Modern society is characterised by many things, but perhaps most notably by the remarkable scientific and technological advancement, as well as capitalism, individualism and hedonism. We are wealthier than our ancestors, we live in more safe and comfortable environments, we have more access to food and other basics needs, why then have we seen a massive spike in mental illness?

The bulk of evidence concludes that there seems to have been a significant rise in the incidence of lunacy in the 19^th century, and that this increase consisted largely of patients with the illness we now call schizophrenia.

One of the most widely ramifying features of modernity is the intense focus on the value and power of the individual self. To turn away from the search of an objective external order and to instead turn inward and become aware of our own activity. This becomes a pervasive feature of human experience and self-knowledge in the 19^th century.

Western culture is dominated by individualism, subjectivism and relativism, with the rise of a new character type that dominates our age, the “psychological man” who is intent upon the conquest of his inner life.

Mental illness must also be viewed in line with the modern social structure, with bureaucratisation, technologisation, secularisation and rationalisation of the modern world on the level of individual experience. The conditions of modern life with its rational forms of social organisation are more complex, conflicting and require potentially disorienting cognitive requirements.

While there is an emphasis on individuality, one must also simultaneously adapt to society’s evolving needs. The problem arises when these two are in contradiction, leading to a sense of inner division.

The Myth of Mental Illness

In The Myth of Mental Illness, psychiatrist Thomas Szasz criticises the psychiatric establishment who uses mental illness as a metaphor to describe an offending or disturbing pattern of behaviour, under the wide-ranging term schizophrenia, as an “illness” or “disease”.

Szasz wrote:

“If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic.”

— Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin

While many behave and think in disturbing ways, this does not mean they actually have a disease. Unlike physical illness and disease, mental illness is judged from certain psychosocial, ethical or legal norms. Transgressing these is not a consequence of illness, but of the attempt to confront and tackle the problems in living.

Szasz does not suggest that mental illnesses do not exist, rather he is claiming that many such phenomena is a consequence of the attempt to confront and to tackle the problem of how to live, and that to identify such phenomena as a disease or an illness is to hide the very real problems in living that people face.

Freedom and Responsibility

With increasing understanding of himself and of the world, modern man feels that he is free to direct his own life and must take responsibility for it. We are, as Jean-Paul Sartre asserted, “condemned to be free”, condemned to shoulder the burden of our freedom and responsibility without being able to seek refuge in others.

We must be responsible for ourselves for we have no other way of experiencing ourselves or the world as being in any other mode than our own existence. We cannot have our existence depend on somebody else, for that would contradict the very core of our being. We can ask for other people’s opinions, but the choice ultimately lies in us.

Many cannot stand this dizzying freedom. Kierkegaard says that one can either get lost in the infinite (a state of analysis-paralysis where one thinks of the infinite possibilities but never acts) or get lost in the finite (becoming an imitation, a number, a cipher in the crowd). The latter is a finitude’s despair or what we’d now call depressive psychosis. One cannot imagine any alternate ways of life and release himself from the trivial obligations that give him no value. It is as if one has literally died to life but must remain physically in this world, one “lives dyingly.”

Eventually, one faces the “why” of existence, as Albert Camus writes:

“Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, according to the same rhythm – this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the ‘why‘ arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.”

— Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

Camus’s absurd person is one who has seen through the ridiculous repetitions of daily life, he is conscious of his Sisyphean condemnation, we all have to push our own boulders and watch it roll back down. If what we do does not satisfy our “why” of existence, we must search for other alternatives or risk falling into an existential crisis, a nauseating sensation of trying to justify one’s existence, which can lead to suicide.

The Death of God

One of Western civilisation’s most significant events is the Age of Enlightenment in the 18^th century, a period which undermined the values that society had hitherto relied on, namely, on the religious view. This engenders the most profound cultural, sociological and psychological repercussions, leaving many facing a crisis in discerning a meaning or purpose for their existence and struggling to tackle the problems in living that this gives rise to.

While we previously had ready answers to the problem of how life ought to be lived and what its overall meaning and purpose was (since faith in the existence of God gave us the reassurance that we are partaking in a divine project) we are now slowly experiencing the consequences of what Nietzsche proclaimed as the death of God, whose full consequences would elude many people as he made clear:

“This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men… This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars – and yet they have done it themselves.”

— The Gay Science, §125

This realisation forces us to be faced with the terrifying question: “Has existence any meaning at all?” The modern age is characterised by a sense of disorientation of not knowing what to do with one’s life.

The Existential Vacuum

One notable figure who has attempted to respond to this existential crisis and the psychological manifestations of meaninglessness, is Viktor Frankl. We have been left in an existential vacuum, the meaning crisis and mass neurosis of modern times is the “unheard cry for meaning”. Frankl believes this is the cause of much of modernity’s increase in mental illness, it is the struggle to confront the existential vacuum, he writes:

“Such widespread phenomena as depression, aggression and addiction are not understandable unless we recognise the existential vacuum underlying them.”

— Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Frankl’s therapeutic response to those experiencing such phenomena is to reorient the person to the meaning, or the purpose of their existence. To confront the question of the meaning of their existence, to explore the question, and, ultimately, to provide a positive answer to it.

Finding meaning to one’s life is not to be understood as some idle or academic curiosity that one engages in when more fundamental needs have been met, the striving to search for and to possess a meaning or a purpose for one’s life is said to be the primary motivational force in man.

Without a meaning, all of life’s struggles, strivings and projects become, ultimately, futile. Frankl believes that this sense of futility is what characterises addiction, aggression and depression.

“There is nothing in the world… that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life.”

— Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Frankl concludes:

“In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

— Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

The Hero Journey

Modern man is in desperate need for the hero journey. In Man and His Symbols, Jungian psychologist Joseph Henderson describes the importance of the hero myth as a universal pattern throughout the world. The hero descends into darkness to slay a dragon, rescue a damsel in distress and gather the treasure.

The early weakness of the hero is balanced by the appearance of strong guardians who enable him to perform the tasks that he cannot accomplish unaided. Their role is the development of one’s strengths and weaknesses, in a manner that will equip one for the arduous tasks which life confronts him. This can be linked to being dependent on one’s parents. It is only when one becomes independent and confronts the world by himself that the individual has passed his initial test and can enter the mature phase of life.

What Actually Takes Place Inside the Mentally Ill?

