Respond openly and creatively to the unexpected

Thomas Moore writes "Happy Accidents" for the July-August 2014 issue of Spirituality & Health. In this column he considers Carl Jung’s tower at Bollingen and some lessons learned by Jung’s experiences including delivery of a stone, inappropriate for the tower, that Jung decided to keep:

"This is the lesson that interests me most in the Bollingen story: Jung doesn’t miss a beat knowing that "accidents" can be both revealing and useful. Some people say that there are no accidents, that everything has a purpose. But Jung’s story suggests that he believed something different: that some things are indeed accidents, and we have to always be ready to respond to them openly and creatively."

Moore describes Jung carving words and images on the stone while suggesting, "Be ready to accept the many things that happen regularly that are not in your plans, the mistakes that may have meaning for you. This is a particular way of living, in which you are not stuck on your plans and expectations and are ready to deal positively and quickly with things that go wrong."