Through a Jungian Lens

I continue with bringing a photo from Angkor Wat with this post.  Walking out of the back of the main temple area of Angkor Wat there is this smaller temple, or more likely one of the smaller palaces that were part of Angkor Wat.  I was entranced by the solidity and ancientness of this building which has been somewhat rescued from the jungle that is native to the area.   Looking through the doorway and windows, one expects to encounter shadows of an inner space.  Yet, that expectation was denied as the doorway and the windows opened up to show the outer world framed by the door and windows.

Inner and outer landscapes, light and shadow.  It is the contrast between dark spaces and light that indicates the presence of life.  If all is dark, that is all there is.  If all is white, that is all there is.  I need contrast to have feeling, to be able to discriminate.  Without contrast, there is nothing but a state of suspended animation – no awareness – as if one is asleep with no dreaming, no physical sensation to have one shift on the bed, no biological clock to have one wake up.  One needs both darkness and light in order to be alive.

I think of many who are bored with their lives.  Why the boredom?  There is not a lack of material stuff in their lives, not a lack of opportunity, not a lack of time; yet, there is little satisfaction.  To go to the same work, to see the same people, to hear the same stories, to take the same routes, to watch the same television programs; to do any of these things day after day without change is not much different that living in a cocoon, in suspended animation.  It is only when someone or something enters the scene, disrupting the pattern that one becomes animated.  Typically, that animation is a negative response, a complaint about how one’s routines have been turned upside down.  The greatest curse one could give was to wish them and interesting life.  An interesting life, one in which pain and pleasure are present, one in which there is mystery and a anxiety.  We now treat anxiety with pills in an attempt to surround the anxiety with a narcotic numbing agent so that one can avoid pain.

I wonder at my need for an interesting life.  If things go too smoothly, I become agitated and find myself resisting the invisible bonds that would have me sit quietly, not making waves, as I wait for my biological death.  I want to feel alive and that means I need to feel, to think, to dream, to act, to go, to be denied, to be loved and hated.  I need to speak out even if what I say is nonsense.  Would it be better if I could sit still in a small town at the edges of the world, smiling and not making any waves, listening to words repeated endlessly so that the words have no meaning other than as a constant drone that persuades the brain it doesn’t need to listen anymore?

Sitting and waiting while life happens around me but not within me – that is what this photo tells me – when one sits still waiting, one has become an empty shell in spite of the fact that the body is still performing biological functions that says the body is alive.  The owner, the spirit has abandoned the body; the soul has shriveled up.  The gods have gone to find a new home.  The lights are on, but nobody’s home.  Clint Black has his way of telling us the same thing.

The lights are on, but nobody’s home – Clint Black

Move slowly to my dresser drawers
Put my blue jeans on
Find my cowboy boots, my button down
Strap my timepiece on my arm
Grab my billfold, my pocket change
Just a mindless old routine
Then it’s out the door and down the street
But it’s not really me

I still comb my hair the same
Still like the same cologne
And I still drive that pickup truck
That the same old bank still owns
But since you left, everybody says
I’m not the guy they’ve known
The lights are on, but nobody’s home

Cup of coffee in the morning
Just food for the brain
But I’ve been numb since our last goodbye
I haven’t felt a thing
But now there’s pains in my head
And pains in my chest
And I think I’m losing my hair
I’m a half a man with half a mind
To think you didn’t care

I still comb my hair the same
Still like the same cologne
And I still drive that pickup truck
That the same old bank still owns
But since you left, everybody says
I’m not the guy they’ve known
The lights are on, but nobody’s home

Hoar frost surrounds most of the branch with only a thin glimpse of what is holding the frost together.  Beneath the frost is life in a carefully crafted state of suspended animation.

As we pass through the seasons from year to year, we learn that nature provides for a cycle of birth and rebirth, a cycle that passes through winter, through a kind of death.  When I look out and see the world before my eyes, I see a frozen world.  When I walk out into that world, I feel the cold.  And, when I have tried to dig into the ground, I meet with the resistance of a frozen earth.  There is no evidence of any part of the earth being alive.  All that is visible are a few scattered beings huddling against the cold and an occasional print of an animal that was obviously hungry as it hunted for food in this frozen place and time.

Yet, another look at the scene takes us into other possibilities.  Why this period of time of suspended animation?  Why this pushing us into an inner place?  What is wanted?

For me, it is about balance.  In warm weather, the call is to the outdoors, the call into active presence and doing.  It is easy to avoid sitting with the self and listening to the faint voices of the soul.  Winter forces me to slow down and in that slowing down, the focus naturally draws inward.  I begin again to listen to what my soul wants and needs.

This is a time for change, for transformative change, a time for alchemy to work on the soul.  Like the branch in the photo, life courses through working changes.  Winter prepares the way for a re-emergence into a fuller life as a changed person.