Accepting What Life Presents Me With
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Accepting What Life Presents Me With
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October 20, 1959
People do not realize just how much they are putting at risk when they don’t accept what life presents them with, the questions and tasks that life sets them.
When they resolve to spare themselves the pain and suffering they owe to their nature.
In so doing, they refuse to pay life’s dues and for this very reason, life then often leads them astray.
If we don’t accept our own destiny, a different kind of suffering takes its place: a neurosis develops, and I believe that that life which
we have to live is not as bad as a neurosis.
If I have to suffer, then let it be from my reality.
A neurosis is a much greater curse!
In general, a neurosis is a replacement for an evasion, an unconscious desire to cheat life, to avoid something.
One cannot do more than live what one really is.
And we are all made up of opposites and conflicting tendencies.
After much reflection, I have come to the conclusion that it is better to live what one really is and accept the difficulties that arise as a result – because avoidance is much worse.
Today I can say: I have been true to myself I have done what I could to the best of my knowledge and conscience.
Whether it was right or not, I cannot say.
Suffering was inevitable in any case. But I want to suffer for those things which really belong to me.
A decisive factor for me in choosing this path was the knowledge that if l did not respond fully to my life’s purpose and challenges, then they would be inherited by my children, who would have to bear the burden of my unlived life in addition to their own difficulties.
I am aware of what a heavy burden was passed on to me by my parents. Such a burden cannot simply be shaken off.
You find yourself weighed down with an inheritance that you have to accept and carry around like a snail carrying its house on its back.
Being “smart” and behaving reasonably are not enough to get you through life.
You may well spare yourself some trouble, but you cut yourself off from your own life in the process.
I have seen the fate of those who have not lived their own lives, and it is simply horrible.
People who live out their destiny and fulfill it to the best of their knowledge and abilities have no reason for regret.
In a way, Voltaire was right when he said one only has to regret “surtout ce que l’on na pas fait.”
It is of immense importance that we as humans accept the debts incumbent on us.
In old age it is not the wonderful things that we perhaps missed out on seeing or experiencing that we will regret, but rather the moments when we let life pass us by. ~Carl Jung, Reflections on the Life and Dreams of C.G. Jung, Page13-14
The life of the solitary would be cold were it not for the immense sun,
which makes the air and rocks glow. The sun and its eternal splendor replace
for the solitary his own life warmth.
H is heart longs for the sun.
II e wanders to the lands of the sun.
He dreams of the }fickering splendor of the sun, of the hot red stones spread
out at midday, of the golden hot rays of dry sand. /
The solitary seeks the sun and no one else is so ready to open his heart as he is.
Therefore he loves the desert above all, since he loves its deep stillness.
He needs little food since the sun and its glow nourish him. Consequently
the solitary loves the desert above all since it is a mother to him, giving him
food and invigorating warmth at regular hours.
I n the desert the solitary is relieved of care and therefore turns his whole
life to the sprouting garden ofhis soul, which can jfourish only under a hot
sun. In his garden the delicious red fruit grows that bears swelling sweetness
under a tight skin.
You think that the solitary is poor. You do not see that he strolls under
laden fruit trees and that his hand touches grain a hundredfold. under dark
leaves the oveifull reddish blossoms swell toward him from abundant buds,
and the fruit almost bursts with thronging juices. Fragrant resins drip from
his trees and under his fiet thrusting seed breaks open.
If the sun sinks onto the plane of the sea like an exhausted bird, the solitary
envelops himself and holds his breath. He does not move and is pure expectancy
until the miracle of the renewal of light rises in the East.
Brimful delicious expectation is in the solitary. 51
The horror of the desert and of withered evaporation surround him, and
you do not understand how the solitary can live. /
But his eye rests on the garden, and his ears listen to the source, and his
hand touches velvet leaves and fruit, and his breath draws in sweet peifumes
from blossom~rich trees.
He cannot tell you, since the splendor of his garden is so abundant. He
stammers when he speaks of it, and he appears to you to be poor in spirit
and in life. But his hand does not know where it should reach, in all this
indescribable fullness.
He gives you a small inSignificant fruit, which has just fallen at his fiet.
I t appears worthless to you, but if you consider it, you will see that this fruit
tastes like a sun which you could not have dreamt of It gives off a peifume
which confuses your senses and makes you dream of rose gardens and sweet
wine and whispering palm trees. And you hold this one fruit in your hands
dreaming, and you would like the tree in which it grows, the garden in which
this tree stands, and the sun which brought forth this garden.
And you yourself want to be that solitary who strolls with the sun in his
garden, his gaze resting on pendant jfowers and his hand brushing a hundred~
fold of grain and his breath drinking the peifume from a thousand roses.
Dullfrom the sun and drunk from firmenting wines, you lie down in
ancient graves, whose walls resound with many voices and many colors of a
thousand solar years.
When you grow, then you see everything living again as it was. And /
when you sleep, you rest, like everything that was, and your dreams echo
softly again from distant temple chants.
You sleep down through the thousand solar years, and you wake up
through the thousand solar years, and your dreams full of ancient lore adorn
the walls of your bedchamber.
You also see yourself in the totality. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages 269-270
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