The following is an excerpt from Becoming Whole: A Jungian Guide to Individuation. It is on sale April 3-10, 2019, for $8.95 in paperback with a free Kindle version included.
As the dream opened, with the force of something coming from the distant past, I found myself sitting in the front of a Shoney’s Big Boy restaurant. The booth I was in was next to the large front windows. While I sipped my morning coffee, I looked out onto the main street of the town I grew up in. Across the street and the railroad tracks was the white Presbyterian Church my mother had taken me to when I was small and where her funeral service had taken place. Further down the street was the high school, the bank, and the shopping district. And, the fact that Shoney’s still included the words “Big Boy” in its name placed us back in history.
As I turned my head and looked across the table from me, I saw a small boy with ruffled brown hair and intense blue-grey eyes. Shocked, I realized that he was a five-year-old version of myself before tragedy had struck our family. When I looked into his eyes he quietly said, “What have you done with my life?”
Before I could answer, I awakened from the dream. As I was musing over the dream, I knew that he hadn’t been talking about the surface stuff like going to the office, shopping, dieting, or even making a living for my family. Those sensitive eyes were searching for a more serious answer. That small boy was posing the question to me that life asks of us all. And, that question is not “What is the meaning of my life?” It is “What meaning am I creating with my life?”
The search for the answer to that question has brought me here today. My answer to it is to try to be fully engaged in life, so that I can develop a greater awareness of my reality and the truth of my existence, so that my life will have an evolving purpose, values and a way of being fulfilled. And, I am seeking to be in touch with life’s spiritual aspects and the spiritual depths within myself, so that I can be sure that love is the foundation of how I live.
On sale!
$8.95 for both paperback and Kindle
April 3-10, 2019
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Art credit (painting above): Vasya, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin
Book Excerpts and Resources
, authenticity, dreams, dreamwork, life of meaning, living authentically, self-loving
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