Maybe you've never been given the opportunity or even met someone to tell you that the shadow side of life, the secret parts of yourself and the world, can be both terrifying and edifying. Carl Jung, a well-known psychiatrist and psychoanalyst - Freud's collaborator for a period - throughout his career studied the human psyche and among other things, he made an observation about how to live a good life and found that ''The difference between of a good life and a bad life'', he said, ''is how well you walk through fire''.
Of course, it is enough to give the symbolism that the fire has for him, to make it easier to understand. So the fire represents the worries, the losses, the sadness, the hidden consciousness and the existential crises that threaten to consume the person on a daily basis . Jung believed that the human psyche desires wholeness, an integration between the conscious Ego and the unconscious shadow that follows it. However, shade doesn't mean it's necessarily bad.
When one enters the process of psychotherapy, all the inner work one does to deal with this shadow is like dealing with a dragon, as he says, but killing the dragon is not the goal. Unexpressed emotions, trauma and the pain of loss, are the sources of your inner struggles. Your emotional or unconscious self can overwhelm you, creating a constant state of unhappiness that saps your energy, leaving you feeling exhausted and like you don't define who you are.
The dragon within everyone, a common archetypal symbol, often represents your untamed, destructive aspects. The goal is to incorporate its power and channel its energy to improve your life. This may include expressing repressed feelings or harnessing your anger for positive change.
On the other hand fire is also a source of light and transformation and through dealing with the unconscious self, repressed emotions, symbolized by fire, you lead the person to completion. The experiences of grief and loss, although painful, can, if you process and transform them, become an occasion to reassess your priorities and find the deepest meaning in life.
So in a good life, know that there are fires that warm and light your path in the direction of inner wealth and self-realization..
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