Through a Jungian Lens

Image of the masculine in Toronto

It’s summer solstice today and I am writing this at approximately two hours past the peak of the solstice.  I found this image as a representative image for the solstice, an image of the masculine.  As most who follow symbolism are are aware, the sun is symbolic of the masculine where the moon is symbolic of the feminine.    The summer solstice is all about the sun.

Solstice is representative of the midpoint of a man’s life in as much as it represents the midlife of the annual journey of the earth around the sun, the point where man is at his peak, the moment when the sun is in the sky longest in the year. It is the time when a man is the most conscious of the fact of being a man, most feeling the power of being male.

If a man has truly worked at becoming conscious, he comes to a point of crisis as he  realises that the life of spirit, of logos doesn’t fill him.  All that has been believed, all the effort, the struggle now seems to ring hollow.  At this moment, a man “knows” that he has peaked and that it he is now engaged in a journey back to darkness.  If he is lucky, he has a guide to help him descend from the peak.

With a focus on what has been attained in the work of being a man, the fact that reaching the pinnacle of his essence as a male has not resulted in a sense of fullness, but of a paradoxical emptiness, a hollowness, a man is graced with the opportunity to move towards balance, the balance of light and dark, the balance between his masculine aspect and his feminine aspect.

And it is this embarking on a new journey that is to be celebrated at the solstice, the end of the honeymoon and the real work to come, the real work which will give life meaning and purpose.  Those who resist this journey get lost in addictions which promise meaning: sex, power, money, dominance of others.

It doesn’t make sense to the objective world that it is in a descent into a subjective world that one finds purpose and meaning in the outer world.  But who said it has to make sense in a “logos” kind of way?  Too much of one thing leads to burn out, to a searing of the soul.

Though it might seem a time for mourning of one’s ego, a time for anger and resistance; midlife is a blessing if one can only dare to continue a journey of individuation, a journey in which one learns to embrace the feminine, the soul.

Stilt houses along the Tonle Sap River in Cambodia

One of the worst decisions I made on the IndoChina tour was to take the speed boat from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh.  It was a rough ride with the long boat so crowded that the seven hour trip was definitely something I would have rather avoided.  That said, I did get to meet a few interesting people and engage in a couple of good conversations as well as capture a few shoreline photos such as this one which I took near the end of the trip.  So, in retrospect, perhaps the ride was worth it.

Stilt houses have a purpose, they keep the house above water during the rainy season when the river overflows its banks.  This flooding is not seen as a bad thing, but as a good thing as it brings rich nutrients to the land that feeds people, food that serves as a foundation for the community and country.  What a difference in opinion would exist if people along the banks of the river didn’t build stilt houses, but decided instead to ignore the cycles and power of nature.

The same happens to us as people with regards to our unconscious.  We try to deny the unconscious and build our homes, our belief systems of self, around the notion that there is only the observable outer world, an objective world.  The more we barricade ourselves into this way of being, the more we suffer the onslaughts of the unconscious in our dreams and in being tripped up by all that is illogical in our behaviour and that of the people with whom we come into contact.  We see nature as a commodity and sometime as an enemy as we wrestle with control.

If only we could somehow look at our realities through a different lens, what we see as forces that turn us into victims could become opportunities for personal growth, for being human in harmony with the visible and invisible worlds in which we live.