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IT IS NOT UNCOMMON for people, during mid-life,to begin to question the place in which they find themselves. A level of maturation is achieved when we have the capacity to commit to and take responsibility for our lives and work over a long period to bring our visions to practical reality. Taking up the challenge of the path through work can enable us to accomplish many things in a practical and creative way. At a certain point in that process, however, we may begin to feel that the original vision and inspiration has become obscured in the demands of the task. In mid-life, it is not uncommon for people to suddenly ask themselves why they are doing what they have devoted themselves to. This question may arise suddenly or it may creep up on us slowly. When it comes, the effect is often very disturbing.
For those whose lives have been preoccupied with the responsibilities and demands of family or work, this questioning often brings a crisis of meaning. I know a businessman whose work, which he pursued for many years, demanded full involvement and dedication. He was also supporting a family in the process. In mid-life, he encountered a typical jolt when he realized that he had lost touch with his wife, his own creativity, and his sense of what he valued about his life. His crisis of meaning took him into the world of Buddhist studies to rekindle of a sense of direction and value.
The crisis will be of a different nature when we consider someone whose life has been preoccupied with so-called spiritual matters. A spiritual way of life can become equally stagnant and bring about a period of painful self-searching. In my own journey, much of my early life was devoted to spiritual practice. I was fortunate enough to have the motivation and the opportunity to spend time studying Buddhist psychology and then to enter into a prolonged period of retreat in the East. For me, a crisis occurred when I eventually returned to the West and realized I had to find a way of earning a living and supporting myself in the world. This culture shock brought me sharply down to earth as I began to see that I was virtually unemployable. How was I going to survive? Mine was a crisis of meaning, but in a way that was the opposite of the crises of those who had worked and had families. I had already fulfilled a desire to go off in search of spiritual meaning; my challenge, therefore, was to achieve a practical embodiment of my spirituality in the world.
For some, the crisis arises through the loss or lack of spiritual vision and meaning. For others, the crisis can be the lack of a grounded embodiment of spirituality in the practical necessities of life and work. Whichever direction we are moving toward, the challenge can be very hard to resolve.
It is not uncommon during retreats for people to express how difficult they find it to integrate their spiritual practice into their lives. There is often a sense in this question of how to integrate that there is a split between spiritual aspiration and vision and the demands of material life. Perhaps this can be seen as a spirit versus matter split or, indeed, as the struggle between Puer visions and inspiration and the materializing principle of Senex. If we were to reflect upon this question in terms of the Puer/ Senex paradigm, we could say that it is fundamentally unhealthy for one polarity to be abandoned for the sake of the other. These two faces of the archetype of spiritual and creative life must be brought into healthy resolution.
The consequences of losing sight of, denying, or suppressing the visionary, inspirational side of our nature can be very disturbing. We may experience a lack of vision and a deadening of the aspect of ourselves that needs to be free to create and inspire. Most of us have felt what it is like when we have become so bound up with the material demands of life that there is no vision and inspiration. We can feel dead and stuck, without a real sense of why we are grinding away just to pay the bills and maintain the upkeep of the home. Work can then become a prison.
One of the unfortunate consequences of an overburdened and responsible work life can be a profound loss of meaning and vision. One might see this as the deadening of the Puer archetype. This may precipitate a period of depression and lack of vitality as we enter a sort of wasteland. At such times, we may be tempted to patch up the cracks and anesthetize the sense of anguish that arises. Ultimately, this is of little use. It may merely serve to exacerbate the situation as we fail to address the crucial issues of our life. Emergence from this wasteland may take time and only truly begin when there is a renewal of vision. Then, the vitality that was lost begins to return.
When this occurs, particularly in mid-life, the crisis of meaning and purpose often precipitates a shift of emphasis in an individual’s life as the necessary missing ingredient is sought. Some will abandon their jobs and head off on an adventure or quest. Others may seek the spiritual nourishment they need through participating in meditation retreats, joining in local classes and groups, or going into therapy. Some search for what is missing by diving into a romantic affair. However we respond to this spiritual crisis, or crisis of meaning, its repercussions can be dramatic. The power of an inner call or impulse is also often hard to resist.
When we enter such a period of transition, we may experience a growing restlessness or frustration. This may precipitate a yearning to be free, with fantasies of travel and exotic pilgrimages. The Puer archetype is emerging again as the renewal of visions that seem irresistible but also disturbing. This return of archetypal intent may herald changes that will upset the status quo. Revolution and the reformation or transformation of the old in order to begin anew comes through the archetype of the Puer.
