Archive for March 7th, 2010
Ideas and Photographs as an Act of Personal Confession
I finally got a decent photo of a White Ibis here in Costa Rica. I have taken quite a few shots of the species covering a fair-sized geographical region. As luck had it, I ended up with this image just a few minutes walk from my villa. There are still a number of birds I have yet to photograph while in Costa Rica. Hopefully over the next four weeks I will have success with this project as it will then be time to head home to Saskatchewan, Canada.
In many ways, the photos I take are almost as much about the questions that I ask myself. Trying to put words here to express both questions and possible answers doesn’t meet with success in terms of my own listening and hearing. Yet, when selecting and fitting the photos into these blog posts, I somehow get a sense, a numinous presence of something which contains both the questions and answers, ideas that highlight the dark spots and the the light of my own fuller self, a self that connects to more than I would ever entertain as a complete description of myself.
“Ideas are, inevitably, a fatal confession, for they bring to light not only the best in us, but our worst insufficiencies and personal shortcomings as well. This is especially the case with ideas about psychology. Where should they come from except from our most subjective side? Can our experience of the objective world ever save us from our subjective bias?” (Jung, CW 4, par 770)
This White Ibis hints at the best of us, but it also symbolises the dark side and our fascination with that dark side. With the approach of a storm such as a hurricane, it is the last to flee to safety from the storm. I am no different. Confronted with the shadows and terrors of the unconscious, I put myself into positions of danger (psychologically) and hope that I will be aware enough to withdraw back to the outer world before the storm, the darkness, overwhelms me.
As I photograph and write, shades of both consciousness and unconsciousness directly influence what I do. The results have little to do with the content of the words or the photos and more to do about disclosing more about my “self.” Each of us is limited in what we can say or do, limited by our awareness and ignorance. In thinking about it, it is dawning on me that this blog site is less about Jungian psychology than it is about a personal confession.
