Carl Jung: Midlife is Not a Crisis

Midlife is hard: But our early forties to early sixties is not a crisis. People talk about midlife like it’s a sudden breakdown. A mental illness. A 'midlife crisis'. I think of it more as a realignment or reorientation to your True Self. I am aligning with my core values, core Self, and true North: Quality time to reassess my whole life in every detail. Who I am BEing.

When it happened to me, I was initially totally bewildered as I had done everything according to plan, just like everyone else. But whose plan was I following? Societal conditioning? My parent's vision for my life? Or was I operating on autopilot, driven subconsciously, because I didn't dare to live my Truth?

I won’t call it a crisis. Because if you do it right, you will experience so much more on the midlife path. Something truly meaningful happens if you can bend midlife in your favour: You can use the opportunity, as Abraham Maslow (of 'The Hierarchy of Needs') calls it, to 'Self-actualise.’

We often find ourselves in a state of liminality as we approach midlife. Liminality refers to a transitional phase between two distinct identities: The ego and the True Self. It is an uncomfortable place to be, as it can bring up feelings of confusion and uncertainty. In Truth it is an invitation from the Universe to undergo a total rebirth. To make the shift from running from pain to healing your emotional pain. It’s an invitation to discover and awaken the divinity within: Welcome to your 'God Mode.'

I love what psychiatrist, analytical psychologist, psychotherapist, and all round spiritual Master Carl Gustav Jung wrote: “Life really does begin at 40. Up until then you are just doing research.” Jung called the midlife shift one of transforming from ego to Soul: Or in other words, from your false self to your True Self. In the present article, we will hear from Jung, and also Professor Brené Brown, existentialist philosophers, Father Richard Rohr, and many more. Let’s dive in…

Carl Gustav Jung wrote “Life really does begin at 40. Up until then you are just doing research.”

Introduction

What brings us to the midlife crisis is irrelevant. The commitment we make to face ourselves and do the challenging, yet ultimately infinitely rewarding inner work that is required is what matters. The gifts received as a result are Grace, and stepping into BEing.

What is a midlife crisis if not a chance to awaken to the possibility of there being more to life? Some people would rather deal with this midlife crisis, by spending money on extravagant things, getting a sports car, a shed, or maybe even having an affair in a bid to find that thing that’s missing from your life, but if you just take the chance to look inwards you might start to find the answers.

God willing, many of us will face a midlife crisis, which is defined as "A period or phase of life transition when a person begins to question the things that they have accomplished or achieved and whether those same things still provide a sense of fulfilment and meaning," said Michael G. Wetter, Psy. D., a clinical psychologist.

Our mindset will decide whether we stay in a crisis (which occurs if there is a refusal to take your ‘Hero’s Journey’) versus awaken. The awakening perspective invites us to put aside old beliefs, stereotypes and ways of doing things. We reach a crossroads: One road is the path to resignation and the other is the path to infinite possibilities. It's a time to reinvent yourself and chart a new and better road for the future.

Now I realise that spiritual awakenings are simply your awareness expanding.

The midlife awakening journey (as opposed to the refusal of the call, which inevitably leads to a crisis) is about leaning into the discomfort of the unknown and learning how to be comfortable with discomfort. Growing into who we are becoming is uncomfortable—plain and simple.

Awakening requires us to look at the people, places, things, and ways of being that are no longer serving us and doing something about it. It requires a leap of Faith to jump into the initial messiness of this stage in life and to create a path to a more harmonious existence. Trust that if you follow the divine breadcrumbs in front of you and move the boulders and obstacles preventing your expansion, with the intuitive guidance of your Higher Power, you will find alignment.

My coach training was a breadcrumb to follow, and my own nervous breakdown was a boulder to release during my midlife awakening. I spent many years in coaching, therapy, training, meditation, Self-reflection, journaling, writing, and prayer. My breadcrumbs evolved into a banquet. If I had allowed my discomfort and fear of about taking this path to keep me stuck, I wouldn't be sitting in front of my laptop writing this article, nor would I have found my calling of Deep Coaching and writing over 400 free articles about transformation. I am not suggesting that a career change is synonymous with a midlife awakening, but when we open the doors of our minds and hearts, I believe divine order can prevail. Do you want to undergo a midlife ‘crisis’ or a midlove (as Brené Brown calls it) awakening?

Consider this

If what you have read so far resonates with you, I have a few questions for your consideration:

If what others thought of you was not an issue, what would you really, really want to be doing at this stage in your life?

Who in your life or the greater community has navigated this stage inspirationally?

What limiting beliefs do you have about aging that are untrue if challenged?

What opportunity does this stage in life present to you personally and professionally?

How may this stage in your life impact your emotional, psychological, and spiritual wellbeing?

Who are you, really, under all the external definitions of who you are if you take away all your achievements, accolades, relationships, and material possessions?

How do you see your new Self evolving?

Navigating midlife is more than answering a few questions; it requires deep reflection, curiosity, counsel, and aligned action. Midlife invites you to face your life head-on and honour the person you desperately want to become. This time in your life is between you and you, not your parents, children, spouse or friends.

If you find yourself questioning your life I urge you to stop looking for external and material things to fill that hole. Take some time to sit quietly and look inwards. Start to follow the breadcrumbs of things that light you up with passion, and that bring you joy and peace. Start believing that your dreams can become a reality. You only live once, why not start creating the authentic, fully integrated life that you truly want? It’s time to live your Truth.

Now, rise and shine, my dear Sleeping Beauty; many adventures are ahead! Now, let’s hear from the psychologists, psychiatrists, spiritual Masters, philosophers, and academics who have explored this path…

Life begins at 40

I love what psychiatrist, analytical psychologist, psychotherapist, and all round spiritual Master Carl Gustav Jung wrote “Life really does begin at 40. Up until then you are just doing research.”