In Memories, Dreams, Reflections; Carl Jung’s research brought him to the burning question: “What actually takes place inside the mentally ill?”. He writes:

“To my mind, therapy only really begins after the investigation of that wholly personal story. It is the patient’s secret, the rock against which he is shattered. If I know his secret story, I have a key to the treatment… In most cases exploration of the conscious material is insufficient… In therapy the problem is always the whole person, never the symptom alone. We must ask questions which challenge the whole personality.”

— Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams Reflections. Chapter IV: Psychiatric Activities

Jung treated many schizophrenic patients, who were considered a lost cause. The paradox of schizophrenia is that there is both a dissolution of the self in the world, but also the dissolution of the world in the self; eternal punishment but divine omnipotence. The patient doubts that it is really him who is thinking his thoughts, “reality” might as well by a train of illusions produced in him by evil scientists. It is the most profound form of self-contradiction, to be both God and a worm.

Jung, however, found out that many people who were diagnosed with schizophrenia actually had ordinary depression as a result of traumas and difficult life experiences that had been repressed.

He tells the story of an 18 year old girl who had been abused at the age of 15. She retreated into isolation and concealed herself from people. She was taken to a mental hospital and remained in a catatonic state. Over the course of many weeks, Jung gradually persuaded her to speak. After overcoming many resistances, she told Jung that she had been living on the moon. She said that she did not like this world and that the moon was beautiful and life there was rich in meaning. He writes:

“As a result of the incest to which she had been subjected as a girl, she felt humiliated in the eyes of the world, but elevated in the realm of fantasy… The consequence was complete alienation from the world, a state of psychosis… She became “extra-mundane”, as it were, and lost contact with humanity. She plunged into cosmic distances, into outer space, where she met with the winged demon… By telling me her story she had in a sense betrayed the demon and attached herself to an earthly human being… Thereafter I regarded the sufferings of the mentally ill in a different light. For I had gained insight into the richness and importance of the inner experiences.”

— Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams Reflections. Chapter IV: Psychiatric Activities

Modern Society: Lack of a Tribe

In his book “Tribe”, Sebastian Junger argues that throughout history, humans have had a strong instinct to belong to small groups or “tribes”. These tribes gave people a purpose and understanding of life. However, this tribal connection has been obliterated in modern society.

During the wars with the Indian tribes, many European settlers were taken as prisoners and held within the tribes. After they had a chance to escape and return to their modern society, many refused to do so, they preferred the primitive society over their modern one. On the contrary, not one tribesman wanted to flee to modern society.

We have evolved genetically to live in an interdependent group in order to survive. And this creates equality as everyone plays a necessary role in the tribe. They work 12 hours a week to survive in contrast to the average 40 hours a week that many Westernised societies require. The tribes collaborate for survival, each day they go to hunt and gather and in the evening they return to share the food.

People often believe that modern life with all its efficient technology has allowed for more leisure time. However, the exact opposite is true. Modern life is characterised by a desperate cycle of work, financial obligation and more work – sacrificing personal freedom.

One might argue, however, that modernity has allowed for a sense of independence which primitive man could never have achieved, leading to a sense of freedom – but can also, lead to a feeling of alienation and depression.

We have not yet been genetically adapted to our environment, the enormous changes of agriculture and the industrial revolution have hardly begun to affect our gene pool. In other words, even though we live in more complex societies, we are still hardwired to be hunter-gatherers.

Today, we can be surrounded by a group of people and yet feel completely alone. This is not something we have experienced until quite recently. We are wired to belong to a group where we feel valued by our contributions to it – and without a group, many fall into a sense of meaninglessness.

Sociologist Émile Durkheim first noticed the positive effects of war on mental health. The suicide rate, homicide, and admission to psych wards dropped down. Likewise, in natural disasters, people overwhelmingly devote their energy to the community rather than themselves. Adversity produces pro-social behaviours in which one is likely to abandon his self-interest and sacrifice himself for others, acting as a unified society – sending people back into a more ancient way of life.

Modernity has disrupted the social bonds that has always characterised the human experience. It breeds comfort, allowing people to act selfishly. This shows an increase of mental illness in modern society’s deep lack of a sense of community which the tribe had historically provided us. We have much to learn from our ancestors in this regard.

Modern Society: Psychic Dissociation

“The world hangs on a thin thread. And that is the psyche of man… We are the great danger... How important it is to know something about it, but we know nothing about it.”

— Carl Jung, BBC “Face To Face” (1959)

Jung warns us that we are pitifully unaware of our unconscious, we have become too rational and have lost contact with our primitive instincts, leading to a dissociation in the psyche of modern civilisation. He writes:

“Things whose enormity nobody could have imagined in the idyllic harmlessness of the first decade of our country have happened and have turned our world upside down. Ever since, the world has remained in a state of schizophrenia… Modern man does not understand how much his “rationalism” (which has destroyed his capacity to respond to numinous symbols and ideas) has put him at the mercy of the psychic “underworld.” He has freed himself from “superstition” (or so he believes), but in the process he has lost his spiritual values to a positively dangerous degree. His moral and spiritual tradition has disintegrated, and he is now paying the price for this break-up in worldwide disorientation and dissociation.”

— Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols. Part I: Approaching The Unconscious: The Role of Symbols

The surface of our world seems to be cleansed of all superstitious and irrational elements, however a realistic picture of the human mind reveals many primitive traits which are still playing their role just as if nothing had happened during the last centuries.

Man feels himself isolated in the cosmos, because he no longer has a deep relation with nature. When a primitive society’s spiritual values are exposed to the impact of modern civilisation, its people lose the meaning of their lives, their social organisation disintegrates, and they themselves morally decay. As Ernest Becker writes:

“Anthropologists have long known that when a tribe of people lose their feeling that their way of life is worthwhile they may stop reproducing, or in large numbers simply lie down and die beside streams full of fish: food is not the primary nourishment of man.”

— Ernest Becker, The Birth and Death of Meaning

Unlike primitive man, modern man has lost contact with nature and his relationship with animals and trees through mystical participation. We may have advanced in the outer world, but our inner world is still delicate and fragmentary.

