Autumn in the High Country by Barbara Carvallo

Autumn chases Dawn into the light every morning now.  The breeze picks up her feet and dances windy as the Sun sets, splashing September’s gold, crimson and indigo spray from the pool of the Western sky.  The Mighty Rockies breathe the scent of pine and early changing Aspen down over the Prairie.  I imagine I smell the crisp clean chill that is the prelude to Winter drifting from the great red-stone canyon that lines the beautiful Boulder Creek running wild with the blood of the Goddess.  How insignificant we are in the face of such grandeur.  Our schemes and plots are trivial when set beside the glory of the smallest flower.  Daily my home reminds me that we are as the least speck of dust in the eye of the Great Mother who created my Colorado, and if there is a place more beautiful I have never seen it on this side of dreaming or the other.

Goddess' Garden by Barbara Carvallo

Moving slowly and beautifully toward fall.

Jung on Depression by Barbara Carvallo

As I understand Jungian theory, he based his concept of depression on his theory of the libido.  In Jung’s approach to analytical psychology he viewed the libido as a psychological component of life energy or what is called the Chi in Eastern religions.  This is not to be confused with the Freudian theory of the libido as sexual energy.  

In Jung’s view the libido drives the organism to grow and develop.  It moves toward balance – the balance between the conscious and the unconscious to include the Shadow, between the male and female parts of the psyche and between the introverted and extroverted sides of the ego.  The purpose of this balancing is to achieve what Dr. Jung called individuation or the wholeness of self realization.  

When the ego is in a state of imbalance between its extroverted and introverted aspects, with the extroverted holding sway, introversion brings forward unconscious material in an attempt to balance ego’s attitude.  Jung believed that introversion exhausts the ego.  Depression then becomes the manifestation of the exhausted ego.  

The libido while balancing opposition contains opposition.  Thus, Jung thought that it held both the drive to live and the drive to die. 

As a hereditary and lifelong Pagan I do not believe that life is the beginning or death the end.  As a devout follower of the Goddess, Her mysteries and mysticism, I believe that we select a life that contains a path.  Goddess gives us each our own light with which to follow that path.  All we can do is follow our light as far and as long as we can – leaning as we go.  For in reality it is the lessons and not the life we have chosen.