Through a Jungian Lens

I took this photo about a week before I left Canada for China.  The scene is in a historical reconstruction of a Métis settlement in north-central Saskatchewan, a tiny Catholic community.  In the past this community was the site of a battle between those trying desperately to hold on to an older vision versus the modern (at that time) power that wanted these old ways buried.  Today, this site is a tourist stop.  One can see evidence from the past which speaks of what was.  Yet, not matter how much nostalgia might press, one can never reverse time to return to the way it was.

As a diversion from thinking too much, I am reading a novel called “The Alchemyst,”  by Michael Scott.  It is a book borrowed from my local library back in Canada, an ebook.  Just over half way through the book I came across these words that I immediately knew should become part of my next post, this one.  ”Once begun, change cannot be reversed.”   Of course, I immediately thought of this line from a “Jungian” point of view.  And, I thought of my “changes.”  As a youth, the earliest memories are of a “belief” in God and how I was going to be a “Soldier of Christ.”  I didn’t live in a “religious” family; somehow, the spiritual drive was evident early and most in my family thought I was going to be a priest.  But, I saw too much that didn’t fit with spirituality in the “church” as I experienced it, and moved away.  I visited other churches of other faiths hoping somehow that I would see what I wanted and needed.  What I found was that I was all on my own.  At seventeen years of age, I came to believe that Neitzsche’s “Zarathustra” had it right, that God was dead.  Music had replaced religion for me.  It sometimes echoed my pain, my longing, my questions.

God – John Lennon

God is a concept,
By which we can measure,
Our pain,
I’ll say it again,
God is a concept,
By which we can measure,
Our pain,
I don’t believe in magic,
I don’t believe in I-ching,
I don’t believe in bible,
I don’t believe in tarot,
I don’t believe in Hitler,
I don’t believe in Jesus,
I don’t believe in Kennedy,
I don’t believe in Buddha,
I don’t believe in mantra,
I don’t believe in Gita,
I don’t believe in yoga,
I don’t believe in kings,
I don’t believe in Elvis,
I don’t believe in Zimmerman,
I don’t believe in Beatles,
I just believe in me,
Yoko and me,
And that’s reality.
The dream is over,
What can I say?
The dream is over,
Yesterday,
I was dreamweaver,
But now I’m reborn,
I was the walrus,
But now I’m John,
And so dear friends,
You just have to carry on,
The dream is over.

I can’t go back, even to the days of the music and John Lennon.  Yet, in the past was something that I found, something that still exists, a state of “grace.”  It was and is a gift that somehow wasn’t limited to a time or place or creed.  It was and is something that I found and continue to find, within my “self.”

“In Jung’s view, the psychological experience of unconscious compensation, which demonstrably moves toward wholeness, is comparable to the experience of God; indeed, he argues that the two are virtually indistinguishable.  The experience of this wholeness or psychic integration Jung came to equate with the concept of grace . . .” (Dourley, The Illness That We Are, p. 13)

I took an early walk this morning through the countryside as the tide was too high for a decent beach-side walk.  As usual, I took a number of photos which featured either birds or lizards which are plentiful in the area.   I noticed this fence post which I knew instantly would be the photo I wanted for today’s post.  As you can see, the post has been broken and therefore does not actually perform as a support for the fence.  It has broken away from the collective, figuratively.  Yet, it is still connected.

As I listen and think about what the journey of individuation is about, there is a tendency to assume that it is only about the self and not also about community.  Well, like this photo suggests, there are ties to community that cling regardless of how desperate one becomes in carving out one’s “unique” place in the world.  As long as one is in the world, one is connected regardless of how thin the thread is that serves as connection.

I have decided to give Dourley and his essay a rest and will shift focus back to C.G. Jung and his book, Modern Man in Search of Soul, in particular I will focus on chapter ten, The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man.  I invite you to click on the blue link at the end of the quote which begins my wandering through the chapter.

“The spiritual problem of modern man is one of those questions which are so much a part of the age we live in that we cannot see them in the proper perspective.  Modern man is an entirely new phenomenon; a modern problem is one which has just arisen and whose answer still lies in the future.” (Jung, The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man, Modern Man in Search of Soul, 1933)

Modern man.  This is an idea that seems to be appropriate for us who live in “modern times.”  Yet, C.G. Jung doesn’t hold that men and women who live in these modern times are to be thought of as “modern.”

“I must say that the man we call modern, the man who is aware of the immediate present, is by no means the average man.  He is rather the man who stands upon a peak, or at the very edge of the world, the abyss of the future before him, above the heavens, and below him the whole of mankind with a history that disappears in primeval mists.  The modern man – or, let’s say again, the man of the immediate present – is rarely met with, for he must be conscious to a superlative degree.  Since to be wholly of the present means to be fully conscious of one’s existence as a man, it requires the most intensive and extensive consciousness, with a minimum of unconsciousness.  It must be clearly understood that the mere fact of living in the present does not make a man modern, for in that case everyone at present alive would be so.  He alone is modern who is fully conscious of the present.” (Jung, The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man, Modern Man in Search of Soul, 1933)

I guess this leaves me out as I know that there is much yet that is unconscious within me.  I react too often with heat, the activation of complexes, which come out of nowhere and have yet to be understood.  Like most people, I am plodding forward but at a snail’s pace with many stops along the way to smell the flowers, cough up dust and perhaps share a beverage with others I bump into along the way.  As I read this, I immediately thought of Zarathustra.  And, in thinking of Zarathustra I became a bit despondent as I have serious doubts that I could ever attain such a level of consciousness.

Like the broken post, I am held in place with my own invisible barbed wire to the personal and collective unconscious, connecting me to the culture and the communities in which I find myself.  Still, I can recognize this and in doing so, I have hopes that I am headed in the right direction.