Through a Naturist Lens

The work in digging into one’s deeper self in order to better understand oneself is one that is not to be taken lightly. For most, it is likely a task that would not feel right and be quickly abandoned.  Yet sometimes, the work is uplifting and animates the spirit nd the body. Though these images were taken indoors, today “I,” the ego or conscious self, found a balcony surrounded by palm and other tropical trees in the Philippines for a meditative moment. The warm, moist air washed over me as I meditated and the muffled sounds of human life and conversations became part of the sounds of the breeze.  As always, I meditated skyclad.  And as always, I positioned myself so as to not be visible to passing eyes.  Meditation is private and only shared with others when those others are also meditating.

There is a risk in taking off the clothes, going skyclad in a culture where nudity is more about evil (sex) than goodness. Taking off ones psychic clothing and becoming transparent is also not received well for most. Like a physical nakedness, a spiritual and psychic nakedness needs to be contained in safety as if being placed on an altar in a temple, a holy place of sacred safety.

Ego: God, it’s hot out here; it must be 34 C not counting the humidity.

Sky Clad: Don’t be such as stuffed shirt. Take of some of those clothes and feel the breeze on your skin.

Ego: Are you crazy? Someone might see me, and then I’d be in deep shit.

Sky Clad: Hmmm? I said take off some clothes, not parade around as if you were in a Pride Parade. Other people don’t have anything to do with letting a bit of air cool you off. With all those layers, air can’t even tell that you are there!

Ego: Well, I guess I could – maybe I can find a secluded enough place around here somewhere.

Sky Clad: No problem, just place a towel over the arms of your chair and it will provide more than enough privacy, protect others from seeing you exposed. Everyone will assume you are protecting your chair from your wet bathing suit, never guessing that you are naked behind the wall of white that the towel creates for you.

Ego: Okay . . . hey, this isn’t so bad, it actually feels cool out. But still . . .

Sky Clad: Enough, you know it isn’t about your naked skin at all. It is about a shame that you have for your own skin.

Ego: A shame that I have? Not in the least . . . I could get arrested for this! You know there are laws against nudity. I could go to jail, get tossed out of the country, lose my passport . . .

Sky Clad: Do you really think so? I see you sitting up on a balcony in a courtyard area where few people are to be found; and you are hidden behind that towel. Someone would really have to go out of their way to see you. Do you think anyone even cares what you are wearing or what you are doing when you aren’t in their face? Besides, all that is just a smoke screen to avoid talking about something real, something deep. What was it about the word shame that made you take off on a tangent?

Ego: I never said I was ashamed of my body!

Sky Clad: Oh? Then what are you ashamed of that makes you take it out on your body?

Ego: Wha . .  . ?

Sky Clad: Think about it. I’ll come back later when you are ready to deal with it. For now, just catch a few breezes and begin to trust that you are safe in this quiet and protected space on your balcony.

In taking time out each day to prepare my lessons, to teach classes and to evaluate what I have done and where I have been in relation to my university students often leaves me drained. I have been doing this for a long time, and find myself still doing this six years after I have retired. I get tired but I don’t seem to know how to let go of my role as educator, teaching about the human psyche, personality and relationships.

Do many years as teacher, confidant, counsellor, coach, sage and father figure make me wonder who I am under all of these roles.  Of course a life at home, a family life only adds more and more roles into the mix. Once upon a time I added in athlete, musician and poet into the mix. Today? I don’t know who the hell I am anymore.

Sky Clad: Hmmm – who are you beneath the roles, beneath the personae that have defined you in schools, in the family and in the community? So tell me, who do you see when you look in the mirror?

Ego: A tired and graying man. I don’t really recognize the face as it seems to be much too old for my face.

Sky Clad: Well, I hate to break the bad news to you, but that face is your real face. So is the gray hair that is thinning out quite a bit in case you haven’t noticed.

Ego: Thanks, that was encouraging.

Sky Clad: Actually, that is good news.

Ego: What the hell do you mean by that?

Sky Clad: Think about it, you don’t have to wonder about who the real you is, what you see is what you get. There is no thirty year old body trapped within your body. Face it, you have a body to match your face, a body and face to match your years. No lies, no masks – just you.  Of course you can let your beard grow again, but that really won’t make much of a difference, just a hairier version of what you see now.

Ego: That still begs the question of who I am beneath all the different roles I play. I’ve been reading up on some Jungian stuff and what is says about persona and the authentic person and individuation and projections and . . . well, at least some of it.

Sky Clad: I hate to break it to you, but some of that Jungian stuff you’ve been reading is just a bunch of New Age claptrap. Listen up a bit and I’ll see if I can shed a little light on the subject. First, if you take off your clothing, does it change who you are?

Ego: Other than being naked and probably left cold and feeling foolish, not really. I get naked from time to time you know, it’s not as if I’m a Victorian prude or something.

