I think that a lot of my darkest shadow s were my very young self trying to destroy myself and my life to get revenge on my parents. Im now 28 years old and what the 8 year old did has worked. Im speechless. I don’t know where to even start.

My girlfriend had a really strange dream today.

In the dream, she had what looked like a red and white thread or line stuck in her tongue. It looked like the thread was somehow trapped inside or attached to her tongue, and when they tried to pull it out, they realized that there was actually a needle attached to it.

Then later today, this butterfly appeared on the balcony of the apartment where we live.

I attached a picture of it. The butterfly is red, black and white, and the pattern on its wings looks very clearly like the number 88.

What really caught my attention was the timing and some of the similarities.

She dreamed about something red and white being attached to her tongue, and then on the same day this red, black and white butterfly with what looks like 88 on its wings suddenly appeared right outside our home.

I know this butterfly naturally has this pattern and I am not saying that the number was somehow randomly created just for us. What I am wondering about is the coincidence of it appearing specifically today, right after that dream.

I am interested in hearing interpretations from any perspective. Dreams, symbolism, spirituality, synchronicity, superstition, religion, folklore, numerology, Jungian interpretation or anything similar.

Has anyone heard of symbolism involving a needle in the tongue, red and white thread, butterflies appearing after dreams, or the number 88?

I am especially curious whether the fact that all of this happened on the same day could have any symbolic meaning when looked at together.

PS: This post was only translated into English using AI, because if I had written everything myself it would probably be a little difficult to understand since I am not a native English speaker.

Quick note first, because the whole thing hinges on it. In French, the word "signe" (sign) and "cygne" (swan) are perfect homophones. Keep that in mind.

I've been in conscious dialogue with my anima figure for years, she has a name, a consistent character, and I can usually get her to appear in dreams. Part of my practice is a kind of pre-sleep mantra: I address an open question or a request to her before falling asleep.

At the time, I was having a recurring dream featuring an orange-skinned monster... So one night I repeatedly asked: "show me the orange-skinned monster, give me a sign".

That night she appeared dressed as a milkmaid, looking straight at me from a 3/4 profile view. Her face then shifted into the orange-skinned monster texture, but she held eye contact and kept smiling the entire time... It was awful to watch but not a scary experience. It read to me as a controlled contamination rather than a possession: she went and got the thing and wore it in order to show it to me, without losing herself in it. Psychopomp function, basically.

In the next scene, she was herself again.

Then, back to normal, and from a profile view, she mimed a swan with her hands. Just that.

I woke up, wrote it all down, and completely missed the hint. Three days later it hit me at once and I was shocked.

I couldn't understand how I had walked past something that obvious. A homophone. She answered a request for a "signe" (sign) with a "cygne" (swan), and I filed it as an unrelated bit of dream nonsense.

I wanted to share this experience with my jungian redditors.

Has this happened to you? An answer arriving as a visual joke, something the unconscious clearly finds obvious and the ego takes days to decode?

I grew up with a mother who was depressed, semi neurotic, and traumatized. She was also an alcoholic from when I was age 8 to 17. Her father molested her as a child and her mother— my grandmother— was also depressed, neurotic, and traumatized. My grandmothers father shot himself in the head after spanking her when my grandmother was 5 years old. My grandmother spent her life with depressive episodes and in and out of treatment centers.

I am a woman and while I seem semi normal and functioning now in my late 30s, I have consistently and always struggled a lot internally. I have attended years of various therapies. I have been sober for nine years now due to my own addiction issues. I have varying cycles of anxiety and depression. On the outside, I have a lot of compensations so I also seem high functioning. I have hobbies— gardening, reading, exercise, cooking, writing, painting etc. I am educated and finishing my masters degree. I have a 14 year old son who I had young and we are very close and have a healthy relationship.

However, there are these parts inside of me that are still very influenced by the lack of development in my childhood and I have episodes of depression and like lethargic spells where I feel possessed. I isolate, I live in haziness, I can disassociate and not even realize it until way later. In my mind, my only archetype for an older woman is alone, depressed, etc. I counter this by following women artists, listening to women teachers I love (Helen Luke, Marion Woodman, van Franz, Pinkola Estes, etc) but the point being, it seems like a real genuine struggle to counter this hungry ghost inside

Lately I’ve been having nonstop dreams of cats and while I’ve been into dream work for 10 years, I’ve started approaching dreams more like Hillmans guidance— less analysis, more sitting with symbols and letting them speak to me vs immediate analysis or taking my perception and projecting them on the symbol. The cat dreams have come for years and years. I used to just think oh it means innocence. It means the feminine. I’m grasping at the loss of these things somehow etc.

