Introduction

.
In a speech before his peers, Carl Jung was once asked whether he felt that ordinary people should pursue
becoming more conscious. He answer surprised many. He answered that it might, in many instances, be
more important for the personality to become less consciousness rather than more…this from one of the
fathers of modern psychology, which seeks to heal by making conscious that which is unconscious.
.
The solar hero is the hero whose journey goes outward into the outer world on a search for expansion of the
self, the accumulation of knowledge and power. This is not the only journey open to the hero, for some few
take the journey into themselves, with quite a different goal and outcome. This alternative road, perhaps
usefully termed “the Road Less Traveled” to borrow from Robert Frost’s famous poem, leads in quite a
different direction. Yet modern Western society remains fascinated with its journey of the solar hero, and
many struggle on to continue their individual solar journey, even after mid-life.
.
This article is interested in examining the crises which follow on that period in life when the solar
characteristics of life are pre-eminent, the time in which young men and women leave their parents and go
out into life to make their fortunes, discover their destinies, find their soul mates, and find their happiness.
.
In other articles set forth here, the mid-life crisis is examined, the dynamics underlying the turn within are
identified, and the hero’s journey at mid-life (and afterward) are made. What factors determine the nature
(and direction) of that later life journey? Why do some people’s journey take on the characteristics of a
seeking of embodiment and tranquility (the Lunar Journey), while other’s journey goes the way of a Solar
Quest? What is the “unfinished business” of a life that is comprised of the remaining unfulfilled tasks of a
man or woman at mid-life?
.
Solar and Lunar Consciousness
.
In the common speech, there are two types of consciousness or mind that everyone ought to become
familiar with. The first is solar consciousness, which usually is said to describe the nature of ego’s quest for
experience and power in the world. Often, the solar quest is said to be associated with the rational and
analytical mind. The second is lunar consciousness, which describes the awareness of our instinctual needs,
our emotions, our subconscious processes, our bodily senses, and our intuitive awareness.
.
Through our solar consciousness, or egoic consciousness, we reason, analyze, formulate, calculate, study,
and seek to control time and our personal destiny. Through this part of our mind, we possess the capability
to dissect and categorize the world, to analyze the relationships between the constituent parts or things of
life, to extrapolate. This part of our mind is habitually engaged in controlling experience, planning and
forgetting (or repressing). [1]
.
Through our lunar, or subconscious awareness, we access our intuitive capabilities, our sense of oneness
with the world, our bodily sensations, our instinctual nature, and our “feelings”. This level of mind takes us
into the world as a part of the living landscape. We become a part of the action of any scene and experience
it emotionally, sensuously and existentially. Although these processes are said to be irrational in the sense
that they do not employ logic and reason to understand the world, that doesn’t mean that they don’t
contribute to the quality and experience of life. [2]
.
Lunar consciousness is the cyclic experience of the Eternal Round, of life lived in the eternally shifting
seasons of repeating time, of the participation mystique with Nature, of ordinary life lived in the routines of
daily activities--making a living, experiencing family life and entertaining ones self--guided by myth and
religion. Lunar consciousness holds man in a participation mystique with the world around him, and gives
him a sense of space, timelessness and oneness with the Everything. Lunar consciousness is “being present
constantly” in time. It is also the realm of Great Mother, the Unconscious Mind, the Garden of Eden of the
womb; the Eternal Round of birth, life and death of the last 2 million years of mans evolutionary
development. It pulls one down into instinct and emotions rather than upward into heightened awareness of
time, change, pride and power. The Eternal Round is the complement to the hero’s journey of the solar
hero…a time of resting after “going out” into linear time to challenge the status quo and the traditional
values of his community--a time of creating new paradigms, new knowledge, new directions, and new
values to be shared with others. The archetype of consciousness for the Eternal Round is the 18th Key of the
Tarot: the Moon.
.
Solar consciousness is the awareness of new possibilities for change in the world. Solar consciousness
began to arise in the world following the reign of Alexander the Great as a new sense of the
interconnectedness of world cultures was born. It again sprang to dominance after the Dark Ages in the
inventions of the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. Solar consciousness is the mind of the
businessman, the politician, the scientist, the logician, the magician and the computer programmer. This
level of awareness is often associated with western society’s explosion of invention and commercialization,
and its values of logic, reason, mathematics, science and scientific analysis. Solar consciousness is often
credited with humankind‘s progress during the past four hundred years, just as lunar consciousness is
sometimes blamed for Man‘s lack of progress during all the preceding millennia. From the capabilities
attributed to solar consciousness have come vast increases in material wealth, improvements in health care,
and vast wars using terrible machinery for killing and terrorizing people.

