I read this piece of work by Yung a long while back
It was a meditation on the injunction to treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated
And what Yung pointed out which I really liked
Was that an injunction to be nice to other people
It was an invitation to reciprocity
It was something like this
Is like you should figure out how you would like to be treated like you were taking care of yourself
Not how you would like people to respond to you
It's more important than that
It's like imagine you had a child that you really cared for
And someone said “Well people will treat this child exactly like you want them to”
“But you have to figure out what that is.”
And so, then you'd have to sit down for like a month
And you think okay well how do you want your child to be treated
You don't want everyone just to be nice to them
You know you want people to challenge them and you want people to discipline him
It was a meditation on the injunction to treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated
And what Yung pointed out which I really liked
Was that an injunction to be nice to other people
It was an invitation to reciprocity
It was something like this
Is like you should figure out how you would like to be treated like you were taking care of yourself
Not how you would like people to respond to you
It's more important than that
It's like imagine you had a child that you really cared for
And someone said “Well people will treat this child exactly like you want them to”
“But you have to figure out what that is.”
And so, then you'd have to sit down for like a month
And you think okay well how do you want your child to be treated
You don't want everyone just to be nice to them
You know you want people to challenge them and you want people to discipline him
I think that you can get glimpses of Heaven and glimpses of Hell
I think that you can see people who live in Hell
You walk down the street and see them
For them it’s eternal
Because their pain is so overwhelming
That it feels like it will last forever
It’s also something that can engulf everyone
And has
Is there a metaphysical reality to it beyond that?
I suspect so but I don’t know
I think that the Heaven-like experience points to the way that things could be
And we don’t know how things could be if we really got our acts together
We don’t know
We spend a lot of time in our fallen condition
Wasting time
Being resentful
Working counterproductively
Hurting other people
And cursing fate itself
I think that you can see people who live in Hell
You walk down the street and see them
For them it’s eternal
Because their pain is so overwhelming
That it feels like it will last forever
It’s also something that can engulf everyone
And has
Is there a metaphysical reality to it beyond that?
I suspect so but I don’t know
I think that the Heaven-like experience points to the way that things could be
And we don’t know how things could be if we really got our acts together
We don’t know
We spend a lot of time in our fallen condition
Wasting time
Being resentful
Working counterproductively
Hurting other people
And cursing fate itself