A famous fictional example of the modern dissociation is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In the story Jekyll’s split took the form of a physical change, rather than (as in reality) an inner, psychic state. Jung writes:

“We can be possessed and altered by moods, or become unreasonable and unable to recall important facts about ourselves or others… We talk about being able to “control ourselves”, but self-control is a rare and remarkable virtue… there is a world of difference between a conscious decision to split off and temporarily suppress a part of one’s psyche, and a condition in which this happens spontaneously, without one’s knowledge or consent and even against one’s intention. The former is a civilised achievement, the latter a primitive “loss of a soul”, or even a pathological cause of a neurosis.”

— Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Part I: Approaching the Unconscious: The Importance of Dreams

In order to heal the split in the psyche, Jung tells us to explore our unconscious through self-reflection and dream journaling. We must understand that there are things within us that are beyond our control, which are autonomous personalities.

Here is where we find the vital insights for our lives, and where the primitive aspects that form part of the original mind are preserved as archetypes. Despite our differences, we all share a collective unconscious which adapts itself to the particularities of the individual’s life.

“We have been so busy with the question of what we think that we entirely forgot to ask what the unconscious psyche thinks about us.”

— Man and His Symbols, Part I: Approaching the Unconscious: Healing the Split

In her book, Puer Aeternus: A Psychological Study of the Adult Struggle with the Paradise of Childhood, Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz gives us an in-depth exploration of the puer aeternus (eternal boy), the eternal youth and creative child within every person.

The negative aspects of the puer aeternus is used to refer to a certain young man who remains too long in adolescence, and usually coupled with too great a dependence on the mother. The natural response of a mother is to protect her child, however, when the child is kept in the comfort of the nest for too long, he is unable to face the trials and tribulations of life when he grows up. He, therefore, flees from the cold cruel world and seeks his childhood under the nourishing and protecting circle of the mother, it is the unconscious temptation to return to the womb. This creates a mother complex.

The puer is the man-child who refuses to grow up, take responsibility, and face life’s challenges, he expects other people, typically his parents, to solve all his problems. Since he lacks zest for learning, he never develops a proper understanding of anything. von Franz writes:

“Such people usually have great difficulty in finding a job, for whatever they find is never quite right or quite what they wanted. There is always “a hair in the soup.” The woman is never quite the right woman; she is nice as a girlfriend, but… There is always a “but” which prevents marriage or any kind of commitment.”

— Marie-Louise von Franz, Puer Aeternus

The puer is aware of the transitoriness of life, so he does not give himself wholeheartedly to any experience. He knows that the end will be a disappointment and a parting. The puer is always getting ready to say goodbye, which makes it more likely for the experience to end, thus erroneously reinforcing his beliefs even more.

It is a typical pathological reaction of the puer to train himself not to suffer by anticipating suffering, he anticipates the disappointment in order not to suffer the blow, and that is a refusal to live. It seems to him the rational thing to do, but thinking too much is a disease. He gets stuck in his own reflective hyperconsciousness, a self-created bubble which isolates him from life.

“One of the problems is that if the puer enters life, then he must face the fact that he is entering upon his own mortality and the corruptible world; he must realise his own death. That is a variation of the old mythological motif where after leaving Paradise, which is a kind of archetypal maternal womb, man falls into the realisation of his incompleteness, his corruptibility, and his mortality.”

— Marie-Louise von Franz, Puer Aeternus

The puer is usually in a sleepy daze, so that sometimes one feels inclined to pour a bucket of cold water over his head. However, this is only an outer aspect, if one looks deeper, one will find that he has a cherished fantasy life within. The puer may become a megalomaniac and think of himself as someone special and exceptional, a hidden genius, or the next big philosopher – but, he has no tangible product to show his genius. He is an artist without art. The puer daydreams and engages in passive fantasy, which is very different from Jung’s technique of active imagination. Daydreaming about success, instead of visualising failure, can make one more prone to failure.

Jung writes:

“The puer typically leads a provisional life, due to the fear of being caught in a situation from which it might not be possible to escape… Plans for the future slip away in fantasies of what will be, what could be, while no decisive action is taken to change. He covets independence and freedom, chafes at boundaries and limits, and tends to find any restriction intolerable.”

— Carl Jung, C.W. Vol 9.2: Aion

The provisional life is a term used to describe an attitude toward life that is more or less imaginary, not rooted in the here and now. The person harbours a strange attitude and feeling that his job, house, car, creative endeavour, or relationship is not yet what is really wanted, they are but mere placeholders until the ‘real thing’ arrives someday.

Jung described it as:

“[T]he modern European disease of the merely imaginary life.”

— Carl Jung’s Letter to Count Hermann Keyserling (30 August 1931)

The puer eschews commitment and responsibility, because it requires a rigid lifestyle. He escapes into the world of fantasy to find temporary comfort. The puer tries to go as high as possible away from reality, ending up like Peter Pan, the boy who wouldn’t grow up, who lives in Neverland, a place where people cease to age and are eternally young. The puer aeternus is also known as the Peter Pan syndrome. This has become an increasingly common problem in our modern age.

Such a person is missing a sense of identity which results in disquieting feelings of fragmentation and worthlessness. The puer compensates in his behaviour by pursuing the ecstatic “high” in drugs, alcohol, sex, sport, and daredevil escapade, that transcends the inner depression which threatens fragmentation, granting an illusion of selfhood, which underlies his restless search for that state of stability and harmony.

The person living provisionally is alienated from his own reality, spending his time ruminating on fantasies that go nowhere, and that achieve nothing.

In the ancient Greek fable, “The Astrologer who Fell into a Well”, Thales of Miletus, considered as the first philosopher, is said to have been so lost in thought that while gazing at the stars, he fell into a well. How should one have knowledge of the heavenly things above, if one knows not what is beneath one’s feet?

While the puer has a vivid imagination, he is not capable of transforming these insights into action, because he lives in an ethereal realm and misses the blood and guts of life on earth. As a result, the puer is not very successful in life.

von Franz writes:

“In actuality, for instance, he gets up at 10:30 a.m., hangs around till lunch time with a cigarette in his mouth, giving way to his emotions and fantasies. In the afternoon he means to do some work but first he goes out with friends and then with a girl, and the evening is spent in long discussion about the meaning of life. He then goes to bed at one, and the next day is a repetition of the one before. In that way, the capacity for life and the inner riches are wasted, for they cannot get into something meaningful but slowly overgrow the real personality. The individual walks about in a cloud of fantasies, fantasies which in themselves are interesting and full of rich possibilities, full of unlived life. You feel that such a person has a tremendous wealth and capacity but there is no possibility of finding a means of realisation.”

