Through a Jungian Lens

I’ve been trying for two days to get access to this out of mainland China web service in order to write a blog post.  Sometimes I get to write for a few minutes and then lose contact with the site as though a door has been shut.  I can’t use a VPN during these moments as well.  There appears to be a lot of tweaking and testing of the national firewall.  When the blocks go in place I still have access to Chinese mainland sites which tells me it is all about firewalls.  This photo is actually representative of the experience.

I see it as China on one side, and the Internet world outside of China on the other side of the bridge.  The government agencies appear to be working at plugging the entrance to the rest of the Internet world at its end of the bridge.

I guess this isn’t much different that what we do as individuals in order to block out reality when we retreat within ourselves.  It becomes a lot like “don’t turn on the lights, I don’t want to see.”  There is a different message also underlying what is happening.  In many places, warrantless Internet surveillance is becoming the norm as governments try to deal with terrorists threats.  With the reality that most governments are fronts for vested corporate interests and an increasingly right-wing ideology, what  freedoms are going to be allowed?  The tools exist for governments to fully control the message and the message carriers – the bridges that link one person to another over distance and time.

I admit to feeling the weight and the darkness of the collective unconscious which has been let loose.  It’s as though the collective unconscious has barricaded its end of the bridge which connects to consciousness so that its power goes unchecked.

This is a photo taken as night was approaching while I was on a hike up to a vantage point where I had hoped to see lava flowing from Arenal Volcano.  Once out of the van, it became evident that the journey up the base of the volcanic foothill would be done mostly in the dark.  I had a guide so the thought of the journey wasn’t as fear inducing as it would have been had I attempted this alone.  Before going far, this suspended bridge had to be crossed.  I knew that this was the boundary line.  If fear was to win out, I would have to turn back here.  Crossing the bridge meant that I was committed for the entire journey.

I have finished with Daryl Sharp’s third book in the Jung Uncorked series.  There is a fourth book now published but I have yet to obtain a copy for reading and reflection.  Since I have an inclination, I want to continue the idea of individuation and spirituality through the work of another Canadian Jungian analyst, John Dourley.  John Dourley is a priest who is also a professor at a university in Ottawa, my birth place in Canada.  I have a number of his books at my home and feel some connection with him as a person though we have never met.  If all goes as planned, I will get to meet John this spring.

“Jung’s theoretical understanding of religion makes of the analytic process a religious event. It recalls the Gods to their psychic origin and encourages unmediated conversation with them within the containment of the psyche. The analytic process thus understood is currently to be valued for a number of reasons. The internalization of divinity curtails enmity between religious communities bonded by external Gods. More than this, Jung’s total myth contends that divinity can become conscious only in humanity. The education and redemption of God in history is an ongoing project. Currently it takes the form of an emerging myth of an extended compassion whose embrace supplants still reigning myths of lesser compass. The analytic process, though confined, in the first instance, to individuals, is a significant contributor to the now emerging societal myth.” (Dourley, Jung and the Recall of the Gods, Journal of Jungian Theory and Practice, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2006, p. 43)

Individuals, individuation, consciousness, internalization of divinity … going down a lesser travelled path leading through darkness.  This is what I have accepted as my future and my present.  I could say that I have no choice, but that wouldn’t be true.  Like the moment on the bridge, I do have the option of saying “No!” to this journey.  To continue this journey, I will increasingly find myself increasingly alone in terms of people around me.  Yet, it will not be as lonely as all of that, for along the way, I will discover my “self” and become more and more of a whole person.  Wholeness.  For me, that is now becoming holiness, a state of terrible grace.

Walking down a dirt trail heading out from the south-western edge of the small village about three kilometres from my villa, I went in search of birds.  The trail is rough and follows along the shore of the estuary or laguna.  This day I decided to go further west past the narrow highway that leads to Mérida, down the dirt road that used to be the route to Sisal further west down the Yucatan coast.  I knew that I was going to come across the bridge that was damaged during one of the last hurricanes in this area and I assumed that it would prevent me from linking to the west shore.  Well, as you can see in this photo, vehicles could never make it across.  This was the best part of the remains.  In two different spots I was reduced to using broken pieces of the bridge as stepping stones in order to make it across.  And, I did make it across the river that joins the sea with the estuary that covers most of the coastal area of the Yucatan.

Crossing a river.  In Jungian psychology, crossing the river is symbolic of transformation.

By crossing the river the hero achieves the critical degree of consciousness necessary to confront and assimilate the power of the unconscious … Jung also recognized a danger in not “fording the stream of unconsciousness … (Women and Sacrifice, William Beers)

Now, this explains the need to take this photo and to bring it here.  The alchemical work that is in progress while I am in Mexico is being flooded with so many images that it makes sense to me that it is all about change.  I don’t know if that is good or bad in terms of where I have been and where I am going.  Looking at this image I get a feeling that the transformation is not necessarily going to be gentle.  The journey looks to be rough and solitary.  But then again, the journey of individuation is precisely that, rough and solitary.  It can’t be any other way.  So I wait and wonder what when will the hurricane strike opening up a singular route for me to follow.