light opposes dark, yet darkness yields to lightness
What stops us being with the darkness of the world? And in a time of much darkness, what way toward light?
What good comes of being with darkness? It's hard to avoid right now, as we are bombarded daily with images of unspeakable tragedies. Human actions that can only be described as evil, while long-standing instabilities creak ominously toward escalation. Sometimes these darknesses seem unthinkable, even unspeakable. And it can be difficult to stay with heartbreaking images and the suffering they connect us to. So maybe it’s not so surprising that when our capacity to take in is maxed, we look away.
Alongside these terrors are some which are hardly acknowledged. There was a recent spate of headlines about Mark Zuckerburg constructing a bunker complex on Hawaii. One of the headlines exclaimed “what do they know?”. It’s quite infantilising really, as if “they” (whoever they are) have some knowledge we don’t. The truth is many of us know, it’s just that some newspaper editors would prefer to keep us in the dark. Meantime when BBC nature speaks on climate realities, the Telegraph is quick to call it out as “Gloomy”, without acknowledging that it sounds gloomy because it is?
I'm no longer surprised when our culture at large, dismisses the potential of significant changes to our lives due to climate change. I hear those ringing the bell of warning, that life and human systems might collapse, dismissed as alarmist. I do however find the avoidance of these dark possibilities to be psychologically intriguing. What I want to explore in this post, is what, outside of the obvious, takes us away from darkness? And why, especially on matters related to climate, is it important that we counter this avoidance?
Psychological defences to unthinkable darkness
Our capacity to sense the world is much less than the sensory information which is available to us. This is why we project: If we observe less and generalise more, we can get along just fine. We generalise on basic survival assumptions, and can then focus on what seems important in the moment. In so doing, we use a lot less energy to process sensory information. Also, the psychological defense (sublimation) which initiates dissociation is a kind of psychic circuit break. It is there to protect us from psychological overwhelm. In short, if we can't or don't need to know, make sense of, or truly take something in, the psyche has plenty of ways of avoiding. Especially if the topic is too big, or feels less immediate.
Other factors stop us seeing reality, some are based on choice, some more unconscious. In part this is guided by projection. In early life we project an idealised nurturer onto mother and an idealised protector onto father. These vary in individuals and often are at odds with the objective experience of our parents, but that’s another story. In part projection can fall into line with the idealisation, because we need to belong in order to survive. We might learn it's better to put ourselves as dependant, not to challenge collective assumptions, and to avoid raising and speaking about matters which might jeopardise our standing in systems of power. If such projections aren’t challenged, we can project a kind of adherence onto society. And those dynamics can filter what we can and can’t see. What we consider “individual” perspective and voice is very much curtailed by the norms of the group and the culture that we are a part of. Unless we make those adherences conscious and then, we can actually choose.
As a culture we like to live above a semi-permeable membrane that keeps light above the surface and darkness and grit below. We like to feel good, think we are good, and keep things simple. It’s an addiction of sorts, where we get hooked on good feelings and develop allergies to things that feel uncomfortable.
On top of this, we are conditioned to "buy-in" to our economic system and think of it as (mostly) good. This buy-in is influenced by the promise of status and money, rationalised as stability and prosperity. When this belief structure is encased in another construct which many hold dear — career — it can become ego foundational, entrenched and almost unshakeable. As well as limiting what we can see and hear, psychologically it prevents us feeling the underlying anxieties of our predicament.
This buy-in is much less pervasive in generations who weren’t alive in the 80s, who haven’t had as much economically derived dopamine to get hooked on, and for whom the promise of a prosperous future is quite the stretch. I’ll come back to the implications of this later.
In the mean time, what happens to this darkness we don’t want to look at? Well, it doesn’t go away. Indeed when we ignore darkness it shows up somewhere else. Except for one small difference: it gets a whole lot darker.
Disowned darkness erupts
Jung wrote this in the 1930s, but it is strikingly relevant today.
“The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological order, but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are nothing other than psychic epidemics. At any moment several millions of human beings may be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have another world war or devastating revolution. Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche. This is the World Power that vastly exceeds all other powers on earth. The Age of Englightenment, which stripped nature and human institutions of gods, overlooked the God of Terror who dwells in the human soul. If anywhere, fear of God is justified in the face of the overwhelming supremacy of the psychic.”
(CW 17, para 302)
What Jung is speaking of here is a product of the discovery he termed the collective unconscious. This concept proposes that disowned thoughts and feelings aren’t erased, rather they are amassed in an archetypal matrix of psychic connectedness. Down there they become infused with all manner of darkness. This is key — the collective unconscious is like an archive, amassing in the underworld since humanity emerged from the primordial swamp. What is disowned then becomes infused with various motifs from the depths of Hades, only to re-emerge in the individual psyche as disruptive complexes. They can also erupt collectively, at a group or global level. Indeed, Jung had a dream which predicted their emergences as the global wars in the first half of the twentieth century and it seems a similar emergence is happening now.
