This is our space for reflections on quotes from Jung.  We invite you to share a favorite quote along with your thoughts by e-mailing us at jung@cgjungcenter.org

"Nothing but unexpected things kept happening to me.  Much might have been different if I myself had been different.  But it was as it had to be; for all came about because I am as I am. . . .  I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself.  I am distressed, depressed, rapturous.  I am all these things at once, and I cannot add up the sum.  I am incapable of determining ultimate worth or worthlessness; I have no judgment about myself and my life.  There is nothing I am quite sure about.  I have no definite convictions--not about anything, really.  I only know that I was born and exist, and it seems to me that I have been carried along.  I exist on the foundation of something I do not know.  In spite of all uncertainties, I feel a solidity underlying all existence and a continuity in my mode of being."  --Jung, "Memories, Dreams, Reflections" pg. 358

At the height of his young career, when he was 38, Jung lost everything he'd come to rely on; everything changed.  Instead of simply retreating in fear (though he wrote later about just how fearful he was), he retreated and used the energy that was now available to him to engage with the material that was flowing forth from his unconscious.  He embraced the unexpected and unknown, worked with it and continued to do that for the rest of his life.  This passage, written in the last years of his life, demonstrates what I believe may be gained from such an embrace of the unexpected: becoming undivided such that one is "all things at once;" a recognition that convictions cannot be definite; and -- despite these perspectives that seemingly make all things tenuous -- a felt sense that there is a foundation and solidity that allows one to exist and continue.