Thursday, April 1, 2010

crucified between the opposites


A great quote for Holy Week:

When Carl Jung received a letter from his friend, Olga Frobe-Kapteyn,
who spoke of feeling torn between her work and her family, he responded:

Dear Frau Frobe,
There can be no resolution, only patient endurance, of the opposites
which ultimately spring from your own nature.

You yourself are a conflict that rages in itself and against itself
in order to melt its incompatible substances,
the male and the female in the fire of suffering,

and thus create that form which is the goal of life.

.
Everyone goes through this mill, 
consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or forcibly.

We are crucified between the opposites 
and delivered up to the torture
until the 'reconciling third' takes shape.

Do not doubt the rightness of the two sides within you,
and let whatever may happen, happen.

The apparently unendurable conflict is proof of the rightness of your life.

A life without inner contradiction is either only half a life
or else a life in the Beyond, which is destined only for angels.
"
~C.G. Jung, written at age 70 in August, 1945, [C.G. Jung Letters, vol. 1, p. 375.]
some of my ~ related commentary 

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