“People Will Do Anything, No Matter How Absurd, To Avoid Facing Their Own Souls”

A number of weeks ago I watched “A Dangerous Method” and this was about a stage of Carl Jung’s life. Watching this film gave me the urge to find out more about him and since that time, a number of his quotes have caught my attention.

One that has stood out is, “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.” My take on this is that he was saying that people will do everything that they can to avoid their own pain.

The Same Purpose

Now, although some of the ways in which someone can do this will look strange from the outside, the same need will be there. Further, someone won’t always know that what they are doing is motivated by their need to avoid themselves.

Thanks to the different defence mechanism that their mind will utilize, they can believe that it is due to another reason. This will allow them to not only deceive themselves but to also deceive others.

Self-Deception

So as someone can avoid themselves without even realising it, it shows why it is difficult for them to face themselves. Their defence mechanisms will shed light on what they are avoiding but in order for them to pay attention to this information, they will need to be aware of them and how they work.

The people in their life could be just as oblivious to how the mind works as they themselves are and it is unlikely that they will live in a society that will as assist them in this process. In fact, they could live in society that provides them with a whole host of ways to distract themselves.

Another Part

Along with the myriad ways that they can be distracted, the media is also likely to provide them with endless reasons as to why their life and the world is the way that it is. What is going on ‘out there’ will be their focus, with there being no reason for anyone to look within.

In other words, this source of information won’t encourage them to look within or mention how their inner world is affecting their outer world, or the world as a whole. It will be as though they are merely an observer of their reality.

Unconscious Consent

Taking all this into account, it can be normal for someone to be totally out of touch with themselves and consumed by what is going on externally. But, as opposed to realising that they are living on the surface of themselves and are caught up in the dramas of the world, it might not even stand out.

It would be easy to say that someone like this is victimised by the system; however, it would be more accurate to say that they are helping to keep it in place. Without realising it, they are both agreeing to and sustaining what is going on.

Final Thoughts

The question is: why are so many societies, in addition to so many people, like this? One way of looking at this would be to say that it’s the result of trauma. When someone is carrying a lot of pain, going within will be incredibly difficult.
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Focusing on the external world will be a key part of not having to face themselves, thereby avoiding the pain that would arise if they did. Yet, as this pain will still be inside them, it will have an effect on how they experience life (the law of resonance) and it will feed into the collective unconscious, playing a part in what happens on a global scale.

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Oliver JR Cooper
http://www.oliverjrcooper.co.uk