Contemplations: Hospital Reading
The Book Carl Jung Hid From the World
Hey Friends,
I’m writing this while recovering in the hospital after surgery. It’s quiet here. Slower.
There’s nowhere to rush off to, and nothing to distract me from my own thoughts.
In the stillness, I found myself thinking again about Carl Jung’s Red Book, a book he kept hidden for most of his life, because it was too personal, too raw, too real. And maybe that’s exactly why it matters.
In case you don’t know, Carl Jung, one of the founding figures of modern psychology, had a book he kept secret most of his life (separated from his clinical and academic corpus of work).
It’s not a clinical paper.
Nor a theory about dreams or archetypes.
To me, it’s something more personal, more profound to him than any of that.
Something so raw and honest that he did not want it published while he was alive.
It is called Liber Novus, which means The New Book, but most people know it as The Red Book.
Thick. Red. Handwritten. Filled with mandalas, visions, and conversations Jung had with the figures inside his own soul/psyche.
He was not crazy. I think he was just paying attention in ways the rest of us weren’t.
And once I understood what he was doing in this work, I could not stop thinking about it.
“The years when I pursued the inner images were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this.”
(The Red Book, Author’s Note)
Jung believed that every person carries a shadow.
Not an evil twin or something broken.
Just the parts of ourselves we learned to hide.
Personality traits that were inconvenient.
Emotions that were too much.
Desires that did not fit the image we were supposed to live up to.
The Red Book is Jung meeting those parts face to face.
He does not suppress them.
He does not explain them away.
He simply listens.
“The spirit of the depths forced me to speak to my soul, to call upon her as a living and self-existing being.”
(Liber Primus)
And in doing that, something else begins to emerge. Something deeper. Something more honest.
What Jung called the Self.
Not the personality you perform, not the roles you and I play.
But the person we actually are underneath it all.
That is what this book stirred in me.
Not fascination with Jung’s visions, but a harder question.
Have I actually met myself yet?
Most of us live from the outside in.
We react/respond to expectations.
We shape ourselves around other peoples approval.
We learn who to be in order to survive, belong, and succeed.
And for a while, that works.
Until it doesn’t.
Until the quiet moments feel heavy.
Until something inside feels muted or restless.
Until the life you built starts to feel slightly off.
That is usually where the work begins.
“You are a slave of what you need in your soul.”
(Liber Secundus)
Here are the takeaways that stayed with me.
-You cannot skip your shadow.
-Ignoring it does not make it disappear. It just makes it louder.
-The parts of you that trigger shame or avoidance are not your enemy.
-They are clues.
-Feeling lost does not always mean something is wrong.
Sometimes it means something real -wants your attention.
-Becoming yourself is not about self improvement. It is about self honesty.
-If you never look inward, the unconscious still runs your life.
-It just does it without your consent.
-The way forward is not control. It is courage.
“He who does not possess this love tries to reach the self through hatred and denial.”
(Liber Secundus)
So here is the invitation.
Actually look at your shadow.
Pay attention to what you judge in others.
Notice what you avoid thinking about.
Ask yourself where you are pretending.
Then go one layer deeper.
What do you want that you never say out loud?
What version of you did you abandon to fit in?
What truth keeps showing up no matter how hard you ignore it?
“I must learn that the dregs of my thought, my dreams, are the speech of my soul.”
(Liber Secundus)
This is the beginning of individuation.
Not becoming better, but becoming whole.
Not living as who you were told to be. Living as who you are.
I am not writing this to give answers.
I am writing because the work matters to me.
Because the world does not need more people performing versions of themselves that are half alive.
It needs people who have faced their shadow.
People who know their depths.
People who are no longer split inside.
If this resonates with you, stay with it.
Sit with the questions.
Write back.
Share this with someone who feels the same quiet pull inward.
This work changes how you show up everywhere.
And it starts by telling yourself the truth.
“Take seriously every unknown wanderer who personally inhabits you.”
(The Red Book)
Thanks for reading.
For what it’s worth.
Shalom,
Jeremy E.
Loved this! Hope you have a speedy recovery.