A life Lesson from one of the most famous Psychologists of all time.
Let’s start today with a little tale.
The prince and the beggar.
The prince flew worldwide, dating all the beautiful girls he wanted to, eating exotic foods, and seeing all the marvelous museums. He went to see the Gioconda at the Louvres and the Guernica at the Reina Sofia. He ate in the most exclusive restaurants in Manhattan and enjoyed all the Broadway shows.
On the other side, the beggar stayed in his town. He always walks around the countryside during the day, speaks with people on the paths, shares nature with the animals, and sleeps under the stars on summer nights. He loves reading and dreaming about life. He was famous for his tales, And he got money from telling the stories he made up to the children of the rich people in town.
One day, the prince heard about the beggar and visited him in the countryside. The beggar did not understand why someone so rich could travel so many miles to talk to a beggar. So when he met the prince, he asked him. He responded, “I have traveled all over the world, and nothing fills me; it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to be happy. And they say that your stories bring happiness to those who listen to them; that is why I have come.”
The beggar did not tell him a story; he gave him advice, “My stories come from me as if they were water from a fountain because my inner world is rich. That is why I spend a lot of time alone, reading and enjoying nature. Stop living from the outside and start living from the inside out, and you will recover the lost happiness.”
Long story short: the prince listens to the beggar, donates all his assets, and they say that he went to live in the beggar’s town, and both silently walk through the fields while smiling, each immersed in their rich inner life.
Jung’s concept of inner life vs. outer life
This little fable was born from my subconscious while reading Carl Gustav Jung’s autobiography.
The author begins his memoirs by saying, “My life is the self-realization of the unconscious.” That is the inner search for the deepest secrets of the human being that Jung was.
The author himself goes on to say, “So I have set out today, at the age of 83, to explain the myth of my life. However, I can do no more than make immediate statements, only tell stories. Whether they are true is not a problem. The question is only whether this is my story, my truth.”
From the above, Jung will not tell us about his life as if his autobiography were a soap opera. Still, he will tell us what happened in his inner world concerning the events he experienced.
For Jung, in a certain way, everything external belongs to a universe of cause and effect and, therefore, in a certain way, boring and predictable (if we obviate his theory of chance), and what is interesting is what we perceive in our inner world concerning what happens to us in the external world.
That is why there is no difference for Jung between his myth, what he tells that he lives inside, and reality, for his inner story, is his truth.
The true meaning of life
When you read Jung, you realize that his dreams were real life for him. Everything he lived daily was the ingredients the great chef (his unconscious) would prepare the meal (the dream).
And if you stop to reflect on it, it is disturbing.
What if we live to dream and not the other way around?
In Jung’s words, “I came to the conviction that if no answer and solution is given from within to the external events of life, their meaning is inferior.”
That is, without our internal representation of what happens to us in the external world, life is meaningless.
Jung continues his argument by saying, “External circumstances cannot substitute for internal ones. That is why my life is poor in external events. I cannot say much about them because what I would say would seem empty or trivial. I can only understand myself from internal events. They constitute what is peculiar to my life and my autobiography.”
So, although Jung needs input data for magic to happen (events from the external world permeating the internal through the senses), life happens in his inner world.
It is in the brain that we live. It is in the inner world where we live. Jung lived from the inside out and not the other way around.
Back to the fable
That’s why it’s wild to go on living like a prince (or wanting to be able to live like a prince), looking for new experiences in the external world like Jonkis looking for a new shot of heroin.
Because wherever you go, you can only be in one place: inside yourself.
Your REAL life is lived in your internal world, not the external one.
That’s why there are people who, having everything, feel unhappy, and people like Nelson Mandela can spend decades in jail and not lose their smiles.
The first seek to live in the wrong place: the external world. The others, like the beggar in the fable or Jung himself, live their lives in the right place: the inner world.
That’s why my advice to you today is to take care of your inner world as the most beautiful garden and be very careful with what things and people get into your head so they don’t trample on your flowers 🙂
Remember: It’s not what you find in your outer life but what you let in your inner one.
A virtual hug
AG
Leave a Reply