Through a Jungian Lens

The moon waxing gibbous as seen through my camera lens.  I had hoped to get an earlier phase of the moon, perhaps the waxing crescent as well as the first quarter, but the sky conditions didn’t allow that to happen.  I take what is given to me and will make do with that in terms of my SoFoBoMo project.  If weather permits, I will be able to get the full moon and the waining phases as well as the new moon.  For my information in preparing for the book as well as these blogs, I went to Moon Connection where a useful chart is available explaining the phases of the moon as well as a host of other interesting information regarding the moon.

With this image, the idea of “whiteness” must be discarded.  The pits and discolorations and shadows can’t all be written off to defects in the cameras lens.  Rather, the moon must be seen as it truly is, a rock that is sterile and which, unlike our planet, can’t support life.  The moon is a cold, hard, lifeless orb mindlessly circling our planet.  That should be the end of all talk of the moon.  But, science and the real facts be damned.  We want more from “our” moon.

I know that the facts we have today about the moon and the sun provide us with no room for some romance, or alchemy.  However, it has never been the sun or the moon.  It has always been about our looking out of eyes onto a world trying hard to find meaning while being trapped behind the lenses of our eyes.  As each of us moves through the days of living, we learn that there “is” more than what our senses tell us exists.  Our senses deceive us, even in terms of parents and siblings.

This is especially true in terms of relationships.  How can we ever truly know an “other” when we are so desperately forever in search of “self?”  Yet, it is only in relationship to “other” than one begins to see otherwise hidden aspects of “self.”  It is as if one requires submersion into the unknown as a means of discovering more about who we are.  And so, as humans we have encoded this hard won awareness of how we come to be conscious beings into myths, into rituals and onto images (archetypes) – a process that has been ongoing since the dawn of human awareness.

The whole process begins with us instinctively seeking out an other person in order to fill a mandate for the survival of the species, something that is unconsciously driven.  Men reach for women and women reach for men.  There is nothing conscious about any of this.  And because of that, we must create stories so that we feel less of a victim, more in control.  And so begin the clumsy gropings for understanding.

Implied sunshine.  Yes, there is little doubt in looking at this image that the sun is present.  In a way, the image evokes a marriage of sun and earth in which life is born.  With birth, life races to become unique as a means of adapting to an ever changing environment.  This marriage of sun and earth is all about life, about change, about adaptation to change.  As I listen to the daily news, it is too easy to get depressed over the disasters that are buffeting the planet.  Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, torrential rains, droughts are matched with man-caused disasters such as the latest major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico just as the hurricane season is about to get underway, a hurricane season that is predicted to be the worst on record.  Our pollution of air, water, and soil speak of our blindness to our relationship with the planet.  But, I know that in spite of what humans can do, including an all-out nuclear act of self destruction, the sun and earth will continue their journey of change.

But, it isn’t just the marriage of sun and earth that produces change.  Our collective consciousness and collective unconsciousness work to ensure the survival of the human race.  The marriage of logos and eros leads to an increased awareness which “should” help us moderate our behaviour as a species, as collective cultures.  Of course, this all must begin with the individual human, the same as it does in nature with the individual plant or animal.

“Individuation is the urge in all human beings to differentiate themselves from collective or traditional patterns of self-understanding, and to make a journey peculiarly theirs, deeply personal, essentially mythic.”  (Monick, Castration and Male Rage, p. 34)

If there was no urge to individuate, humans would stay within their condition rather than risk change.  It is much simpler to go along with the collective than it is to strike out and carve a unique path.  Yet without this urge to individuate, humans would soon find themselves bypassed by the rest of life forms.  As the individual humans change, the collective changes.  Where that change is based on increased awareness that is based on the marriage of consciousness and unconsciousness, human society can help ensure its own survival.   The marriage of logos and eros will continue to gift us with “life.”

First, I want to begin by saying that this is my wife.  We have been married 38 years.  I have avoided bringing her into this blog for a host of reasons, the primary one being her privacy.  That said, it is only natural that I include her in today’s post about love.  One of our frequent discussions revolves around trying to define what love is.  Of course, such a discussion is usually disappointing in terms of finding a common definition.  I don’t think that a definition can ever be achieved when looking at it from two separate poles, that of the masculine and the feminine.  The best I can do, is speak from my core, from my level of consciousness and the intuitions that arise.

First, the basic premise that opposites attract hold.  Magnetism proves this in nature.  This is vital for survival of all species.  Male attracts female; female attracts male.  This instinctual attraction leads to renewal of the species.  But, this isn’t enough to approach the idea of love.  There is so much more.  So many women, so many men; if this was all there was to it, a man could fall in love with all women or a woman could fall in love with all men simply because they were the opposite gender.

No, the opposite has to be much more significant.  When we look at personality, even here opposites attract.  The more they are opposite, the more the fire, the energy, the clash.  One is extrovert and the other is introvert.  One trusts intuitively, the other trusts based on what the senses reveal.  One processes based on feeling tones, the other cognitively.  Now, how can two people who are so totally different, ever possibly arrive at a common definition of something that defies definition even when two other people are paired with the same personality?

Here are Jung’s words on the topic that might be of help.  But in saying that, one has to be of a mind to hear and understand the world, humanity and the human psyche from a Jungian point of view.  Complicated, isn’t it?

Love has more than one thing in common with religious faith.  It demands unconditional trust and expects absolute surrender.  Just as nobody but the believer who surrenders himself wholly to God can partake of divine grace, so love reveals its highest mysteries and its wonder only to those who are capable of unqualified devotion and loyalty of feeling.  And because this is so difficult, few mortals can boast of such an achievement.  But, precisely because of the truest and most devoted love is also the most beautiful, let no man seek to make it easy.  He is a sorry knight who shrinks from the difficulty of loving his lady.  Love is like God:  both give themselves only to the bravest knights. (Carl Jung, CW X, paragraph 232)