He thought the period of the first 40 years (the 'first half of life') was 'preparation' period for our Self-Realisation. We gather experiences, data, we learn about the world, and create a self-concept: But this is not who we truly are. Psychology says that we are the 'sum of our learned experiences', but this simply isn't true. The real work of transformation and the great remembering of our True Selves has not yet begun. The whole purpose of one’s life is Self-realisation: I see our primary role, then, as Self-realisation, and I see my secondary role as supporting God to help others to Self-realise. Who are you? What is your secondary role? If you know who you are then your secondary role will reveal itself.

In our youth, we absorb everything: Ideas, values, beliefs, judgements, shame, and concepts. We try to make sense of life without even knowing who we truly are. We try on different roles, exploring who we might be. It’s experimental. What comes to mind is the iconic Rumi (the Persian Sufi poet and theologian) quote “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself." Sufism is a mystical movement within Islam that seeks to find divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God. Carl Jung felt that he had direct experience of God. When asked if he believed in God, during his famous 1959 BBC interview with John Freedman, Jung replied “I don’t need to believe in God; I know."

Jung called the first 40 years the “First half of life”: A process of establishing our identity in the world, where we define ourselves largely through the expectations of others. Developmental psychologist Erik Erikson describes this as building a “Sense of self.” I have left 'self' with a small 's' as it is not our True Self - who we really are: Erikson is talking about the ego.

We try to build our careers, reputations, and material riches in the first half of life in order to get external validation and to relieve our existential pain. But this is not yet the whole picture. We don’t know what drives us: What our purpose is. We’re still laying a foundation for the small 'self.' By the time we reach 40 years of age, a major shift begins.

The second half of life

In the second half of life our priorities change. This phase is what Jung calls ‘individuation .’ Individuation means that we become whole. We integrate all the parts of ourselves and our psyches. It’s like combining every lesson we’ve learned so far and using it to guide our own true path. We start to 'unpeel the onion'. We gain wisdom and clarity. We no longer seek just to fit in and be admired.

We start to want to fulfil our evolving Selves (note the capitalisation). Studies in developmental psychology show that people over 40 experience a new depth of Self-awareness. Neuroscientists find that the brain’s emotional centres become more balanced over time. We stop reacting to life. We start reflecting, responding, and creating from the heart instead. We start acting from a place of choice as to who we are BEing and therefore what path to take when we reach a fork in the road. It’s as if the mind gains a kind of freedom that wasn’t there before. We make the shift from our entire focus on our selves to freedom from the bondage of the ego. Ironically this is what allows us to discover who we truly are: It's a spiritual paradox. It's a change from using our will to awakening to the Universe's plans for us. In youth, we rely on the outer world almost entirely for direction. We care what others think. At 40, we begin looking inward. We ask, "Who am I?" and “What do I truly want?” We become less influenced by external expectations. Life begins because we finally start living on our own terms.

Jung saw this as essential for true joy. We stop looking for highs (with the inevitable ensuing lows). We make peace our goal. We switch from seeking drama to seeking serenity. Jung believed we must confront our shadows — our hidden fears, insecurities, and suppressed desires. Only by acknowledging them do we become whole. Some might call this a 'midlife crisis', “ but Jung called it a 'midlife awakening.' He saw it as a pivotal moment, a turning point.

At this stage, life shifts from doing and having to BEing. It’s no longer about proving ourselves to others, but more about BEing our Selves. We start focusing on things that have meaning and fulfil us, rather than things that impress others. The power of this realisation can’t be overstated. Until now, we tried to accumulate knowledge, skills, experiences, and a public reputation. But after 40, we live fully integrated, authentic lives. At this stage life becomes more than just a career change or new hobby. It’s an internal transformation. We start making choices based on who we are — not who we were told to be. Life feels more real, more our own.

Internal shifts also bring a kind of peace. Researchers find that people over 40 often report higher life satisfaction. They feel more connected, less driven by ambition and competition, and accept themselves more fully. The acceptance becomes a new freedom. By now, we know what matters to us and let go of all the rest. We become grateful for what we have. We become more humble. And again, paradoxically, this is when we become truly abundant. The ‘noise’ of youth becomes irrelevant. We start listening to our quiet inner, intuitive voice. Jung believed that facing midlife consciously is essential. If we avoid it, we risk becoming rigid, bitter, or resentful. Life stays shallow. But if we take on the new beginning and this opportunity for growth and evolution, we grow in ways that youth can never fulfil. After 40, we start building, with solid foundations, even if that means knocking down the rickety tower that we tried to build without foundations.

We stop just ‘researching’ life and start designing it. Every experience up until now becomes a tool that we can use or not. Mistakes become lessons. Failures become wisdom. Life begins at 40 because it’s the point where I can finally see the whole picture. I no longer feel like I’m just following someone else’s path.

Midlife is not a 'crisis'

Brené Brown, a researcher and storyteller who’s spent two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy, says that what happens at midlife is not a crisis. “People may call what happens at midlife ‘a crisis,’ but it’s not. It’s an unraveling — a time when you feel a desperate pull to live the life you want to live, not the one you’re ‘supposed’ to live. The unraveling is a time when you are challenged by the Universe to let go of who you think you are supposed to be and to embrace who you are,” she writes in the 'The Gifts of Imperfection', which is in my 'Suggested Reading' list. Midlife is not a time for despair; it’s a moment of Truth — your Truth. Brown calls it an 'unraveling' — a time to break open your shell so that you can really grow. An unraveling reveals what I thought I was 'supposed' to be and who I truly am, under all of those layers, facades, masks, and that concrete shell that we built around our open hearts during our youth. We stop chasing power, people, and things. A crisis comes if you ignore the Universe's signs and signals, do not engage with awakening, remain asleep, and allow your life to be guided by your unconscious mind.

