Jung on fulfilling the soul's pattern

This episode begins with the idea that all the troubles in the world at this time bring a great weight and pressure down upon, not just humanity as a whole, but also each individual soul. Since our souls are secretly tuned to the world, the widening divisions outside us tend to activate inner splits within us, specifically in the form of early life feelings of being abandoned, rejected and overwhelmed.

Fears of abandonment and overwhelm return each time we face great obstacles or the need to truly change, not because we are inherently bad or simply ill-fated. Rather, a genuine crisis will activate our early life experiences of rejection and loss in order that we find ways to heal our inner wounds and at the same time reveal our deepest gifts. Part of what seeks to become reclaimed as part of our natural inheritance used to be known as the child of joy, the source of natural buoyancy as well as inner resiliency.

Our innate connection to joy can be a meaningful antidote to the weight of the world and the increasing anxieties that entrap us. However, finding again this kind of soul connection requires that we work through the exact wounds that keep us from feeling fully alive to begin with. The problem turns out to be not simply that there was an original betrayal that leaves us wounded, but also that we keep betraying ourselves in the same way. Eventually, the issue is not simply who did what to us and why, but rather how we manage to stop abandoning ourselves each time we feel fearful, on the edge of overwhelm or stuck in life again.

Genuine change and renewal, on both individual and collective levels, require that we touch the original splits again and heal the wounds that separate us from the inner source of existence and the innate sense of joy that naturally attends the gift of life. For it is this soul connection and inner resilience that seeks to be found, that waits to be felt again and that wishes to be nourished, despite and because of the troubles that now plague the world.

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