The archetype of the Solar Hero is the 2nd Key of the Tarot: the Magus.
.
What is not generally recognized however is that any culture serves the Mothers, for as men and women are
acculturated into their culture, they are homogenized into a sameness of beliefs, values, opinions and
assumptions about the nature of man and the Universe. The process by which this is achieved is called
“programming, molding, and sculpting. And as they take on this sameness within the population, they too
feel a sort of “participation mystique” with the rest of their society. A sense of unity emerges that is obvious
at public events, such as at football games, elections, and moments of social crisis. There is a public
response in which the phenomenon of Unity Consciousness emerges, and all feel and act as one.

The implication of this observation is that even the patriarchy serves the Mothers. But not well, for the
rules by which patriarchy rules are logical and analytical. A culture emerges in which the individual is
unconscious of his or her unconsciousness, and in fact perceives him or her self to be thinking and acting
independently. The participation mystique of the average citizen in culture pulls everyone into the
pathology of the culture without their conscious awareness of what is happening to them.

The Solar Hero rides out into this culture, programmed and unaware of the unnatural character of his
environment, convinced that all is well because everyone else is just the same as he is. Every individual,
though neurotic and suffering, assumes that he is normal and well because everyone else is neurotic and
suffering. Everyone insists that he is well, and yet he lives in pain and depression. He is only ill if he is “not
tough enough” to take it.
.
The Path of the Lunar Hero travels out of culture; out of spiritual, emotional, psychological and even
physical unwellness;, and into a state of altered consciousness, where the wounds taken on by the soul
might be healed and life might be lived anew.
.
.
The Solar Journey
.
The symbol of the solar hero is the Sun. The Sun is the significator of spirit. The Solar Hero is on an
adventure of the spirit. He is the creative sexual, life force expanding out into life. He is not interested in
ordinary life. Instead, he seeks adventure, the exceptional, the new, and the expansion of the self.
.
The Journey of the Solar Hero seeks the development of self-consciousness, strength, authority,
individualism, power, leadership ability, self confidence, courage and faith.
.
The danger of the journey is that the hero will fall into the more negative expressions of the solar force,
such as self-will, cruelty, austerity, arrogance, willfulness, aggressiveness, tyranny, ego-centricism, seeking
power over others, or pessimism.[3]
.
The solar hero is on a journey to discover all he CAN be. In the process, he meets tests of his character.
His will becomes stronger as he overcomes life‘s obstacles. He determines his own course. His hardships
develop his character so that he becomes strong, self-confident, reliable, vitally alive, loyal, and optimistic.
Like the Sun, he gives his light and power to those around him.
.
Every young man, as he sets out from home early in life to discover life for himself is on this outer journey
of the self. He carries his inner wounds within himself from childhood, not knowing them…but gradually
discovering them as he travels, by repeating over and over the same mistakes.
.
Even after mid-life, if the hero’s journey has been rewarding, he may continue upon the solar course,
pursuing the path of the Magus, until time and energy pull him down into himself again.
.
Inevitably, the very striving for the things and adventures of life creates scars in the soul of the solar hero,
so that he is inevitably brought to failure. For life’s length is finite, as are his energy and physical resources.
Eventually, he must come to the questioning of his life as it has been.
.
How the West Lost the Moon
.
The question for us here, however, is not which “category” of consciousness is “best” or “right”, for they
are both right. In fact, they are complements developed through millions of years of evolution. Both are
needed for survival of the species. And both, in balance, are required for psychological, sexual, spiritual,
physical, and emotional health. Unfortunately, in the West the value of lunar consciousness has been
misunderstood, attributing lunar conscious to the unconsciousness of the Mothers…an abyss of unknowing,
changelessness, passivity, unconsciousness, primitiveness, loss of individuality and dependency.
.
The West built its culture biased against feelings in favor of logic, against receptiveness in favor of
assertiveness, against community in favor of individuality, against belongingness in favor of fame-seeking,
against the sanctity of individual rights in favor of the demands of power, against nurturing behavior in
favor of exploitation, against family values in favor of monetary values; against sacred sexuality in favor of
promiscuity and exploitative sexuality, against the alignment with nature in favor of achievement and
conquest of Nature; in short, a prescription for disaster, unconsciousness and poverty.