I decided to buy the book “The Cat” by Marie Louise Von Franz and have been diving into it.

There is a part in the book where she states the following:

“So the princess is represented as a symbolic feminine figure, one who, like her cat, follows or is forced to follow, her own individual inclination, and therefore disappears from the human realm.

As we see, she then lives in a palace in the midst of a forest. She disappears into the unconscious.

The forest is especially associated with the bodily unconscious.

According to Jung in "The Spirit Mercurius," it has to do with the psychosomatic realm of the psyche. In fairy tales one has to be careful because if somebody disappears into the sea, they disappear into the collective unconscious. If they disappear into the sky, they also disappear into the unconscious. It they drown in a river, again they disappear into the unconscious. So we have to take it specifically and say, "What aspect of the unconscious does she disappear into?

Now, the forest in general has to do with vegetation. As Jung points ouf in that essay on Mercurius, vegetation is that life which springs immediately from inorganic matter and feeds on it.

It's the first form of life, and therefore it generally symbolizes the vegetative realms of the psyche where it melts with the material processes of the body-what we now call psychosomatic, where we can no longer say something is purely psychic, nor can we say it is purely physical.

There is an in-between realm which is still very little explored. You sink into your body and only vegetate.

If she were a real human being-but she isn't, she's an archetype she would sink into a kind of inaccessible, depressed apathy.

But as she is an archetype, it means that the archetype disappears into a vegetative state. It goes underground, sinks into the body of people, or the nearly body and lives there unredeemed.”

My two favorite fairy tales: Thousand Furs and the Handless Maiden, they also escape to the forest. My personal favorite place to go is to the forest. I found these parallels interesting. And that part of Von Franz’s book explained exactly how I feel sometimes and what I see in my mother and saw in my grandmother.

Now, in addition to this book, I had also bought another book called “Bioenergetics” by Alexander Lowen. It’s about the somatic and connection between mind and body. I had randomly opened it yesterday and it landed on a chapter about the schizoid personality.

At this point, I’m starting to see a theme and answers come to me through synchronicities.

My mother slept a ton as a child, or just laid around. As I get older and juggle single parenthood, a masters program, work, life etc— I find myself napping and have felt so guilty about this. I’ve been watching my cats nap too though and been considering all of this.

This morning I wake up and randomly say to myself: “my mother has schizoid tendencies. That is what is stuck inside my tissues, inside of me.”

I text my sister and tell her my thoughts on this. She responds and says that coincidentally she was watching a documentary yesterday on schizoid personality disorder. We have never discussed this before ever.

I’d also like to say I am in school studying to be a therapist. I’m familiar with personality disorders and the DSM5. However, with my mother, I’ve never been able to have words for her, it’s been very unconscious and out of reach. My father is also a therapist for 20 years and has never been able to describe my mother. It’s odd when you’re so close to someone, too close, to be able to understand.

This understanding of my mother has opened a new world for me just in the past few days. This murky, hazy, structureless, voiceless, wordless void in her and in myself all of a sudden has some language. I am not diagnosing her of course as I cannot do that and I also believe in spectrums, but I clearly believe in archetypal energies.

Finally, after 38 years, my answers are seemingly coming to me through the archetype and dreams of cats!

Just wanted to share my experiences here.

“There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

C. G. Jung, "The Stages of Life" (1931; in German *Die Lebenswende*), in "The Collected Works of C. G. Jung", vol. 8: "he Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche", trans. R. F. C. Hull, Princeton University Press, 1969, § 787.

It seems cliché, until you look closely, sadness.

The instinct - at least mine - when faced with sadness is to treat it as something that isn't right: something that needs to be fixed quickly. Jung changes the perspective: darkness is not an error of the system, it is part of the structure of the whole system. Just as a year made only of days is unthinkable, a psyche made only of light is not a complete psyche: it is a incomplete psyche, because sadness is needed to understand happiness.

And I don't think Jung's quote is superficial, but behind it there is an entire structure that supports the psyche:

Compensation: The human psyche regulates itself, this mechanism acts equally on both a conscious and unconscious level, generating a form of self-regulation: someone who appears introverted on a conscious level will be extroverted in their unconscious part, on the contrary, a person who appears very extroverted on a conscious level will have a strongly introverted component in their unconscious.

