The Middle Passage - Finding Meaning; Carl Jung - Individuation

In this newsletter:
- The Middle Passage
- My midlife crises
- Carl Jung
- James Hollis
- Pablo Casals - Never retire
- Ray Bradbury - Never worked a day in his life

“The midlife crisis, which I prefer to call the Middle Passage, presents us with an opportunity to reexamine our lives and to ask the sometimes frightening, always liberating, question: ‘Who am I apart from my history and the roles I have played?’

“The Middle Passage is an occasion for redefining and reorienting the personality, a rite of passage between the extended adolescence of first adulthood and our inevitable appointment with old age and mortality. Those who travel the passage consciously render their lives more meaningful. Those who do not, remain prisoners of childhood, however successful they may appear in outer life…The Middle Passage represents a wonderful, though often painful, opportunity to revision our sense of self.”
-The Middle Passage, James Hollis (see below)

“And then comes the knowing that in me there is space for a second, large, and timeless life.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke(The Middle Passage, publication page)

My four midlife crises
The way I look at it, I've had four midlife crises so far in my 64 years of life.

Each one involved a career change, a move to a new city, and new relationships.

They were pivotal turning points, big changes that heralded new epochs, new chapters in my life.

My last midlife crisis occurred around the time I turned 60.

Our existential angst
There are times in life when we grow increasingly restless. We ask ourselves why am I doing this, why am I living here, why am I in this relationship.

There can be intellectual agitation, we become easily frustrated, we get fidgety, or angry. Where am I going with my life? It can be uncomfortable.

A friend asked me, “why do so many guys become grumpy old men as they age?”

She said a lot of them sit around and complain about politics, wars, woke, women, modern culture, immigration, the markets, their bodies, kids, drama, etc.

Personally, I think a lot of this is existential angst, a reckoning with the reality that there is an end to our life, in collusion with our sense of Purpose.

More sense of Purpose, means less angst. 

And the agitation often sows the seeds of motivation, to move us to make the effort to become relevant before the end.

I think it's our subconscious mind that sows those seeds. That mind has a voice and it is speaking to us.

The voice of our subconscious mind
As we age, I believe, the louder the voice of our subconscious mind becomes. It is speaking to our conscious mind. We might call this a "wakeup call." 

The louder the voice, the greater the imperative to acknowledge the meaning of the voice.

It becomes crucial for Well-Being to listen to the subconscious voice. It won't go away. It will keep chipping away at our consciousness.

Don't ignore the voice
We can recognize how aligned we are with our voice by our energy level, enthusiasm, commitment, and dedication to our work. 

When we are not aligned with our voice it shows up as illness, depression, addiction, pleasure seeking, or other forms of resistance.

When we are not aligned with our voice, we are ignoring a calling, our souls intent, our Self. 

The voice is calling us to our Purpose. See Finding Meaning

In my last midlife crisis, the voice was louder than previous ones. More pronounced, more powerful, with a greater sense of imperative.

Courage to accept the voice
It takes courage to face the insurgency of the soul, that subconscious voice.

But it’s one of the most important responsibilities in life because it pushes us to align with our true selves, which is crucial for our Well-Being.

Expressing our true selves makes us happier. And it makes those close to us happier.

The uncomfortable renunciation of our past, our personal complexes and projections, takes courage and opens a door to regenerative transformation.

I consider this as a reconciliation between our conscious and unconscious minds. A time of reckoning. It is growth. 

These ideas are brilliantly written by Carl Jung when he describes "individuation." 

Carl Jung

I am by no means an expert on Carl Jung (1875-1961) but I do greatly admire his contribution to psychology. 

To be honest, a lot of his work, while fascinating to me, goes over my head. 

At the same time, I am especially drawn to his ideas about "individuation." 

Carl Jung on Individuation

- Individuation is the process of becoming who we really are.  

- It's an everlasting journey through the depths of the human psyche.

- It's a passage to becoming our true, authentic self (less concerned with what others think).

- We all have this innate drive towards self-realization.

- It’s the ultimate quest for personal growth and fulfillment.

- It’s where we explore the depths of our subconscious – we confront our fears, our desires, our strengths, and weaknesses.

- We encounter both the light and shadow aspects of ourselves.

- When we accept these aspects of ourselves, we become more whole.

- Every piece of us, including the dark and uncomfortable parts, contribute to who we are.

- It helps us align our conscious and unconscious selves.

- We become more in tune with the deeper truths of existence.

- The process is messy, complex, and deeply personal. It’s about embracing the messiness of being human and finding meaning with it.

The process of individuation is a journey of self-discovery and self-actualization, like peeling back the layers of our psyche, meeting the darkness within, and emerging as a more integrated, authentic human.

My interest in Carl Jung has brought me to James Hollis and his book, The Middle Passage.

James Hollis is an American "Jungian" psychologist, author, and lecturer.

One of his books is: The Middle Passage - From Misery to Meaning in Midlife (1993).

The book publisher is Inner City Books, a publisher that promotes studies in Jungian psychology by Jungian analysts, for understanding and practical application of the work of Carl Jung.

Hollis says the capacity for growth depends on one’s ability to take personal responsibility; if we see our problems as caused by others, then there will be no growth. “If we are deficient in courage, no revisioning can occur.”  

Hollis quotes a letter Jung wrote in 1945 discussing personal growth:
"The opus [work, effort] consists of three parts: insight, endurance, and action. Psychology is needed only in the first part, but in the second and third parts moral strength plays the predominant role."

