Buffalo seasons Awareness in life
The Self That Holds Us: On Identity, Ego, and Becoming.
We spend so much of our lives trying to figure out who this “I” is—this constellation of stories, habits, wounds, longings, and flashes of wisdom that moves through the world in our name. Some days the “I” feels solid, knowable. Other days it dissolves, slipping through our fingers like water. And perhaps this is the point: the self is not a possession we hold, but a living process we learn to relate to with increasing honesty, courage, and grace. Carl Jung wrote that becoming ourselves is both the simplest and the most difficult task of a lifetime. Individuation, he said, is the work of gathering up the scattered pieces of who we are—the conscious stories, the shadowed memories, the unlived potentials—and integrating them into a coherent enough center from which we can move through the world. “Coming to selfhood,” he called it (CW 7, para. 266).
Being in Alignment with Oneself: An Existential Task
In existential depth psychology, the concept of being in alignment with oneself is a central tenet that speaks to the essence of human authenticity. This idea suggests that individuals often live—often unconsciously—in ways that contradict their true nature, acting out of alignment due to external influences and learned belief systems. The structures and values imposed upon us by society, culture, family, and education frequently take precedence over our innate feelings and desires. Consequently, we become estranged from our authentic selves, leading to internal dissonance and confusion about our emotions. This essay explores the process of misalignment, its consequences, and the path toward self-reconciliation through existential awareness and authenticity.