Through a Jungian Lens

I continue with bringing a photo from Angkor Wat with this post.  Walking out of the back of the main temple area of Angkor Wat there is this smaller temple, or more likely one of the smaller palaces that were part of Angkor Wat.  I was entranced by the solidity and ancientness of this building which has been somewhat rescued from the jungle that is native to the area.   Looking through the doorway and windows, one expects to encounter shadows of an inner space.  Yet, that expectation was denied as the doorway and the windows opened up to show the outer world framed by the door and windows.

Inner and outer landscapes, light and shadow.  It is the contrast between dark spaces and light that indicates the presence of life.  If all is dark, that is all there is.  If all is white, that is all there is.  I need contrast to have feeling, to be able to discriminate.  Without contrast, there is nothing but a state of suspended animation – no awareness – as if one is asleep with no dreaming, no physical sensation to have one shift on the bed, no biological clock to have one wake up.  One needs both darkness and light in order to be alive.

I think of many who are bored with their lives.  Why the boredom?  There is not a lack of material stuff in their lives, not a lack of opportunity, not a lack of time; yet, there is little satisfaction.  To go to the same work, to see the same people, to hear the same stories, to take the same routes, to watch the same television programs; to do any of these things day after day without change is not much different that living in a cocoon, in suspended animation.  It is only when someone or something enters the scene, disrupting the pattern that one becomes animated.  Typically, that animation is a negative response, a complaint about how one’s routines have been turned upside down.  The greatest curse one could give was to wish them and interesting life.  An interesting life, one in which pain and pleasure are present, one in which there is mystery and a anxiety.  We now treat anxiety with pills in an attempt to surround the anxiety with a narcotic numbing agent so that one can avoid pain.

I wonder at my need for an interesting life.  If things go too smoothly, I become agitated and find myself resisting the invisible bonds that would have me sit quietly, not making waves, as I wait for my biological death.  I want to feel alive and that means I need to feel, to think, to dream, to act, to go, to be denied, to be loved and hated.  I need to speak out even if what I say is nonsense.  Would it be better if I could sit still in a small town at the edges of the world, smiling and not making any waves, listening to words repeated endlessly so that the words have no meaning other than as a constant drone that persuades the brain it doesn’t need to listen anymore?

Sitting and waiting while life happens around me but not within me – that is what this photo tells me – when one sits still waiting, one has become an empty shell in spite of the fact that the body is still performing biological functions that says the body is alive.  The owner, the spirit has abandoned the body; the soul has shriveled up.  The gods have gone to find a new home.  The lights are on, but nobody’s home.  Clint Black has his way of telling us the same thing.

The lights are on, but nobody’s home – Clint Black

Move slowly to my dresser drawers
Put my blue jeans on
Find my cowboy boots, my button down
Strap my timepiece on my arm
Grab my billfold, my pocket change
Just a mindless old routine
Then it’s out the door and down the street
But it’s not really me

I still comb my hair the same
Still like the same cologne
And I still drive that pickup truck
That the same old bank still owns
But since you left, everybody says
I’m not the guy they’ve known
The lights are on, but nobody’s home

Cup of coffee in the morning
Just food for the brain
But I’ve been numb since our last goodbye
I haven’t felt a thing
But now there’s pains in my head
And pains in my chest
And I think I’m losing my hair
I’m a half a man with half a mind
To think you didn’t care

I still comb my hair the same
Still like the same cologne
And I still drive that pickup truck
That the same old bank still owns
But since you left, everybody says
I’m not the guy they’ve known
The lights are on, but nobody’s home

This morning was different from most mornings here in Costa Rica.  For one thing, I slept in until 6:00 AM.  Ie got a solid eight hours of sleep and had no intention of going out for a morning run along the beach.  Yesterday, I was too tired and had planned on a day off for today.  As a result, I was sitting on the small patio having my morning coffee when this fellow and two mates came to sit for a brief moment on the wires just a short distance away.  I only got to take this one photo before they were gone.  Somehow, I think it might be a Red-Throated Ant Tanager.  If I am wrong, I hope someone can help me out in identifying him.

I find this little bird of special interest, specifically because of his colour.  The orange-red chest makes me think of heat and change – alchemy.  Alchemy makes me think of how things transform through assimilation.  Alchemy speaks of death and rebirth, thoughts of the Phoenix rising out of its own ashes come to mind.