— Marie-Louise von Franz, Puer Aeternus

The puer usually has a great capacity to assimilate the contents and to listen, so that it seems that he is going to implement them. But, he never applies the concepts he has learned, for he is not grounded enough in reality. It is a trick which the puer performs: the realisation that they should adapt to reality is an intellectual idea to them which they fulfil in fantasy but not in reality. Though it might seem simple, the puer is unable to cross the border from fantasy to action.

The word human derives from the Latin word humus, which means earth. To be human is to be humble, down-to-earth, and grounded in earthly experience, which contains a rich source of nutrients that heals us.

The puer is like Icarus, who in Greek mythology is warned about hubris and not to fly too close to the sun. However, he ignores this instruction and flies so close to the sun that his wings melt. He falls from the sky, plunges into the sea, and drowns.

Jung writes:

“The provisional life; where one does not exist really, they are only a spectator; so any experience is ghost-like, perfectly abstract, without a trace of realisation.”

— Carl Jung, The Visions Seminar

Jung tells the story of a 25 year old girl who had an extreme case of provisional life, which led to her suicide. She proved to be absolutely inaccessible. She lived things, she did things, but she did not know what she was living. No matter how hard Jung tried, nothing touched her, because she had no relation to the world at all. A few months later, she shot herself. Jung writes:

“I saw the corpse. She had shot herself through the heart in the street and had not lost consciousness for a minute or two. The expression on her face was completely altered. For a long time I stood watching her face and asking myself: “What kind of expression is that?” It was the most extraordinary, the expression of someone who was convinced, say, that a thing was black, and to whom it was very important that it was black, but to whom one had finally proven that it was red; and it was as if she suddenly realised it was red. It was a look full of bewilderment and a sort of pleasant surprise. I saw what happened: at the moment when she shot herself… she understood what life was for the first time.”

— Carl Jung, The Visions Seminar

Sometimes people have to injure themselves very badly in order to awaken to what life really is. This shows how deeply unconscious people often are.

The inner world must complement the outer world, and vice versa. An over-reliance on the inner world in which the ego cannot get out of Neverland, will make it impossible to advance into adulthood. As this becomes more and more of a crisis, the unconscious starts to seep in and threatens to overwhelm and drown the ego.

“Whatever one has within oneself but does not live, grows against one.”

— Marie-Louise von Franz, Puer Aeternus

There are also children that become mature too early, and grow up very quickly – the extreme opposite of the puer, these are neglected children. The hardships of life have forced them to become very realistic, independent, and disillusioned. You can generally tell from a bitter and falsely mature expression that something went wrong. They were pushed out of the childhood world too soon. Such people cannot love nor trust anybody, in that situation life has no meaning, because they have lost the magical aspect of the eternal youth. They always feel not quite real, only half alive. In therapy, the analyst has the difficult task of guiding them back to their childish fantasies, in order to deal with them correctly.

The eternal child also contains many positive qualities, a spirituality which comes from close contact with the unconscious. The puer is agreeable, has the charm of youth and starts invigorating and deep conversations. He appears as the divine child who symbolises newness, potential for growth, and hope for the future. Friedrich Nietzsche understood the importance of this. In fact, he considered the child to be the final metamorphosis to becoming who one is. He writes:

“The child is innocence and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelling wheel, a first motion, a sacred Yes. For the game of creating, my brothers, a sacred “yes” to life is needed.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

What is meant by the inner child is that which is born from the maturity of the adult. It is not a regression towards an infantile state of life, but a progression towards wholeness. We all have an inner child within us, even older people, who sometimes appear to return to the child-like state of innocence.

The eternal youth is one who is immersed in the moment and filled with wonder and playfulness, giving way to pure creativity. He is a Yes-sayer, the pinnacle of life-affirmation. He brings the heavenly realm into his earthly existence.

A passage from the bible reads:

“Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

— Matthew 18:3

Senex and Puer

As we grow older, we enter the world of the senex, which is Latin for old man. He too possesses positive and negative aspects. Positively, he is a balanced person who is grounded, patient, conscientious, risk-averse, and controlled. Here he appears as the archetype of the wise old man. The negative side of the senex is cynicism, rigidity, materialism, reluctance to change, and a lack of a sense of humour.

The senex is the opposite of the puer archetype, though they must be seen as the opposite sides of the same coin. We recognise youth by knowing age; we become aware of ageing by remembering how we were when young. Jung writes:

“The puer’s shadow is the senex… associated with the god Apollo – disciplined, controlled, responsible, rational, ordered. Conversely, the shadow of the senex is the puer, related to Dionysus – unbounded, instinct, disorder, intoxication, whimsy.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol 9.1: Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

The puer dreams big. The senex works hard. The ratio of one to the other varies from person to person. Both archetypes live within us, and both are necessary for a psychologically healthy life. A one-sided imbalance in either direction is not advisable.

The puer and senex have different versions of play. While the puer enjoys sports, socialising, games, eating out, going to the movies, etc., (which are all non-tangible products), the senex feels that play is engaging in a non-work activity that produces a tangible result: painting, cooking, writing, building, and so on.

The Puer Aeternus and The Little Prince

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is one of the most well-known books in the world. He displays all the typical features of the puer aeternus, which, however, does not alter the fact that he was also a great writer. He worked as a professional aviator, and died during World War II in an airplane crash. When he was not allowed to fly he always became depressed, walking up and down in his flat from morning till evening, desperate and irritated.

We see that Saint-Exupéry has never really gotten used to living in the world of the adult. He was experiencing depression and disillusionment. It was as if his unconscious were saying to him that he must participate in the world and cannot always escape the unimaginative and banal world of everyday life. He felt as if his soul had been completely dried up, and that he was dying of thirst, hence the image of the desert. This mid-life crisis leads to conscious absent-mindedness and one little mistake can cost one’s life.

Saint-Exupéry speaks about the emptiness, idiocy, and meaninglessness of adulthood, and that the childhood life is the fantasy life, the artist’s life, the true life – all the rest is empty persona running after making money, making a prestige impression on other people, and having lost one’s true nature. The great problem is that he has not found a bridge by which he could take over the true life into the adult life.

The English poet William Wordsworth wrote about this poignantly:

“There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore; -

Turn wheresoe’er I may

By night or day.

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

…

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy,

At length the Man perceives it die away

And fade into the light of common day.”