.
In fact, a balance of lunar and solar energies are required for the sanity of individual and culture. And the
West has lost its balance.
.
But the West goes plunging ahead, seeking its society of rationalist, progressive, masculine values over
irrational, stable, feminine values; logic over feeling; and rationality over instincts. We don’t have to look
far back to discover that we were warned, early in the development of the foundations for our Western
culture, of the dangers of the unbalanced rational mind.
.
Early Greek myth described the evolving psychology of Western Man in terns of the Divine Beings of the
Olympiad and even the more ancient chthonic Titan gods before them. The Titan Tyrant Kronos presaged
the repressed and tightly controlled business executive of the 20th and 21st Century. And the god king Zeus
who “overthrew Kronos” and was perceived to rule the Cosmos as a beneficent (if unfaithful) ruler, could
have run for President on either ticket in a U.S. presidential election. On his left hand sat Apollo, symbol of
the Solar Hero, embodying the search for knowledge, rationality, light, art, music and prophecy. On his
right hand sat Dionysus, the mad god of wine, poppies, religious frenzy, and the maenads; the women who
followed Dionysus and celebrated his rites. Without the balancing energy of Dionysus, Apollo was wont to
become a psychopath, murderous and cruel; a mad god tending to arbitrarily go on killing sprees.. The two
gods, Apollo and Dionysus, symbolized the “Mind of Zeus”…both rational and irrational in balance in its
essential nature.
.
In her caves beneath the ground, the Moon goddess Hecate was granted reign by Zeus over all the Cosmos
and was among his closest advisors. Hecate was an ancient Moon goddess known at the Triform goddess,
embodying the three aspects of Virgin, Mother and Crone and symbolizing the wisdom and virtue of
women throughout their lives. Her reign from beneath the earth was symbolically indicative of the role of
the feminine in Nature and in the lives of her subjects. The feminine “grounds” the masculine. The
unconscious grounds the conscious. The irrational “grounds” the rational.
.
In Greek myth, we find that the wisdom of the feminine was needed to balance the masculine rationality of
the Olympiad rulers. But the lesson was lost on the patriarchy of western culture, on the male leaders of the
Catholic Church, upon the growing political power of Kings, and today upon the republics of the West, that
solar consciousness, by itself, was pathologizing of culture and psyche; and that lunar consciousness and
lunar wisdom was necessary for the wellness of a human being. Locked in a world of unredeemed logic and
precision, the human spirit wilts. Life becomes existential. The soul becomes unwell. And humankind
periodically goes mad.
.
Western religions have taken on the aspirational qualities of its mainstream cultures, seeking ascendence
rather than soulful living in the body, seeking salvation from our instinctual nature over acceptance of
ourselves as we are, service to others over love of self, accumulation of merit over meritorious living. Our
religions take worshippers out of their body and weaken their sense of self, whereas Eastern religions
embody loving self as the Divine issue. Even during periods of relative peace today, huge numbers of
humans suffer in depression, diseases of the mind and emotional nature, diseases of the immune system,
and diseases of diet and toxic poisoning, all stemming from the pathologies of the soul.
.
Man is not and never has been solely a Mind; he is also a physical body guided by instinctual habits and
needs evolved through millions of years. Whenever man gets pulled away from his instincts into primarily
mental or even spiritual striving, he sickens. Whenever a person is programmed to serve another master
than himself, he suffers a weakening in his sense of self and in his will to live. We cycle continually from
solar to lunar states of being throughout history: seeking outwardly and then falling back into periods of
rest and unconscious living. Even the precession of the equinoxes takes us on this journey of self discovery
outward and then back inside ourselves to rest on a 25,000 year cycle.
.
In our Western culture, every child is trained from infancy to serve his parents, his teachers, his employers
and his nation. Every boy child is given a wound to separate him from his mother and from his emotional
nature to prepare him for the sacrifice of his own needs and his body to the requirements of this
technological society. Young men are taken into the military, broken down, and put back together to insure
that they will only follow orders and look after their fellow soldiers rather than themselves when bullets
start flying. Young women are indoctrinated into becoming willing partners, urging their men on to
accumulate wealth, father their children, and to advance in the work forces of corporate Kings or burocratic
barons. Every effort is made to create homogenous societies of educated and conformist homoclites, who
will wait in line to fill the jobs, bear the guns for the military, and support the control by government. Those
who fall by the wayside fill the streets as homeless, drug addicts, and alcoholics, or sit in prisons angry or
mentally ill.