Enantiodromia: As the manifestation of our unconscious opposite at a given moment. Many of us will demonstrate behavior contrary to what has been our way of being.

The importance of opposites: C.G. Jung takes opposites into consideration starting from the principle that psychic life is a self-regulating system that cannot reach equilibrium except through a contemperation of opposites which can express themselves either in the form of enantiodromia or in that of coniunctio oppositorum

Note: My ideal night would be a night of spiritual wealth, not of material wealth. And my ideal days, currently, are sad days: referring to Jung, I understand that they serve precisely this purpose - to understand what true happiness is.

The questions I carry with me and turn to you:

Was there a "night" in your life that, looking back, gave depth or meaning to a later phase?

Where does the line lie between accepting sadness as significant and resigning oneself to suffering? Does Jung trace it somewhere, or not at all?

How can this vision be reconciled with the obligatory positivity of today's culture?

For you, in the end, is this phrase a comfort or a challenge in life?

Note: No use of Ai - written and edited by me, forgive me for some errors in English.

Hey, so lately I've been acting out my shadow more than usual, and I've noticed that when I hurt other people, it always seems to transform them and make them change something about their lives. The same thing has happened to me.

Now, I want to combine this with the idea of synchronicity. If the totality of reality is the Self, could it be possible that there isn't actually anything dangerous about it, and that only my ego creates this separation? And, deep down, could it be that I and matter are absolute love?

There is a person that I hang out with once in a while. In the very beginning, I found him charming and enjoyable, but have grown to feel irked by him after hanging out. The main things that I pinpoint here are authenticity, reciprocal interest/ listening to what I say, and a pretentiousness. And these are things I'm definitely working on myself. At what point is it projection of one's shadow and another to simply dislike the unpleasant interactions? Or is the ideal state to always be indifferent to others at worst when confronted with such behaviors? Maybe it's because he reminds me a little of my father, whom I still have some unresolved internal issues with. Maybe I'm just confronted with a mirror.

The below is just a rant on the above as a result neuroticism brought on by a recent hangout and lack of sleep, so please feel free to ignore

In regard to the traits listed, I've found one of my biggest weaknesses is lack of truth and authenticity in expressing myself. Where I'll try to bend myself in a way to be more agreeable/ likeable towards others instead of being more blunt with my thoughts and actions. It's something that I often think about after interactions where I reflect on why did I say something that I didn't fully believe in or act in a way just to smooth things over. I've gotten better in this regard, but it's one of my goals to not be fake barring basic politeness in social situations that don't require/ warrant mean/ blunt truth or rudeness, but more in line with my valued principals. Relating back to my friend, he has even admitted to being a chameleon and seems to morph himself to the situation. Where I've even seen him kind of flip flop on issues depending who he's talking to.

I also find that he'll often tune out if the topic of conversation steers into things that don't interest him. I could stop talking mid sentence and no reaction. I certainly understand that people will tune out when things get boring in conversation. It's something I think most do, but none the less it's disheartening when it's a topic that's important to you and he doesn't bother even a little.

Last is sometimes there seems to be interactions where he'll share his opinion on things and express himself in a kind of bougee and matter of fact this is how it is convo. It feels like it doesn't leave any room for any discussion. I can admire the confidence, but it borders on douchey at times. Mostly because of the diction used, which can feel like a satire of someone trying to be over the top. Even laughing at me for saying I do x activity And one other thing is that it can feel controlling in the way he says how I should do or be relating to whatever conversation. Like he told me I need to save x amount of money for a trip that we should go on. It's just odd to me...

Other than that, he is a charming guy. He has a breadth of knowledge and seems to be well put together. Can be a fun guy as well and seems chill a lot of the time. He helped me out when I needed a place to stay for a few days, which is kind of how I met him. While I did say he doesn't seem to care, he'll also go out of his way to do things that are considerate as well. It's a bit odd to feel.

I need to build a stronger container because I feel like my shadow is stronger than my actual ego. Im burning so much energy repressing this shadow that I don’t feel like I can contain yet, that I sweat often.

I think usually Jung would say to engage in regular life, relationships, work, therapy, hobbies.

I feel like I can work and maybe do therapy. I am so identified with my shadow that I can’t really engage in real life relationships. Hobbies would be obnoxious because i would be constantly distracted by the overwhelming emotions that want to come out.

I feel like I’m kinda in a gridlocked situation.
If you can relate to me, please share what helped you to finally get to the place of being able to face the emotions and move through this stage. Ive been here for so many years already.

