Thanks Vinay for bringing this beautiful truth up to our forum; indeed the
biggest challenge is myself.
Many thanks for writing this to inspire a reflection.
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Hania Gorski, Melbourne
Psychologist, Relationship Coach, Systemic Therapist
Mobile: +61 400 225 357
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*The world, I’ve come to think, is like the surface of a frozen lake. We
walk along, we slip, we try to keep our balance and not to fall. One day,
there’s a crack, and so we learn that underneath us — is an unimaginable
depth. *James Joyce
On 14 June 2017 at 13:37, sophie badami sophie.badami@xxxxxxxxx
[ConstellationTalk] <ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Every word rings true!
On 14 Jun 2017 03:58, "Steve Vinay Gunther spirited@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[ConstellationTalk]" <ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I wanted to share with you all a beautiful quote by Jung:
People forget that even doctors have moral scruples, and that certain
patient’s confessions are hard even for a doctor to swallow. Yet the
patient does not feel himself accepted unless the very worst in him is
accepted too.
No one can bring this about by mere words; it comes only through
reflection and through the doctor’s attitude towards himself and his own
dark side. If the doctor wants to guide another, or even accompany him a
step of the way, he must feel with that person’s psyche. He never feels it
when he passes judgment. Whether he puts his judgments into words or keeps
them to himself makes not the slightest difference.
To take the opposite position and to agree with the patient offhand is
also of no use but estranges him as much as condemnation. Feeling comes
only through unprejudiced objectivity. This sounds almost like a scientific
precept, and it could be confused with a purely intellectual, abstract
attitude of mind. But what I mean is something quite different.
It is a human quality, a kind of deep respect for the facts, for the man
who suffers from them, and for the riddle of such a man’s life. The truly
religious person has this attitude. He knows that God has brought all sorts
of strange and inconceivable things to pass and seeks in the most curious
ways to enter a man’s heart. He therefore senses in everything the unseen
presence of the divine will.
This is what I mean by “unprejudiced objectivity.” It is a moral
achievement on the part of the doctor, who ought not to let himself be
repelled by sickness and corruption. We cannot change anything unless we
accept it.
Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. I am the oppressor of the
person I condemn, not his friend and fellow-sufferer. I do not in the least
mean to say that we must never pass judgment when we desire to help and
improve. But if the doctor wishes to help a human being he must be able to
accept him as he is. And he can do this in reality only when he has already
seen and accepted himself as he is.
Perhaps this sounds very simple, but simple things are always the most
difficult. In actual life it requires the greatest art to be simple, and so
acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test
of one’s whole outlook on life.
That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in
the name of Christ, all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto
the least o’ my brethren, that I do unto Christ.
But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the
poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yeah, the very
fiend himself, that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of
the alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved.
What then?
Then, as a rule, the whole truth of Christianity is reversed: there is
then no more talk of love and long-suffering; we say to the brother within
us “Raca,” and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide him from the
world, we deny ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves, and
had it been God himself who drew near to us in this despicable form, we
should have denied him a thousand times before a single cock had crowed.
Anyone who uses modern psychology to look behind the scene not only of
his patients’ lives, but more especially of his own life—and the modern
psychotherapist must do this if he is not to be merely an unconscious
fraud—will admit that to accept himself in all his wretchedness is the
hardest of tasks, and one which it is almost impossible to fulfill.
The very thought can make us sweat with fear. We are therefore only too
delighted to choose, without a moment’s hesitation, the complicated course
of remaining in ignorance about ourselves while busying ourselves with
other people and their troubles and sins. This activity lends us a
perceptible air of virtue, by means of which we benevolently deceive
ourselves and others. God be praised, we have escaped from ourselves at
last!
There are countless people who can do this with impunity, but not
everyone can, and these few break down on the road to their Damascus and
succumb to a neurosis. How can I help these people if I myself am a
fugitive, and perhaps also suffer from the morbus sacer of a neurosis? Only
he who has fully accepted himself has “unprejudiced objectivity.”
Collected Works of C.G. Jung: The First Complete English Edition
p519-520
