Through a Jungian Lens

Along the journey, there are many trials and tests.  The hero wielding a talisman and with the help of a guide at critical points, tames the monsters.  And as distance and time take the hero from the battle with these monsters, those monsters become smaller.  Little did the hero know that each of these were aspects of self.

I often forget all that I have thought I have learned as I face conflicts.  Some small movement outside of my self, triggers an old complex, one that I thought had been “solved” in some manner.  The flare up causes a retrenchment and reactive response that escalates the conflict.  I feel under attack and build stronger defences and at times even start lobbing out my own missle strikes in retaliation.  Then exhausted, I fall back and look out on the battlefield, the wreckage and begin to wonder “what in hell” had happened.

A bit of distance and it comes to me that the conflict was mostly self-induced.  Old patterns emerged from the depths and act out old battles based on old fears.  Now, if only I had been able to be in the present, there would have been no conflict.  Of course, it would have helped if the “other” had also been able to be in the present and not acting out old dramas, historical dramas.

Well, I have completed nine photo pages for the project which I started on May 5th.  At this rate, I hope to finish in about two weeks.  That leaves me a good amount of time for tidying up the text and photos, getting it right for publication.  The photo on the right isn’t used in the project though the text below is.  In order to find the will to enter the hero’s journey, often a collapse of ego is required, just like this old car.  Now, the post from the book …

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Supernatural aid

First encounter on the road

Old man bearing gift

Midlife crisis – the real thing, not some precursor which as painful as it felt, forces the issue.  Will the crisis result in action?  Will it result in denial?  Assuming that one decides, or falls into following the quest by default, it is then time for help to appear on the scene.  After all, no one is really prepared to go on any quest, especially into unknown country.  One is filled with doubts, with fear.  But the will to go forward allows one to move forward from the known conscious world into the shadow world of the unconscious, the inner spaces of the human psyche.

Without consciousness there would, practically speaking, be no world, for the world exists for us only in so far as it is consciously reflected by a psyche.  Consciousness is a precondition of being. CW vol. 10, “The Individual’s Understanding of Himself,” paragraph 528, 1958.)

To turn back to the certainty of the world left behind is rejected because to return would be the end of ego, of the known self.  That much is certain.  Because the outer world has betrayed, the idea of another world becomes a considered possibility.  And there is hope.

For those who have not refused the call, the first encounter of the hero-journey is with a protective figure (often a little old crone or old man) who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass. (Campbell, Joseph, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, p. 69, 1968.)

This is an important thing to realize.  Should one facing this crisis of “self” and find the will to begin the work of taking the journey of self-discovery, there will be help along the way.  All kinds of our stories, myths and tales provide us with examples of such supernatural aid.  In Jungian psychology, one turns to the myths to find the common threads of our human story, aspects of being human that are stored within our personal and collective unconsciousness.