Through a Jungian Lens

Yes, it’s raining again here n the Canadian prairies.  This is an unusual state of affairs as this is the land of sunshine and wind, a semi-desert country that is now so soggy that farmers are actually having a legitimate reason for complaining about the weather.  The rain is allowing me more time to read and think.  However, perhaps it makes too much time for this in terms of “comfort level.”  In some ways, it is almost as if the “shadow” is too close to the surface, too close to consciousness.

“Perhaps the most functional definition of shadow is that which I am uncomfortable in my culture or myself.”  (Hollis, Swamplands of the Soul, p. 68)

Darkness, dampness, and the closed-in feeling smells, feels and tastes like a depression, not much different than an atmospheric depression that brings on the rain.  The darkness limits vision and we tend to see what is inside when we can’t see what is outside.  And so it cycles until a high pressure system lifts the darkness and allows the sun to shine again.  Instinctual or biological or both, it doesn’t matter.  The psyche must deal with this mood.

“We are asked to bear what is often felt to be unbearable.   This is the task awaiting us in the swampland of the soul we call loneliness – to bear the unbearable.  But in doing, by “going through,” one breaks the hold of the primal fear that holds sway over much of our lives.  To go through it with the insight and courage of an adult, to make friends with it, somehow, breaks that tyrannous hold.”  (Hollis, Swamplands of the Soul, p. 64)

Yes, it is about loneliness.  The rain and the darkness forces one to deal with the loneliness that is “self.”

Rain as a welcome guest

Rain as a depressive presence

Polarities – It’s funny how we see things differently.  Playing with a photograph it is easy to evoke different moods and textures.  This morning I took this photo while looking out my living room window onto the street where a gentle rain was falling.  Since this area has been dry for some time, this rain is viewed as a welcome guest by the farming community.  Now, the crops will have a chance to germinate (some still haven’t) and to flourish, at least for the next while.  Of course another timely rain would then be necessary or the crops would then wither and produce shrivelled kernels of grain.  The mood in our tiny town is positive and people are smiling.

As a child growing up in cities, rain was not so good for me.  It seemed to leave me feeling depressed.  Rain still reminds me of lonely streets and Sunday mornings.  It likely doesn’t make sense, but even though it was a depressed feeling, I seemed to prefer the lonely streets in the rain to the hustle and noise of the house.

Rain – water – the source of life -  the upwelling of the unconscious.  It is both, so much for either/or.  Now, if I could only hold the tension of opposites and not get trapped into polarity thinking, I might better appreciate the whole.

The rain has forced me to reschedule the planned photo trip.  Hopefully it will happen next week so that I can finish the third book called “Mike.”  It is a shift from landscape-nature photography to people-nature photography.

The nose of Chaac, the Rain God.  Ascending alongside the central staircase of the Magician’s Pyramid on both sides are faces of Chaac, each face contains an elephantine nose similar to the one found on the ground here.  There are twelve such Chaac figures on each side.  A thirteenth Chaac figure sits above the temple entrance.  Thirteen being the number of levels in the Mayan heaven.  The Chaac nose both receives the rain and distributes the rain (metaphorically) which comes from the Rain God.

Curious how such symbols of power between men and gods also can serve as ‘keys’ to one’s own inner world.  When viewed as a key, the image makes ‘sense’.  Water, the source of life speaks of the vast unconsciousness of humankind and of the container that holds us.  At the same time as being a key, it also can serve as a ‘hook’.  It even looks like a hook.  And this is the danger when approaching the unconscious.  Does one get hooked like a fish at sea and thus drown in the depths never to return to consciousness?  Intentional descents are safer, especially with a guide, unintentional descents result in madness.  Jung studied those lost in this madness to discover some of the territory of the unconscious.  Choosing a descent?  Not too likely.  However, the pain of being present in the world without having the anchor of ‘meaning’ is often the stimulus to risk descents into the swampland, the dark sea of one’s unconscious aspects.