— William Wordsworth, Immortality Ode

The fundamental question is: how can one grow up without losing the feeling of totality, the feeling of creativeness, magic, and of being really alive, which one had in youth?

Integration of Puer Aeternus

To integrate the puer aeternus, one must bring oneself down to earth, not by having a one-sided view on the life of fantasy, but rather by exposing oneself to daily life, chores, and hard work.

The puer must also merge with the crowd, to become the sheep that Saint-Exupéry put into a box, though this isn’t without its dangers. A dangerous situation is cured by a dangerous situation. However, it is the anti-dote for a mother complex. Normally, very few young men have a strong enough individuality to pull away from the mother of their own accord; they do it via collectivity. This is the first step of the cure, it is only by immersing oneself in society that one can experience the warmth of human beings, have relatedness, and a sense of being part of a tribe that transcends individual desires and needs.

The second step is that the puer must take care not to lose his self in the crowd. He must simultaneously sacrifice his inflated specialness, and megalomania (which is his fake individuality) – and not lose his real individuality by becoming a mere number in the crowd. This can be done by balancing one’s social life with one’s spiritual life, for if one never spends time alone, one may never built an indestructible foundation, which is crucial for self-realisation. Nietzsche wrote:

“When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think as I really think; after a time it always seems as though they want to banish me from myself and rob me of my soul and I grow angry with everybody and fear everybody. I then require the desert, so as to grow good again.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, §491

Jung likened the human life span to the passage of the Sun over the course of 12 hours: the Sun rises and we begin the day (birth); the Sun rises in the sky (we grow from infancy to youth to young adulthood); the Sun comes to the zenith at noontime (mid-life, the peak of our abilities, vigour and, if we have been on the right path, career success); then the Sun begins to lose its altitude (we begin to age), until it finally sets (we die). These phases of life have different priorities, and specific types of psychology.

For Jung, the priority of the first half of life is a strengthening of the ego: work, education, relationships, and so on. It is only in the second half of life that we are sufficiently anchored in reality and our focus shifts to our inner world, to our quest for individuation. An imbalance in this transition is often the start of a mid-life crisis, the cry of the soul for growth.

Jung writes:

“The significance of the morning [of life] undoubtedly lies in the development of the individual, our entrenchment in the outer world, the propagation of our kind, and the care of our children. This is the obvious purpose of nature… Whoever carries over into the afternoon [of life] the law of the morning, or the natural aim, must pay for it with damage to his soul, just as surely as a growing youth who tries to carry over his childish egoism into adult life must pay for this mistake with social failure.”

— Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 8: Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche

Jung tells us that to cure the neurosis of the puer, one has to work. This is the most disagreeable word for a puer because he has to sacrifice the wonder of the fantasy realm to a conventional life, which requires commitment and responsibility. It seems like utter madness to him, because he is letting go of his specialness. The crucial step is that he must drive out his devils, and be careful that he doesn’t also drive out his angels. This can only be achieved by a focus on the inner world, and the outer world, which is the purpose of individuation.

Through work, the puer may actually become exceptional in reality, not in fantasy. It doesn’t matter if one has no idea which job is the right one, or what one really wants to do – one has to stick with any kind of job and immerse oneself in the outer world. Søren Kierkegaard calls this type of anxiety – the dizziness of freedom – the vertigo that comes from having to choose from a sea of infinite possibilities. Here one may either lose himself in the finite (becoming an imitation of other people), or lose oneself in the infinite (a state of analysis-paralysis where one thinks of all the possibilities but never acts).

The puer usually tries various different jobs but never sticks to one, and quits when it becomes too boring. While he can work, he’ll find it a chore. This is because he is working completely uphill in opposition to his own flow of energy. The puer knows that everything goes wrong because he is lazy, but he cannot want not to be lazy, and so he remains in depression.

We all possess a great storage of enthusiasm, which is kept hidden as long as we do not integrate the archetype of eternal youth. The unconscious indicates the direction in which there might be some enthusiasm or where energy flows naturally, for it is, of course, easier to train oneself to work in a direction supported by one’s instinct.

Nevertheless, in every field of work there always comes the time when routine must be faced. All work, even creative work, contains a certain amount of boring routine, which is when the puer complains.

When asked how one should live, Jung wrote:

“There is no single, definite way for the individual… if you want to go on your individual way, it is the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot in front of the other. If you always do the next thing that needs to be done, you will go most safely and sure-footedly along the path prescribed by your unconscious. Then it is naturally no help at all to speculate about how you ought to live.”

— Jung’s Letter to Frau V (15 December 1933)

Jung tells us that we shouldn’t spend time in useless speculation and waste our energy and our resources by thinking of how to live, but rather to toil the soil directly in front of us. As such, we are always doing something meaningful and intended by fate.

The puer denies the call to adventure in the Hero’s Journey, which separates the person from the aspects of their previous life and causes anxiety. He remains in the stage of refusal, and cannot leave the ordinary world and enter the special world, where he must confront his dragon (his worst fear, event, person, situation, or memory long avoided).

Thus, he cannot access his reward, a treasure chest full of inner gold that is guarded by the dragon. The puer remains in perpetual stagnation, because he cannot acquire the insight that comes from a psychological death and rebirth, the death of one’s old self, and the birth of a new and more capable self – without which there’s no individuation at all.

In some Native American rituals, young boys are gathered by the men and taken out in the middle of the night and dragged off into the wilderness, where they must pass trials for their initiation into manhood. This is the beginning of the Hero’s Journey. If he succeeds in slaying his dragon, he re-enters the community as a man who has left the realm of childhood. Manhood is different from being a man, it is a badge of honour one must earn. It creates a sense of autonomy and a growth in ego strength, a sense of belongingness, purpose and meaning. That’s something missing in a puer, who is often driven by a desire for safety and/or pleasure. Jung writes:

“For the hero, fear is a challenge and a task, because only boldness can deliver from fear. And if the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is somehow violated, and the whole future is condemned to hopeless staleness, to a drab grey lit only by the will-o’-the-wisps.”

— Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 5: Symbols of Transformation

Initiation invites us to throw ourselves into the fire of life. In modern times, we lack these tribal initiations that were so important to our ancestors, and many men opt for alternatives such as military service, or the so-called “gym bro mentality”.

Some young men are hoping that something in life will carry them off, from the painful and mundane day to day life, like being thrown on an island where one must survive by building a fire, shelter, hunting for food, and so on. This is both terrifying, and exhilarating. In psychological terms, they are waiting for an archetype to activate in the psyche, and help orient them in life.