Brown writes with hindsight “As it turns out, I was right about one thing—to call what happens at midlife ‘a crisis’ is bullshit. A crisis is an intense, short-lived, acute, easily identifiable, and defining event that can be controlled and managed. Midlife is not a crisis. Midlife is an unravelling. By an definition, you can’t control or manage an unraveling. You can’t cure the midlife unraveling with control any more than the acquisitions, accomplishments, and alpha-parenting of our thirties cured our deep longing for permission to slow down and be imperfect. Midlife is when the Universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear: ‘I’m not screwing around. All of this pretending and performing—these coping mechanisms that you’ve developed to protect yourself from feeling inadequate and getting hurt—has to go. Your armour is preventing you from growing into your gifts. I understand that you needed these protections when you were small. I understand that you believed your armour could help you secure all of the things you needed to feel worthy and lovable, but you’re still searching and you’re more lost than ever. Time is growing short. There are unexplored adventures ahead of you. You can’t live the rest of your life worried about what other people think. You were born worthy of love and belonging. Courage and daring are coursing through your veins. You were made to live and love with your whole heart. It’s time to show up and be seen.’”

Brown continues “If you look at each midlife 'event' as a random, stand-alone struggle, you might be lured into believing you’re only up against a small constellation of 'crises.' The truth is that the midlife unraveling is a series of painful nudges strung together by low-grade anxiety and depression, quiet desperation, and an insidious loss of control. By low-grade, quiet, and insidious, I mean it’s enough to make you crazy, but seldom enough for people on the outside to validate the struggle or offer you help and respite. It’s the dangerous kind of suffering—the kind that allows you to pretend that everything is OK. We go to work and unload the dishwasher and love our families and get our hair cut. Everything looks pretty normal on the outside. But on the inside we’re barely holding it together. We want to reach out, but judgement (the currency of the midlife realm) holds us back. It’s a terrible case of cognitive dissonance—the psychologically painful process of trying to hold two competing truths in a mind that was engineered to constantly reduce conflict and minimise dissension (e.g., I’m falling apart and need to slow down and ask for help. Only needy, flaky, unstable people fall apart and ask for help). It’s human nature and brain biology to do whatever it takes to resolve cognitive dissonance. For most of us, this is where our expertise in managing perception bites us on the ass. We are torn between desperately wanting everyone to see our struggle so that we can stop pretending and desperately doing whatever it takes to make sure no one ever sees anything except what we’ve edited and approved for posting. Many scholars have proposed that the struggle at midlife is about the fear that comes with our first true glimpse of mortality. Again, wishful thinking. Midlife is not about the fear of death. Midlife is death. Tearing down the walls that we spent our entire life building is death. Like it or not, at some point during midlife, you’re going down, and after that there are only two choices: Staying down or enduring rebirth. Whatever the issue, it seems as if we spend the first half of our lives shutting down feelings to stop the hurt and the second half trying to open everything back up to heal the hurt. Sometimes when the 'Tear the walls down and submit to death' thing overwhelms me, I find it easier to think about midlife as midlove. After two decades of research on shame, authenticity, and belonging, I’m convinced that loving ourselves is the most difficult and courageous thing we’ll ever do. Maybe we’ve been given a finite amount of time to find that self-love, and midlife is the halfway mark. It’s time to let go of the shame and fear and embrace love. And just in case you think you can blow off the Universe the way you did when you were in your twenties and she whispered, ‘Pay attention,’ or when you were in your early thirties and she whispered, ‘Slow down,’ I assure you that she’s much more dogged in midlife. When I tried to ignore her, she made herself very clear: ‘There are consequences for squandering your gifts. There are penalties for leaving big pieces of your life unlived. You’re halfway to dead. Get a move on’... Unfortunately, what makes midlife different from the other stages that we’ve managed to survive is that the symptoms don’t improve over time. Choosing to numb the midlife unraveling is choosing to numb for the rest of your life.”

Brown talks about her own response to the calling of the Universe in a passage called ‘When the Universe Brings It‘. In it she states “I put up the fight of my life, but I was totally outmatched. The Universe knew exactly how to use vulnerability and uncertainty to bring down this perfectionistic shame researcher: A huge, unexpected wallop of professional failure, one devastating and public humiliation after the next, a showdown with God, strained connections with my family, anxiety so severe that I started having dizzy spells, depression, fear, and the thing that pissed me off the most—Grace. No matter how hard or far I fell, Grace was there to pick me up, dust me off, and shove me back in for some more. It was an ugly street fight, and even though I got my ass kicked, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. There was a significant amount of pain and loss, but something amazing happened along the way—I discovered me. The real me. The messy, imperfect, brave, scared, creative, loving, compassionate, wholehearted me.” With those reflections and hindsight from Brown, why would you put up a fight against the Universe? The Universe always wins. Brown concludes “As far as my relationship with the Universe... Well, we’ve actually become very good friends. I even came to love and trust her when, in a quiet moment, I looked deeply into her eyes and realised that she, the Universe, was me.”

Maya Angelou writes, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” I’ve always honoured the power of story. In fact, I believe so strongly in its power that I’ve dedicated my career to excavating untold stories and bringing them up to the light. In some miraculous way, I feel as if this midlife unraveling has taught me—in my head and my heart—how to be brave. I’m still not good at surrendering or 'living in the question,' but I am getting better. I guess you could say I’ve graduated to 'writhing in the question.' Not exactly Zen, but it is progress. It makes me question every role, every choice, and every label I have taken on. At this point, I feel a calling — an undeniable urge — to live the life I actually want, not the life expected of me.

