Through a Jungian Lens

This little fellow decided to appear in front of the villa while I was sitting out enjoying the cooler evening air.  He was definitely out of place being at least 150 metres from the seashore.  I wondered at how he would find his way back to the sea when there were dangerous streets to cross with vehicles racing by ready to crush and kill.  I wondered why he left the safer place that was home for him and others like him.  But then again, perhaps he is more like me, uncomfortable with the status quo and needed something more.

I have to be clear about a few things.  I didn’t just rebel or reject the spiritual myth which is at the heart of the western world, especially that of Christianity.  Rather, I questioned and questioned those who were the keepers of the mysteries in an attempt to set my questing mind at ease.  When the right answers which would give me a sense of security and certainty didn’t come, I drifted.  I guess one could say that I lost the anchor that would allow me to stay grounded in the communal myth.

“The turbulence surrounding the birth of a new societal myth is presently vividly evident at the collective level. The educated and spiritually sensitive turn away in great numbers from ecclesial institutions that continue to take their founding poets, the writers of their Holy Scriptures, literally and then rely on legalism and authority to enforce belief in the unbelievable. Theology thus remains where it was in Jung’s day: “It proclaims doctrines which nobody understands, and demands a faith which nobody can manufacture” (Jung, 1948, p. 192).” (Dourley, “Jung and the Recall of the Gods”, Journal of Jungian Theory and Practice, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2006, p. 44)

Yes, I would agree that with the loss of belief and faith, I was definitely adrift.  The waters I entered into as I unconsciously began a search for my own myth was definitely what could be described as turbulent.  I was still a teenager, a time when there is enough turbulence without the loss of spiritual grounding.  Needless to say, this was a time of despair and a heightened sense of loneliness.  I didn’t belong to anything.

I wasn’t alone as I wandered streets when I should have been attending classes in the second half of the 60′s.  Others wandered just as lost.  Somehow many of them banded together as “Flower Children” while I hung back on the sidelines, not willing to give up my quest for meaning, for a spiritual centre.  As I walked the streets one winter day, a stranger stopped me and told me that I must read Thus Spake Zarathustra by Neitzsche.   And so my quest lead me to the philosophers who had previously lost their anchors to the communal myths.

It was Neitzsche, Spinoza, Leibniz, and a host of others who let me know that I wasn’t a freak, that others also had lost their roots as they made journeys which allowed new roots to be planted.  I saw hope flicker and dared to continue being.