vol. 3 issue 35
Greetings,
Not being an expert on the life of depth psychologist C.S. Jung, I don’t fully know the context of the letter he wrote to Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, but when I came across it today, this bit especially caught my attention:
“There can be no resolution, only patient endurance of the opposites which ultimately spring from your nature.
“You yourself are a conflict that rages in itself and against itself, in order to melt its incompatible substances, the males and the female, n the fire of suffering, and thus create that fixed and unalterable form which is the goal of 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. But God loves human beings more than the angels.”
Jung’s friend and contemporary, Frau Fröbe-Kapteyn was a Dutch woman of some means, an intellectual, and a devotee of Jungian thought, given that it aligned with her then iconoclastic views that ranked spirituality over religiosity. That’s all I really know about her, other than she is the founder of an annual conference in Switzerland called Eranos, which gathers together thinkers across many fields to discuss the role of spirituality in our lives.
So, it’s probably fair to say that receiving such a letter that speaks authoritatively about what God thinks and how he rates the angels was not so extraordinary to Frau Fröbe-Kapteyn.
But, after considering the suicide of one of my readers and thinking all week about the state of mind one must be in to commit to that act, I was startled by the seeming assurance Dr. Jung was offering this woman that God wanted her to suffer.
These years of writing and producing docu-mental have served as my attempt to reconcile the prevailing reductive approach to existence with my personal view that life is ripe with meaning, and ours is to discover what that meaning might be.
Still, some mental illnesses cannot be driven away with talk or spirituality-based therapies, and we are foolish to deny that many people’s quality-of-life is greatly changed for the better through medications and other interventions. I have seen this first-hand, particularly in people who must live with schizophrenia, for example.
And yet, I believe we are experiencing an epidemic of existential crises as much as we are enduring a pandemic of infectious disease.
A key reason for this is our fundamental inability as a nation to cope with and accept pain. It is this flight from feeling what hurts that causes us to suffer. I believe this.
Pain, I believe, is inevitable; suffering is optional.
Perhaps the letter from Dr. Jung was translated from the German to say “suffer” when another verb might have held more nuance. While I do speak German, I am not adept enough nor know the full circumstances that provoked his sentiments, so I won’t hazard a guess.
But I remain kerfuffled as to what such a declarative statement about the mind of God, coming from one who counseled so many about the treasures to be found at the core of pain, might have been intended to convey.
Here is where I will wager a guess: That sacred anxiety, the kind that makes us want to wrestle with the angels, as Jacob does in the book of Genesis, is rigged in our favor. That by engaging with the pain of not knowing the right answer, of not knowing how to assign meaning to what is mysterious and awful, we will win, no matter how long the battle.
I say this because what I have lived long enough to conclude is that the line between engaging in battle as a spiritual warrior is antithetical to suffering, while refusing that call to engage is what prolongs suffering.
Other than that, I don’t really have a moral of this story to offer. Perhaps all Dr. Jung meant was that angels are not blessed with the dark.
Meanwhile, every day, in so many ways, we all are challenged to engage with pain, and we do so, intent on winning. Yet, how do we reconcile the losses, such as in the case of my late reader, Scott S.?
It’s only by way of my faith, borne not of any religious entrainment, but from years of observation and consideration, that I say I believe life is worth living and why this year a mantra of sorts has developed in my mind: “It could be worse, I probably deserve worse.”
It’s funny to me how when I share that with others, the reaction so often is “Aw. You don’t really mean that.”
Yes, I do.
In my life I have learned that when the pain is so bad it defeats every weapon I employ against it, I can still win by adjusting my expectations.
Peace,
Whitney