Philosopher Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, wrote that “The will to meaning” is the primary drive in human life. Unraveling isn’t about abandoning everything. It’s searching for a life that feels significant, even if it looks different from what I once imagined.

At midlife, we sense that these parts have been hidden for too long. It’s a calling from the Universe to let go of the persona (the ego) you have been creating for decades. The pressure I feel in midlife isn’t a 'crisis' of losing my youth: I’m letting go of what’s no longer true for me. It's actually a tremendous relief not to care what anyone else thinks apart from the people that you love unconditionally.

Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson called it the stage of “Generativity versus stagnation.” He said we feel a strong need for something meaningful at this stage. Midlife makes you face your own mortality - often with huge benefits: This urges you to align with your True Self: A clarifying process. Not a 'crisis'. You realise that you are here to live a specific life — your life, not someone else’s idea of a good life. You start to live by your own Truths, not the expectations handed to you in your youth.

Existentialist philosophers like Søren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre believed the real freedom to live starts when you reject “Bad Faith” — living according to what others expect, rather than what you actually believe. At midlife, you will feel the calling to make that choice: To either conform and continue as the ego (the false self) or to live freely as your True Self, which is no less than your Soul. The integration pushes you to confront fear. Fear of not being loved, fear of not being loveable, fear of being unworthy, fear of judgement, fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of abandonment. You no longer run from fear or attempt to seek oblivion from it - you face it squarely head on. This turns fear into what I call the 3T's: A Teacher, the clarifier of your Task in life, and your real Treasure.

It’s uncomfortable. It's painful. It can even feel like loss (grief). You may lose old friendships with people who are no longer on your trajectory, let go of long-held ambitions that did not represent the real you, or step back from commitments that no longer serve you on your new 'Hero's Journey'. But through the discomfort, you learn courage. Psychologist Abraham Maslow talked about the drive toward “Self-Actualisation ” — the desire to realise one’s full potential. At midlife, the drive intensifies. You turn inward to find what brings joy, peace, love, meaning, and purpose.

Some call the midlife process a rebirth: A reset stage towards what matters to you. You stop trying to be everything to everyone. Jesus said that you have to "Die to be reborn." There are many metaphors for this including the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into the butterfly, and the phoenix rising from the ashes. You may even need to self-sabotage (note the small 's') to achieve this transformation. Tear it all down in order to rebuild.

From ego to Self

You start focusing on what fulfils you. Jung believed that this period allows us to move from the 'ego' to the 'Self’. You stop living for superficial goals and start connecting with meaning and purpose. Jung saw midlife as a step toward wholeness, a time to integrate all parts of your Self: The light and the dark; Your inner child, your ‘shadow’, and your Higher Self.

You are not abandoning responsibilities: But finding meaning in them. You choose what and who you keep and what you release. You begin to build a life based on intention rather than inertia. Every choice becomes a way to express who you are becoming, who you are BEing.

An unraveling isn’t a breakdown, as Brown points out: It’s a breakthrough. It’s a process of letting go of your old self, old stories, and old beliefs, old negative thought patterns, and to excavate long-buried emotions. You make space for a true identity that aligns with who you truly are. It's a visible and palpable flourishing. It’s a step up to a life that feels real. In a way, midlife is a gift. An opportunity to redefine success, love, and joy. I’m finding clarity, purpose, meaning, and depth: A calling. I’m living not as an image any more but as a whole, integrated person. “The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely,” Jung said. That’s why midlife can quickly derail into what some have called a 'crisis'. But you know better. People may call it a crisis, but they are missing the point. Done right, midlife is a turning point for internal freedom.

You are not falling apart; although you may need to briefly and completely: You are letting your Self finally come together. It’s a process of returning to your Self, to the life you were meant to live, based on your spiritual blueprint that you were born with that got conditioned out of you by your parents and by society.

The shadow

A closer relationship with your hidden Self (your shadow) is how you move closer to a state of integrity, wholeness, and authenticity. Carl Jung wrote that "The Self might equally be called the 'God within us.'" He also said "Whatever is rejected from the Self, appears in the world as an event." Do you want to know the God within you? The divine part of your Self that resides in your subconscious? If you don't, then you will not be in control of your own life. Carl Jung knew God. Do you, yet?

The conscious self is the ego, that part of us which is seen - the mask. But spiritually speaking, the ego is fast asleep. The unconscious Self is the soul, which needs to be made conscious and awakened in order to make us whole. The unconscious Self is the Higher Self and the shadow.

Neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, thought psychology was all about repressed childhood desires. Jung, a one-time protégé of Freud, disagreed. He observed that the human psyche is not just about our childhood or past but also our deep unconscious Self.

Jung didn’t just theorise; he experimented. He looked for answers in dreams, mythology, and even religious experiences in his ‘Red Book’, which is in my ‘Suggested Reading’ list , looking for patterns across cultures and time. It blew Freud’s mind (literally - the two had a nasty public falling out). But Jung’s broader view of the psyche laid the foundation for a whole new school of thought: Analytical psychology.

The real question is, why should I care about Jung’s observations on the human psyche? Because he put together a powerful framework for understanding your Self. Carl Jung's observations about how my unconscious Self manifests and sometimes even controls my conscious life are mind-blowing.

So, if you’re curious about your Self and the deeper workings of your unconscious mind, stay with me. I will explain Jung’s hidden doorway to better understand who you are beyond your conscious self.

Everyone has two lives — the conscious life (the thoughts and feelings that you readily access) and the unconscious life (the hidden but influential life people don’t know).

Carl Jung called the parts of ourselves people don’t know the 'shadow' - a hidden aspect of our Selves with a lot of power to change our life’s trajectory — and sometimes, cause trouble.

So, why go into your shadow self at all?

