are at least a few individuals who understand what man’s real task consists of, and keep its tradition
for future generations and a time when insight has reached a deeper and more general level.
First the way of a few will be changed and in a few generations there will be more. . .
whoever is capable of such insight, no matter how isolated he is, should be aware of the law of synchronicity.
As the old Chinese saying goes: “The right man sitting in his house and thinking the right thought will be heard a hundred miles
away.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 525.
To Warner S. McCullen
Dear Mr. McCullen, 4 June 1956
The loss of the mother in the early years of childhood often leaves traces in the form of a mother-complex.
If the influence of a living mother is too strong, it has the same effect as when she is absent.
In either case it will be the cause of such a complex.
One of the main features of a mother-complex is the fact that one is too much under the influence of the unconscious.
As the unconscious in a man’s case has a female character it then looks, Allegorically speaking, as if one had “swallowed” the mother.
In fact, there is only an arrested development of the female side of a man’s
character.
This shows either as too much femininity or too little.
Not knowing your personal biography I would not be able to tell you which your case is.
Fear and feelings of guilt, however, are characteristic of such a condition as a symptom of insufficient adaptation, as there is always something too much or too little, and moreover there is the feeling of a task to be fulfilled and not fulfilled yet.
It is unimportant to know what the possible original cause of such a symptom Is.
The search for the cause is rather misleading, since the existence of the fear continues, not because it has been originally started in the remote past, but because a task is incumbent upon you in the present moment, and, inasmuch as it remains unfulfilled, every day produces fear and guilt anew.
The question is, of course, what do you feel to be your task?
Where the fear, there is your task!
You must study your fantasies and dreams in order to find out what you ought to do or where you can begin to do something.
Our fantasies are always hovering on the point of our insufficiency where a defect ought to be compensated.
I thank you very much for your kind present of the Korean medal .
The representation of the Chinese Saturn period is particularly
Beautiful.
Faithfully yours,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 305-306.
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