Through a Jungian Lens

I felt that this is a perfect photo in which to engage in a bit of active imagination – looking at another possible universe through an opening that somehow emerges from our limited level of consciousness.  It’s easy to imagine a paradise, a utopia of colour and shape that blends nature and man when we look outside of our daily worldview.  Most of us take on a self-definition that sets limits on who we are and what we can do.  With that box built, we become beleaguered by anything and everything that is different.

We shape ourselves  as victims of the otherness, even when we dominate the otherness.  Now, how does this make sense?  Think of the abuser who batters his or her children, his or her spouse – their common complaint “you made me do it” is repeated over and over again suggesting that the abuser believes that they are the victims, not the perpetrators.  On a less extreme scale, but infinitely worse are the collectives who operate as mobs, as collectives with one voice and one worldview, collectives such as religions and political groups.  Our nastiest atrocities on each other has been through these collectives.  The evidence of partisanship bent on destruction is seen in America, Europe, and Canada, as well as the major religions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.  Accepting self identification with a group traps a person and blinds a person to other possibilities.  The world ceases to be a colourful place and takes on a black and white aspect where each side is white with the other side being black – each side believes that God is on their side.  And in the process of claiming these collective identities, one claims being a victim.

It is only through active imagination that we find an opportunity to see other plausibilities in a non-destructive, non-threatening manner.  One steps aside from being victim and sees what one could be, what the world could be.  What is rarely realised is the fact that these utopic worlds are not places of imagination, they are real places.  Of course, one can also get there via a different route, that through reducing all to ashes and building anew out of the ashes.  Personally, I would try the route of active imagination rather than pursue a path of denial and destruction.

I went back two months into my archives to find this photo which I took in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.  Why this particular photo?  I guess, it was the first to catch my eye.  There is no “plan” as far as today’s post is concerned.  For a while, I didn’t even know if I would write a post.  Today is a sunny day with the temperature finally climbing into a very comfortable range which lead to a long walk in the early afternoon.  The morning was spent trying to keep up on the tragedies that are unfolding all around the world with the earthquake and tsunami in Japan heading the list.  With all of  this happening, I just couldn’t seem to find the “will” to write as I usually do.  However, now in the late afternoon, I find that the words are beginning to come.  Trusting to instinct, I have decided that I will post today.  In a way the photo sort of helps explain how it feels to be coming out of a tunnel and looking at the sunshine promised in the distance.

The unrest in Northern Africa, the conflict in Afghanistan, the tensions in so many places and the unsettled planet making its own set of statements through earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and storms.  It makes me think of how one is often left feeling powerless when the inner storms begin their assaults that are chaotic.  When the psyche decides enough is enough, one is shocked by eruptions of the unconscious.

I turned to Jung’s works for some words that might make a difference in feeling less “at sea” with all that is going on.  Strangely enough, I found something in volume 11 in a an essay on the concept of “quaternity” that seemed to fit with what I am experiencing/feeling.  I have often written about typology, about the two rational functions and the two irrational functions with the dominant function being opposed by an inferior function.  In the essay, Jung looks at the role of the inferior function in a way that helps me understand a bit more.

“Three of the four orienting functions are available to consciousness.  This is confirmed by the psychological experience that a rational type, for instance, whose superior function is thinking, has at his disposal one or two possible auxiliary functions of an irrational nature, namely sensation (the “fonction dy réel”) and intuition (perception via the unconscious).  His inferior function will be feeling (valuation), which remains in a retarded state and is contaminated with the unconscious.  It refuses to come along with the others and often goes wildly off on its own.  This peculiar dissociation is, it seems, a product of civilization, and it denotes a freeing of consciousness from any excessive attachment to the “spirit of gravity.” (Jung, CW 11, par. 245)

The missing fourth function erupts and does its own thing, unchecked by the superior function that is blind to the inferior function.  Why do I think this is relevant?  I think back to how other cultures, and animals have been in tune with the planet and seemed to “know” in advance the approach of events such as earthquakes.  Such events take us by surprise and seem to come out of nowhere.  But, our inferior function lost in the sea of unconsciousness to our purposes is not really lost.  All really isn’t in a state of chaos.

It takes a lot of patience with ourselves as we do the work of rediscovery of the inferior function, trusting that the dark and unknown regions are not really just a personal version of a chaotic and dark hell.  There is light in this darkness as well.  And as in this photo, we can learn to navigate into and out of the shadow and feel less of a victim.