For a young woman it is marriage and childbearing that conquers the puella. There is a sacrificial moment that in order to incarnate the archetype of the mother, she has to put the archetype of Aphrodite into the sacrificial altar, and accept the fact that her body is going to look very different, and that she is going to feel different, after giving birth to a child. This enormous responsibility of the mother often causes the death of the puella. Though, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t cases in which a mother is still a puella, or a woman that has no children that is not a puella.

Dreams are an important source to integrate the puer. When the inner child appears in dreams, it’s always behind us and ahead of us, simultaneously. Behind us is the infantile shadow, that which always pulls us backward into being infantile, dependent, lazy, escaping problems, responsibility, and life. It must be sacrificed for us to become the hero. The child god that is ahead of us means renewal, the possibility of life continually growing and expanding.

When our ego attitude changes, the dreams respond. We can influence dreams by writing them down and giving meaning to them, and by drawing, and colouring it. This helps us to amplify the contents of the dream and bring the imaginary figures into reality, and the unconscious realises that one does this, because it changes too.

Dream images can be used in active imagination, when you enter your inner picture while being conscious, and continue to live in it and transform it, giving it a new life. Dreams tells us what to do with our lives, and we don’t have to worry when we don’t understand a dream, because a dream understands us.

Swiss artist Peter Birkhäuser had a dream of the puer aeternus, and made a painting. A wonderful, divine boy rides an extremely powerful wild horse – he comes from cosmic distances, from the boundless universe, in other words, from the collective unconscious. He rides through the space of the psyche like a new star in the heavens. It is an encounter with the archetype of the Self. He has four arms and out of one hand grows a magical eight-pointed flower (or he is holding it). The boy embodies quaternity, the universal expression of spiritual totality, and characteristic of most images of the divinity.

The English poet and visionary artist William Blake is an example of an individuated person having integrated his puer aeternus. He reminds us that if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite, opening us up to the mystery of the inner and the outer life.

“I feel that a man may be happy in this world, and I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision. I see every thing I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike… The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way… As a man is so he sees.”

— William Blake’s Letter to Dr. Trusler (23 August 1799)

“Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.”

— Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 11: Psychology and Religion

Put in another way, neurosis is the flight from authentic suffering. We all suffer. But you can suffer authentically or not.

Suffering is often caused by a clash of opposites. Should I help my family and honour them or grow and live my journey? The answer is, both. That is the difficulty. The hard thing in life is not to choose between right or wrong, but to choose between two things that seem equally right and true, both are costly. That’s a real life issue.

This is the tension of opposites that Jung so often talks about. The task is to hold the tension of opposites as long as you can, until what the alchemists called the tertium quid (the “third thing”) appears. This “third thing” was considered an unidentified and mystical essence that emerged from the union of two known opposing elements.

The third thing is the call to consciousness, our ultimate vocation, that develops out of the conflict of opposites. But you can only get there when you suffer the opposites within. And what solves the problem is that which is higher than the ego, the Self. It is the Deus ex machina that appears and unexpectedly solves that which seemed unsolvable. A miracle. Something inside us supports the fall and holds it with care, “We’re all falling… And yet there is Someone, whose hands infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.” (Rainer Maria Rilke, Autumn). That is the encounter with the Self.

Neurosis occurs when suffering loses meaning or authenticity. When you suffer but you do not know why, then you rebel against life, shake your fist against God or repress your emotions, and unleash the violent monster within. Nietzsche wrote that, “The meaninglessness of suffering, not the suffering, was the curse that lay over mankind so far.” (Genealogy of Morals).

Jung wrote that, “The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate.” (C.W. Vol. 9.2). This is a scary thought. What is that within us that seeks to express itself? To know oneself is more important than one might think. Fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant (Seneca, Letters from a Stoic). We are born to fulfill our unique soul-essence, that is the true journey of life, and without it life has no purpose. As Socrates put it when he was sentenced to death, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Be mindful. Be courageous. Show up. The spirit of evil is negation of the life force by fear; only boldness can deliver us from fear; and if the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is violated.

“When Jung once said that “a neurosis is an offended god,” he meant, metaphorically, that the neglect of a deep, instinctual energy ultimately revenges itself in our somatic discords, compulsions, addictions, or projections onto others.”

— James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life

In other words, Jung means that we have repressed some expression within us that is seeking to enter the world through us. When we oppose that, we are offending the gods, as it were, it has that much importance in your life.

This post was inspired by James Hollis.

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I don’t stop moving all day

long before sunset I’m done

back home I wash off my feet and sleep

too tired to notice the mountain moon’s passage

birds wake me up from a distant grove

the red sun’s disc shines through the pines

today and tomorrow don’t differ

the years are all the same.

Not one care in mind all year

I find enough joy every day in my hut

and after a meal and a pot of strong tea

I sit on a rock by a pond and count fish

quiet untroubled days

nothing to do or change.

Lots of idle thoughts occur during meditation

I gather the dead wood for my stove

living among cliffs I’m suddenly old

my reflection looks thin

when I walk beside a stream

my eyes have turned blue

viewing mountains through pines.

Old, but at peace in body and mind

I cleared a place to rest in the pines

a remote mountain makes me happy.

Wind blown tea smoke floats above my bed

stream born petals fill the pond outside.

With 36,000 days

why not spend a few staying still?

— The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse (Translated by Red Pine)

The goal of Zen is satori (awakening or enlightenment). It is a new way to experience reality, and to see into one’s true nature - a lifelong task.

“After seeing your self-nature, you need to deepen your experience even further and bring it into maturation. You should have enlightenment experiences again and again and support them with continuous practice.”

— Sheng Yen, Dharma Drum: The Life and Heart of Chan Practice

To attain satori, one focuses on silence, stillness, and simplicity unconcerned by theoretical speculations. You do not necessarily have to be in solitude. Zen can be practiced anywhere, even in the busy and noisy streets of a city.

Zen is a way of life, that can be applied to everything you do. It is a meditative or contemplative state:

What do you see?

What do you smell?

What do you hear?

What do you taste?

What do you feel?

The goal of Zen is to bring us back to experience itself, or to what Carl Jung calls the sensation function (which is more or less developed depending on each individual).

