Jung's Coffee Cup Quote

In 2007, when I retired from my therapy practice, the church, and as an officer in The Jung Society of Claremont, I was given the gift of a Starbucks coffee cup. I’ve had this cup for three years without ever reading the entire inscription. Today, needing some mental stimulation, something to avert my sinking attitude, sitting in my 1978 Chevrolet pickup, waiting for my passenger to take to lunch, I finally read the inscription. It brightened my day, just the way the cup promises to do: “Start Your Day the Enlightened Way with Carl Jung.” Even without caffeine in my cup, reading this uplifted me and got my restless brain to focus.

“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being...Where love rules, there is no power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is shadow of the other... The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed... A ‘scream’ is always just that—a noise and not music.... Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own... It depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves... Knowledge rests upon truth alone, but error also... One heart glows, and secret unrest gnaws at the root of our being. Dealing with the unconscious has become a question of life for us... The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable... When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate....” (Source not cited, but attributed to Carl Jung, which I think is in his Memories, Dreams, Reflections.)

Copied from the cup, the chalice, this Second Day of July, 2010 in the Common Era [C. E.], by Chris Rubel chrisrubel@rewells.net

One more thing: Please list in the space below all those dimensions/figments of your psyche and behaviors that are unconscious. Those items unlisted you will find among the events and influences you’ve disowned with the explanation of fate, i.e., you might very well conclude that all those matters attributed to fate are in fact evidence of what resides in your unconscious. And, remember, don’t believe everything you think. Here’s to consciousness! Though it won’t bring happiness. Consciousness, however, will bring substance to your anxieties. If you think it is true, how does it feel? If you feel it is true, what do you think about it? Christopher Rubel

Enjoy!

The psychiatrist, Carl G. Jung