I am deep into a short book by C.G. Jung called “The Undiscovered Self: The Dilemma Of The Individual In Modern Society.” The book is described as a passionate plea for individual integrity during a time and the individual never feels more helpless or marginalized.

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious,” he wrote. That, to me, is the role of the individual, surely the job of the writer and the artist.

In the broad belt of unconsciousness which sometimes seems immune to truth, control or criticism, we as individuals stand defenseless, open to all kinds of influences and psychic infections. Self-knowledge is our only defense from the suffocating power of mobs and labels and demagogues and impersonal ideologies and states.

Since self-knowledge, writes Jung, is a matter of getting to know the individual facts, theories and labels and speeches help us little to find individual integrity. It is easy to feel that as a social unit, a poll projection, a vote to be manipulated, we are impotent, thus frightened.

I am seeking enlightenment, every day in my life, I seek to make the darkness conscious. Jung wrote that until we make the unconscious conscious, it will direct our lives and we will call it fate. Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to a fuller understanding of ourselves.