Outside the window of the room in which I do most of my writing is a pear tree. Now, being a writer, I am always on the lookout for a good metaphor. Also, being interested in Jungian Psychology, I am prone to see things for, or at least contemplate the possibility of, their symbolic value. The pear tree over the years has been for me nothing short of miraculous in the richness of inspiration and imagery it has provided.
Many years ago when the tree itself was yet a fledgling, it appeared to me as a predawn monster outside my window as I journaled. At that point in my life, many things appeared to me as monsters, however. An hour later when the sun illuminated the world around me, I could see that it was the pear tree and no monster at all. Similarly, many other of my "monsters" transformed into something less threatening with more light.
Carl Jung in Psychology and Alchemy says, "Everything unknown and empty is filled with psychological projection; it is as if the investigator's own psychic background were mirrored in the darkness." He, of course, said this in the context of discussing the background of alchemy, which he studied extensively as a psychological symbol system. However, as he goes on to say, "What he sees in matter or thinks he can see, is chiefly the data of his own unconscious which he is projecting into it." (Jung, p. 228) I believe for me the symbolism and metaphors I saw in the "amazing pear tree" were reflections of the archetypal process unfolding within my psyche.
It is no surprise to me that the earliest images I garnered from the pear tree were monsters. My "psychic background" was full of monsters that could be "mirrored in the darkness." The long process of analysis helped to illuminate the images so that I became more conscious of what they really were. And during my analysis I thought of how a pear is womb-shaped. It is also somewhat like the shape of the medieval alchemists' vas, the vessel wherein substances were transformed. The analytical setting was the vessel, the container, the womb in which a transformation took place for me.
During the process of my personal journey through analysis, though, several spectacular (at least to me) things happened with that same pear tree. One summer day the birds' unusual noisiness drew my eye out the window into the lush green canopy of leaves. Since my writing room is on the second floor, the foliage of the pear tree is at eye level. My surprised gaze that day fell upon a relatively small green snake making its way from branch to branch straight up toward the top of the tree. I had never seen anything quite like that before.