Those who have followed a working material life and have established a pragmatic stability may well be challenged by the renewal of Puer restlessness. If, alternately, we have been dominated by the Puer spirit, our challenge will be to face its polar opposite. That which becomes established and ordered in clear and definite form lives under the aegis of the Puer’s archetypal polarity, Senex. Senex could be described as aged, as the old man either wise or cynical. The feminine form is Seneca or the old woman, the crone, and may manifest as either a wise old woman or a negative old hag.
Our capacity to materialize and establish a practical base that grounds our visions and ideas or ideals comes through the archetype of Senex/Seneca. The master craftsman or craftswoman carries something of the positive Senex as the one who has refined and crafted the capacity to materialize his or her visions. Both Senex and Seneca are states of being that have been established though the slow, grinding experience of time. Senex governs the establishment of laws and systems, of order and structure. It could be seen as the reality principle that requires that we be practical, pragmatic, grounded, and responsible. Senex has a strong relationship to the father as the old wise man who has gained wisdom through gradual experience. Seneca relates to the mother as the earthy old woman who is wise in natural lore and has deep inner knowledge through experience. In this respect, they have a slower, more measured, and less idealistic view of the world. The difficulty with both Senex and Seneca is that their negative tendency is to become stuck and rigid. There are many similarities in the relationship between Puer and Senex that are echoed in the Puella/Seneca polarity, but for the present I will focus upon the former.
Senex as the archetypal root of the need for order, structure, and authority, appears in both the secular and the spiritual worlds. It is found within the world of bureaucracy as well as in spiritual institutions. Its negative and destructive tendency is then found in any institutional establishment that fears and disenfranchises those who seek to be radical, innovative, or individualistic. Senex can be seen in its most destructive manifestation in the example of the Tiananmen Square massacre, where Senex embodied in the Communist Party leaders demonstrated ruthless determination to destroy the threat of the students’ Puer vision of freedom and democracy. Senex is often negatively manifested in the relationship between a father and son. It is the harsh, disdainful voice that demands that the son abandon all his dreamy spiritual idealism and get a job and earn a living. In this respect, the Senex can be seen as opposing the Puer’s need for individual expression, ideals, and visions.
Puer and Senex are therefore the two poles of a significant archetypal paradigm that runs through our lives. When we are unaware of these influences, they tend to dominate us unconsciously and, unfortunately, are often at odds with each other. Puer and Senex rarely live in a harmonious relationship to each other without being consciously recognized and integrated. Their inherent dispositions are so contrasting that they do not easily shift from opposition and conflict to a position of mutual compatibility. This is in part because they live at opposite ends of an unfolding process that originates with Puer vision and terminates in Senex materialization.
To live with one polarity dominant will inevitably bring difficulties. It is therefore vital that we come to terms with the reality of both poles and not try to deny or ignore the problem. In the spiritual world, there are those who may seek to remain caught within the polarity of the Puer. The consequence is often unsatisfactory and, at some point, becomes painfully disturbing. The longer the Puer type postpones the inevitable need to face the reality of the Senex, the more painful the process eventually becomes. Those I have known who avoid addressing this issue until middle age often suffer greatly. The aging Puer is a sorry individual. The stage, film, and music world is a place where this Peter Pan disposition is most noticeable. In the spiritual world the aging Puer may be struggling to find a way to ground his or her spiritual life as the recognition dawns that time is passing.
The consequence of the stuck position of either Puer or Senex is a painful awakening to the need for a balance. Just as the businessman may suddenly recognize the lack of meaning and inspiration in his work, so too the spiritual practitioner may suddenly become aware of the need to earn a living and establish some roots. This was particularly the dilemma I experienced when returning to the West from India. Archetypal Senex was demanding that I establish a material basis in my life, but I actually felt ready to take up the challenge.
While I was teaching at Sharpham Buddhist College in a year-long program of Buddhist studies, students were offered an opportunity to take time out from their normal lives to go through a period of study and self-exploration. Two noticeable factors seemed present for those who attended. Firstly, many of the students were people who had stepped out of a conventional working life because they wished to enter the search for a different meaning. Secondly, some experienced extraordinary difficulty settling into a sense of direction in their lives following the year-long course. It was this second factor that reflected the struggle between spiritual inspiration and its application in the world.
Within Buddhism, the resolution of the paradigm of Puer and Senex comes through the genuine embodiment of our spiritual aspirations within a practical application in life. If the disposition of Puer is to experience inspiration and the aspiration to attain liberation through transcendent and enlightened insights, then that of Senex is to need to ground this experience in the relative world for the welfare of others. We may look to the path of the bodhisattva as a journey of individuation and of the embodiment of spirituality in the world. The bodhisattva’s way of life particularly resolves the issues of Puer and Senex, spirituality and materiality, through a profound process of individuation that leads not to an avoidance or transcendence of materiality, but to buddhahood.