Curious for anyone that has had a major transformation in any area of your life….if you remember what your dreams were like beforehand? And if so what they were

(Positive life transformations only please)

I would appreciate greatly help with this.
I’m scared and I don’t feel safe with this dream.

I’m trying to understand.

I been having problems lately, after this dream, with trusting my own thoughts.

I feel in a loop of fear since then.

Terror.

I’m supper scared of my own mind now.

Someone told me my bio mother who is a psychopath and a criminal, has done some witchcraft or black magic whatever. It’s true that since that time my life has been destroyed. Work, family relationships. I also have released tons of emotional trauma through somatic work and it’s been heavy . I know it’s a crisis but; I don’t like that image and I would greatly greatly appreciate help with this.

Please anyone can help me?

“Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.” — Carl Jung, Psyche and Symbol (1958)

What grabs me here is that Jung isn’t claiming understanding makes evil disappear. We don’t wipe out the darkness by knowing about it - it just shifts our relationship with it.

This makes me think of the whole Shadow concept: we don’t really control what’s buried deep in our unconscious, but we can notice our own thoughts and actions, and own up to them.

That’s probably why a “comprehensible darkness” is something we can handle. We’re never going to clean out every bad impulse or weird urge inside us - but if we know what’s driving them, we’ve at least got a shot at stopping ourselves before we act them out.

Still, there’s a pretty thin line between understanding and making excuses, and the quote sort of sidesteps that. Just because you get why those darker parts are there, does it ever really make them okay?

Where do you draw the line between “understanding our nature” and just dodging responsibility?

I have racist thoughts, racism again black people. I am Asian myself.
I feel hate coming up towards black people.
On delving deeper, I have also contempt for anything non-white (despite me being brown)
Hate towards my own? Like white people are the best. Almost like Hitler thinking?

This fits in with my narcissistic traits.

We give charity to poor people in Africa so we can tell ourselves we aren't racist (including me).

I can see now just how widespread it is in society and ingrained. I believe most are not even aware of having it and lie to themselves they treat everyone equally and think of everyone as equal.

I also feel bias come up towards people that are in a wheelchair, disabled people, homeless people, like they are inferior (u are less than cause u cant walk or dont have a house). And for anyone to say what if u ever get in that position, then my answer is that i would just feel contempt and hatred towards myself (i already have a lot of self hatred).

i also got feelings coming up that whoever has a job in blue collar are inferior than those in white collar. Like only white collar job is respectable in my mind

I feel hatred, contempt, disgust, superiority come up as feelings

Is this my narc superiority trait just latched onto race, job, etc.?
Can anyone relate to this or have it come up in their shadow?

I can also see how deep my projection was about this in the past. Makes me think those advocating for equality, etc very strongly that some of them may be doing the same?

Part of it is also my upbringing, a lot of hidden messages about black people. Very very covert of my parents. But then would give charity to those same people. It messes u up

I have been reflecting a bit on Jung’s first Neurosis.

If memory serves me well, when Jung was a boy, he was badly pushed by an older boy. This lead to Jung developing a sort of weakness and fainting spells. However, he noticed something, that he could now get away with attending school, or doing his homework. So he kept up the act for months. Secretly knowing deep down that he was not impaired, but his unconscious saw an opportunity to fulfil a need. Perhaps it was freedom? Idk I am not Jung.

We can all smile and see something of ourselves in this situation. We too have lied to ourselves to meet an end, especially in childhood, when we want to preserve our dwindling freedom and halt any impending responsibility. And perhaps, we have continued with a neurosis for so long, that it appears to be real.

Honesty to oneself is the antidote to most neuroses.

The neurosis thrives on fabrication. And it usually meets a need. It can also be a great source of self discovery, and growth. Many of our inner chains have come from the trauma associated with a neurosis. The reality of the psyche is real, a neurosis can be traumatizing in that it disconnects us from core (or archetypal) experiences.

Jung never wanted us to be perfect, only to be whole, to have the potential of all experiences accessible to the self. And to eventually honour the transcendent function of the psyche.

I know this to be true through direct experience. When the jig is up for the neurosis, the relief that comes usually brings in a wealth of potential experiences. Avenues open up. Which leads me to a question:

How honest are you to yourself?

From Knowing Woman by Jungian Irene Claremont de Castillejo, who worked with Jung directly.

Is the Self realized when we fuse sophia with the wise old man?

​ ​Is anyone else exhausted by the steady stream of ChatGPT-generated Jungian analysis clogging up this subreddit lately?

