Carl Jung: If you will stand by yourself and endure things as they are
To Frau V.
Dear Frau V., 28 June 1958
When you say that an experience of wholeness is the same as a “dynamic irruption of the collective unconscious,” this is an indubitable error.
The experience of wholeness is, quite to the contrary,an extremely simple matter of feeling yourself in harmony with the world within and without.
If you have attained this simplicity, you will not let yourself be upset either by your son’s awkward family circumstances or by the loss of your “book of voices.”
You don’t have your roots in this book of voices nor are you your son, who must and will have a life of his own despite the fact of your clinging to him.
Everything that is necessary can be lived if only you will stand by yourself and endure things as they are without grumbling.
You should always tell yourself : that’s how it is, and there’s nothing Ican do about it.
Everything that will or must be comes without your doing, and you have only to hold your own in order to come through the darknesses of human existence.
Too strong a dependence on the outside and too dynamic a view of the inside stem essentially from your desire, intention, and will, which you should push into the background a little for the sake of what really concerns you: holding your own in the chaos of this world.
With best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 456.
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