We've all said these words at one time or another in our lives, and I wonder how much we really believe them. When something occurs in the outer world as an ill-fated event, do we stop to understand the meaning or do we continue to play the victim and let life go on as usual?  Studying Jung for many years and being especially fond of his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, I came to understand that the unconscious (or God within) is always striving for wholeness and consciousness. It’s almost an irrverance and disrespect to the Universe when we ignore the feedback that it is giving us as to how we are doing. As the Taoists say, when one lacks a sense of awe, there will be disaster. 

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Jung often said that the unconscious will work with you if you will work with it. If you choose to ignore it, then it will find a symbolic way to get your attention. Keeping a journal in order to clearly see the patterns that will occur is a fabulous way to do some self-analysis. Notice the events and relationship situations that you experience, and recognize their importance even to the minutest detail. The events are often similar to a dream that is bringing you a message in symbolic form. 

 

Glenn Perry, one of my favorite teachers, once said to me, “Who you’re with is where you’re at.” I never forgot those words as it made sense to me. 

Like is constantly attracting like, and some would also describe this as vibrating at the same frequency. Usually there is an unconscious collusion between both parties from the very beginning and a dance that is destined to play itself out whether you are with that person or the next or the next. The situations and events will repeat.

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Most of us attract people who are our opposites, which automatically creates problems. These opposites are a vehicle for self-awareness whether we know it or not. Opposites need each other to complete what is incomplete in themselves. And there it will be over and over, and once again we will experience firsthand that there are no accidents. We have created this "other" as an opportunity to learn to see our darker side, our "Shadow." 

You will know you are headed to healthier relationships when you begin to reflect on just what this opposite is doing in your life and what the Universe wants from you. And don’t be afraid of the term “your darker side.” I know it sounds sinister and foreboding, but “dark” just describes what is hidden from view or awareness. It’s impossible to see this aspect of ourselves in any other way. 

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As we strive more and more towards wholeness, we will be mysteriously drawn to only those people from whom we will learn about ourselves even though at times it can be rather painful. Jung also said, “Seldom or never does a marriage develop into an individual relationship smoothly and without crisis. There is no birth of consciousness without pain.”2 

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What he meant by an individual relationship is that both people become aware of the opposites within themselves. They acknowledge and own them consciously and then make an effort to find a place for that disowned part of themselves in their everyday life. This takes courage and change, which is painfully slow, but it can occur. I was asked just the other day, “Do you really think we change? I don’t believe we do. We just keep repeating things over and over.” 

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I said, “I think we become more aware, but change is a very slow process. I don’t want to live in a world where there is no change, because then all the striving is for naught. I believe we do grow and that as painful as the process is, we do learn.” 

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  Opposites are not just about marriage partners; we all have relationships. Relationships are happening with our banker, our friends, our siblings, our bosses, etc. Even though we are not married or in a significant relationship with the opposite sex or same sex, we will be experiencing relationships, and these, too, will act as messengers. Give yourself a chance to learn more about yourself by engaging more closely with others.

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Let me give you an example that is probably a very common scenario in relationships. A woman came to me, (I’ll call her Mary), and she had a pattern of attracting men who were always somehow involved with someone else. They were either married, involved with another woman or not really available. Mary would enter the relationship thinking this time it will be different but as usual there was always this other woman in their lives. 

And here is the repetitive clue: this “other woman” would usually be someone who was rather sick in her outlook on life, alchoholic, escapist or unable to differentiate and take any responsibility for her own behavior. As time wore on Mary would see that her lover was addicted to this woman anyway, regardless of how she treated him or how she behaved toward others in the world, but finally she recognized that this was a pattern for herself to attract this same situation over and over so she started to go within.

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Through honest introspection and therapy, Mary begins to recognize a familiar theme. She had tried over and over and over again to get her mother to leave her alcoholic, abusive father. Her mother would not protect herself, and more than that, refused to aknowledge there was even a problem by pretending it didn’t exist. Every time some big fight or disruptive situation would occur, it would all be swept under the rug. This was so frustrating to Mary watching all of this, because she could clearly see even as a young child that this situation was unhealthy for her mother but try as she might 

to get her mother to leave, she could not. Her mother had another agenda that Mary didn’t realize: she refused to “grow up” and be responsible for herself and her life. 

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So Mary grows up with a distorted sense of her own worth because she cannot get the love of a parent who could not give something away that she didn’t have for herself. We can love others only when we love ourselves. No doubt about it. And the sins of the father, so to speak, get passed on to the children. So Mary, continually looking for love in all the wrong places, continues a pattern that began long ago, a time she doesn’t even remember because she was too young then to understand. 

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It always looks like an ill-fated event that brings it all to a head, but it’s a time bomb waiting to go off as the situation has always been there in the relationship from the very beginning. The unconscious (God within) is truly loving us 

to see who we really are. Even our dreams, which are God’s forgotten language, will warn us, but we refuse to see until it hurts too much not to see and that is when we do grow, and we do change. That is when the ball starts rolling in our favor, and it is always, as they say, the darkest before the dawn. 

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Dawn is the time of illumination, the time of real love. 

Love of others and love of Self go hand in hand.

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The opposites occurring in this situation are actually only unconscious aspects of the Self. Each person in the triangle is the same. They cannot value themselves enough, but only because they don’t understand the pattern. Once the pattern and the truth emerge, each person has choices to make.

Make it a goal to be "real" with others who are willing to be "real" with you. Look at what is going on with yourself that is not chance anymore when it happens more than twice. The resulting awareness will be well worth the effort, and the synchronistic events will be clearly explaining what is next 

if we want to evolve, because, as the saying goes, there are no accidents!

 

1 CW l0 : Civilization in Transition:872

2 CW17:The Development of the Personality:331