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Working on yourself has an inductive effect on others. To my mind
this is all to the good, for if enough individuals become more con-
scious psychologically, then the collective will too, and life on this
earth will go on.
The guiding principle is this: Be the one through whom you wish
to influence others. Mere talk is hollow. There is no trick, however
artful, by which this simple truth can be evaded in the long run. The
fact of being convinced, and not the things we are convinced of
that is what has always, and at all times, worked a change in others.
55
The Development of Personality, The Development of Personality, CW 17,
par. 293.
18
Togetherness vs. Intimacy with Distance
When a person complains that he is always on bad terms with his
wife or the people he loves, and that there are terrible scenes
or resistances between them, you will see when you analyze this
person that he has an attack of hatred. He has been living in
participation mystique with those he loves. He has spread himself
over other people until he has become identical with them, which is
a violation of the principle of individuality. Then they have
resistances naturally, in order to keep themselves apart.56
One of the greatest single obstacles to a mature relationship is the
ideal of togetherness. It is an ideal based on the archetypal motif of
wholeness. Find your soul-mate, your other half, and you ll live
happily ever after. This is a very old idea. You find it in Greek phi-
losophy, for instance in Plato s Symposium, where Aristophanes
pictures humans as originally whole but arrogant.57 As punishment,
Zeus cut them in half, and now, it is said, we forever seek to replace
our lost other.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this ideal. The mistake
is in expecting to find our lost other in the outside world. In fact,
it is our contrasexual inner other, animus or anima, who is more
properly the object of our search. Outer relationships, already ham-
pered by personal complexes and a multitude of day-to-day con-
cerns, cannot bear the extra weight of archetypal expectations. Al-
though individuation is not possible without relationship, it is not
compatible with togetherness.
After the passage quoted above, Jung continues:
56
The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1932 by C.G.
Jung, p. 7.
57
Symposium, 14-16 (189A-193E).
67
68 Togetherness vs. Intimacy with Distance
I say, Of course it is most regrettable that you always get into trou-
ble, but don t you see what you are doing? You love somebody, you
identify with them, and of course you prevail against the objects of
your love and repress them by your very self-evident identity. You
handle them as if they were yourself, and naturally there will be re-
sistances. It is a violation of the individuality of those people, and it
is a sin against your own individuality. Those resistances are a most
useful and important instinct: you have resistances, scenes, and dis-
appointments so that you may become finally conscious of yourself,
and then hatred is no more. 58
Individuation, finding your own unique path, requires a focus on
the inner axis, ego to unconscious getting to know yourself. The
ideal of togetherness lets you off that hook. Togetherness doesn t
acknowledge the natural boundaries between people, and it gives
short shrift to their differences. All you re left with is unconscious
identity. When you are on the path of individuation, focused on
your own psychological development, you relate to others from a
position of personal integrity. This is the basis for intimacy with
distance. It is not as sentimental as togetherness, but it s not as
sticky either.
A relationship based on intimacy with distance does not require
separate living quarters. Intimacy with distance means psycho-
logical separation, which comes about through the process of dif-
ferentiation knowing where you end and the other begins. Inti-
macy with distance can be as close and as warm as you want, and
it s psychologically clean. Togetherness is simply fusion, the sub-
mersion of two individualities into one, variously called symbiosis,
identification, participation mystique. It can feel good for a while
but in the long run it does not work.
Togetherness is to intimacy with distance as being in love is to
loving. When you re in love, you absolutely need the other. This is
symptomatic of bonding, which is natural between parent and in-
fant, and also at the beginning of any relationship at any age. But
58
The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, p. 7.
Togetherness vs. Intimacy with Distance 69
need, finally, is not compatible with loving; it only shows the de-
gree to which one lacks personal resources. Better take your need to
a therapist than dump it on the one you love. Need in an intimate
relationship easily becomes the rationale for power, leading to the
fear of loss on one hand, and resentment on the other.
The key to intimacy with distance is the self-containment of each
of the partners, which in turn depends on how much they know
about themselves. When you are self-contained, psychologically
independent, you don t look to another person for completion. You
don t identify with others and you re not victimized by their projec-
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