A Matter of Perspective

In our current society we are driven by results, bottom lines, the numbers at the end of the quarter. Expectations are set, exceeded, met, or not met. Success is measured by reaching a point, determined in advance; and sometimes how we get there is totally discounted. But the most important process we are involved in cannot be measured in those terms. In recent months we have seen business fall from the top of the echelon into disgrace and the stock market rise and fall like a car on a roller coaster. Forces we haven't had to reckon with on a large scale before have threatened our economy and our security. In the midst of such uncertainty in our work-a-day world, I believe it is important to ground ourselves in another reality. We are not the commerce in which we participate. We are not a gross national product. We as individuals cannot be defined or our worth measured in terms of the goals that have been set and met or not met.

Sometimes in our personal lives we see ourselves like the businesses and industries whose ups and downs often consume us. We see ourselves in terms of accomplishments, end results, final products. Each goal met, each new year, each birthday is but another "end of a fiscal quarter" and a time to strive harder to increase production or accomplishment in the next.

It is at this point that I believe C.G. Jung's work has made a significant contribution. Jung himself set a great example. He never saw himself as a finished product. Like his "Tower" on the lake, he himself was a work in progress. He never in this physical life reached a point of having arrived. He was always on the way. In Modern Man in Search of a Soul, he said, "The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness." He continued, "Each of us carries his own life-form - an indeterminable form which cannot be superseded by any other." (p. 69) We do not necessarily discover that "indeterminable form," which makes each of us an individual, by marching to the drumbeat of the collective and measuring ourselves with the collective yardstick. That is why the individuation process is so named. It rests within each of us to be open to, even encourage, experiences which enlighten us about our "forms."

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