Archive for May 7th, 2010
Longing For the Unconscious Communion With Life
I decided to add one more “snow” photo in honour of experiencing two distinct snow storms yesterday here on the Canadian prairies. This morning the snow is all gone and there are small patches of blue sky that promise a return to warm weather. Temperatures are beginning to creep up with a high of +12 C. for tomorrow under sunny skies. Perhaps I will get to go golfing.
Snow is interesting and enjoyable when it is experienced with reasonable temperatures rather than extreme cold. With the wind carving shapes, snow is sculpted into all manner of designs, constantly shifting. If this was a person, it would be similar to one who is constantly changing their wardrobe, hair styles or lifestyles. One gets to see something that dresses up, that hints at something deeper within.
Snow is also fascinating because it doesn’t sit very still for very long. Wind allows the snow to shift shapes as well as to find a new home for a brief moment. The sun calls the snow to change shape and relocate as well. It is as if the snow is a gypsy.
Perhaps when a man discovers more of his inner self, becomes more elemental, the same thing happens. The need to go on journeys, the need to discover and uncover pulls one to explore. With a pull toward consciousness, one finds oneself caught up in heroic journeys in quest of treasures of the spirit and soul, in search of truths, especially the truth of “self.”
“The heroes are usually wanderers, and wandering is a symbol of longing, of the restless urge which never finds its object, of nostalgia for the lost mother. The sun comparison can easily be taken in this sense: the heroes are like the wandering sun, from which it is concluded that the myth of the hero is a solar myth. It seems to us, rather, that he is first and foremost a self-representation of the longing for the unconscious, of its unquenched and unquenchable desire for the light of consciousness. But consciousness, continually in danger of being led astray by its own light and of becoming a rootless will o’ the wisp, longs for the healing power of nature, for the deep wells of being and for unconscious communion with life in all its countless forms.” (Jung, CW Vol. 5, Symbols of Transformation, par. 251; cited in Aspects of the Masculine, p. 6)