Another, perhaps more relatable way of thinking about this is that this eruptive force is charged every time one pole in a tension of opposites is chosen over another. Say we want to see ourself as good, then we might push our badness away, only until we have an altercation with a friend, which surfaces that the badness is still in us. In this case, the friend reflecting back what one doesn’t want to hear about oneself is the re-balancing of opposites. Quite often the re-balancing makes more mess than if the badness had just been held in mind all along.
Through this lens we can see that groups, collective cultures, even the planet as a whole as a kind of living thing. Not literally a biological organism, rather an intricately connected set of systems which takes on something of an aliveness when viewed in the whole. This is close to the principal of Gaia theory, and similar to the Jungian idea of anima mundi, or world soul.
This connectedness is observable collectively when violence or revolution erupts simultaneously across multiple regions, or when political swings are mirrored across continents. The interconnectedness of unconscious process and anima mundi may also help to explain why many believe dreams can be precognitive, it also validates transpersonal ways of knowing.
This systemic connectedness has always been known. Mythical belief structures projected the causation of various eruptions onto vengeful gods. These days we’ve largely done away with such magical thinking, but we could see a vengeful scuttling if turmoil spreads in economic, geopolitical, and ecological systems, as is predicted. This takes us to another question, how do these systemic happenings show up inside of us? And, in a time of darkness, how might the systemic effect on world soul be playing a part in our mental health crisis?
Climate crisis: A darkness of anima mundi, a darkness in us
To most who understand climate science, it is understood that if we aren't able to make sacrifices around how we collectively choose to live and don't challenge existing economic assumptions about consumption and growth, that we will see catastrophic and irreversible impacts to the biosphere. The question really isn’t “if”, it is “how badly”, and “when.” And given the current trajectory, the “how badly” looks pretty catastrophic.
If we pause for a moment and dwell on that possibility, then the darkness of the world can be felt inside of us. Dwell a little longer and that darkness begins to change form. I believe this is a sacred reflection. It is to pause from the distraction of our desecrated world, and to allow the dangers of the climate crisis to be fully felt. Only then can we see that such danger affect at the deepest levels of psyche, including at the level of anima mundi. Put another way, the soul of the world lives in each of us because we and the world are one. And that world soul is in crisis.
Depth psychotherapies do not see soul as an external or purely metaphysical phenomenon. Instead it is understood that soul is observable, felt, and subjective. It is also the most subtle and sensitive part of psyche. In this sense, our soulfulness is protected by the psyche and is often unknown to conscious awareness. We have to purposefully seek it out, which is why deliberate and contemplative reflection is so important.
If you feel up to it, take a moment to pause on this, to see what’s inside of you, at a deeper level than you usually make time for. And if you can, notice what takes you away from it. To help you reflect, you might dwell with the words: the world is in crisis, the world is in me.
In the climate group I facilitate in London, we have tried to make some space for these feelings. One of the most difficult has been the near psychotic terror which exists in relation to climate. It is a profound and very troubling set of feelings, akin to infantile feelings of the loss of a carer, and the subsequent fear of annihilation. Although this sounds like an analytic idea, it's also an ecopsychological one. In our infantile, merged state, we contact our dependence on mother. Beneath our modern day abstraction from nature, the truth of our dependency on Mother Earth is still felt.
Such undercurrents are defended against which makes them ripe for psychic eruption. We’ve termed them “climate grief” or “eco-anxiety.” I prefer to think of them as a crisis in earth soul. A kind of psyche-shattering heartbreak, laced with grief, anger and intergenerational regret. It is usually only seen when we enquire deeply, though it can also break through defences. It breaks through more readily in those more vulnerable, including those who are distressed and the young, who have more years to live exposed to what is to come. If we don’t let it show up in a conscious way, then it shows up in the collective, as an eruption of darkness.
As depth psychologists we might interpret our global metacrisis as evidence of these eruptions. But before we can see them in the individuals that we treat, we have to get past what is at the surface. Many times, what we see first are the attempts to numb the pain, perhaps through addiction to substances, sex, or screens. Sometimes, it’s when externalities such as status, money or relationships, loose their numbing capacity and can no longer keep the difficulties down. And sometimes they emerge as a psychiatric diagnosis or a murky confluence of anxiety, meaningless and depression.
Diagnostic categories such as depression or anxiety are common, but too simplistic. Similarly, more specific psychiatric or behavioural diagnostic categories, whilst often capturing something important of the lived experience of suffering, tend to be superficial and overly individualistic in understanding psychosocial causation. We have to get into the pith and the symbolism of the presentation to know what is occurring and what is needed. Each client is different, so the manifestation will be unique in every case, but some general themes are around. I often see that in flattening the value of Mother Earth, we are flattening a rich, life-giving and connected aspect of ourselves. Similarly, our sense of agency or participation in the system can be marred by nihilism or powerlessness, which in turn might be inspired by unconscious guilt and regret of how we and our forbears have got us here in the first place.
