Through a Jungian Lens

A glimpse of the shoreline of Lake Diefenbaker shows the presence of flowers, grass, wood and stone.  It amazes me how simple things combine to create scenes of beauty, scenes that transport one beyond the ordinary into a place of extraordinary.  Light and shadow, earth and water, life (flowers) and death (branches) – a balancing act beyond the efforts of ego.  And this is extraordinary precisely because it exists beyond the ego.

I think that one has to accept the mess of the inner-scapes of the unconscious as being beyond our control.  Many, myself included, like to arrange the environment so that it is pleasing to the eye – weed the garden, arrange books on a shelf, place the stuff in the garage in some semblance of order to enable easier search and use of materials within the garage, mow the lawn, arrange flower beds, organise photos into thematic albums – the list is likely endless.  So, it is natural to want to find some sort of order in the apparent chaos of the unknown.  We want to clean up our act in terms of banishing complexes and shadows; by denying their very existence we hope to become “good” people, people in control, people who aren’t messy in their relations with others.  However, when we do that, we find that we are often making trips to the psychotherapists office, taking pills or “trying harder” in order to fix those unruly elements that keep throwing themselves into our faces as a challenge.

It takes a long time for most people to accept the reality of who they are with all of their messiness.  I have had to admit that having passed the age of sixty, I may as well give up trying to reinvent myself and allow my “self” to simply be as it is.  And in doing this, I am learning to accept that there is beauty in the mess that is me.