This Jungian Life

In the first half of life, we strive to develop ego strength and achieve our dreams. To want, will, and work is worthwhile and adaptive--until a life dream, relationship, or identity fades or fails. Should we hang in and hang on - or let go? When does perseverance become pointless, or hope turn rancid in refusal to accept disappointment, defeat, or depression? In letting go, we relinquish our hard-won, heroic “I” and yield to an encounter with the unconscious. Jung says that although “I was afraid of losing command of myself…I let myself drop.” He came to realize that “This identity and my heroic idealism had to be abandoned, for there are higher things than the ego’s will, and to these one must bow.” Jung discovered, as may we, that in letting go something greater can meet and sustain us.  HERE’S THE DREAM WE ANALYZE: “I’m in a dining room. It’s in an older house with rooms like boxes for different purposes. There is the requisite brown wood dining room table. I’m not sure I should be in there. It feels old