Three Boats on Hoi An River, Vietnam 2011

I was being driven to view vegetable farming in a village near Hoi An when I say these three boats in the river.  I managed to get the guide to have the driver stop so that I could take this photo.  Though it seemed to crimp on the guide’s agenda and time, I finally got me way and walked back to the scene above.  It only takes a bit of courage to say no to one’s guide when the guide forgets that it isn’t about the guide.

Sometimes, perhaps even often, this is the problem with counselling and therapy, the agenda is about meeting the needs of the service provider, than it is about meeting the needs of the one who comes for help and guidance.  In seeking out a guide, one shouldn’t give up one’s autonomy and one’s ability to think for oneself and make decisions.  One’s counsellor, therapist, analyst or shrink is not a god.

Okay, that small rant is over.  I sometimes get heated because others want control that doesn’t belong to them, such as the guide that would have not stopped for me to take this photo.

While taking a walk through another part of the city, I found another area in which row after row of old tenement building are being taken down to make way for high rise apartments and more green spaces.  In one area which had been reduced to rubble, there was this one building which still was standing and it will stay standing until the resident of this one apartment reaches an agreement with the city government.  One apartment still in use while the rest of the building has been vacated and stripped.  Electric power, water and gas have been turned off, but still the owner of the apartment refuses to leave.

I wonder what what is going on in the mind of the owner as he clings so desperately to what was a home.  It makes me think of a dream in which one is found in a desolate wasteland but refuses to leave, protesting that the barrenness doesn’t really exist.  Though this is lived in the outer life, the real drama is occurring within the psyche and deep within the unconscious.

“Myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings, and anything but allegories of physical processes.” (Jung, CW 9i, par. 261)

Living in the outer world as if trapped within an inner world is living in a myth.  One wanders in this world as a victim, setting up barricades to protect and protest.  Reason has no room to play its own part.  The photo shows an overt example of this, but I feel that many of us get caught up in our own myths in smaller ways.  When we feel the victim, when we feel a loss of control as we do our best to shore up our ego with anger or fear or both; that is when we are in the grips of unconscious psychic contents.  We become victims of the gods, of the authorities, of others – when in truth, we are feeling the power of the archetypes within.

When do we finally learn to look within to find what needs to be addressed, to make our way out of the wasteland back into life?

This is one of my Chinese colleagues sitting at his desk waiting for students to arrive for the next class.  He is one of the less timid colleagues and often stops to talk with me on the stairs or in the hallways as we pass each other on the way to classes or finishing classes.  I chose to use this photo because you can’t identify him in terms of culture or using any other criteria.  All that you can know is that he is likely a male and that he is an older specimen of the male gender, likely in late middle age.

Midlife is a hard time for most of us.  The work of the first half is basically done.  We may have become parents; we likely have taken care of carving a place in the outer world, in the community; and now our mortality is staring at us in the face.  We know we are getting older.  And, we wonder at has become of the time we so carelessly used up.  After all the focus on the outer world, we are left staring at ourselves in the mirror and saying, “Is this all?”  We see a stranger in the mirror, an aged face that causes us to again ask, “Who am I, really?” and we worry about dying without finding meaning for our short lives.  And so if we are not satisfied with the lack of answers and we are willing to risk digging deeper, we begin a new journey, a heroic journey in which we meet ghost-like images in the shadows within.  We battle for survival with these shadows knowing that to fail would mean that our lives would truly be meaningless.  Who will rule, ego or shadow?  It is only when we arrive at the realisation that the only way to survive is to accept the shadow as an intimate part of “self.”  We must assimilate our shadow.

“There is no generally effective way to assimilate the shadow.  It is more like diplomacy or statesmanship, and it is always an individual matter.  Shadow and ego are like two political parties jockeying for power.  If one can speak of a technique at all, it consists solely in an attitude.  First one has to accept and take seriously the existence of the shadow.  Second, one has to become aware of its qualities and intentions.  This happens through conscientious attentions to moods, fantasies and impulses.  Third, a long process of negotiation is unavoidable.”  (Sharp, Jungian Psychology Unplugged, p. 47)

Daryl Sharp has it right.  If one doesn’t do this work, one is reduced to being a victim, to being confused, bitter and angry.  Moods consume us and control us.  We drown our pain in alcohol, in drugs, in chasing the elusive fountain of youth and money trying to deny that the questions are even heard.  We live through the lives of our children and grandchildren rather than face the fact of our own lives and that we are responsible for the quality of these lives.  Better to be the loved, self-sacrificing grandparent or parent than to risk self-discovery.

