As Within, So Without
According to Jung, what I see outside is often just my own projection. My unconscious is busy painting the world with colors I sometimes don’t even recognize as my own. The anger, the hurt, the stubbornness, the beauty — it’s all me staring back at me through others.
In Sufism, they call it tajalli — the self-disclosure of God. The way the Divine shows Itself through everything and everyone. Mercy, Wrath, Beauty, Majesty… all the Names are playing themselves out in the world around me. Not random, not separate, but a reflection of the Real.
So when I put Jung and the Sufis side by side, I find myself nodding. Different languages, but the same truth: what I see outside is a mirror of what’s inside. The Hermetic folks said it best a long time ago — “As within, so without.”
Jung would say it’s my psyche projecting itself.
The Sufi would say it’s God revealing Himself.
I stand somewhere in between, wondering if it’s not both at once.
The question that lingers for me: am I looking at my own shadow, or am I looking at the Face of God? Maybe the answer doesn’t matter. Maybe what matters is learning to see, really see, without blame, without clinging, without turning away.
As Ibn ‘Arabi wrote:
“He who knows himself knows his Lord.”
And so, every encounter — with strangers, with my children, with the passing moods of the day — is a chance to look into the mirror. To see my self, and beyond my self.
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