Through a Jungian Lens

While in Progreso, Yucatan, a small city on the northern coast, I came across this herd of goats with both a man and a woman acting as shephards.  They were trying to move the goats to a small green area next to a trucking lot filled with trailers.  The contrast with a modern world of sattelite televisions is amazing.  Contrasts.  It makes for good photos and it makes for drama.  And, it makes for stress and conflict.

The contrast between our conscious self and our unconscious self is just as stark.  Refusing to acknowledge the presence of the opposite, the constrast causes one untold grief.  Denying the existence of the old ways in a modern world leads to an impovershment of both new and old ways.  Denying the existence of one’s shadows and presences of archetypes as they present themselves to us through dreams, through our interactions and our behaviours results in psychic pain akin to psychosis.

We actually know that there is something wanting our attention, yet we refuse to acknowledge it out of fear.  To acknowledge this “something” means us opening a can of worms, a Pandora’s Box.  We know that things can never be the same once we go “there”.  And fear tells us that it can only be worse.  Well, in a way, it will be worse for the persona that we desperately cling to for personal meaning.  Yet, as in the Pandora Box tale, opening the box has a great gift waiting for us.