We can see these energies in action individually, but also collectively. The attempts by distorted power to hold onto dead-end paradigms through economic or military force is palpable and terrifying. As is western society becoming disenfranchised with government, as positive qualities such as justice and honour, are increasingly thin on the ground.
We might ask what can we do? The answer to that lays at many levels. Of course, our culture advocates action in the face of challenge, and this isn't bad. Moving toward a personal reduction in carbon emissions, and influencing others, institutions and governments toward change certainly has its place. But there is also something vital which can be done through inner work. To face reality is to encounter that which is psychologically unpalatable. To encounter such darkness, Jung suggests that we cultivate an "imagination for evil."
Developing an “imagination for evil”
I am shifting away from Jung’s use of the word “evil” to “darkness”, partly for creative consistency but also because, although “evil” is quite accurate, some might find it counterproductive. That said, the word “imagination” is perhaps the most important word to interpret, so let’s start with that.
To my mind, Jung is asking us to develop an imagined voice, which uses creative imagination - an intuitive, playful inner fantasy. This is important, for if accessed correctly as an unforced intuitive spark, creative imagination allows us to bypass our thinking defences. Both personal and collective unconscious material becomes available to this process, which means when imagining our darkness, we are tapping into collective (cultural, ancestral and instinctual) as well as personal (infantile fantasy and other suppressed memory) unconscious material. This is particularly important for those with an eye on social activism, as encountering such material personally has a small, but authentic impact at the collective. This impact is energetic and also relational, which I will come back to shortly.
Over time, and ideally within a robust therapeutic relationship, or with a similarly safe supportive other, this once dispossessed darkness becomes a dynamic internal resource. The relationship is important, for it is difficult to see ourselves clearly alone. For those familiar with depth work, it’s a little like developing a specific sub-personality or a part, and engaging with that part in various circumstances to continually develop greater self awareness and more authentically engage with the world.
Through this part, we might look to locate the misogynist (or misandronist), the power-hungry, the racist, or the warmonger. Analytic traditions wax lyrical about “murderous rage” and “sexual predation” as ways into more instinctual aspects of this disowned part. In the case of our relationship to climate, we might locate the greedy part, the part who puts self unreasonably above other, the part who is wedded to social status and power. I know first hand locating these parts can be quite difficult, partly because we are living in a society which normalises them and also as ego will resist. After all, ego fears bringing darkness into light as it fears loosing its will, freedom and power. And as far as ego is concerned, what was put into darkness, was put there for a reason.
For those of you who work with clients, working this way has a "multiplier effect." It does require a commitment to become comfortable with our own darkness. But when we do, we can then authentically ask clients about their own. In working this way, we not only help enhance a clients emotional resilience, potency and self control, but also bring them to question their own use of interpersonal power. It might be useful to think about this as a multiplier of your own impact on the world. That through relationships, radiants of consciousness develop can go on to aid others, and through them, further radiants grow out.
The dawning of an authentic transcendence?
Thanks for staying with me, especially on a topic that can be heavy. There’s a little light coming, I promise.
When we are prepared to sit with our darkness, to truly get to know it and integrate it into our self image, we are making room in our psyche for good and evil to co-exist alongside each other. This takes psychological strength, but it leads to multiple benefits, both internally and through relationships.
This is the territory of the transcendent function, a cornerstone concept in Jungian psychology. For when we invite the dark and the light to co-exist within ourselves, we are holding the tension of the opposites. In this way, deepening understanding of our darkness is vital to expand our internal container. What does this mean? Well, a wise woman once told me if we can bring light to our deepest, most precious, sometimes dissociated parts, then we are making it possible for those parts to have a relationship with the divine. This in turn, brings the possibility of transcendence to those parts. And in so doing, we are healing trauma and simultaneously evolving and expanding consciousness within ourselves.
This is very different to an idealised transcendence, sometimes present in spiritual circles, where harmony and love are idealised, and certain aspect of human darkness are ignored.
When we deepen both our light and dark, we become more capable in the world, more able to remain present to others, and more able to remain true to ourselves in difficult situations. This has a real and profound affect on those we come into contact with. It transmits a certain quality of love, which in itself, enlivens and awakens.
It also is enlivening and awakening the spark of consciousness that dwells, for a while at least, inside of us. A light that, if we are able, we might take toward the dark, and illuminate a small part of the world that we can know.
The 2024 dates for the climate group I facilitate have now been set. You can see the dates via the link below. If you’re in or near London it would be great to see you there, to (perhaps?) spread a little light.