Well, because, as Jung himself said, “Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.” “One does not become Enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious, he said.

Knowing your hidden self is also the beginning of Self-wisdom. We all have blind spots: Our 'unknown unknowns’ in the Johari window of our psyche. Unconscious biases, hidden desires, unresolved conflicts — these things are beyond the practical life. They are a part of our Selves we rarely talk about, but influence how we live our conscious lives. The disturbing truth is that they manifest in ways we barely notice. Jung thought until we acknowledge them, they can sabotage our relationships, careers, and destroy our lives.

The human psyche is like a house. Your conscious self is the open or spacious living room. It’s open to all — anyone who has ever visited or seen your living room knows how you’ve arranged your stuff. Our conscious space is the part of ourselves that makes decisions and interacts with the world of form or matter. The unconscious or hidden Self is the cellar, full of our forgotten memories, emotions, instincts, primal urges, and hidden desires. Not many people know our cellars. Making the unconscious conscious is about bringing the hidden things in the cellar up into the light and integrating them into the whole structure of your BEing.

It sounds scary. It is. “There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul,” Jung said.

No one wants to embarrass themselves. So we hide things in the cellar. But Jung thought making peace with everything in the cellar is how we find the freedom to live our best lives. An unresolved childhood experience with a strict parent may explain why you sometimes have conflicts with authority figures.

“If conscious life is not wholly rational, driven as much by emotions and intuitions, then the patterns and instincts of the unconscious are even more buried and obscure. Worse, Jung argues that the modern world has developed a positive fear of the unconscious because it escapes the precise determination, analysis and control promised by modern science. The natural language of the unconscious is not exact like mathematics; it is flexible like mythology.” — Mark Vernon — Carl Jung, part 3.

Encountering the unconscious: Knowing your shadow or hidden dark experiences brings a sense of wholeness. You become more Self-aware. That can translate into better emotional regulation and a stronger relationship with the people close to you because you won’t be afraid to open up or be vulnerable.

The goal of getting to know our hidden or shadow selves isn’t to eliminate its influence but to integrate its personality. Accept that these hidden aspects are part of you. The goal is to transform them from destructive forces into potent sources of strength, courage, transformation, and growth.

We all wear masks, social personas that we project onto the world. These can be lethal to us. There’s the ‘work me,’ the ‘friend me,’ the ‘family me.’ While these personas serve a purpose, they can also become rigid, stifling our true Selves. Jung believed the goal is to achieve a balance — acknowledging the persona while staying connected to our true Selves. Don’t confuse your persona with your true Self. The persona makes a great servant to our true Selves, but a terrible master.

“Indeed, many people are essentially fused with their ego identifications — their beliefs, interests, values, personal story, etc. — to the point of believing that the ego constitutes the entirety of who they are. They’re ignorant of their unconscious side — the shadow, which is abounding with unrealised ideas, wishes, and feelings. Freud once likened ego consciousness to a large building where the lights are on in only a single room. Hence, individuals identifying strictly with their conscious ego don’t realise that the psychological space they inhabit is only a small slice of what’s available to them.” — Dr. A.J. Drenth, The Spiritual Role of the Unconscious in Jungian Psychology.

The persona is just a tool, not your whole Self. “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes,” Jung said. If you make time through introspection (meditation) or creative therapy, you may find the hidden resentment and how it’s influencing your present life. Some people use 'self-awareness journaling' to tap into their unfiltered thoughts and emotions. They don’t judge; they write freely about their fears, frustrations, and desires: Hidden aspects of themselves. Patterns may emerge, revealing hidden aspects of themselves they’ve been ignoring.

Others use art as a therapy. They bypass the conscious mind and tap directly into the unconscious to express themselves through painting, drawing, writing or any form of art that helps them fully express themselves without holding back.

Writing is helping me acknowledge my shadow emotions. I’m learning more about the things that trigger my nervous system. I name my internal sources to tame them.

Knowledge about my hidden frustrations is helping me remain calm even when my shadow self wants to scream or react on impulse. It’s transforming my relationship with the people close to me.

Creative personal projects can be the window into your inner Self. They are a remembrance of who you truly are. A closer relationship with your Self or the hidden Self of your BEing is how you move closer to Jung’s ideal of the Self — a state of wholeness, integration, and a psychologically rich life. It’s how you become who we truly are, flaws and all. It’s also how you become less at war with yourself and those around you. It's how you reintegrate your fractured psyche. You create from your heart.

The other avenue, other than creativity, to discover and integrate your true Self, is through meditation and guided meditations that unite your inner child, Higher Self and your shadow.

Jung wrote "My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light." And this light just gets stronger, clearer, and sharper.

Carl Jung said “The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.” There is nothing healthy about the ego – it simply carries us through the first half of life, as our conditioned selves struggling through a dysfunctional, Dystopian, conflict-ridden world, until we hopefully ‘wake up’ before we reach our death-bed. Do you want to wake up before yours? We are meant to thrive and not just survive: For this you will need to fall upward: It is no less than a Hero's Journey.

Jung wrote in 'The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche' “One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie."

Falling upward

This article would be incomplete without a discussion of work of Father Richard Rohr (an American Franciscan priest and hugely influential writer on spirituality): We need to learn to ‘Fall Upward’, as Father Richard Rohr states in his book of the same name, which is in my ‘Suggested Reading’ list. In the first half of life, governed by our ego (our petrified seven-year-old selves), we are naturally preoccupied with establishing our selves; climbing, achieving, performing, and gaining accolades.

