30 Perfect Days Log 5 — Living with Jung

Week 5, Friday, November 7—Finding abundance in ordinary life is not just about finding meaning and living in the moment; it’s also being authentic and in tune with who you are. C.G. Jung said it beautifully when he wrote “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” My 30-days project is largely a phenomenological exercise because I’m trying to discover the meaning things have in my experience of life. Heidegger’s Being and Time, a winding tome seeks to find the meaning of being in time, looks at our existence in the universe, our existentialism. When I rolled my yoga mat out on the hardwood floor this morning, I chanted an over-simplified “I am”—there’s nothing more profound and difficult as finding one’s true self, the center of “I am.” I still think back to the days I spent in my woodlands hermitage at Mount St. Benedictine’s as somewhat perfect days. I wrote and walked, I practiced yoga and read Thomas Merton’s Book of Hours, made use of the monastery’s hourly meditations, and sat with the nuns as they chanted in the morning. I was truly myself when I was there because no one else was around. How is being alone related to being authentic? At the end of Day 5, I was seeking answers. And that is enough.