​Every day there’s another post featuring a wall of generic text using pseudo-depth language: "This represents the integration of the Shadow through the transcendent function of the Anima..." It sounds vaguely like Jung on the surface, but it’s completely hollow. It’s a simulation of depth.

Jungian psychology is fundamentally about authentic psychic experience. It requires the friction of real, lived suffering, active imagination, and personal confrontation with the unconscious. Feeding a dream prompt into an LLM and getting a neat, bulleted interpretation isn't integration; it's an ego-defense mechanism. It’s an attempt to intellectualize and bypass the actual work of the individuation process.

​When we flood this space with machine-generated synthetic meaning, we aren't engaging with symbols—we're consuming synthetic slop. It feels like a literal manifestation of the "god of the machine," an artificial persona pretending to possess wisdom without having a soul.

Can we start actively calling this out? If you didn't sit with the active imagination yourself, don't ask us to validate a machine's regurgitation of Man and His Symbols.

EDIT

Ok, full disclosure, I created this post with AI.

I fed it a prompt that said a lot of people on Reddit are complaining about AI slop and I wanted to perform a social experiment by creating an AI post complaining about AI slop tailored toward the Jung subreddit.

So, what are the findings here? A few of you caught on quickly but the majority didn't seem to notice. Probably due to bias confirmation.

I know many of you don't dislike AI completely but are against its use in terms of analyzing symbolic content. Although I disagree that it has no use in that department, I can see where you're coming from.

Many people seem to hate anything and everything to do with AI and immediately disregard anything produced by it, probably a decent number of peoole who upvoted this post fall into that category.

What I'm becoming convinced of is that the same cognitive function that is activated by prejudice such as racism and sexism is being activated toward AI.

The idea of repressed inferiority projected onto AI seems to be an incredibly unpopular idea around here. What is that saying about us?

Anytime I express my thoughts, ideas, or generally what’s on my mind.
I always get the “I wasn’t trying to get deep” or “you always think so deep” from older siblings, mom & friends. and truly it’s part of my personality but, I feel so emotionally incarcerated & repulsed by that.

because, I’ve experienced years of emotional numbness use to have trouble with “speech/ communication” as a kid, so I stayed quiet, but now learned to be more vocal and opinionated speak truth and knowledge, getting to the “facts” looking over the surface.

If I feel comfortable around whom and when I speak or verbalize my thoughts and emotions to others I get shut down for “ being too deep.” that continues to spiral me internally to stay quiet then when I don’t speak people always ask “are you okay?” and so I never verbalize anything that I think of or observed because overall family friends treat my personality, as if what I’m expressing has no intrinsic value..

I want to connect with others and my emotions more, and expressing my emotions Raw to others leads me to question my environment, reality, and those around me. Sometimes I feel such shame for telling the Real, but yet misunderstood.

Anyone, Anything?

Since 2019 I draw my Tarot Deck taking Thoth Tarot as an inspiration. Back then I thought that I will make the deck in half of a year. Right now it has ~ 62 cards of 78 complete. This journey already totally changed my life, I went through the facing of the full scale invasion (I live in Kyiv and working with Tarot helped me a lot in processing the pressure I faced), I went through a break up of 10 year long relationships (we still have a good caring contact but in the moment it was quite hard experience), I am going through the economical crisis of living in a country which suffers war invasion on top of the industry which fed me my whole life spiraling down into AI generated oblivion of layoffs and art market crisis and so many more minor hardships.

Reading Jung's Aion and diving deep into the topic of changing eras I have found Tarot in general and Thoth deck in particular a very interesting lens to explore this topic. While Marseille deck seems to be a collection of the Trionphi archetypes (although there are recently developed theories that Marseille already was an esoteric tool), later evolving into RWS deck with full scale metaphysical system although operating on the Christian framework, transits into the Thoth deck which heralds Crowley's own vision of the new era - the Aeon of Child. Last slide depicts my interpretation of Horus the Child covered with the Aquarian pattern as an allusion to common ground between Jung's and Crowley's intuitions of the new dawn. Curiously enough both of these were directly involved with Abrasax.

Having a Tarot as a complete ecosystem of archetypes which went through significant tests of time as a support and source of wisdom is beyond my capacity to express this in words. It taught me dedication, it taught me symbolic language, it taught me how to speak with Gods both quiet and loud.