Perhaps, but not for me.  I must take the risk regardless of the cost in terms of what others will think of me.  I need to find answers to these questions that can only be answered by turning within and assimilating the parts hidden in shadow.

One of the things I love about this time of year is the appearance of new life, new growth on old plants and trees.  These leaves on a poplar tree glow with life and are unmarked by any hardships of life so far.  Not too many days after taking this photo, I got to see my youngest grandchild, a boy of just six months.  Like these leaves, he is unmarked by hardships.  Life is all about promise.  Since this photo was taken, these leaves have had to experience a blizzard and harsh winds.  Some of the leaves have been blown off the tree, a few have been scared and allowed to continue their growth on the parent tree.  Life for a leaf is all about fate.

Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College  - Thomas Gray

“Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
‘Tis folly to be wise.”

This poem by Thomas Grey written in 1742 can be found here.  I wanted to include this selection from the long poem because of the expression, “ignorance is bliss” that has become a familiar complaint used by many.  I know I have used a variation of the expression, “as happy as a carrot” in order to express the same concept that being aware, being conscious, has its costs on the psyche.  That awareness as described in these expressions, is of being aware of one’s state as victim.  Without consciousness, one is no different than these leaves who cling to the tree waiting for life to happen to them while repeating life patterns inscribed in the genetic codes.  There is no will to change the conditions; there is no power to change the conditions of life.  But, for a human, consciousness is an option.

I want to return to James Hollis who talks about this issue of fate and consciousness:

“The concept of individuation represents Jung’s myth for our time in a sense of a set of images which guide the soul’s energies.  Simply put, individuation is the developmental imperative of each of us to become ourselves as fully as we are able, within the limits imposed on us by fate.  Again, unless we consciously confront our fate, we are tied to it.  We must separate who we are from what we have acquired, our de facto but false sense of self. “I am not what happened to me; I am what I choose to become.”  This sentence must be conscious to us each day if we are to become more than prisoners of our fate.”  (Hollis, The Middle Passage, p. 97)

Hollis’ words are clear.  There is no room for blame other than to blame oneself for feeling like a prisoner.  We might be in a real prison because of some foul play we have inflicted upon our world, but while in that prison, we can chose consciousness rather than blindness as we navigate the remaining days.  We might be a recently divorced “over-the-hill” person lost in regret or we can see that our new condition is actually a doorway into a new way of being with ourselves.  It is about attitude, an attitude that comes with consciousness.

It is easy to blame others for what happens to us.  Indeed, others do commit bad acts on our persons and on our conditions of living.  These acts of others and of nature on us aren’t denied or trivialized.  What is critical is one’s attitude with the life one finds oneself living.  Are we defeated or are we still alive?  As the old expression goes, “to not choose is a choice.”  Should we not choose to become the fullness of self, then we choose to be a victim of fate.  And now, a few final words on the topic of being a victim and how to change one’s attitude as well as one’s fate:

AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN FIVE SHORT CHAPTERS

by Portia Nelson

I

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost … I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.

II

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place
but, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

III

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in … it’s a habit.
my eyes are open
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

IV

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

V

I walk down another street.

This is quite a change from the photos I’ve been posting in the last three months.  I have to say that I wasn’t prepared for this as I have been watching the weather forecasts for my home area in Canada for a number of weeks, and that weather featured above zero temperatures everyday during that time.  My friends commented that they had even been able to golf a few times the past week.  As always, I’ve come to expect the unexpected.

It would be easy to get upset as though I was owed good weather rather than a mid-winter blizzard for my return home.  But, the truth is, I am owed nothing.  None of us are.  Life is what it is and it is that simple.  To think otherwise is only setting ourselves up for a world of grief.  It is this kind of thinking that has us adopt a world view as a “victim.”

Blizzards are natural phenomena, not some manifestation of some malevolent deity out to punish us for some mysterious broken rule, or simply to torment us for the pleasure of seeing us suffer.

