Interior Odyssey…Into the depths…

This image, which I have included in Ruminations, was published in the edition of Jules Verne’s famous story ‘A Journey to the Centre of the Earth’, a book that I first read as a child. The picture shows the adventurers on their initial descent into the Snaefells volcano of Verne’s imagination. I have since come to understand that the story can be read on more than one level – as it were!

Verne’s explorers made their descent into the depths of this immensely atmospheric Icelandic volcano as Verne imagined them and plumbed the passageways therein. These led ever downwards, eventually to an undiscovered primeval world. Given what is known about human brain structure, need this, I ask, be so very unlike a journey into our own minds?

The famous psychologist / analyst / healer / writer Carl Jung made just such an epic (and hazardous) descent into his own personal unconscious and described his interactions with the ‘archetypes’ that he believed that he discerned therein. He also made his 'discovery' of the Jungian collective unconscious and gave a description of it.

This was an interior odyssey, a Snaefells journey par excellence. Fortunately, for us lesser mortals, it is not necessary to imitate Jung’s high risk exercise to find what we may be looking for within the depths of ourselves.

Our own interior odysseys should be conducted with open-minded awareness and could use some of the approaches mentioned in earlier posts. With the addition of observations from trusted others, we will surely find abundant imperfections - and lopsidedness too - but some of these aspects will also have good positive possibilities if integrated into the personal whole. And some of our own lost worlds may be rediscovered.

Such an inward, integrative journey of rediscovery, transcendence or integration of self is likely to be a long one, but don’t expect it to be a ‘Road to Damascus’ experience - mistrust it if it seems as if it is. Outside of tales meant to inspire, nothing that good is likely to be instant and effortless. Simply remind yourself that: ‘the road is hard, but I am strong’ and you will complete your own interior odyssey as Jules Verne’s adventurers completed theirs.