I want to return to my work in progress, getting to know anima and in the process, becoming more animated.

The assimilation of a particular anima-image results in its death, so to speak.  That is to say, as one personification to another.  anima development in a man is thus a continuous process of death and rebirth.  An overview of this process is very important in surviving the transition stage between one anima-image and the next.  Just as no real woman relishes being discarded for another, so no anima figure willingly takes second place to her upstart rival.  In this regard, as in so much else involved in a person’s psychological development, the good is the enemy of the better.  To have contact with your inner woman at all is a blessing; to be tied to one that holds you back can be fatal. (Sharp, Jung Uncorked:  Book Two, 2008, p. 15)

I don’t know how this really all makes sense, but the words jumped out at me when I read them.  In a way they give me permission to change, to not get stuck in some place in time where I became a better person, but not yet the best person I could be.  As I change, I sense that things are shifting beyond my field of vision, deep within and in the world without.

Remembering that the face and voice of anima that aren’t made conscious are often projected onto an “other,” becoming aware of these previously hidden faces of anima and assimilation of this into the psyche results in a withdrawal of those projections.  There is no doubt in my mind that in withdrawing projections, one stands in a different relationship with the other, one that may or may not be viewed positively.  The self changes, consciously.  The other readjusts position in relation to this re-animated self; and in the process enters uncertain terrain, especially as the terrain begins to show signs of constant shifting.  The thoughts that one knows the other is thrown into doubt, a doubt that forces one to begin considering self.  And the relationship changes from two enmeshed into a pairing of separate selves.

All of this, perhaps, is nothing more than words.  However for me, there is a symbolism that is being affirmed by the images that appear before me, images such as this bird.  In the time spent here, I have been sunbathing and losing tan lines, becoming fully cooked with the heat piercing deep – purposefully mixing the alchemical pieces to purposefully spur on the transformations as though there was no time to waste.  And like this bird, I have turned a deep brown and red colour on the outside, a changed outer shell that proclaims that the faces and masks of the past are now gone.  What is next?  Where next?  Well, the work is unfinished so I will not worry overmuch about these questions.  Rather, I will live the processes.

This is a Yellow-Crowned Euphonia, a bird I have never seen before.  I managed to get its photo yesterday morning when I took a solitary walk in mid-morning.  There is no doubt that this bird’s colours seemed to animate the otherwise flat intense light of the morning’s walk.  It was a walk that produced a few surprises in terms of photographs and in terms of good thinking time.

I have been spending a bit of time thinking about anima, about soul.  I am finding that as I do so, I invite her presence and in return, my life becomes more animated, my life has more colour, more passion and more joie de vivre.  Is it simply the switch from the cold of the Canadian Prairies?  Is it simply the intense heat of the sun here in Costa Rica?  Likely it is neither of these and both of these.

My partner has noted the difference in my way of being, has commented on how I have somehow left the darkness and lack of ambition and passion that I was experiencing on the prairies.  Instead of waking up lethargic at 8:00 am as I did in my Canadian home, here I am up somewhere between 4:30 and 5:30 every morning.  The difference shows up in many ways, especially in my increase in enthusiasm to do things.  I have become more animated.   These are sure signs that I am taking care of my soul.  Now for a few words from Daryl Sharp on the topic:

Jung had a number of descriptions and definitions of the anima, such as soul-image and archetype of life itself, but in this essay he focuses on her as the “projection-making factor” in a man’s psyche.  She saves a man from being a stick-in-the-mud, prods him to adventure and the taking of risks, alternately enlivens and maddens him.  And everything she does to him inside is reflected and amplified, through projection, in his activities and relationships in the outside world. (Sharp, Jung Uncorked:  Book Two, 2008, p. 12)

Now, if you have noticed, I have been taking risks here in terms of transparency and authenticity.  I guess I could blame the influence of anima for this.  It is as if I am being submersed into a cauldron where the heat is being turned up so that the transformation process pace speeds up – literally and figuratively.  Are the manifestations showing up here influencing my relationships with the outside world that meets with me on this blog site?  Are the manifestations showing up in the physical space where I am now found influencing my relationships?  I can answer the last question without hesitation – yes!  It is too early to say whether or not these changes are welcomed or acceptable in the “other,” but that is for time to work out one way or another.  But for this space?  I honestly don’t know.  Only you can answer that question, and only in terms of yourself.  I look forward to your responses.