I suppose it is inevitable that as we age, we look back and say, “I wasted so much time! I might have done this, or that, or the other.” I am sure we have all missed opportunities. Who uses all his talents? Who takes advantage of everything life offers? I don’t see how else it could be.
But maybe this lament belongs among what we might call theoretical regrets. Because nobody can take advantage of every opportunity, how can it be a tragedy or even a misfortune that we miss some? Maybe this is why people say, “All paths are good.” On the one hand, every step we take forecloses other opportunities. On the other hand, foreclosing (or overlooking, or disdaining) an opportunity opens up new possibilities. Two ways of saying the same thing: There isn’t any one path. There are many paths, including the paths one makes oneself by wandering off on one’s own, and they’re all valid.
That said, I do have my own list of regrets, of course. Don’t we all? High on my list is, “Why didn’t I do the reading and studying that would have given me a comprehensive, first-hand knowledge and understanding of Carl Jung’s writings?”
I know the answer, of course. At least, I think I do. If I had received an academic understanding of Jungian psychology, or even if I had done enough reading early on to really understand what he was saying, I wouldn’t be where I am now, reading his work through the filter of 20-plus years of exposition from the guys upstairs. I would have been tempted to explain away their explanations as “nothing but” what I had read in Jung. Even as it was, I had read enough Jung to wonder. Had I made a through study of his work, it would have been much harder.
Still, as I read him now, in my old age, I see so much that it would have been helpful to have known long ago. While I am propounding a useless “if only,” I might as well concatenate them. So, if only I had:
- made a thorough study of Jung immediately after coming across Modern Man in Search of a Soul in 1970;
- acquired the theoretical background in psychology to feel at home discussing it;
- begun talking to the guys when I was in my twenties, instead of my forties;
- spoken to Jung long before I did, and had the background to ask more penetrating questions;
- begun working with Rita Warren or some equivalent (supposing there was some equivalent) 20 or even 30 years earlier;
- used those connections and that education and those sessions to produce a conspectus on reality as it looks when one looks at the description given by the guys when combined with a Jungian perspective.
I didn’t do any of those things. Instead, I stumbled around in the dark, feeling my way toward an unknown goal, the way we do, and it all worked out, as I imagine it generally does.
But what a lot of work there is left for the future! We can only hope that others will take up the task as they do their own stumbling toward unknown goals.
Frank,
Why do you think it would have been beneficial to be more familiar with Jung in your life?
Don’t you think this would have been a key question to address in the post?
Do you think there is a difference in the acquisition of data or the application of the knowledge gained from that data? Heart vs Mind.
Consider how all this information could be used in evangelism for other beings who don’t have the intimacy with the information or the love for other beings to apply it for others. Attract joy and spark it in others!
Try a perspective of abundance and Love. ❤️
I can see i didn’t write this one as well as i might have done. What I continually find, as I read Jung, are concepts that fit equally well with what the guys have said over the years, reading the same facts in a different context.
I feel competent to represent what the guys said and meant, as it was a direct mind-to-mind communication, but I don’t feel equally confident that I know just what Jung meant, or even just what he said, because I (1) don’t read German and (2) am not trained in Jungian psychology and (3) have not read most, let alone all, of what he published during his lifetime. (And now I learn that there is much more that he wrote and did not publish. I suspect that some of this will be a slow-motion time bomb as it is translated and released to the world.)
On the other side of the ledger are several mind-to-mind communications with what I took (and still take) to be the mind of Jung himself, but of course information received in that manner may serve to orient me, but cannot serve as evidence.
That’s what I meant to say, and didn’t realize I hadn’t said.