Rohr wrote “When we fail we are merely joining the great parade of humanity that has walked ahead of us and will follow after us... There must be, and, if we are honest, there always will be at least one situation in our lives that we cannot fix, control, explain, change, or even understand. For Jesus and for his followers, the crucifixion became the dramatic symbol of that necessary and absurd stumbling stone... It is not that suffering or failure might happen, or that it will only happen to you if you are bad (which is what religious people often think), or that it will happen to the unfortunate, or to a few in other places, or that you can somehow by cleverness or righteousness avoid it. No, it will happen, and to you! Losing, failing, falling, sin, and the suffering that comes from those experiences - all of this is a necessary and even good part of the human journey... The bottom line of the Gospel is that most of us have to hit some kind of bottom before we even start the real spiritual journey... If you try to assert wisdom before people have themselves walked it, be prepared for much resistance, denial, push-back, and verbal debate.”

Rohr continues “The genius of the Gospel was that it included the problem inside the solution. The falling became the standing. The stumbling became the finding. The dying became the rising. The raft became the shore. The small self cannot see this very easily, because it doubts itself too much, is still too fragile, and is caught up in the tragedy of it all. It has not lived long enough to see the big patterns. No wonder so many of our young commit suicide. This is exactly why we need elders and those who can mirror life truthfully and foundationally for the young. Intimate I-Thou relationships are the greatest mirrors of all, so we dare not avoid them, but for the young they have perhaps not yet taken place at any depth, so young people are always very fragile.”

Mistakes are our building blocks

Love your mistakes. How many times do we fall off bicycles before mastering the skill of cycling?! Life is the same, and as we keep trying we grow, spiritually and emotionally. Rohr wrote “You learn how to recover from falling by falling! It is precisely by falling off the bike many times that you eventually learn what the balance feels like. The skater pushing both right and left eventually goes where he or she wants to go. People who have never allowed themselves to fall are actually off balance, while not realising it at all. That is why they are so hard to live with.”

As we grow older and encounter challenges and make mistakes, we need to see our Selves in a more life-giving and forgiving way. This message of falling down - that it is in fact moving upward - is the most resisted and counterintuitive of messages in leadership coaching, psychology, and religion.

Falling upward offers a new paradigm for understanding one of the profound of life's mysteries: How those who have fallen down are the only ones who understand 'up'. We grow spiritually more by doing it wrong than by doing it right, and the disappointments of life are actually stepping stones to the spiritual joys in the second half of life. We need to keep the Soul open for something more, much more, than our ego.

The great remembering

We all seem to suffer from a major case of mistaken identity. Carl Jung wrote “In each of us is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves.” We need a healing of our amnesia. We have simply forgotten who we are.

Rohr wrote “The English poet Wordsworth put it so beautifully: ‘Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our Life's Star Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness. And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy.’”

The ego revisited (don't worry it's not forever)

The ego is who you think you are, but are not. Rohr wrote “Your false self is your role, title, and personal image that is largely a creation of your own mind and attachments. It will and must die in exact correlation to how much you want the Real... The surrendering of our false self, which we have usually taken for our absolute identity, yet is merely a relative identity, is the necessary suffering needed to find ‘The pearl of great price’ that is always hidden inside this lovely but passing shell.”

Rohr continued “The ego hates losing – even to God... The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling, or changing, or dying. The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo – even when it's not working. It attaches to past and present and fears the future.”

Rohr said “If change and growth are not programmed into your spirituality, if there are not serious warnings about the blinding nature of fear and fanaticism, your religion will always end up worshiping the status quo and protecting your present ego position and personal advantage as if it were God.”

The 'ladder of success'

Thomas Merton, the American monk, pointed out that we may spend our whole life climbing the ladder of success, only to find when we get to the top that our ladder is leaning against the wrong wall, or the wrong tower.

As Rohr wrote “It takes a huge push, much self-doubt, and some degree of separation for people to find their own Soul and their own destiny apart from what Mom and Dad always wanted them to be and do.”

We need to create space inside us to allow our 'cup' to be filled. Rohr wrote that “All the emptying out is only for the sake of a Great Outpouring. God, like Nature, abhors all vacuums, and rushes to fill them.”

As Paulo Coelho wrote "Maybe the journey isn't so much about becoming anything. Maybe it's about un-becoming everything that isn't really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place."

Our real Self again and at last

Rohr wrote “Your true Self is who you objectively are from the beginning, in the mind and heart of God.”

We are shedding our fake selves. There is no going back to the childish side of the rainbow. Dorothy says to her dog in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ “Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.”

When we awaken, we are coming home to our true Selves. This is the pool of swimming in infinity. Rohr wrote “Home is another word for the Spirit that we are, our True Self in God. The self-same moment that we find God in ourselves, we also find our Selves inside God, and this is the full homecoming, according to Teresa of Avila.”

Rohr continued “The nuclear family has far too often been the enemy of the global family and mature spiritual seeking... Perhaps it has never struck you how consistently the great religious teachers and founders leave home, go on pilgrimage to far-off places, do a major turnabout, choose downward mobility; and how often it is their parents, the established religion at that time, spiritual authorities, and often even civil authorities who fight against them.”

The great Greek philosopher Aristotle once said, “Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.” This is the child and the man before personal transformation. They are one and the same and behave in the same way.

The spirit is like a homing pigeon.

As you do the inner work you will realise that your self-image and self-concept is not something that you want to hold on to.

Rohr wrote “Your True Self is who you objectively are from the beginning, in the mind and heart of God, 'The face you had before you were born,' as the Zen masters say. It is your substantial Self, your absolute identity, which can never be gained nor lost by any technique, group affiliation, morality, or formula whatsoever. The surrendering of our false self, which we have usually taken for our absolute identity, yet is merely a relative identity, is the necessary suffering needed to find ‘The pearl of great price’ that is always hidden inside this lovely but passing shell.”

