“Fish frequently occur as symbols of the unconscious contents.” Carl Jung, CW VIII, par. 827
“The ambivalent attitude towards the fish is an indication of its double nature. It is unclean on the one hand, but on the other it is an object of veneration. It seems to have been regarded as a symbol for the soul…” Carl Jung, CW IXii, Par. 187.
Fish find themselves swimming through the Gospels and if you pay attention, you might notice them in your dreams as well. Or perhaps you’ll find yourself with fish like qualities, speeding through the depths while mysteriously siphoning oxygen out of the water. And then there’s the whole posture and process that goes with hooking and netting what dwells beneath the surface.
When I’m asked “how do you remember your dreams?” I often respond with the analogy of fishing. Remembering dreams is a bit like catching a fish. You certainly do not catch a fish on every cast, nor on every fishing excursion for that matter. And you’ll never catch a fish if you do not cast a line into the water.
So find a good fishing hole, bring a boat load of patience with some unwavering intent. Then see what happens…the dreams will come, I promise.
What about lures or bait for dreams?
With our attention turned (tropos) toward the dreams there opens a beautiful space of reverie, we again have time to ponder, just as one does while fishing. Question the waters. What’s going on down there? What do the waters have for me tonight? What will my nets drag up?
Indeed, each dream that manages come over the rail of my small boat (crossing the threshold of consciousness) is piece of the soul mystery unfolding through my life. And as the dreams pile up like sardines in my dream journals, it dawns on me that I’m actually the bait.
“The hero is a hero just because he sees resistance to the forbidden goal in all life’s difficulties and yet fights that resistance with the whole-hearted yearning that strives towards the treasure hard to attain, and perhaps unattainable – a yearning that paralyzes and kills the ordinary man.” ~ Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation, par 510
As Jung says elsewhere the hero and the demon are the two symbols that cut the figure of man. Both emanate as archetypes of the collective unconscious, and as such, they can both be destructive if the individual unconsciously identifies with them.
The energy of the hero can blindly propel one to attempt physical, intellectual, and spiritual feats beyond ones capability leading to broken bones, families, relationships, and yes, even death. The energy of the demon can blind one to the horrors of manipulation, violence, cruelty and deceit. Indeed, unconscious identification with any of the archetypes can open up a path to ruin.
Yet these energies are us, and our lives are shaped by how we relate to them. What is the ego to do, adrift both in the world and upon the vast ocean of energy that sustains it? I sense that this is a question each needs to answer for him or herself. In as much as you are able formulate an answer that has some level of efficacy, creating some movement in your life, you have consciously begun to walk down your path of individuation.
“…if a primitive tribe shows even the smallest traces of culture, we find that creative fantasy is continually engaged in producing analogies to instinctual processes in order to free the libido from sheer instinctuality by guiding it toward analogical ideas.” Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation, par. 337
It was an interesting day of walking back in time as we visited NYC. We began by visiting the Met, drilling back through the age of the knights, through Greece and Rome and then to Egypt. Crossing Central Park, we then visited the Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History. What’s distinct in our line is not the tools, other humanoid predecessors had those. It’s the symbols.
Such intricate bone carvings were displayed from France dating back 16,000 years. And the images from the caves, so powerful and pointing to a sense of ritual. But it’s those little four inch statuettes of the Venus’ extending right back to that moment, that emergence 25,000 years ago, from which point we have are pretty much remained the same genetically.
Jung defines this uniquely human process as the transmission of instinctual energy to analogical ideas. After my walk through the origins, I think he underestimated the primitives he was referring to. I think this feature of symbolic transfer goes all the way back to our origins and every human ever has generated symbols in this way. No amount of tribal culture was needed before it could occur. It’s just what we, meaning all 25,000 years of us, do.
Sometimes you just need to take a stand on a hunch.
It’s never funny when anybody hurts themselves…right? Well, then again I’ve seen those funniest video shows on TV which seemed inundated with folks having the most horrendous accidents. And poor Wiley Coyote took slapstick humor to outrageous heights of pain and misery in his Sisyphus like pursuit of the Roadrunner.
So I doubt I was alone yesterday witnessing the irony of Dick Cheney’s bad back, apparently caused by moving his junk back into his home. Mr. Cheney cut quite the figure for himself over the last eight years, seemingly driving the nation from the passenger seat, shooting a friend in the back on a hunting trip, and this final image of being unable to walk out in the procession on his two feet. Instead he sat off in the corner in a wheel chair.
We all hit these unfortunate accidents along our road of life. The question to pose: what is the symbolic message in the incident? How does the unconscious use the “accidents” as lessons to our unresponsive egos? For instance, the broken toe, sprained ankle or injury to the hand, all of these are ripe mythological motifs that can be grouped together as “the wounded extremity.” Often these injuries seem to call the hero or character to recognize that the ego is but an extremity or appendage to the broader forces of the Self.
The broken back has a different tone to it. When we think of a figure needing more back bone, is it not that he or she needs to find conviction, or a sense of will power. So this image of our former Vice President with a bad back which seemingly gave out on his last day in office reveals the humor of the Unconscious is not all that subtle in the staging of unfortunate “accidents.”
“Fish frequently occur as symbols of the unconscious contents.” Carl Jung, CW VIII, par. 827
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