Realizing this helps me to deal with my own inherited, experienced and self-inflicted crap. I didn’t have a good model for a father and had a rough go at it during my childhood and youth.  But on thinking about it,  this isn’t so abnormal in the big picture of the human race.  Sure, it could be better, but it is what it is.  So, what does one do about it?  What does one do with being excessively shamed, or verbally abused, or being ignored to the point of feeling invisible, or bullied, or physically or sexually abused?  In my opinion, it is only when we accept the fact of the abuse, accept the fact that one was a child or youth and that the past cannot be undone.

Accepting the facts, one has to let the woundings become simply yet an experience which has forged the person we have now become.  To expect something to be done or undone is to stay in the place and time of wounding.  One is obviously not in the present, one’s energy is trapped in the past.  Now, if only it was easy enough to say, “suck it up” and have one come unstuck so that one can recapture one’s energy to live in the present.  But, it isn’t that easy though the song by Darryl Worley, Sounds Like Life To Me, would have us believe it is that easy.

Got a call last night from an old friends wife, said, I hate to bother you
But Johnny Ray fell off the wagon, hed been gone all afternoon
Well, I know my buddy, so I drove to Scullys and found him at the bar
Said, Hey Man, whats goin on, He said, I dont know where to start
Sarah’s old car startin to fall apart and the washer quit last week
We had to put Mama in the nursing home and the baby’s cuttin teeth

Sounds Like Life To Me
I didnt get much work this week and I got bills to pay
I said, I know this aint what you wanna hear but its what Im gonna say
Sounds like life to me, it aint no fantasy
It just a common case of everyday reality
Man, I know its tough but you gotta suck it up
To hear you talk youre caught up in some tragedy
It sounds like life to me

Well, his face turned red and he shook his head
He said, you dont understand, three kids and a wife depend on me
And Im just one man, top it off we just found out that Sarahs two months late
I said, Hey, bartender, set us up a round, we gotta celebrate
Sounds like life to me, aint no destiny
Yeah, the only thing for certain is uncertainty
You gotta hold on tight, just enjoy the ride
Get used to all this unpredictability, sounds like life
Man, I know its tough but you gotta suck it up
To hear you talk youre caught up in some tragedy
Sounds like life to me (sounds like life to me)
Sounds like life

The song isn’t all that good as far as music is concerned, but there is a truth in it, that of having the darker stuff as being a normal part of living.  Since the darker stuff comes with being alive, there needs to be a use for it in our journey, a use that is positive.  If anything, it allows us to put the dark stuff that lies within each of us to be held differently.  Rather than lying to ourselves about our own “stuff,” we can own up and acknowledge it and set it safely within our consciousness so that it doesn’t come sneaking out of the darkness of our unconsciousness so that we inadvertently act out and repeat these abusive patterns.

That’s my task, to see the abuser in me and allow myself to consciously choose behaviours and attitudes.  Denying that hidden abuser and I don’t really get to choose as the shadow will act out (unconsciously acted out behaviours) and leave the conscious part of me left holding the bag wondering “what in hell just happened?”

I think that this becomes the key in forgiving those who have  abused us in the past.  We realize that we are not that much different from those who have wounded us.  And then, we can begin to start forgiving ourselves.

This was the view from the back deck of my home which I took last night at 10:01 pm.  I have to admit, I love the colours of the sky after the sun has set and before darkness has hidden the clouds.  It is raining as I write this, a necessary rain for the farms, gardens and lawns here in the open prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada.  The prairie gets thirsty.

Humans get thirsty as well.  Of course, I am thinking of something more than just a beverage here, I am thinking of how one’s soul gets thirsty, how one’s heart yearns for nourishment.  Rain, water, food from the unconscious depths found within.  Of course, that depth is more than just a personal depth, it is also a depth that reaches both up and down to include the One, the Self, or whatever name you want to call your god(s).  You don’t find “your” god “out there.”  The kingdom is within according to the bible of Christianity.  To place your centre “outside” of self is to be separated leaving you hollow, feeling empty.  Leaving your god “outside” allows you to believe that you are a victim of life rather than the day-to-day co-creator or you life.  Blame it all on the gods.

This placing of gods “outside” of self is just another way of projecting our unconscious, hidden inner aspects into the outer world.

We may fear to know what we know, so its costliness persuades ego to seek a thousand evasions; thus we dissemble, procrastinate, project … (James Hollis, Celebrating a Life, 2001, p. 130)