“Dear Frau Frobe, the opus consists of three parts: insight, endurance, and action. Psychology is needed only in the first part, but in the second and third parts moral strength plays the predominant role. Your present situation is the result of pressure of circumstances which are unavoidable. It is conflicts of duty that make endurance and action so difficult. Your life's work for Eranos was unavoidable and right. Nevertheless it conflicts with maternal duties which are equally unavoidable and right. The one must exist, and so must the other. There can be no resolution, only patient endurance of the opposites which ultimately spring from your own nature. You yourself are a conflict that rages in itself and against itself, in order to melt its incompatible substances, the male and the female, in the fire of suffering, and thus create that fixed and unalterable form which is the goal of life. Everyone goes through this mill, consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or forcibly. We are crucified between the opposites and delivered up to the torture until the "reconciling third" takes shape. Do not doubt the rightness of the two sides within you, and let whatever may happen, happen. Admit that your daughter is right in saying you are a bad mother, and defend your duty as a mother towards Eranos. But never forget that Eranos is also the right thing and was latent within you from the beginning. The apparently unendurable conflict is proof of the rightness of your life. A life without inner contradiction is either only half a life or else a life in the Beyond, which is destined only for angels. But God loves human beings more than the angels. With kindest regards, Yours sincerely, C.G Jung”

Jung is correct here as far as it goes. However, I extend beyond his statement where I believe that life is inherently crucified between the opposites as a base condition of living. This is because (1) energies in this reality are defined in terms of its opposite (good and evil, light vs darkness, up vs down, in vs out, hot vs cold, mercy vs justice, love vs hatred, an infinite number of such pairings), and (2) the lived navigation of the opposites within finitude is what gives life meaning to unconscious totality, because consciousness arises from subject/object differentiation which are otherwise united within it.

Jung puts a redemptive spin on this, seeing the Self as navigating an individual teleologically with “love” toward wholeness, whereas I see the Self as an orienting center which offers a provisional foothold, tested and re-tested, not a guaranteed eventual arrival - many people fail or collapse on their journey - and that all experiences add to totality whether or not redemption occurs.

Thus it seems to me that for Christianity, the Cross is one historical event; for Jung, the Cross becomes a recurring psychological archetype; while for me the Cross symbolizes the basic geometry of finite existence itself. Every organism, every choice, every identity, every differentiation, is already cruciform. Selection always entails foreclosure, identity always excludes and life always differentiates, so "crucifixion" stops being a religious image and becomes a description of how finite reality operates. A finite being is crucified because every act of differentiation simultaneously realizes one possibility and forecloses others, and consciousness makes one aware of this to greater or lesser degrees. The cross, therefore, is the intersection of time, choice, and limitation, and you can't escape it because it's what makes existence possible in the first place.

This is why life feels inherently tense, high-stakes, and exhausting, because the very act of being a conscious, finite entity is a state of perpetual tension between what is chosen and what is left behind. This is why my use of the term "crucifixion of opposites" is structural to my work instead of incidental.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5884366&forum_id=2#50011296)

From my perspective, the crucifixion of opposites is ontologically prior. It is the condition of finite existence itself. The Self arises within that condition as the psyche's best orienting principle because no lesser center can withstand the structural tension of finitude, not because reality guarantees reconciliation. The Self still orients, it still "leans" toward wholeness - intuition, dreams, symbolic life, and the balancing of functions remain indispensable - but orientation is not destination, and the risk of collapse and failure without redemption lurk around every corner.

So why listen to the Self? Because ego containers cannot contain the crucifixion of opposites forever. If reality itself is cruciform, then every ego identity is necessarily too small to contain it indefinitely. The ego wants coherence, certainty, consistency, and stable self-definition, but reality continually presents competing obligations, incompatible values, irrecoverable losses, and unforeseen change. Eventually the ego's model breaks. The Self, by contrast, isn't a fixed identity but an orienting center capable of tolerating paradox longer than the ego can. It doesn't eliminate contradiction; it enlarges one's capacity to live within it. Fidelity to the Self, then, isn't about achieving wholeness but about remaining as open as possible to the full field of oppositions that finite life presents.

Ego: "I must make reality consistent with my identity."

Self: "My identity must remain responsive to reality."

Totality/Abraxas: Reality exceeds both, regardless of whether either succeeds.

The symmetry that results is as follows:

Ontology: Reality is constituted by irreducible oppositions.

Psychology: The Self is the best available navigator of those oppositions.

Ethics: Fidelity means remaining responsive to the Self while accepting that every realization entails loss.

Metaphysics: Totality receives every outcome - integration, failure, tragedy, and redemption alike.

This perspective decouples orientation from teleology, preserving Jung's psychology while replacing his optimistic metaphysics with a tragic ontology of finitude.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5884366&forum_id=2#50012109)