Through a Jungian Lens

This year two hummingbirds have been visiting the flowers in the garden.  I did manage to capture this image even though the birds are quick to depart as soon as they sense the presence of someone approaching.  It’s not much different than when I am trying to deal with the inner world.

The best I can do is to suggest what it means to me, for me.  Even then, words don’t quite capture what I want to say in terms of images that are fleeting and almost hardly there at all.  The word numinous is the best I can do.  When I use the word numinous I am speaking of something that is spiritual, mysterious and awe-inspiring.  If one thinks of the feeling that washes over one in a great cathedral in the midst of light and music and performance, one has been visited by something numinous, a touch of the divine.

At those moments when I find myself catching these fleeting magical moments, I am filled with an awareness of a spiritualism deep within.  How do I recognize this?  Well, it has to do with something resonating, a confirmation within.

And so, I continue to use the camera to capture images.  And in looking at these images following the moment when something fleetingly catches my eye, I am often amazed at what I see in these images that had been hidden in plain sight.  And these images then nourish my soul just like these flowers nourish the hummingbird.

A second hummingbird photo to bring here for you.  Like the last photo, this one was taken in Costa Rica.  This photo talks to me about being warm, about sunshine, about summer.  It has been quite cool and cloudy with more rain than is normal.  For a typical prairie summer, we have had more than 400% the normal rainfall – more than four inches in the last week alone.  The gray skies and the frequent showers limit the walks through the countryside and do not provide good light for photography.

Today I am supposed to get my new camera so I imagine that regardless of the gray skies, I will be out taking photos to learn the feel and the capabilities of the new camera.  I have to admit that I am excited about the new camera.  I also bought a book by Tom Ang on photography as I will likely have time to study the art more in the university year to come while I am in China.

In less than two weeks I will be back in my apartment in Changzhou, Jiangsu, P.R.C., back to a work week of sixteen hours in classrooms filled to the brim with young twenty somethings who are filled with dreams of perfect lives, perfect loves and enough wealth to make these dreams a reality.  The university is a place of charged energy and I am valued for the gifts I bring to the craft of teaching at the university.  This will be my thirty-third year practicing the art of teaching.  For those that want to follow my “Teacher in China” blog, click here to link to Laowai Lens.

In case you are wondering, I will be continuing to post here at Jungian Lens almost daily.  I have already packed eight books by Jung and post-Jungian writers.  I have also packed my Chinese dictionary and a few calligraphy brushes as I will be working on learning Mandarin with better focus this year.

Looking back at this post, I am surprised at how I have left out almost all reference to Jungian psychology in what could be seen as a celebration of ordinary things.  And in realising this, a smile comes to my face as I know that this is an important psychological process – making room for the hodge-podge, the méli mélo of life.

This is a hummingbird that I photographed in January while in Costa Rica.  I never realised that there were so many kinds of hummingbirds, especially those with short beaks like this one.  I was fortunate to be able to capture quite a few different types of hummingbirds while in Costa Rica.  Lately, I have bee seeing one particular hummingbird in our back yard as it sniffs around the flowers of our garden.  I am constantly amazed at how it flies so quickly only to stop, hover, drop lower or rise higher or dart side to side as if the most technologically efficient aircraft.  This little bird can do what technology can only dream of accomplishing.

For me, the hummingbird is a call to “joie de vivre.”  In this photo, as I look into the eyes of the hummingbird, I see something of the challenge to be.   Yes, simply to be as fully “me” as I can.  I see the challenge to do.  It is almost as if I am being “dared” to step out of the ordinary into the extraordinary, to risk even greater change..  And in his eyes, in her eyes, I see the infinite.  The path traced by the wings of a hummingbird form the symbol of infinity, an eight laying sideways – also the symbol used by the Métis people as a symbol of themselves as a people.