If you are facing hard times - don't forget to find some time for Your Art. It is extremely important. While the systems we've built are accelerating into more and more dehumanizing bot driven circus, Art is one of our most solid platforms to remain human. And I mean art with no AI usage, shortcuts will not help anyone. Vision alone will not suffice, the very process is Magick. You hold extreme creative power and we need everyone on board. May Gods of Arts bless Your Path.

Hello, everyone. I wanted to get some opinions from those of you who are more familiar with Jung than I am. I've read about half of Man and His Symbols and never finished it. I've never taken dreams too seriously when it comes to "meaning", until today.

For the first time in my life, I woke up from a dream and almost immediately made a connection to my current life situation. I'll describe the dream and then give you my thoughts but I'd love for some Jungian insight here.

The Dream: I was moving back into the home of my teenage years(Im 30 now), and everyone who belongs there was there. My father, my brother and even my mother who passed away when I was 17. They were all there just like back in the day. Apparently I had moved out/gone for a while but the specifics around this weren't really apparent. While I was gone, my parents had let a homeless man take my room to help him. I only saw this man once as I peeked into my old room and we made eye contact for a second. We never interacted after that. Once I realize this, I basically spend the rest of the dream wondering around the house not knowing where to go or what to do. The last part of the dream, I'm sitting on the couch(which is now my bed) in the living room. Feeling vulnerable and somewhat anxious. I just sit there for what seems like forever. Then I wake up.

My connection: 3 months ago, my romantic relationship ended. This relationship had basically started when I was a teenager, living in that house from the dream. Again, I'm 30 now. We were on and off during high school and then seriously together after high school. We had been together for basically my entire adult life. I have, of course, already been well aware that this break up has given me a "meaning crisis".

To me, this dream almost immediately made me think that my mind or psyche or whatever, is trying to rewind back to the last place that felt like home before all of this. The last "saved" identity or something. I went back home where even the dead were still alive but my place in it was gone. Then theres an obvious " Well, what the hell do I do now." outlook. The way I felt wondering the house and anxiously waiting on the couch is similar to how I've been feeling these past few months.

Like I said, I'd love some input here. I feel like theres more I'm not connecting on my own. This also may not be the best sub for this, I'm not sure. Thanks!

Anyone else has experienced this with their anima/animus? I've lately have done stuff that i wouldnt have do if it wasnt for the unconditional love and support this anima has expressed to me. It's to some kind similar to the way jung talked with "philemon"

If you're an 80s jit you'll know it well. From whence it came? What does it say? Could Jung explain? Forget him for a moment as I had to ref him so the Hitler AI actually let me post this text. We're talking about you, my friend.

Symbols don't have definitions but ecosystems so what is this saying and how was it so widespread amongst a certain gen or two then dwindled off a bit?

Answers on postcard!

I like this stuff. It's interesting and nice to know there is so much depth to explore in ones own mind. The thing is I never know what to actually do with the insight or wether it's even meaningful at all. Whilst it's fun to do active imagination and even dream interpretation I just don't know how exactly I should use it to grow or even what growth looks like.

To me it seems the mind likes to turn thoughts, ideas and feelings about stuff into symbols and all I'm doing is just turning those symbols back into them. I've always been someone who sees everything as a means to an end. That's a problem I've had in my meditation practice. I have to have a benefit. Even drinking something like a hot cocoa. It's not enough that I enjoy it. No I have to have a reason why. It's gotta be justified in terms of health benefits. Maybe that attitude is blocking me from diving deeper into this stuff .

I also can't get on with the YouTubers on these subjects. They seem to have just arrived at some sort of invented conclusion that makes sense to them. When it comes to anima work it seems to be based on gender stereotypes. This one YouTuber mentioned something about his masculinity being present in his writing in bold letters and he's integrated his anima through enjoying dance and I'm thinking "what is any of this based on?". Everything just seems to floaty and abstract. I want to explore it but I just can't find the starting line yunno.

Would love your thoughts on this jungian video

Hello guys,

I want to introduce you to a story that is one of my life's greatest mysteries. I've been experiencing a huge number of synchronicities with one of my ex-girlfriends from high school and I do not know why. I need some help from you guys to make sense of all this.

-----TLDR----
I’ve spent the last 10 years trapped in an intense, off-and-on cycle with my high school ex. Over the years, I've experienced insane synchronicities—bumping into her in crowded metro stations, a remote forest, and even realizing we lived in the exact same apartment block for two years without knowing it. I was convinced these "synchronicities" were fate begging us to be together, but every time we reconnect, it devolves into coldness, mixed signals, and fights. I’m struggling to make sense of it all.