Our lenses
Hollis says our reality is shaped by the multiple lenses with which we are born. These lenses include genetic inheritance, where we were raised, our family environment, gender, culture, and so on. Often, we look back, acknowledging that we have possibly lived less from our genuine nature than from the reality we see from our lenses.

“Perhaps the first step in making the Middle Passage meaningful is to acknowledge the partiality of the lens we were given by family and culture, and through which we have made our choices and suffered their consequences.”

He adds that if we were born to different parents, in another time or place, we would have completely different lenses.

Thus, the lens we grew up with created a conditional life; that life doesn’t represent who we are as much as how we are conditioned to see the world and make choices.

Over time, our socialized selves shift away from our inherent nature; the socialization process progressively separates us from our natural self.

Death and rebirth
“Most of the sense of crisis in midlife is occasioned by the pain of that split. The disparity between the inner sense of self and the acquired personality becomes so great that the suffering can no longer be suppressed or compensated.”

“The transit of the Middle Passage occurs in the fearsome clash between the acquired personality and the demands of the Self. A person going through such an experience will often panic and say, ‘I don’t know who I am anymore.’ In effect, the person one has been is to be replaced by the person to be. The first must die. No wonder there is such enormous anxiety. One is summoned, psychologically, to die unto the old self so that the new might be born.”

“Such death and rebirth is not an end in itself; it is a passage. It is necessary to go through the Middle Passage to more nearly achieve one’s potential and to earn the vitality and wisdom of mature aging. Thus, the Middle Passage represents a summons from within to move from the provisional life to true adulthood, from the false self to authenticity.”

Couple this with another book by James Hollis: Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life (2006)

From Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life:

It is common for us to go through life and progressively realize we are not in the right place anymore. That is when the cracks begin to show. There’s an “insurgency of the soul.”

Hollis writes:
“No amount of good intentions, conscientious intelligence, forethought, planning, prayer, or guidance from others can spare us these periodic encounters with confusion, disorientation, boredom, depression, disappointment in ourselves and others, and dissolution of the plans and stratagems that seemed to work before.”

“Acknowledging these deep currents, which initially course beneath our conscious awareness, is the beginning of what we may legitimately call wisdom. Aeschylus, the first great tragedian, observed that the gods ordained a solemn decree that from suffering alone comes wisdom. Such earned wisdom brings greater dignity and depth to our lives, and we are blessed by the spiritual enlargement that is its byproduct.”

Carl Jung references the Self as a metaphor for that inherent, unique intelligence that lies far beyond our ordinary ego consciousness. It comes from our intuition that something within us “seeks that state of being that is the apparent purpose of our incarnation in the first place.”

“The story of the subordination of the Self’s interests to the task of meaning is repeated in various versions in all our lives. And when we live without meaning, we suffer the greatest illness of all."

Hollis cites Jung:
“Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness. Meaning makes a great many things endurable – perhaps everything.”

Hollis continues:
“Perhaps Jung’s most compelling contribution is the idea of individuation, that is, the lifelong project of becoming more nearly the whole person we were meant to be – what the gods intended, not the parents, or the tribe, or, especially, the easily intimidated or inflated ego…Our individuation summons each of us to become more fully responsible for who we are in this journey we call our life.”

The idea of individuation should not be confused with self-indulgence, says Hollis. Individuation is the “surrender of the ego’s agenda of security and emotional reinforcement, in favor of humbling service to the soul’s intent. This is quite the opposite of self-indulgence; it is the service of the ego to the higher order manifested to us through the Self…The Self is the embodiment of nature’s plan for us, or the will of the gods – whichever metaphor works better for you.”

“The struggle for growth is not for us alone; it is not self-indulgent. It is our duty, and service to those around us as well, for through such departures from the comfortable we bring a larger gift to them. An when we fail ourselves, we fail them.”

I think the journey, the struggle for growth, never ends. It is everlasting.

Pablo Casals is one person who understood this lifelong journey. 

Pablo Casals – Never retire

Here is a great tribute to the extraordinary Spanish cellist and conductor, Pablo Casals (1876-1973): The Marginalian - Pablo Casals at 93, on Creative Vitality and Love of Work.

Recalling a story in the London Sunday Times about an orchestra composed of musicians older than one hundred, he explains their vibrancy and expresses his views of retirement:

“In spite of their age, those musicians have not lost their zest for life. How does one explain this? I do not think the answer lies simply in their physical constitutions or in something unique about the climate in which they live. It has to do with their attitude toward life; and I believe that their ability to work is due in no small measure to the fact that they do work. Work helps prevent one from getting old. I, for one, cannot dream of retiring. Not now or ever. Retire? The word is alien and the idea inconceivable to me. I don’t believe in retirement for anyone in my type of work, not while the spirit remains. My work is my life. I cannot think of one without the other. To “retire” means to me to begin to die. The man who works and is never bored is never old. Work and interest in worthwhile things are the best remedy for age. Each day I am reborn. Each day I must begin again.”

Ray Bradbury – Never worked a day in his life

Consider Ray Bradbury’s declaration that he never worked a day in his life.

You can see him speak here: YouTube - An Evening with Ray Bradbury 2001

I can relate to Bradbury. To some extent, I feel like I'm back in school, engaged in learning, not in working.

My next midlife crisis might be an urging to travel a lot more, or live abroad. But I don't think I can predict that.

For now, I'm very content where I am. My subconscious voice is pleased with my work.

Traveling through the Middle Passage consciously takes effort.

It's a journey, an exploration beyond which lies the potential for creative self-renewal.

Thank you for reading! 

Be well,

Peter Pavlina