baja

When we forget our ability to choose, we learn to be helpless. Drip by drip we allow our power to be taken away until we end up becoming a function of other people’s choices – or even a function of our own past choices. In turn, we surrender our power to choose.

When we are willing to accept the darkness, it is only then that we find the light.

But how can I attain the knowledge of the heart? You can attain this knowledge only by living your life to the full. You live your life fully if you also live what you have never yet lived, but have left for others to live or to think.

Does the ego require a dying process, as the themes of myth and alchemy suggest?

The violence of positivity does not presume or require hostility. It unfolds specifically in a permissive and pacified society. Consequently, it proves more invisible than viral violence. It inhabits the negativity-free space of the Same, where no polarization between inside and outside, or proper and foreign, takes place.

The Essentialist doesn’t just recognise the power of choice, he celebrates it. The Essentialist knows that when we surrender our right to choose, we give others not just the power but also the explicit permission to choose for us.

The dark side of psychic life is both dangerous and at times tragic, but the acceptance of its tragic potential was for Jung a necessity. He noted that the cure for suffering might well be more suffering.