Sky Clad: My point, Putting the clothing back on doesn’t change who you are either. Clothed or skyclad, you are still you.

Ego: So far I follow what you are saying. So what exactly are you trying to say?

Sky Clad: Just this, your personae, the roles you play are all a part of who you are, they aren’t simply masks and mirrors hiding the real you. Of course you are more that these limited number of roles, you are all the other roles that you have fantasized about, thought about in your head.

Ego: You have to be kidding, you can’t be serious!

Sky Clad: Just think about it – why and how could I bullshit you. All I can do is tell you the naked truth.  Ha ha, that was a good one – I’m naked telling the naked truth – a pun indeed.

Ego: Explain.

Sky Clad: What? The pun?

Ego: Geesh! No, this stuff about me being my personae AND my fantasies.

Sky Clad: Oh that. Well, as I was saying, you are quite a complex person, and a complexed person I might add, but that is a different topic for a different visit. I think you understand about the nature of personality how one is caught between the polarities of extraversion and introversion. Well, take that idea further. For example, you teach and are a teacher, but at the same time you are working behind the scenes as a learner, as a student.

Ego: So what has that to do with my fantasies?

Sky Clad: Just be patient. In your lived life you have been faithful to your wife – no sleeping around, no adultery. I guess you could say that you are an exemplary model of fidelity. Yet, you know that beneath your skin, you aren’t so exemplary at all. Even today you looked at some of the young women in your classes with lust, could almost visualize them without their clothing and began wondering what it would be like.

Ego: Still, I kept my dick in my pants and didn’t cheat on my wife.

Sky Clad: Because of a strong ego, you managed that. The point is, there is a part of you that is willing and ready to fuck just about any woman who smiles at you, and even some that don’t even know you exist. The adulterer is there and you know it. 

Ego: Okay, I’ll admit to the truth of what you are saying. But everything, all of my fantasies?

Sky Clad: Yes, all of them. They are all telling you something about who you are. Your lived roles in the outside world and your repressed dreams and fantasies, you are all of these. There is no you that exists that doesn’t include them, all of them. That’s the problem with a lot of the quacks who claim to be therapists and analysts; they claim to be ready to help you find the real you, a you stripped of your personae.

Ego: Hmmm.  I gotta think about this.

Sky Clad:  Take your time; I’ll be back when you’re ready for more.

There is only one week to go until Hallowe’en. Hallowe’en isn’t a Chinese thing nor is it a celebration that we care for even in Canada. We do buy the treats to hand out in our town as it would be a faux pas for the retired principal to not do his part to maintain social events.

We are getting tired as we have picked up another teaching gig in order to help our university gain even more status. We had been asked to teach a few times a week at a prestigious elementary school, the one that several of the college deans have their children attend. I have been giving it my best efforts, however I just don’t enjoy teaching grade 4 and 5 students. Still, the experience pays more per teaching hour than I get at the university. To be asked to do this is a high honour which none of the other foreign teachers have been asked to do.

As I said, we are getting tired. We need a holiday. We didn’t get to have the usual National Day holiday of several days, a time when we usually travel. In the past, we visited Beijing 2006, Xi’an 2007, and went to Chongqing in 2010 via a cruise through the Three Gorges along the Yangtze River. Our social life has been limited as well. We are not in the “in crowd” with our foreign teacher colleagues. And, I think that has a lot to do with my withdrawal from trying to be extroverted.

I am an introvert, and as such, I need to withdraw in order to have enough energy to cope with a busy outer world. The cost involved in recharging my energy levels usually comes at the expense of engagement with others.

It is hard, harder than I thought, coping with my mother’s death. I am left wondering why as we weren’t very close to each other. Because of a dysfunctional family history, I was more than glad to live at a significant distance from her with visits usually limited in time every second year. I had no respect for her as a person. Yet, she was my mother and had her own issues to which I was never privy. Other than being grandmother to our three children, there was no sense of her loving me as her child that I had ever felt while growing up. I didn’t have a happy childhood. There wasn’t any way for me to bridge that distance, especially since she always denied that there were problems in our home when I was young.

Perhaps it is because I missed out on being able to get any responses to my questions which denied closure and acceptance. Today, my wife took this photo of me in a place that I had chosen for meditation just off the beach. I am amazed at how nurturing and supportive she has been for me, especially as I challenge everything she knows with this strange behaviour of my nudity.

It’s Monday afternoon and I have finished my two morning classes and I don’t have another class to teach until tomorrow morning. I teach sixteen classes each week, just slightly more than my Chinese colleagues, but less than the other foreign teachers. Sixteen teaching hours a week leaves me with a lot of free time. Since our scheduled with only some overlapping hours, much of the spare time is spent alone.

Americans make up most of the other foreign teachers, with a couple from Australia added into the mix. The Australians live across the hall from us in our old apartment. I can see that we will become good neighbours as they are older than the American teachers, while younger than us.

