You Yourself Are a Conflict that Rages

August 24, 2023

I am immersed in the final stages of syllabus preparation for our upcoming course, Toward Wholeness: Integrating the Masculine & Feminine in Self and Society. As we plan to send a welcome email out to all registered students on Monday morning, I’m going to keep cooking and keep this post short!

In lieu of a longer newsletter, I wanted to share these absolutely beautiful lines from a letter that Jung wrote to Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, the founder of the Eranos Conference, in 1945. If you’re like me, you may want to read it a few times through because of its power. Some of Jung’s greatest writing is found in his letters…

“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 fixed and unalterable 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.”

Whew!

XO, Satya