The forest, the unknown and the unconscious.

Walking through a forest at night, your torch casts its weak glow, illuminating the silvery, leering trunks and casting dancing shadows which leap and loom against a deep black void. All you can know about is that which your torch beam lights up; everything beyond its reach falls into the realms of the unknown. Seen and unseen, known and unknown, consciousness and unconsciousness. 

One can have a similar experience when paying attention to our inner vision - close your eyes and all becomes black, after some time however, and certainly if verbally prompted, it is probable that images will appear. Out of the darkness phantom images will to drift into view, one by one, shifting and morphing, never quite achieving full solidity. From where do these phantoms emanate? If you pay close enough attention you may become aware that there seems to be no choice involved in the emanation; it is as if they are, of their own volition, passing from darkness into light - from the unconscious to the conscious.

Dark forests have long been used as a metaphor for the unconscious mind and it is indeed an apt analogy, for even during the day ones vision in severely limited, obscured by trunks, boughs, twigs and leaves. Add darkness to the equation and one has no way of knowing who or what might be present - just out of sight. For centuries humans have lived in relation to historically vast forests, where it was easy to get lost, easy for vagabonds to hide, stalked by wolves and bears. The forest was rightly seen as a place populated with unseen dangers. Just as a bandit or wolf may lie hidden, so is the unconscious mind by definition unknown; that which the light of consciousness has not yet fallen upon or events and scenes which we have long ago buried out of sight and out of mind.

Folk and fairy tales are often seen as stories of psychological growth, and many involve their protagonists entering a ‘deep’ or ‘dark’ wood, where they very often face a deadly trial before finally escaping and finding their way out. Hansel and Gretel are forsaken by their parents to face and overcome an evil witch, and Little Red Riding Hood is tricked by the wolf. The various woodland trials faced by these characters are thought to be analogous with coming to know, and coming to terms with, ones darkest inner world; indeed Carl Jung declared fairy tales to be culturally elaborated representations of the contents of the deepest recesses of the human psyche. When one enters into the ‘shadow’ and comes to terms with its frightening and abhorrent contents one has the possibility of returning from those netherworlds more whole, for one has assimilated that which was once unacceptable to the conscious mind.

The village and the forest.

The village is a place you know, its sidewalks are paved and roots will not trip you up. Its streets are lit at night so you will not lose your way, so that strangers cannot lurk unseen in the dark. Windows flicker with the blue light of TV sets as the inhabitants sit on cozy sofas and consume a diet of mass media. You know this place, it is familiar, but it could also be profoundly dull, possibly even depressing. At least it is safe. By contrast, outside of the village lies the dark woods. The forest is wild, branches and brambles will pull at your clothes, without a torch the blackness is profound, you may come upon wild animals who would not expect a human to tread there so late. It is decidedly unfamiliar, quite possibly frightening, certainly not dull.

These two places are possible analogies of mental states. If you speak with psychotherapists you will often hear of clients who are stuck; they know they are unhappy - that’s why they are in therapy, but often they will be unwilling to change and to break the patterns that keep them stuck. The village is just too familiar. It may be dull, probably depressing, possibly painful, but - ‘better the devil you know’. Changing, breaking out of stuck patterns is like walking out past the street lights of the village and entering the forest; it can feel frightening, unfamiliar. Old beliefs may need to be confronted and changed and when they are, you may feel adrift in the dark. Walking out of an old identity doesn’t necessarily result in the immediate discovery of a new one. We may spend some time in the wilderness, for in order to change we may first need to become unmoored and loosened - lost in the woods.

In this way the forest can be seen as a transformational space. Tibetan Buddhism might use the term ‘Bardo’ - a limbo-like realm in between more solidified states where powerful change or understanding can take place. Western psychology has the concept of the existential crisis or Dark Night of the Soul (taken from the Poem by St John of the Cross). This is a kind of psychic event which Eckhart Tolle describes as a death of meaning where it seems there is no purpose any more. A profound lost-ness, then. But, he says there is the possibility to enter into this lostness and to awaken to - ‘A deeper sense of purpose or connectedness with a greater life that is not dependent on explanations or anything conceptual any longer.  It’s a kind of re-birth’. If an event in ones life occurs that strips you of meaning, your conceptual framework may collapse - you have wandered out of the village and can no longer locate it again, you are lost and stumbling in the woods. But that lost-ness can bring a sense of aliveness because you no longer try to fit events into a concrete conceptual framework. Life can become wilder and freer, perhaps a spiritual awakening could occur.

Maybe this is why I venture into the woods at night? I certainly suffer from a loss of meaning. Certainly a string of deaths of those close to me has resulted in me questioning the compassion of the universe or the point of life - to this day I struggle with a conceptual understanding of ‘the point of it all’. And yet I look upon a tree and I flip from “there is no point” to “how marvellous that this tree (and universe) exists - for no conceivable reason!” For surely it would be more expedient to have nothing as the status quo as opposed to the astounding complexity that we find ourselves presented with?

So next time you feel dull, bored or pointless; next time you feel sick from scrolling through social media posts, maybe you could see what it was like to do something quite different: Find a torch and drive out at dusk and you might discover a whole new world - a wildness and and aliveness just outside the village.