Jung: Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.

I realize that under the circumstances you have described you feel the need to see clearly. But your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Without, everything seems discordant; only within does it coalesce into unity. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.

~Carl Jung, Letters Volume I, Page 33.

Praise the Rain by Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She is serving her second term as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States. www.joyharjo.com

Praise the Rain

Written by Joy Harjo

Praise the rain, the seagull dive
The curl of plant, the raven talk—
Praise the hurt, the house slack
The stand of trees, the dignity—
Praise the dark, the moon cradle
The sky fall, the bear sleep—
Praise the mist, the warrior name
The earth eclipse, the fired leap—
Praise the backwards, upward sky
The baby cry, the spirit food—
Praise canoe, the fish rush
The hole for frog, the upside-down—
Praise the day, the cloud cup
The mind flat, forget it all—

Praise crazy. Praise sad.
Praise the path on which we’re led.
Praise the roads on earth and water.
Praise the eater and the eaten.
Praise beginnings; praise the end.
Praise the song and praise the singer.

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.
Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

the way you make for yourself … CG Jung, Letter to Frau V.

On December 15, 1933, Jung responded to a woman who had asked his guidance on, quite simply, how to live. In many ways, the advice he gives is very much in tune with the approach in Deep Imagery. Reminiscent of Nietzche’s admonition that “no one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life,” Jung writes:

Dear Frau V.,

Your questions are unanswerable because you want to know how one ought to live. One lives as one can.

There is no single, definite way for the individual which is prescribed for him or would be the proper one. If that’s what you want you had best join the Catholic Church, where they tell you what’s what. Moreover this way fits in with the average way of mankind in general.

But if you want to go your individual way, it is the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot in front of the other.

If you always do the next thing that needs to be done, you will go most safely and sure-footedly along the path prescribed by your unconscious.

Then it is naturally no help at all to speculate about how you ought to live. And then you know, too, that you cannot know it, but quietly do the next and most necessary thing.

So long as you think you don’t yet know what this is, you still have too much money to spend in useless speculation.

But if you do with conviction the next and most necessary thing, you are always doing something meaningful and intended by fate.

With kind regards and wishes,

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung, Letters, Vol. 1, p 132-133.

You cannot copy content of this page