Final Reflections On “The Red Book” by Carl Jung

Today I finished with “The Red Book” by Carl Jung. It is impossible to explain fully its impact on me. Very few books I’ve read have entered into the dark crevices of the soul, the places I — and maybe all of us — are terrified to enter. In the darkness are our demons. We think our demons are outside of us. We see our demons in other people in all the ways we dislike and judge. But the demons of course are just us, the parts of ourselves we want to reject. We can all be so petty and small and weak and ugly. In the dark reaches of my psyche, I am all those things. My shadow is just as dark as yours.

I am not what you would call a “good person” whatever that means. My shadow emerges all the time. My attachments are often broken, anxious and avoidant. My parents did the best they could, and I am the result of that, mostly secure in myself. But the damage is still there. Perhaps the damage is unavoidable. To be alive means to suffer. And I suffer daily. I can be vain and petty. I can be narcissistic and angry. I can be envious of what I don’t have. I can want more and more material goods. But somehow this is ok. I am both my darkness and my light all at once. It could be no other way.

I read this morning, “Idealism is an act of violence.” My idealism about myself has definitely been violent throughout my life. For so long, I called myself…