Day 5

Jung’s life unfolds; on page 231 of The Red Book, he writes, “When I had the vision of the flood in October of the year 1913, it happened at a time that was significant for me as a man. At that time, in the fortieth year of my life, I had achieved everything that I had wished for myself. I had achieved honor, power, wealth, knowledge, and every human happiness.” Before I go on with what Jung says next, I just want to pause here. Pause. Go get a drink of water, or a candy bar. Who can say this at 40? Everything that I had wished for myself. I often wonder if any woman could ever say this. (The Twain in me.) Can a woman ever have everything she’s ever wanted in a man’s world?

There have been times in my life where I’ve had everything I’ve ever wanted. But perhaps my wants were too small. I wonder if I’m insane to even try to measure my life against Jung’s? What am I looking for in The Red Book? What does Jung say next? “Then my desire for the increase of these trappings ceased, the desire ebbed from me and horror came over me. The vision of the flood seized me and I felt the spirit of the depths, but I did not understand him. Yet he drove me on with unbearable inner longing and I said: ‘My soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak. I call you-are you there? I have returned. I am here again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you. I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you again (p. 232).’ ”

Perhaps what life is is a going out into the world, into the extra world (taken from the concept of Jung’s introversion and extroversion), as Jung did, and finding some level of success and then a return to the inner world for renewal. If Jung’s The Red Book is a journey into his soul, his spirit, then he once again gives back to the external world, if not 100 hundred years later, like Twain, but 48 years later, with it’s publication. Jung died in 1961, The Red Book, 2009.