Whole Is Good

I’m tackling another writing prompt, this one from a blog called Re-Minderz. The idea is to journal or write about this quote: “I’d rather be whole than good.” – Carl Jung

My first reaction is that, while I understand the intention behind the quote, I would think that if we were whole, we would also be good. I guess it depends on how you’re defining “good.” If it means “well-behaved,” then yeah, that’s just conformity and trying to please others. True wholeness brings an independence of spirit that probably doesn’t fit with society’s expectations of the model citizen (or consumer).

I guess the Jungian concept of whole would mean that we’ve integrated our shadow side. Although, again, once we’ve done that work, I think a certain intrinsic goodness would prevail, in the higher sense of the word. But if I just had to choose between the two, I guess at this point in my life I’d go for wholeness. I mean, that’s what I’m working on, really. I’m learning to be whole unto myself and not rely on external conditions in order to be well. And that includes not relying on other people for my happiness.

Yet sometimes that concept leaves me feeling a bit sad and lonely. Perhaps I just don’t have the lens adjusted quite yet. I want to be able to feel wholeness in my heart, to really mean it with my whole being when I say that I’m just fine on my own. I do feel it, to a great extent, yet I guess there’s still a part of me that wants to be cherished and nurtured. But that’s my job, not someone else’s.

I think when I say it’s “my” job, I need to expand what I mean by “my self” to go beyond the ego or conscious self and to include playful child self, deep self, soul, Source. That is what being whole means – that I’m deeply connected to my place in the multiverse, and thus to all other beings. Then I can act and feel and be from that wider space. When I do, it feels good. It might appear, from an outside perspective, that I’m not being “good” (well-behaved) and doing what I “should,” because instead I’m following my individual path, moment by moment, in a place of harmony with All That Is. Whole is good.