Meaning
Meaning is spiritual. It is the mastery of this world & the assertion of your soul. Through all that which you experience, the events that happen signify nothing, they signify only in us. Through the creative depths of our being we create the meaning of events. The meaning is the way of salvation that you create. Nevertheless, meaning is & always was artificial.
My voice is but vibrations in the air. But when you constitute a particular set of vibrations in the air & put meaning in them, they go beyond the ear & into the depths of the soul. A comforting word may have a healing effect, but the words are effective only in so far as they convey a meaning. Whether the meaning rises in you spontaneously or reaches you from without, it can make you ill or cure you.
Nothing is more intangible & unreal than fictions, illusions, & opinions; & yet nothing is more effective in the psychophysical realm. Everyday reason, & science as a compendium of common sense, help us over a good part of the road. Yet, they do not go beyond that frontier of human life which surrounds the common place. They offer no answer to the question of spiritual suffering & its innermost suffering of a human being who has not yet discovered what life means to him.
Although, all creativeness in the realm of the spirit, into reaching higher consciousness, arises from a state of mental suffering. We look for something that will take possession of us & give us meaning & form to the confusion of our neurotic mind. It is no reckless adventure, but an effort inspired by deep spiritual distress to bring meaning once more into our life. Caution has its place, no doubt, but we cannot refuse our support to a serious venture which calls the whole of the personality into the field of action. If you oppose it, you will suppress what is best in you. & if you avert the venture, then you will have stood in the way of that invaluable experience which might have given you meaning to life.
- This excerpt is extracted from the many different writings of Carl Jung. I altered some to give it a good flow.