.
The need for us all on our journey through life is to learn to marry our inner Sun and our inner Moon, to
balance the striving and upward seeking of the spirit with the downward yearning of the soul and to learn
how to heal the scars of the soul from the hero’s experience in culture. Sometimes during each life, the
spirit’s (Sun’s) will dominates the journey. At other times, the soul’s (Moon’s) will dominates.
.
The Hero’s Journey
.
The Solar Hero embodies the archetype of the Magus, the one who by an act of Magic seems to control his
world by an act of Will. He symbolically seeks the treasure of Apotheosis on his journey: to become a god.
His journey is symbolically up the outside of the Mountain…which is the masculine journey…the son
seeking his Father at the top. What he does not generally realize is that his journey is to “become” his own
father by sacrificing his seeking for service to mankind. He must find the will and self-discipline to drop his
Son-ship and step into the shoes of the Father…to become and live the Father. And in the end, he must
come to understand that little will be achieved that will be healing to others so long as he awaits the
attention of gods or Masters. To live the Father, he must return down the mountain to help others heal their
own lives.
.
In the literature on the Hero’s Journey, it is sometimes observed that men must make the solar journey,
while it is women who make the turn within for the lunar journey into the depths of the mind. The problem
with this is that it is the men who break and fail at mid-life, becoming mentally, emotionally or spiritually
ill from their unbalanced, rationalistic, unemotional way of living. It is the men who become pathological
and whose soul wounds demand healing. Our prisons are filled with men. Almost 90 percent of prisoners
incarcerated in the United States are male.
.
On the other hand, women who have been turned by men’s projections into an unbalanced lifestyle and an
unbalanced expression of their femininity, or who have been turned towards a masculine role in society, in
the home, or in careers, have also been unbalanced by their culture. They too have taken on soul wounds by
surrendering the possibility of a balanced solar-lunar life and accepting cultural compulsions to aspire
upward in a solar journey; and religious beliefs that denigrate their bodies, their instinctual nature, and their
natural sexuality; and role compulsions which take them out of the home and away from grounded,
nurturing roles. Culture has taken women away from their historically balanced personalities and shoved
them over to the solar extreme to create a labor force. Women too have participated in this change in their
nature, feeling diminished by men’s focus on power and wealth. Thus, they too often experience a midlife
catharsis, in which they too are compelled to take the lunar journey back into their own nature.
.
Although this is a hard issue to accept, it is Nature--not mankind--who has differentiated the sexes and
determined their differences. There may be opportunities to explore one’s own needs after menopause
however as the hormonal balance within each gender. Men experience a fall off in the production of
testosterone, and women experience a fall off in production of estrogen. Men become softer and more
inclined to experience their feeling nature. And women become more assertive and more inclined to
explore their inner masculine.
.
Many men and women at mid-life who have not achieved their solar aims experience this need to heal
through restoration of their natural sense of embodied self, and to exchange the mental ego for their more
ancient body-ego. This process has been labeled by psychologists as a regression of the ego, or as a return
to the womb of unconsciousness. But it is through this mechanism that the mind and the instinctual nature
of the body are re-united as a functioning coordinated unit. It is through this process that the mind is
reunited with the body and the mind-body split is healed.
.
These heroes come to understand something those who turn away from the Lunar Journey never learn.
Nothing needs to be done on our journey on this Earth…nothing at all. All we actually need to do is to
understand our inner nature. Nothing more!
.
When the ancient Greeks admonished us to “Know Thyself”, this is what they meant. The journey of the
soul is also the Way of Hermes, the Trickster’s Life of Loving Self Intention.
.
On this journey, the hero may lose the battle at the Threshold, falling into unconsciousness and
surrendering the ego and will to control his journey. If this happens, the hero is badly wounded, lost in his
inner journey, and unaware of how he is doing or where he is headed. He wanders without goal, haunted
sometimes by fear, on a path of fear and loss in the Borderland of Souls. He seeks the road Home, but is
constantly denied his need to surrender his life.
.
