January 5, 2021

Dr. Carl Jung — Heroes, Alchemy, and Connection (#86) | Below The Line with James Beshara

When we can be comfortable with flawed heroes, we can start finding and treasuring heroes around us
Myths are maps that guide our lives, directing us to satisfy our biological needs
“The most true direction is to be useful, to provide for your community” Carl Jung
- Serve yourself and you will lack love, connection, nutrition
- Serve others, and your community will keep giving back to you
- “You become invaluable by either doing what only you can do or by doing what no one else will do” Carl Jung
“Individuation is when an individual transcends the attachment to the individual, the lower self, and attaches fully to the collective” Carl Jung
“Being liked is not being loving. Love thy neighbor has nothing to do with being liked or being nice. Sacrificing being liked for others’ well-being, that is love. That is kindness.” Carl Jung

Dr. Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Jung founded analytical psychology and his work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, philosophy, religion, and literature
Host: James Beshara (@jamesbeshara)
In this conversation, Dr. Jung discusses some of his most influential ideas in psychology, including individuation and the power of myth

Individuation
- The achievement of self-actualization by integrating the conscious and the unconscious
- You become a truly useful individual in your community
Archetypes and archetypal images
The Collective unconscious
Capital S, Self
- Which governs our collective unconscious and is the unifying force between us
The role dreams play in our lives
Extroversion and introversion
The Shadow
- Repressed aspects of ourselves that we don’t want to look at
Synchronicity

In this century, we’ll need heroes more than ever
- “We need heroes in the midst of flaws, strength in the midst of weakness” Carl Jung
- Yet, we are not able to find them
In history books and in fiction, we idealize heroes
- Our idealized heroes have no flaws
- In real life, no one has no flaws and that’s why we’re incapable of finding modern-day heroes
  - We wait for people to die so that we can remove their flaws and turn them into heroes
- “How many heroes living around us do we miss on? Do we not empower?” Carl Jung
- Jesus has been put on such a pedestal that we can no longer relate to him
Our heroes should be unclothed and have their flaws revealed
When we can be comfortable with flawed heroes, we can start finding and treasuring heroes around us

Myths are not just entertainment stories
- They are maps that guide our lives, directing us to satisfy our biological needs
The Myth of the Hero points us to the ideal that we can pursue to find fulfillment and satisfy our needs
- “The most true direction is to be useful, to provide for your community” Carl Jung
  - Serve yourself and you will lack love, connection, nutrition
  - Serve others, and your community will keep giving back to you
- The hero isn’t just a part of the community, it is an invaluable part
  - “You become invaluable by either doing what only you can do or by doing what no one else will do” Carl Jung
We are constantly in search of the myths that best serve our biological needs
Myths developed and refined over 25,000 years, they survived because they work

In the mythological sense, “sin” is to live separate from your target, your direction in life
- In reality, we are not separate, but we feel that way
- “If you zoom out to a time horizon that begins with the Big Bang, we (everything) was connected physically. It’s less obvious, but we still are. Connected that is” Carl Jung
The individuation process, the hero’s path all aim to help us remember our truth, that we are connected

To tell if a paradox is true or not
- Zoom out and see if it unifies you and your “target” or if it separates you
- If it unifies, it is true
Conflict is needed for harmony
- White blood cells attacking a virus allow you to live
- Nuclear explosions on the sun give us a peaceful spring day
The main paradoxical truths are in our myths
- Does being selfless starve or serve the self?
- You can test this in your own life
“Holy shit” is not just a colloquial myth, it is a biological truth
- When we hear something that rings true, we instinctively say “Holy shit”
- Consciously we think of shit as waste
- But unconsciously, we know that it is holy
  - Dung is biological gold, the feed for all plants, the source of life

Individuation does not mean becoming more “individual”, or a more divided self
- On the contrary, it is a process of unification
The process of individuation is the unification of the
- Lower Self and the higher Self
- Conscious and unconscious
- Individual and their community
“Individuation is when an individual transcends the attachment to the individual, the lower self, and attaches fully to the collective” Carl Jung
- Transcending the self is a painful and scary process
- “The treasure you seek is in the cave you least want to enter” Joseph Campbell
Before individuation one lives a typical life; concerned about money, prestige etc…
After individuation, you are concerned with truth, biological truths
- “Do you choose uncertain life or do you choose certain death? Each day you have a chance, several times a day, you make a choice between those when you choose comfort over truth” – Carl Jung
“Being liked is not being loving. Love thy neighbor has nothing to do with being liked or being nice. Sacrificing being liked for others’ well-being, that is love. That is kindness.” Carl Jung

Freud was not concerned with the latest trends or research, he was in search of Universal Truth
- His influences were the mythological truths of Shakespeare and Nietzsche
- “He wasn’t on this earth to cure an illness. He was on this earth to cure mankind. That was his mission” Sigmund Freud
- That’s what attracted Jung to him
With time Jung recognized he would be more useful in creating his own identity
- Separation from Freud meant that Jung had to face his deepest fear, loneliness
Where Freud and Jung started diverging
- To Freud, sexual desire was the ultimate master of our behavior
- To Jung, our unconscious was also co-created by our collective myths

Jung used to discard the ideas of alchemy, but with time, as his understanding improved he started seeing the value in its implications
- Isaac Newton was also fascinated by Alchemy
Interpretation of the idea of turning lead into gold
- Most people see lead and gold as “dead” materials
  - Jung thinks that all matter is alive and continuously transforming
  - What is gold was once not gold
- Time horizons for such transformations are much longer than humans’ infinitesimally small horizons
To understand Alchemy, replace the desire for personal gain with the desire for Universal understanding

“Humor is the only divine quality that humans have acquired” Arthur Schopenhauer