He continued “In this second half of life, one has less and less need or interest in eliminating the negative or fearful, making again those old rash judgements, holding on to old hurts, or feeling any need to punish other people. Your superiority complexes have gradually departed in all directions. You do not fight these things anymore; they have just shown themselves too many times to be useless, ego-based, counterproductive, and often entirely wrong. You learn to positively ignore and withdraw your energy from evil or stupid things rather than fight them directly.” Why would you pick a fight with an egomaniac with a superiority complex?

Great people come to serve and not to be served. They radiate light. They are effulgent. As Jesus described such people (John 7:38) “From their breasts flow fountains of living water.”

Rohr wrote “We are created with an inner drive and necessity that sends all of us looking for our True Self, whether we know it or not. This journey is a spiral and never a straight line. We are created with an inner restlessness and call that urges us on to the risks and promises of a second half to our life. There is a God-sized hole in all of us, waiting to be filled. God creates the very dissatisfaction that only Grace and finally divine love can satisfy.”

Learn to hear the still quiet voice

Rohr wrote “There is a deeper voice of God, which you must learn to hear and obey in the second half of life." This is the voice of intuition, which whispers softly to you, unlike the loud, brash lying voice of the ego.

Meaning

The Soul cannot live without meaning. We have to create meaning in this empty world. When we return to our sense of meaning we will feel like a return to simplicity, light, love, peace, joy, and bliss.

Pain and darkness

Rohr wrote “St. John of the Cross taught that God has to work in the Soul in secret and in darkness, because if we fully knew what was happening, and what Mystery/ transformation/ God/ Grace will eventually ask of us, we (our ego) would either try to take charge or stop the whole process. No one oversees his or her own demise willingly, even when it is the false self that is dying.” The ego puts up a legendary battle, the closer you get to your calling and your true nature. You may feel this as fear. But fear comes from the ego.

Rohr wrote “Before the Truth sets you free, it tends to make you miserable.” You will have to face your pain, emotions, and darkness, but have no fear: All is well. He continued “The most common one-liner in the Bible is, "Do not be afraid." Someone counted, and it occurs 365 times.”

There is no such thing as ‘evil’

‘Evil’ is merely sleepiness, superficiality, shallowness, projection, and digital, and social toxicity. Don’t follow these passé judgemental zealots. There is no real evil. You become a mirror image of what you fight. Therefore give up the fighting. Frontal attacks on evil just produce more evil.

Sin happens whenever we refuse to keep growing. There is no such thing as sin, apart from deciding to live in a contracted, fearful state. Rohr said “It has been acceptable for some time to remain ‘wound identified’ (that is, using one's victimhood as one's identity, one's ticket to sympathy, and one's excuse for not serving), instead of using the wound to ‘redeem the world,’ as we see in Jesus and many people who turn their wounds into sacred wounds that liberate both themselves and others.” It is in your power to move from victim to victor. But you can never become a victor if you remain a victim. Victims don’t grow, they just turn into persecutors. He continued “Ken Keyes so wisely said, ‘More suffering comes into the world by people taking offence than by people intending to give offence.’”

As a society we are in love with elitism (the ego trying to be the best, because it feels unworthy and full of shame) rather than egalitarianism. Rohr wrote “Much of the work of midlife is to tell the difference between those who are dealing with their issues through you and those who are really dealing with you... The cross solved our problem by first revealing our real problem, our universal pattern of scapegoating and sacrificing others. The cross exposes forever the scene of our crime... Those who are not true leaders will just affirm people at their own immature level.”

Rohr continued “This is surely what Jesus meant when he said that you could only tell a good tree from a bad one ‘By its fruits’ (Matthew 7:20). Inside of life energy, a group or family will be productive and energetic; inside of death energy there will be gossip, cynicism, and mistrust hiding behind every interaction. Yet you usually cannot precisely put your finger on what is happening. That is second-half-of-life wisdom, or what Paul calls ‘The discerning of spirits’ (1 Corinthians 12:10)."

We are all in this together: If you so wish. Look for the things that you share in common. Creating dramas has become very boring. Rohr wrote “Until we learn to love others as ourselves, it's difficult to blame broken people who desperately try to affirm themselves when no one else will... In the second half of life, people have less power to infatuate you. But they also have much less power to control you or hurt you.” Most people confuse their life situation with their actual life, which is an underlying flow beneath the everyday events.

Your greatest gift to the world is your inner light. If you meet a person who is filled with light, or become such a person, you will never be the same again. Rohr warns us not to get attached to 'spiritual heroism': “If we seek spiritual heroism ourselves, the old ego is just back in control under a new name. There would not really be any change at all, but only disguise, just bogus self-improvement on our own terms... I guess prophets are those who do not care whether you are ready to hear their message. They say it because it has to be said and because it is true.” Rohr continued “As Desmond Tutu told me on a recent trip to Cape Town, ‘We are only the light bulbs, Richard, and our job is just to remain screwed in!’... A person must pass the lessons learned on to others - or there has been no real gift at all.”

‘Heaven’ and ‘Hell’

Heaven is right now. The only mistake religion has made is to push off Nirvana and Enlightenment into the next world or next life. Heaven and Hell are effectively states of consciousness in this life, not physical places.

The divine union with our Higher Power has been called Heaven. It’s loss has been called Hell.

You are a human BEing

Rohr wrote “When you get your, 'Who am I?', question right, all of your, 'What should I do?' questions tend to take care of themselves.” BE, then doing and then having flow like a river flows from its source, or like an oak that grows from an acorn.

You have to take the Hero's Journey

Rohr wrote “We do not want to embark on a further journey if it feels like going down, especially after we have put so much sound and fury into going up. This is surely the first and primary reason why many people never get to the fullness of their own lives. The supposed achievements of the first half of life have to fall apart and show themselves to be wanting in some way, or we will not move further."