He is being healed through powerful other world forces who keep guiding him away from his need to die
and into healing paths that he cannot comprehend. He journeys through his past, learning to have
compassion for himself. He journeys on to re-embodiment, discovering his senses again and learning to
live, love and feel pleasure again. He discovers his dreams and the woman within who guides him on his
inward journey. Synchronicity places flagstones under each foot from moment to moment, for as he is,
nothing makes sense in this realm of the soul. He learns that his journey is in fact into his own feminine
nature that he never truly understood and had so feared throughout his life. In the underworld of his mind--
in his own subconscious mind, he learns the mystery of the feminine and its healing energy.
.
.
Mothering and Mothering Ones Self
.
The Moon as a symbol represents the Mother, and it is the relationship between the Mother and her
children that is the source of many of the dysfunctions a person encounters in life. The love and nurturing
quality of the child’s early relationship to its mother lends stability and security to the child’s evolving
personality, instills trust in the world and in others, and creates an ability to give and receive love in return.
Failure to receive the requisite nurturing and protective treatment, to have its own needs honored and met,
and to have loving encouragement in its exploration of the world in its early years creates problems that
might last throughout the child’s life.
.
Unfortunately, in our western cultures, many mothers are quickly drawn away from the home and child
raising after giving birth into careers in order to contribute income to their growing families and support the
material comfort of the family. Most young women emerge from childhood to begin married lives
unprepared for the wrenching changes in their lives that stem from becoming mothers and wives. They are
soon overwhelmed by the demands on their patience and energies of filling too many roles with too little
time. The consequence is often the de facto neglect of the needs of their children for security, nurturing, or
loving regard. The Inner Child of such children emerges with a anxious sense of dread from the home
feeling lonely and emotionally vulnerable, is susceptible to feeling unliked by peers, is uncertain of himself
or herself, is intimidated by the outside world, is haunted by dread or anxiety from the pressures of young
adulthood and is confused about how to meet the responsibilities of adult life.
.
What are the consequences of inadequate mothering for a child? What are the pathologies and neurotic
qualities of personalities that do not receive the necessary care as infants and growing children due to
pressures upon the parents?
.
Children lacking strong and wise mothering can emerge into adult life with an incapacity to trust in
themselves, in others or in the abundance of life. They may suffer a mind-body split, and in consequence be
unbalanced towards a life dominated by a mental ego and a break in their connection with their senses and
instinctual nature. The child’s rootedness in her body and instinctual nature may be compromised, or she
may lack a feeling of centeredness or authenticity of self.
.
A lack of feeling safe as an infant can lead to an underlying anxiety that creates an emotional instability in
dealing with the pressures of everyday life or an inability make decisions or take risks. As a mother or wife
she may later compensate for her feelings of fear and insecurity by becoming a smother-mother with her
own children, attempting to deal with her panic and fear for her own children by over-controlling them to
keep them safe. She may react by becoming co-dependent or dependent upon a parent, or husband or
significant other because she lacks the boundaries or the confidence to take care of herself. A male may
react to weak mothering by avoiding pressure or becoming a follower, unable to step up to higher
responsibility or take risks.
.
Such persons are said to have “inferiority or superiority complexes”, both of which are ‘fear-based.’ They
have a fear of conflict and have a tendency toward escapist lifestyles. Or they may become raging tyrants in
their work or at home in an furious effort to control the people and events of their lives. Men may be
incapable of intimacy or normal relationship with women (and women may be incapable of trusting other
women). Relationships may be characterized by a neurotic, clinging dependency or a distant, ambivalent
inability to connect or feel intimacy. Some may experience panic attacks and be unable to relax in social
situations. Others may be excessively selfishness; narcissistic or weighed down by a lack of empathy for
the feelings of others; compulsive behavior; addictive eating disorders, alcoholism, bulimia, obsessive-
compulsive behavior patterns; withdrawal; or an inability to relate to reality. [4]
.
After reading through the above dysfunctions, the reader may be ready to accept that such a person might
have a need for healing more than expansion and more struggling in the world of culture. Such a person is
likely to have spent his or her entire life suffering through each day until the struggle becomes too much to
bear any more. Thus, the break down, when it comes, becomes a healing journey and a path to a way of life
that provides for a time of harmony and tranquility rather than power or achievement. The Lunar Journey is
the path of healing….a time in a lessened state of consciousness and inner connection, deconstruction and
reconstruction of the subconscious mind. Or, in the language of psychology, the death, rebirth and
regeneration of the self to a more healthy state of mind, body, spirit and emotional stability.
.