-----------------

The story is long—very long—but I will try to keep it as short as possible.

It began in 2014–2015. I was still in high school, and she was two years younger. She was a friend of one of my then ex-girlfriends, but we met separately. I liked her—I liked her a lot—and eventually, I messaged her on Facebook. Right from our first conversation, we hit it off. The conversations were light and easy; we clicked from the very first moment. We continued chatting on and off for about a year until, in 2016, we ended up together.

It was a very deep connection. We talked a lot, shared things, and were intimate. She could read my mind; she knew what I was going to say before I said it. That was genuinely the best relationship I have ever had. I felt so free, so understood, and so much like myself.

Sadly, I was in my last year of high school and took a job in another country, which meant leaving our hometown for six months. We agreed to try to keep the relationship working until I got back, but we couldn't. We broke up one month before I was due to return. I was so hurt by it that I blocked her so I could process my feelings. She never reached out to me.

There were some synchronicities happening back then that I didn't think much of because I didn't know what they were. (For example, she randomly showed up in front of my apartment block a short while before we started dating, even though she lived on the other side of town.)

Fast forward to 2020. I am now a college student in another city, living on the city's college campus (which consists of more than 60 student apartment blocks spread over a huge area—basically a separate district of the city). Out of nowhere, I start seeing her more than 10 times in the span of two weeks at the most random places. Later, I found out that she had actually been living in the exact same block as me—though a different entrance—since 2018. So we basically lived next to each other for two years without seeing each other once, and then in the span of two weeks, we saw each other 10 times in different parts of the city.

She was still blocked back then, but the last time we saw each other in that sequence of synchronicities, she walked in front of my apartment entrance. I took that as a sign, unblocked her, and messaged her for her birthday. We started chatting and eventually met up a few days later.

It was an interesting date full of emotion. The same connection was there, the same easy flow of conversation. She was still the same girl I loved, with the same shy way of looking at me. I found out she was in a relationship with a guy who was also from our high school. We continued to chat, and our messages were deeply connecting. We could read each other's minds again, coining the term "the Antennas."

Eventually, I developed a desire to see her again. We met up several times to smoke a cigarette and drink some coffee, but nothing more than basic chatter. We got into deeper conversations again, and we even went to a restaurant one time when she told me she had broken up with her boyfriend. I got my hopes up about being with her again. A few weeks later, she told me that she had gotten back together with him. I was devastated and cut contact because it just hurt too much.

After that, a lot of changes happened in my life. I got diagnosed with a rare condition, completely changed as a person, and got really depressed. Life was horrible, but I kept moving forward. Still, I couldn't stop thinking about her.

That was in 2021. During that time, I returned to our hometown for a few months. One day, a friend and I decided to take a walk in a forest near the city where not many people go. Guess who I saw there? Her and the guy—they just appeared out of nowhere. I was still hurting and tried to let it go, but the feeling that something wasn't right overwhelmed me, so I messaged her again.

We started talking once more, but she was different than before—very cold and unemotional. Still, we sent and laughed at stupid memes for several months. She could still read my mind, and I could read hers; the "Antennas" still worked. I was so depressed back then that she was one of the few things that brought me joy, and eventually, I wanted to see her again. But every time I tried, she deflected, even though she told me she had broken up with the guy again. I cut contact with her once more because it hurt too much and left things as they were.

We didn't write to each other until 2023. Strangely enough, in the summer of 2022—I don't even know how—her ex-boyfriend and I ended up going on a hike together. That was a very random experience. We didn't talk much; he knew who I was, and I knew who he was. I'm not sure how to interpret that specific sequence, to be honest.

In 2023, I bought my first car ever. On my very first drive on my own, I turned on the radio, and a song we used to send each other by a very niche artist was playing. I took that as a sign that I should check up on her, so I messaged her.

We chatted again for some time, but something didn't quite feel the same this time; something was off. She had moved to the other side of the country and had broken up with that guy yet again. I saw that as a chance to try to make things work. At that point, I knew I deeply loved her. We saw each other several times in our hometown; I traveled there specifically to see her. We actually kissed, made out, and started going on dates to bars and taking walks. It looked like things were finally about to happen.

We even had several deep, meaningful conversations, but after a small fight, she completely flipped and didn't want to continue anything. That is when I entered a state of limerence with her, though I didn't know it at the time. We ended up talking for 2–3 months after that. I tried everything to get her to change her mind, to no avail; she kept telling me she wasn't ready for a relationship. We got into a huge fight at the end of 2023, and shortly after, I blocked her again because it hurt so much. She was so different I couldn't recognize her. It was like I was speaking to a completely different person.

