Through a Jungian Lens

I love falling snow.  Well, that is true when the temperature is not too cold and there isn’t a wind blowing.  I had hoped for a clearer image of falling snow, distinct evidence of snowflakes.  But, when all was said and done, this photo caught my unconscious intention best.

Now, when I look at the photo, I see not the lamp post and the snow framed by the late evening sky, but I see a different world.  It is as though I see out my window into another universe.  The photo also pulls me within.  And like all things which pull at me, I am pulled in two different directions at the same time.

The photo reminds me of a painting I once did called “Night Storms.”  It was representative of one of my “dark” periods in the early ’90s.  Now, it represents something that is about “light” in the darkness.  Both realities exist at the same time.  All exists at the same time, all opposites, all possibilities.  Being alive means that each of us is caught in between each of the polarities.  Drifting too close to one polarity only results in imbalance.  Polarities are the homelands of the archetypes.  The sum of all gives us the ONE, that which each religion places as the deity that embraces all that is and isn’t.

Whenever we try to define conceptually either a God or an archetype we find that neither can be grasped adequately by conceptual means.  As metaphysical principles they elude our knowledge.  The Greeks learned about their Gods through unwritten mythology.  We learn about our archetypes through lived psychology. (Hillman, Re-Visioning Psyhcology, 1975, p. 36)

This was the view from the back deck of my home which I took last night at 10:01 pm.  I have to admit, I love the colours of the sky after the sun has set and before darkness has hidden the clouds.  It is raining as I write this, a necessary rain for the farms, gardens and lawns here in the open prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada.  The prairie gets thirsty.

Humans get thirsty as well.  Of course, I am thinking of something more than just a beverage here, I am thinking of how one’s soul gets thirsty, how one’s heart yearns for nourishment.  Rain, water, food from the unconscious depths found within.  Of course, that depth is more than just a personal depth, it is also a depth that reaches both up and down to include the One, the Self, or whatever name you want to call your god(s).  You don’t find “your” god “out there.”  The kingdom is within according to the bible of Christianity.  To place your centre “outside” of self is to be separated leaving you hollow, feeling empty.  Leaving your god “outside” allows you to believe that you are a victim of life rather than the day-to-day co-creator or you life.  Blame it all on the gods.

This placing of gods “outside” of self is just another way of projecting our unconscious, hidden inner aspects into the outer world.

We may fear to know what we know, so its costliness persuades ego to seek a thousand evasions; thus we dissemble, procrastinate, project … (James Hollis, Celebrating a Life, 2001, p. 130)