What would this new state of harmony, peaceful abiding, and wellness be like? NOT a state of not-
suffering, for suffering is endemic to life. But a time of inner work, recapitulating one’s past, mindfully
watching one’s own mind, thoughts, emotions, behaviors, feelings, and body.; and a time of studying the
outside world. Then, a time of experimenting with different approaches to life, attitudes, self concepts, and
behaviors in the outer world; a time of uncovering and testing many assumptions one has about the
meanings of language, social and spiritual belief systems, one’s purpose in life and more. Life becomes
one’s teacher and one’s teaching then.
.
As one bores down into the soul spaces within, the meaning of health and wellness and the forms of that
wellness state are contemplated and evaluated. Unlike the usual treatment received on the therapy couch,
the lunar journey is not so much making the unconscious conscious…although that process is also apparent
in the path of self discovery…as a ‘letting go’ of old understandings and values and a feeling of one’s way
into a new way of relating to life.
.
The seeker descends into matter and rediscovers a way of relating to self and others akin to the Eternal
Round paradigm. Instead of seeking an exceptional life, the hero feels his way into an ordinary life. His
new habits become simple and body centered. His thoughts slow and disappear. He finds his mind is able
to remain present for longer periods of time and thoughts do not arise at all.
.
As he seeks new spiritual guidance, he discovers that the spiritual teachings of the East are by far more
helpful for the lunar journey than the spiritual teachings of the Western religions. These teachings guide
him to surrender to life’s flow, to be receptive, to discover the feminine energy and nature within himself,
to drop the struggle of trying to control things, to let go of all the should’s and ought’s given to him by his
culture. These ideas are by far more helpful in the lunar journey than adopting goals or trying to chart
where one is supposed to go.
.
In fact, the lunar hero never knows exactly where he is or where he is going. The rational mind is kept in a
quandary all the time because its capabilities can’t make sense of what is happening to it. Traditional
assumptions about life and religion fall away as the traveler realizes that he has no knowledge that he
KNOWS is “true.“ Nothing can be actually counted on except what he can perceive through his senses or
feel through his body.

By allowing life to carry him, he discovers life’s will for him and his destiny. He learns to relax and find the
pleasure in the moment.. He learns to accept the insecurity of life and lives on the edge every moment. He
discovers that in living this way, language and information doesn’t help much and so he drops so much
talking, thinking, and operates from a place of direct perception without concepts, thoughts, or ideas. He
learns to feel his way along with gut instinct rather than cognizing everything, planning the future, or
extrapolating his past experiences.
.
In short, he learns to tap the ancient tactile and sensing abilities asleep within himself. He learns what
wellness IS.
.
As healing is uncovered and re-discovered, the Lunar Hero discovers within himself and herself the
following capabilities and “feels“ his way toward them through “gut feeling“:[5]
.
• Restoring his basic trust in himself, in others, and the world
• Discovering how to root himself in the body and the spirit; find one’s own center and remaining there
• Learning how live close to his instinctual nature so his human needs are met consistently
• Attuning to his feelings
• Keeping an eye and ear open into one’s emotional depths
• Learning to maintain emotional stability in the midst of a chaotic world
• Opening to the world and other people while maintaining and respecting personal boundaries
• Learning empathy: maintaining his receptivity and responsiveness to others and their needs
• Recovering his ability to nurture himself and others where necessary
• Allowing himself to receive nurturance from others
• Establishing a healthy pattern of giving to and receiving from others
• Re-learning to experience and satisfy his needs for relationships without losing his independence
• Learning to be independent and maintain one’s independence in life and love
• Learning to balance intimacy and separateness in relationships within the family
• Experiencing the blooming of loyalty and devotion to loved ones
• Satisfying security needs
• Establishing a secure and satisfying home base from which to venture into the outside world
• Engineering a lifestyle in which one feels a sense of pleasure, peace, harmony and contentment
• Maintaining a feeling of love for one’s life no matter what life brings
• Learning to be thrifty and conservative with one’s resources for living life as it is
• Developing constructive and efficient personal habits which lend a sense of solidity to daily life and
help to ground one in life
• Learning healthy eating habits
• Learning in times of stress how to retreat and regroup his physical, emotional and energy resources
• Allowing a childlike open-ness to emerge in the personality and finding a new spontaneity in the way
life may be lived
• Learning how to be adaptable to life’s surprises without feeling any loss of self
• Learning to drop the ego’s defensiveness and to differences with others’
• Becoming accustomed to intuitiveness as the guiding principle to living rather than rationality
• Expressing the feminine energy within the male; or if a woman, expressing one’s femininity within
.