To realise that there is no past and no future, can bring relief. There is only ‘now’, or what Alan Watts calls the ‘eternal now.’

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

— Matthew 6:34

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“Man is not truly one, but truly two: I say two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point. Others will follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines, and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens [archetypes!].”

Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a classic exploration of the duality of man that also provides us with psychological insights into our nature.

Dr. Jekyll is a highly regarded, hard-working, and honest man. But, this is merely an outward appearance. It is what Carl Jung calls the persona or social mask, the way one presents oneself to the world. In reality, from an early age, Jekyll has always felt at odds with himself, repressing and hiding his lustful desires with an almost morbid sense of shame. Of course, people rarely see that side which we deny even to ourselves. That suppression of instinct only makes the impulse stronger and more animalistic is a definitely Victorian conception of desire. This repression feeds the shadow, the unknown and neglected part of oneself.

Dr. Jekyll daydreams on the thought of separating his dark side, and be relieved of all that is unbearable, refusing to believe that it is part of himself. He thinks about separating his shadow from his virtuous self, instead of integrating it. After much study, he concocts a potion in his laboratory and drinks it, and becomes Mr. Hyde, he appears irrecognisable and deformed by pure evil. This explains why people around him feel uneasy, though they cannot explain why, except that there exists a sort of “deformity” about him.

Dr. Jekyll, tired of the dryness of a life of study, is tempted and attracted by the new power presented by Hyde. By drinking the potion, he could change into Hyde and back to Jekyll at will, and at any moment. However, he becomes so depraved and inherently malign as Hyde that he murders an innocent bystander. Jekyll is horrified at this. He realises he cannot control Hyde, and succumbs to his darker impulses.

Eventually, Jekyll does not even have to take the potion, but simply awakes as Hyde. Terrified, he doubles the intake of the potion, but it only lasts momentarily. Now the battle is to maintain his ego or sense of identity as Jekyll. But, he loses hold of his original and better self, becoming slowly incorporated with his second and worse self. His devil had been long caged, and he came out roaring.

After running out of the ingredients to make the concoction, and after being unable to purchase more, for he realised that the first supply had an unknown impurity which was precisely what made it efficacious, he succumbs finally to Hyde, forever.

“He, I say—I cannot say, I. That child of Hell had nothing human, nothing lived in him but fear and hatred.” - Dr Jekyll

The story shows how easily one can be tempted by evil and its fascinating power, similar to Faust’s deal with the Devil.

If we spend our lives neglecting the dark aspects of ourselves, seeking to separate ourselves from them and projecting them onto others, we eventually become possessed by our own shadow and commit atrocious acts.

By displaying a persona that is not your true self, and being unconscious of doing so, while repressing your negative traits, you slowly feed your shadow, until it becomes large enough to overwhelm your personality and possess you. That is an age-old struggle of mankind, echoed by Paul the Apostle’s words, “For what I want to do, I do not do; but what I hate, I do.”

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“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.”

— Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections

When a person knows more than others, he becomes lonely. But that does not necessarily mean that such a person is hostile to companionship, for no one is more sensitive to companionship than the lonely person, and companionship thrives only when each individual remembers his individuality and does not identify himself with others.

It is important to have a secret, a premonition of things unknown. It fills life with something impersonal, something numinous. A man who has never experienced that has missed something important. He must sense that he lives in a world which in some respects is mysterious; that things happen and can be experienced which remain inexplicable; that not everything which happens can be anticipated. The unexpected and the incredible belong to this world. Only then is life whole.

Jung had always felt, like Socrates, that he had a daimon in him, an impersonal and amoral force which guided him to fulfill his soul-essence (the ultimate meaning and purpose of our life). If we deviate from this instinctual path, we feel overwhelmed, our minds become a massa confusa or confused and entangled mass of thoughts, and we fall into disorientation, anxiety, despair, and meaninglessness. This frequently occurs when everything seems to be going well outwardly, yet you have an inner uneasiness but do not know why.

Just as an acorn cannot grow if the ground is infertile and not enough nutrients are given to it, so too can we not grow into who we are meant to be, if we do not take care of our psychological well-being. We become neurotic, apathetic, and the world takes on a grey appearance, devoid of all colour and life. The tree slowly withers away and dies before its time.

If we follow our vocation, however, and know with an inner certainty that this is what I am meant to do, despite all struggles of life, we develop and become individualised, following the path nature carved for us.

I am satisfied with the course my life has taken. It has been bountiful, and has given me a great deal. How could I ever have expected so much? Nothing but unexpected things kept happening to me. Much might have been different if I myself had been different. But it was as it had to be; for all came about because I am as I am.

— Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections

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“Our fantasies do not lead us straight to hell (unless we indulge in them and use active imagination the wrong way) but, if we learn to trust our own experience, it will, accordingly to the natural law, lead us to a state of completeness, to what we really are.”

— Barbara Hannah, The Archetypal Symbolism of Animals

The original unconscious primitive condition of the human being is a sort of rock that contains gold, and if you put that body through the proper alchemical transformation - or psychological treatment - the rock will yield gold. By separating the instincts that were contained in the original unconscious, you lift them up into the light of consciousness.

Consciousness is the gold that has been contained in the unconscious, but so distributed that it was invisible. So, if we follow the laws that are in our own nature, they will lead us to the right end. This is just what active imagination can do for us.

Through the process of civilisation you slowly bring out all the gold and other precious metals that were contained in the original unconsciousness, the philosophers’ stone, the diamond, the gold, the elixir vitae, the fluid that makes you immortal, etc., all these are symbols for the various substances extracted from that rock of original unconsciousness.

But if you allow your consciousness to be dissolved, it is as as if you pour liquid gold into a heap of ashes, and in time forms a rock as before. Thus, you will create again the original unconsciousness.

Instinct - usually represented by an animal - is the unconscious mental functioning of the human being, in which there are the possibilities of extracting the gold of consciousness.

Source: Paraphrased from C.G. Jung’s Vision Seminar in 1933.

I was reading about this and thought I would share it with you, as I found the analogy between instinct, consciousness, and gold, particularly enlightening (pun intended!).

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I have been contemplating on the nature and telos of human life and it seems to me that we all have an essence to fulfill in our time on Earth. I have struggled to reconcile religion’s emphasis on the summum bonum (highest good, i.e., God), with the duality of good and evil inherent in the human condition. Theologians will argue that only good exists (ultimtaely, as God is the source of being) and that evil is a privation of good (privatio boni), but it is clear once we open our eyes to the world that there exists true evil out there. I think, however, that we can reconcile both positions.

