Crow is inviting me to follow it. One morning, while sitting in my back garden sharing an enthralling dream during a monthly Dream Appreciation group on Zoom, a crow kept dipping into my garden, flying in and out of my secluded piece of paradise. Later in the week, returning home from an outdoor yoga class below my beloved Table Mountain, a crow flew alongside the car for a good while.  A few days later, while walking my Siberian Husky on the green belt, two cawing crows circled above me. I stood for a while, listening.
 
Why is Crow showing up for me right now? According to Ted Andrews, Crow’s message is “The secret magic of creation is calling you”. Crow is legendary for its intelligence, watchfulness, adaptability and its remarkable voice range.  Mythologically, Crow is associated with creation and the archetypal forces that surround us and is symbolic with “magic that is alive within our world every day and available to us” (p. 132).
 
There seems to be a synchronicity between Crow’s appearance and my discussed dream image of ‘the baby with the gaping wound’, whose inside was empty, except for the presence of vital organs, prominently the heart’. I meditated on the meaning of emptiness in terms of an ‘absence of presence’, but then there is also the Buddhist tenet that ‘all things are empty of intrinsic existence and nature’.
 
What started as a disturbing image turned into one of deep inspiration as I thought about it being analogous to an acorn that has to burst open to grow into the mature oak tree. This was affirmed for me while listening to Polly Young-Eisendrath’s talk on the Jung Platform’s Soulful Life summit: “Your brokenness is the door”.  Polly encourages us to engage with our brokenness which will connect us with our Purpose and lead us to enlightenment. Our deepest wounding is the gift. We need to be open to receive ‘The Teachings’.
 
The lesson I am taking from the resonance between my inner and outer worlds is that we need to connect with our feelings of suffering in order to be full participants as co-creators of this magical universe. As Leonard Cohen said: “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
 
Reference:

1. Animal Speak, Ted Andrews, 1993.

 
Image credit:
(1) Unknown
(2) Chris Wood
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“Individuation means becoming an ‘in-dividual,’ and, in so far as ‘individuality’ embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s own self. We could therefore translate individuation as ‘coming to selfhood’ or ‘self-realization’.” (1) Individuation is not the same as individualism, the latter being more ego-driven, fostering selfishness.

Due to societal conditioning and cultural programming, we are mostly asleep to our most authentic self. We remain unconscious until our ‘unlived life’ burst forth from the Unconscious. We thought we knew who we are. We have developed a cohesive personality, a suitable persona and hopefully enough ego-strength to navigate the demands of the world. However, this created ‘identity’ is partly an illusion and may crumble when the call to the individuation journey is sounded.

The individuation journey pushes a person into greater consciousness of their inner world and the tension-creating polarities threatening to sometimes pull us apart. We realised we lived in a hall of mirrors. In the service of psychic survival, we have had to adjust, adapt, compromise, and even betray our authentic nature. However, the Archetype of the Self demands expression and would go through apocalyptic lengths with repeated crucifixions of the ego until there is a reconstitution of our being. Years of inner work of making the unconscious conscious with multiple initiatory experiences (suffering) brings a more expansive view of ourselves.
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Wholeness is achieved by healing deep splits in the psyche when we integrate aspects of our personality of which we were not conscious of – the unknown, hidden, denied or disavowed alienated parts of ourselves. These shadow aspects fall outside of our conscious awareness and include everything we don’t know or can’t observe within ourselves - our so-called spots. Joseph Campbell (2) explains: “Jung’s concept is that the aim of one’s life, psychologically speaking, should be not to suppress or repress, but to come to know one’s other side, and so both to enjoy and to control the whole range of one’s capacities; i.e., in the full sense, to “know oneself.”

Written for @jungsouthernafrica 

Citations:

1. CW, 7, ¶266.

Jung, Carl Gustav (1966), “Two Essays on Analytical Psychology,” CW 7. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
    2.   Jung, C. G., & In Campbell, J. (1976). The portable Jung. New York: Penguin Books

​Source:
https://jungiancenter.org/components-of-individuation-1-what-is-individuation/
 
Image credit: Freydoon Rassouli
 
#jungsouthernafrica #jung #carljung #jungpsychology #jungianpsychology #depthpsychology #analyticalpsychology #unconscious #consciousness #archetypes #individuation #shadow 
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