Rohr continued “No Pope, Bible quote, psychological technique, religious formula, book, or guru can do your journey for you. If you try to skip the first journey, you will never see its real necessity and also its limitations; you will never know why this first container must fail you, the wonderful fullness of the second half of the journey, and the relationship between the two. Such is the unreality of many people who ‘never grow up’ or who remain Narcissistic into their old age. I am afraid this is not a small number of people in our world today.”

Science

Science is increasingly confirming Nature’s secrets that have been held in spiritual terms for thousands of years. There is even a ‘God particle’! Rohr wrote “The gift of living in our time, however, is that we are more and more discovering that the sciences, particularly (quantum) physics, astrophysics, anthropology, and biology, are confirming many of the deep intuitions of religion, and at a rather quick pace in recent years.”

Rohr wrote that “Wisdom was distinguished from mere knowledge by Isaiah (11:2), by Paul (1 Corinthians 12:8–9), and by Scholastic philosophy, which spoke of analytic intelligence (knowledge) and intuitive or ‘co-Natural’ intelligence (wisdom; ‘like knows like’) as two very different levels of consciousness.” Intuition is the highest level of consciousness - also known as God consciousness or Universal consciousness, accessed via meditation.

Wake up

Rohr wrote “It has been said that 90 percent of people seem to live 90 percent of their lives on cruise control, which is to be unconscious.” We need not be afraid of falling upward and waking up. Rohr wrote “We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right... Such a down-and-then-up perspective does not fit into our Western philosophy of progress, nor into our desire for upward mobility, nor into our religious notions of perfection or holiness.” These examples of external validation allow us to remain asleep and anaesthetised. We need to awaken to our wholeness and follow our intuitive inner voice. Rohr wrote “The ancients rightly called this internal longing for wholeness ‘fate’ or ‘destiny,’ the ‘Inner voice’ or the ‘call of the gods. It has an inevitability, authority, and finality to it, and was at the heart of almost all mythology. Almost all heroes heard an inner voice that spoke to them. In fact, their heroism was in their ability to hear that voice and to risk following it - wherever!”

Falling upwards is no less than a move from an egocentric world view to a Soul-centric world view.

No-one can keep you from the second half of your own life except your Self. Nothing can inhibit your second journey except you. You will need creativity, patience, and courage. Your second journey is all yours to walk or to avoid. Rohr wrote "If you don't walk into the second half of your own life, it is you who do not want it. God will always give you exactly what you truly want and desire. So make sure you desire, desire deeply, desire yourself, desire God, desire everything good, true, and beautiful. All the emptying out is only for the sake of a Great Outpouring... The Holy Spirit is that aspect of God that works largely from within and ‘secretly,’ at ‘the deepest levels of our desiring,’ as so many of the mystics have said... More than anything else, the Spirit keeps us connected and safely inside an already existing flow, if we but allow it. We never ‘create’ or earn the Spirit; we discover this inner abiding as we learn to draw upon our deepest inner life.”

Rohr wrote “Your concern is not so much to have what you love anymore, but to love what you have - right now. This is a monumental change from the first half of life, so much so that it is almost the litmus test of whether you are in the second half of life at all... In the second half of the spiritual life, you are not making choices as much as you are being guided, taught, and led, which leads to choice-less choices... Your driving motives are no longer money, success, or the approval of others. You have found your sacred dance. Now your only special-ness is in being absolutely ordinary, and even choice-less, beyond the strong opinions, needs, preferences, and demands of the first half of life. You do not need your visions anymore. You are happily participating in God’s vision for you.”

Rohr wrote “As Mary Oliver puts it, ‘What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’”

Your spiritual awakening is an unfolding of remembrance. Effort isn't part of the equation. It’s a calling. The best thing you can do is be in the present moment, listen to your heart, and live in a state of flow. The knowledge you are seeking will find you, the people you are seeking will find you. Trust the Universe. True spirituality does not require a life-long dependency on an external middleman or mediator (priest, rabbi, guru, shaman, book, technique, object, religion, etc.) that stands in between you and the Universe. An authentic teacher’s role is to move out of the way and hold up a sacred mirror and remind you that… “You are already that which you seek.”

Rohr continued “We are glad when someone survives, and that surely took some courage and effort. But what are you going to do with your now resurrected life? That is the heroic question.”

Are you ready for your very own Hero's Journey? Rohr wrote “So get ready for a great adventure, the one you were really born for. If we never get to our little bit of Heaven, our life does not make much sense, and we have created our own ‘Hell.’ So, get ready for some new freedom, some dangerous permission, some hope from nowhere, some unexpected happiness, some stumbling stones, some radical grace, and some new and pressing responsibility for your Self and for our suffering world.” No falling down is final: It contributes to the bounce. The stumbling is the finding...

Namaste.

Sending you love, light, and blessings brothers.

Olly

Dr Olly Alexander Branford MD, MBBS, MA(Cantab), PhD.

Fully qualified and certified coach

https://www.transformativelifecoach.co.uk/post/faith

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Hello,

I am delighted and enchanted to meet you. I coach men with 'Deep Coaching', 'Supercoaching', and Transformative Life Coaching (TLC). Thank you for reading this far. I very much look forward to connecting with the highest version of you, to seeing your highest possibility, and to our conversations. Please do contact me via my email for a free connection call and a free experience of coaching on Zoom or in person.

Speak to you soon,

Dr Olly Alexander Branford MD, MBBS, MA(Cantab), PhD

Fully qualified and certified coach

hello@transformativelifecoach.co.uk

“Transformative life coaching uniquely creates and holds the space for you to see your self afresh, with clarity, and step into new ways of BEing, which will transform how you perceive and intuitively create your world. My work is to guide you to raise your own conscious awareness to the level that you want to achieve.”