If there exists such a thing as a purely good world that we once lived in as souls, a Garden of Eden, why was it necessary for us to fall into the body and eat of the forbidden fruit? Theologians call this the felix culpa or happy fall. Perhaps it was a necessary act in order to experience the full spectrum of human emotions, or perhaps this life we are living right now is our ultimate task whose grand purpose is reunion with the paradise we once lived, but on a higher level of consciousness. As such, we are fragmented or dissociated beings that are in a struggle of reconciling the opposites, until we can manage to unite the division within ourselves through self-realisation and return to the world of pure good we once belonged to, in order to feel a real sense of “home-coming” (something also described by people who have had near-death-experiences).

Until we attain theosis or union with God, Eastern philosophy emphasises that we will be reincarnated into the bodily form. Some indigenous cultures, however, see reincarnation as the goal, as our bodies disintegrate into nature and feed it, continuing the cycle of creation-preservation-destruction. Whatever it may be, we may say that metaphysically only good exists, but, as divided beings seeking union, we experience psychologically and phenomenologically both good and evil. For there can be no salvation without a prior fall. And that is the true beauty of the human condition.

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We are all “thrown” into the world as Martin Heidegger puts it. Into a particular historical period, country, race, sex, economic class, etc. Just as we are heavily influenced by our genetics, so are we inevitably moulded by life and our immediate environment as we grow up and adapt to the world once we gain a sense of ego, of identity “of who I am” - which starts at around the age of 3, though it may vary. The question about free will and determinism is a grey zone. Both are right. Rarely are things black or white. However, we are concerned with what we can do in our lives to find meaning and improve ourselves and others around us.

We must never blame the circumstances we were born into, as they are outside of our control. In fact, a person may end up the same despite being born in the slums or in a luxurious family. Many times it is those who are born in difficulty that acquire the necessary experience to confront life’s troubles and succeed. So that, later, they are grateful for their “misfortunes”. Whilst those who are coddled, are given whatever they desire, and are not taught discipline may end up in a very difficult situation later in life.

Once we throw ourselves into the fire of life, and begin our journey of the first half of life, that of building the ego or self-identity, we slowly anchor ourselves in the world and the psyche starts to transition into our inner life at around midlife, to begin our true task of life, discovering who we are, or our “soul’s essence.” True freedom comes upon not doing what one wants to do, but rather upon fulfilling the seed that is implanted in each of us when we are born into this world. Discovering this seed and finding one’s vocation to realise it, is a true blessing. No matter how difficult times may be or how many obstacles one must confront, if you know you are on the right path, and are not lost or disoriented, you are already on the right track. A single step begins a journey of a thousand miles.

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“To venture in the highest sense is precisely to become conscious of oneself.”

— Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death

Kierkegaard valued subjectivity above all. We all start with our own lived experiences and only then do we form our life’s philosophy. Nietzsche said that every philosophy is nothing but the author’s biography. And in The Tragic Sense of Life, Miguel de Unamuno stated that it is not usually our ideas that make us optimists or pessimists, but it is our optimism or pessimism that makes our ideas.

When our life is not in order, we most likely will have pessimistic ideas about life. No matter what philosophy we might follow. To become conscious of oneself is to take on the call to adventure in the Hero’s Journey as Joseph Campbell would tell us. Only then can we face with the root of our problem head to head, defeat our dragon (repression, obstacle, fear, etc.) and gather the much deserved gold.

We must understand that this is a cyclical journey, as Carl Jung would say, self-realisation is a circumambulation of the Self (our total peronality), progressing towards the centre in a circular motion.

Here are a few things to ponder about becoming conscious of oneself.

1. Are you being your self or sometimes suppress your emotions to act out a false persona for social purposes? It is quite alright to portray a persona if you are conscious of it. However, if you are unconscious of acting differently around others, then who are you really? The person you are at home or your social persona?

2. Do you sometimes feel down even though everything seems to be going alright outwardly? Perhaps its time to listen to your conscience, or inner images. Nobody knows you better than your own unconscious.

3. What irritates you most on a daily basis? Notice the event and your emotions and write it down. The confrontation with the shadow (our unknown and hidden aspects) is crucial for understanding ourselves.

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“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

The quote continues, “If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you’ll succumb in every battle.” This is from Chapter 3 of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.

Your greatest enemy has always been yourself, and until you conquer it, you can go no further.

This “enemy” can be viewed as our shadow in Jungian terms, our hidden and unknown qualities in the unconscious. He is not evil. He is, in fact, our ally; for he contains the necessary insight for our realising our Self, the wholeness of our personality, through individuation (the goal of analytical psychology). Hence, love your enemy within yourself, for he appears hostile only because you have neglected the repressed contents of your unconscious. This is typically expressed in dreams or sudden mood swings.

When you are feeling down, know that you need not fear the result of defeat. It is painful, but necessary. There exists no concept of victory without it. Balance is necessary for life. It is no contradiction, but a paradox of human existence. This realisation leads to tranquility, and peace with reality. An acceptance of oneself and one’s flaws, of one’s place in the world, and of one’s spiritual duty.

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Focus on what you can control, and not on what you cannot. This Stoic phrase has been one of my mantras during difficult times. It is similar to the Serenity Prayer, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

Many times we are worried and anxious about things we cannot control. We try our best to avoid what causes discomfort and misery. However, life has both good and bad in it. Sometimes we need to let go of what we wish for and let life happen as it actually will. Instead of trying to swim against the river of life, we should flow in harmony with it. With everything bad and everything good included.

Epictetus was a slave who ended up teaching philosophy as a way of life. He tells us in his handbook, the Enchiridion:

“Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.”

Take a minute to think about your main worries right now. Perhaps write or type down the top 3 that you feel are bothering you most.

Are they the result of your actions or other people’s actions/the environment? In other words, are they within your control, or are they outside of your control?

My airplane just got delayed.

I am worried about what people think of me.

I am jealous of my neighbour. He has a nicer car than me (Keeping up with the Joneses).

I wish I was taller.

I was born in poverty and I am likely to remain in poverty.

…

These are a few examples of things outside of our control we worry about. But since they are outside of our control, there is no point worrying about them. For they shall pass. Focus on what you can control, and not on what you cannot.

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:34)

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