Awakening at Mid-Life
.
In Michael Washburn’s book Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred World, there is an implied process of
unfolding of the personality within time. The Solar Hero’s Journey is implicit in the first half of life,
expanding outward, learning, developing, progressing, creating. In the withdrawal of the Dynamic Ground
in crisis at mid-life, there is the re-assessment of the ego by turning within to assess his life. If he has done
well, there is the tendency to continue his path outward. If he has the sense that his life was a failure, or if
he feels his life was not well spent or misspent, he is more likely to determine that his outward expansion
had not been successful. If that happens, he questions himself and turns inward to rediscover the source of
his disappointments.
.
The Solar Hero is likely to blame outward opposition for his disappointments in life. If he continues, he is
likely to continue his outward search for meaning and significance. The Lunar Hero is likely to determine
that the faults for his disappointments lie within himself. He is more likely to turn to the task of changing
himself rather than expanding himself as the Solar Hero might.
.
Washburn’s model in fact appears to document the journey of the Lunar Hero, who at mid-life feels that his
life has been a disappointment. His will to live collapses as the Dynamic Ground withdraws. Life becomes
existential. The ego frays and collapses. And the hero must experience a time rebuilding his egoic nature
and his ability to function in the outside world.
.
But as a result of his travails in the inner world, his personality is stronger, as is his sense of self. His values
have been changed. He is capable of standing alone and valuing freedom over socially approved goals or
needs. His character has been tested, and his ego is humble. He knows he had virtually nothing to say about
what happened to him nor had he any illusion that he in fact was in control of events on his journey. He
has a sense of life as a fate, which can be converted to a destiny only by his willing acceptance of his fate.
[6]
.
Washburn’s model does not seem to account for those men and women who experience the midlife crisis or
awakening at midlife and still continue their outward pursuit of fame, power and achievement. These men
may not ever explore the mystery of their inner feminine nature or find the peace and harmony at the
completion of the Lunar Journey. Women who turn outward are on their own solar journeys may be
experiencing animus possession. However, they are experiencing their own power and exploring their inner
masculine nature.
.
There is also the issue of whether the hero’s journey is completed when he achieves his ends on his Lunar
Journey. He may be content with his work and his life. Or he may not. He may wish to achieve something
else before his age ends his journey. And so he may return again to his solar journey to reach new heights.
He is in effect asking to write a new chapter in his Book of Life to explore new avenues for personal
development. But having learned the perils of the solar path, many will resist being pulled out of their new
more balanced and tranquil lifestyles, preferring to stake out an independent course rather than being pulled
into some new set of institutional goals.
.
Conclusions
.
The Lunar Journey at Midlife seems to be the form of the midlife crisis in the West, because the cult of
individuality and rationalism in the West unbalances the psyche in the direction of spiritual, materialistic, or
mental striving. This unbalancing wounds the psyche and turns the personality pathological. However,
there are exceptions, and many crises lead to a re-invigorating of the solar search for significance and
meaning. Those who choose the Lunar Journey often do so without understanding what is happening to
them, until in retrospect they realize the choices they have made in order to heal within. Some may feel
they have been left behind as others strive onwards. But among the “wisdoms” of this inner journey is the
awareness that “freedom” is the reward of their painful struggle, and the striving of the solar hero leads
away from freedom.

Examining the experience of living as a whole, it is apparent that the journey of men is to discover and
know the mystery of the feminine…not only the mysteries within woman but the mysterious feminine
within themselves. For a man to know his masculinity AND his inner feminine is to know the Self. It is
apparent as well that the journey of women is to discover and know the mystery they represent…to know
their own mysteries. Woman stands closer to the mystery of Life than does Man.

___________________________________________

Footnotes

1 Howard Teich, Ph.D., “A Psychology of Light: Healing the Divided Soul (http://www.solarlunar.com/)
2 Ibid.
3 Isabel M. Hickey, “Astrology: A Cosmic Science”(Sebastopol, CA: CRCS Publications, 1992), p. 38.
4 Tracy Marks, “The Astrology of Self-Discovery” (IBIS Press: Lake Worth, Florida, 2008), p. 9-15.
5 Ibid, p. 17.
6 Michael Washburn, “Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred World” (State University of New York Press:
Albany, NY, 2003).