heart vision
“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” – Carl Jung
Words. How many words did Jung use to express this breathtaking truth?
Just 20 words. Simple words.
He strung a few simple words together with a pronouns and prepositions to share a stunning principle in two sentences. He was a peer of Freud who parted company at one significant point, their views of the human nature.
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Though Jung’s analytical psychology derives from Freud’s psychoanalysis, there was strife, disagreement and disappointment shared between these two great thinkers, resulting in a rift between once great friends. Some key differences are presented below:
| FREUD depicted the unconscious as a receptacle underlying the conscious mind, whose task is to contain rejected and un-encountered events, feelings, thoughts and experiences of the resenting conscious mind. |
JUNG postulated two layers of the unconscious – a personal unconscious, right under the conscious mind, taking in personal psychic contents and down below the collective unconscious, containing the accumulating experience of all humanity.
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| According to FREUD the force of life is driven by sexuality and the underlying unconscious contains nothing but feelings, thoughts experience and frustrations of resulting unfulfilled sexual desires; hence the unconscious is a bag full of pathology and in fact, so is life in general. | There is much more to life than sexuality, which is but a part of a greater wholeness, which underlies the process of Individuation and constant search for meaning, according to JUNG. The unconscious has a compensatory regulating function, aiming at healing, growth and individuation. | |
| For FREUD, a disturbance to the psychic balance is a pathology stemming from an unresolved sexual conflict, a complex surrounding the person’s sexual energy (libido). | For JUNG it is not necessarily a pathology, but rather a compensatory and regulatory inclination of the unconscious to strive and resolve the unbalanced equilibrium of the psyche as a whole. |
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Although there is much divergence between the Master (Freud) and his ex-devotee (Jung), there is much in common too. One may sometimes refer to psychoanalysis as “materialistic” and reductive, while taking Jung to be the “spiritualistic” and holistic.
You’ve heard of “night vision”. You know some people with “tunnel vision”. And of course there is “double vision”. Why wouldn’t we have coined “heart vision”?
What is vision? According to Merriam Webster-
1. a conception or image created by the imagination and having no objective reality- daydream, figment, pipe dream
2. the ability to see
3. the soul of a dead person thought of especially as appearing to living people- apparition, spirit, spectre, phantom
4. concern or preparation for the future – foresightedness, forethought, providence
Let’s think about “heart vision”. Jung pointed out that looking outside your “heart” or the center of your being creates dreams. I’d say that was in line with #1 & #3 of the definitions of vision.
Looking inside creates awakening. Awakening of the personal unconsciousness- the personal psychecontents- aimed at healing, growth and individuation.
What is awakening? An act of moment of becoming suddenly aware of something- coming into existence or awareness, revival or arousal. Do you see a brick walkway, the creek beyond or the squirrel in the middle? The tombstone, the liriope, the cedar tree trunk, the wrought iron light post? What are you more aware of on first view?
I see.
If we look inside, with our “heart vision”, we reach awareness. We are awake to every nuance, every moment, every opportunity to live our dream instead of passively dreaming our life away.