My wife and I are the examples who are always held up to the other foreign teachers about how it is all supposed to be done. Staff turnover is very high every year. The only exception other than us, is one young man who came partway through the year last year.

But, this post isn’t about foreign teachers. When My wife got back from her class, she saw me meditating in the spare bedroom on the upper level. Without disturbing me, she took this photo. She knows that meditation is vital to my well being, and she knows that I meditate while nude. This photo was an implicit acceptance of my nude meditation. And that acceptance means everything to me.

While she was teaching an afternoon class, I went for a walk to a small park about a half-hour from our place. It’s a Friday afternoon and I was surprised that the park appeared to be abandoned. All the other parks we have visited were always busy with people. This park didn’t look as well taken care of as the others either. Seeing a few small paths through bushy garden areas, I did the unthinkable. I got naked outdoors in a large Chinese city.

I took images in three different locations and then hastily got my clothes back on. Public nudity? In China? I knew that this was an irrational act on my part. I also knew that I wasn’t going to be seen, but that really isn’t the point. I mean, I have never even been nude in Canada in a public space. Nudity on wild prairie hills, far from any town or city, is one thing, but this was something else. Needless to say, now that it is done and I am back in the apartment waiting for my wife to come home, I have time to wonder about why I took the risk.

I have to admit that there was a rush, a quickening of my pulse when I stripped off to take this photo. Was I wanting to get caught and have China deal with me? If so, why? If not, why did I even think of it? I mean, I wouldn’t do this at home in Canada. Questions that have no answers. What I do know is that there arw some unconscious impulses that are being acted upon. The veil between the unconscious contents and my ego is very thin. I will have to be very careful in the future. The last thing I want to do is to ruin our reputation here in China and have to leave in shame.

The first week of extra classes are done for me. My wife still has another class to teach this morning. Then, we will have the weekend off to go and do more exploring. We are planning on doing some dancing in the square along with almost a hundred others who live in our neighbourhood, all older Chinese couples for the most part. I have been meditating every day and finding it to be invaluable for my sanity.

I have avoided talking here about my mother, something that surprises me. I have always been her golden child according to her. I was also the first of nine children. This past summer I went to British Columbia to visit her and my brother, D, her fourth child. He lives close to her place and has been the one responsible for meeting her needs. My mother is in the hospital and it doesn’t look like she will leave it alive. She is on dialysis several times a week. My brother and I took care of all the legal documents regarding her care. Since the summer, my brother has been keeping me up to date on her progress.

Though she calls me her golden child, my conscious memories of life at home as a youth tell me a different story. I know I don’t have all my memories of that time. Regarding those memories that I do have, she had denied them ever happening. I knew that she would never divulge anything that had a dark core. Now, because of doing my own psychoanalysis [and this includes dream work], I wonder if what is lurking in the shadows has to do with her. Only time will tell.

I am earning to cope with by daring to add nudity to my life at home. The mental crash yesterday has been navigated and life goes on. I bought a few posters for the wall, which you can see above, so that the place feels less bare.

Next week, both of us will be getting the rest of our classes, with the addition of first year students who are spending their first weeks on campus training to become cohorts. They wear army fatigues and engage in boot camp-like exercises. Their cohorts are between fifty and sixty students in size. They will attend all their classes for the first two years as a cohort. And yes, that means we will have large classes to teach.

The addition of these extra classes beginning on Monday. That will keep me busier, a good thing. The more work I have, the less time I have for thinking. Now, it’s time for me to go back to lesson planning as we are going for an afternoon walk to the city centre later this afternoon.

The darkness is back with a vengeance. It is getting harder and harder to contain it. I am so thankful that I am able to keep it hidden from view from my students when I am teaching, and from my colleagues and friends when we are socialising. However, my wife knows. She always knows. However, there is nothing that we can do about it, such as my returning to proper Jungian psychoanalysis while we are here in China.

Because of our different teaching schedules, at least one class [an hour and a half sessions] each day I have at home in our apartment alone. I spend that time writing for the most part, usually for my Jungian psychology blog site. And, I am nude. I have been reading a book suggested by my wife [I have quite a few of my psychology books here in China] that focuses on self-psychology. That book has opened up a can of worms.

I don’t know where this is going, but I haven’t any choice but to go with it, or disappear into the darkness.

We are back in our home in China. We have lived in the same 150 square metre apartment since our first year here in 2006-2007. Well, it is almost the same. The first two years we lived in an identical apartment across the hall on the same floor. As a result, it feels like home. Last year we had purchased paintings for the living room wall, as well as other Chinese hangings which decorate the rest of our split-level home. We have separate offices on the bottom level with the kitchen and dining room on the upper level. Our bedroom and the living room are in between.

I am not sure why I needed to explain this, but if I am going to keep writing here, it might give some idea to whomever reads this about the setting for whatever comes next. I don’t know what will come next, but it looks as though I will be risking all in telling the world what will emerge. My intuition knows something is stirring and it will be a rough journey ahead.