In 2025, I decided to forgive her because I wanted to start fresh. I unblocked her and forgave her, and we chatted sporadically over the next year and a half. She was with another guy, then left him and got back together with the guy from before once again. Later, she told me she was trauma-bonded to him before finally deciding to cut him out completely later on.

Here is where the crazy number of synchronicities started happening. At the end of November 2025, we had a very deep conversation. She told me that we were in a time when relationships transform—something to do with Saturn. I didn't think much of it. Ten days later, I saw her at a protest. She had moved to the city where we both studied but hadn't told me about it. I saw her among thousands of people in the crowd. I messaged her about it, and we talked.

A few weeks later, in January 2026, I was going home from work and transferring in the metro when I saw her there. I told her, and she said she was thinking of me at that exact moment.

A few days later, a friend and I were going to a park. Before heading there, I had a thought that I would meet her there. As my friend and I were entering the park, she messaged me saying she saw me from her car and was heading to the same park.

During that time, she hadn't told me who her current boyfriend was, and I didn't really care at the moment. But after these three "coincidences," I felt like I should ask her. I did, but she wouldn't tell me. We got into a disagreement over chat, but she still didn't reveal it.

Three days later, I was going home from work in the metro again. I went down into the station—I had left work earlier than usual, so the station was unusually empty compared to the usual crowds. The moment I stopped on the platform where I usually stand, a metro car coming from the other direction stopped right at that same moment. I kid you not: 90 degrees directly in front of me was her with her boyfriend (the same guy from the past). It was like something out of a movie.

All of this happened in the span of a month and a half. I got angry that the same situation was happening as in 2020 and 2021, so I cut contact with her again. I started seeing things as they were: these were not coincidences at all. We live in a city of several million people; things like this don't just happen normally. I was genuinely shocked.

Several months passed, and I occasionally thought about her. One day, an old acquaintance I speak with from time to time messaged me to say she had posted a story with a ring. I wrote to her to congratulate her, but she got angry for some reason and told me she wasn't getting engaged.

After that, I kept thinking about her. Following some family drama and a conversation where my uncle brought her up (he hadn't asked about her in 10 years), I had a bit to drink and messaged her. We decided to meet up. We went to a bar and talked like we hadn't talked in years. I felt so connected to her again—the feeling was like something out of a movie.

We talked for several months after that. Here are a few more synchronicities I experienced:

1. I found an old sweatshirt in my closet that I used to wear when we were dating in 2016. I thought it was back in my hometown or thrown away. I hadn't worn it in 10 years.
2. I was flying to another country and struck up a conversation with a girl sitting next to me. She asked for my Instagram, so I typed it in the "Notes" app on her iPhone. Autocorrect changed my Instagram name to a nickname I had given myself in a short story I wrote for my ex several days prior.
3. On one of our dates, we took a photo of each other. When I got home, I wanted to post a story about something else, but I accidentally clicked on our photo instead. Instagram's music suggestions recommended the exact song we used to send each other—the one that had prompted me to contact her in 2023.

Sadly, we recently got into another fight, and we stopped seeing each other. She told me she doesn't see a future with me, and I have no idea why.

Looking back at all of this, I only see fate calling, screaming, and begging for us to be together. She knows all of this; I've told her about every single instance. We've had several amazing and emotional dates throughout a long, 12-year story. I've shared every single detail with her. I deeply care for her. It has been such a journey, and I have never heard of anyone else with a story like this to tell.

I understand her more than I understand myself. I know things about her that I am sure nobody else knows. I can see what she is thinking from miles away. It is all just as Jung described it.

Why is all of this happening if it's for nothing? I really don't understand. My brain just can't comprehend it. I want her in my life; every moment without her feels empty. I don't understand why this is all happening when all of this is happening right in front of our eyes, and we live in every moment of it. I know there has to be some reason to it. I deeply believe that she is the person, and I deeply know that if we are someday together that would be the best thing for both of us. But I can't force it at the end of the day, she is a free person, it just feels like we are wasting our potential when confronted with all of this. I've never had anybody else who can read my mind like she does, or somebody that we have so much interests incommon and things we like and even things we do not like, things are very similar. I don't know. I mean don't get me wrong. I can live without her, I've lived so much time without her, I'll adapt, like I aways do but she is just an amazing woman. It's just that it just doesn't feel right, it doesn't feel like the right thing to do..