“The quest involves listening to your interior intelligence, taking it seriously, staying true to it, and approaching it with a religious attitude. In Jungian psychology this quest is called individuation—discovering the uniqueness of you, finding your purpose and meaning.”
I often write about listening to our inner voice and, by trying to live in accordance with what we discern by that listening, becoming the unique person each of us was created to be. The above quote from the book Living Your Unlived Life by Jungian psychotherapists and authors Robert A. Johnson and Jerry Ruhl states so well what listening to our inner voice involves and what it can lead to.
I write about these ideas because learning about Jungian concepts and dream work, combined with having been given the gift of faith, has resulted in my having a more purposeful and meaningful life. And my hope is that others who haven’t already discovered these truths will be helped as I have been.
When we don’t have a sense of purpose and meaning, our lives feel empty. People will try to fill that emptiness in unhealthy ways, such as by using drugs and/or alcohol, overeating, overspending, and making other harmful choices, only to find that what they’re doing doesn’t alleviate the emptiness. Sometimes those activities provide some relief, but that relief is temporary and the emptiness returns and intensifies.
Trying to do those things that help us to individuate involves effort and a certain amount of sacrifice, in particular sacrificing ego desires that don’t align with inner direction. Reading books by authors who have written about Jungian concepts makes this clear. This was also made clear to me by a synchronicity I experienced many years ago. I had arrived for a session with a Jungian psychotherapist I was seeing and there was a client who had finished his session and was about to leave. We recognized each other from a therapy group we had attended and greeted each other. Then the man showed me a pin that was an advertisement for the company where he worked and he asked me if I would like to have one, and I said yes. On the pin were the words “This Ain’t No Hobby, Pal.” I don’t recall the type of work this man did. That didn’t matter. What mattered was the synchronistic meaning of that occurrence. What are the chances someone at the therapist’s office would have a pin with those words, would ask me if I would like to have it, and would happen to be there at the time I was arriving? Extremely small. The combination of those happenings is what makes this occurrence meaningful.
The words “This Ain’t No Hobby, Pal” signify to me that doing inner work is a serious endeavor and that it requires effort and commitment. From time to time I think about that occurrence and it serves as a reminder of why doing inner work matters so very much. As does looking at the pin which I have kept all these years.