Interlude: Why Archetypes for Your Better Endings?

Socrates had a wonderful admonition for us all: “Know Thyself.” He buttressed this with a fuller statement: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” While not everyone might equally agree with the second of these postulates, most would agree that there is much value in a life well lived and that we learn more about ourselves as we experience life’s treasures, including hard times as well as easier, happier times.

Carl Jung is largely credited for his recognition that getting to know our Selves involves much more than simply looking into a mirror.  We are each of us inherently multiple in the sense that we develop different sub-selves as we gradually take on roles and responsibilities in the process of forming a sense of our IDENTITY, both consciously as public personas and privately and unconsciously as well.

 

Becoming a social self in a community of others entails adopting ‘typical’ role identities, and as an anthropologist I would say that Jungian (and other) ARCHETYPES relate to these role personas both consciously and unconsciously. So as we become an individual we develop certain facets of our identity corresponding to specific sorts of situations. We draw upon universal or collective “archetype” images as we develop these outer and subjective personas. A parent may take on ELDER LEADER and/or NOURISHER points of views and attitudes, for instance, a spouse expresses LOVER traits, a soldier enacts a WARRIOR role, a doctor the HEALER, etcetera. All human societies include a stock in trade of several primary role modalities which are psychologically available for identity construction and expression. These also may become aberrated or may take on “Shadow” traits in our unconscious psychological makeup.

What Jung prescribed for all of us is to seek to better INTEGRATE our archetypal persona influences in the process of becoming fully mature, self-actuating, INDIVIDUATED persons. As Jung himself pioneered for us as a role model (see his RED BOOK and articles about active imagination), he has encouraged us to get to know our archetypal animating energies as vital aspects of our greater Self or Soul. I call this your Ensemble Cast of Mythic Archetypal Characters”. In my forthcoming book (hopefully 2016) YOUR LIFE PATH, I focus part of a self-discovery toolkit around understanding 12 Universal Archetypes that were used by the late Dr. Charles Bebeau and his wife Nin at the Avalon Archetype Institute, based on Sumerian mythology and Jungian principles.

With this blog this year I am presenting one archetype per month and aligning that with a “Life Metaphor” that connects with that archetypal energy. Getting to Know YOURSELF as an integrated Whole comprised of various persona dimensions in key situations in your life can definitely help you to achieve your own BETTER ENDINGS.

You can aim to fulfill all aspects of your Self, not just one or two at the expense of others (thereby leading to internal conflicts or frustrated “parts of Self”).  What Life Dream would help you to do that? This will be our topic for August as we celebrate and explore the NOURISHER Archetype and the Life Metaphor Life is a Mountain with Vistas.

I invite you to stay tuned and join the Adventure. 

I always welcome your Comments and Stories.

 

 

The Nourisher Archetype

Since the Nourisher is associated primarily with the sign of Cancer and the month of July, as we move toward August let’s pause to celebrate Nourisher energy and form. This is a heart energy; a nurturing, supportive form.

Mother Theresa is an example of a person expressing a dominant NOURISHER persona; Julia Child is another. Masculine NOURISHER examples would include St. Francis of Asisi and the Dalai Lama.

To give, to share, to support, to feed, to gently nourish another’s heart or mind or body is a fundamental facet of the human Spirit and of the Universe as a whole.

Allow me also to re-blog this excellent Daily Quote (7/27/2015) as posted by Theresa at Soul Gatherings, from His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama:

If you want others to be happy,

practice compassion.

To be happy,

practice compassion. 

Re-Member Your Golden Child

I initially misread my own weekly topics agenda for this past month. The Golden Child archetype is associated with Leo, yes, but really this Leonine Ally is more associated in the Avalon Archetype Institute framework which I am utilizing here with August rather than July. The NOURISHER (or, Nurturer as I prefer) archetype is more directly connected with July Cancerian energy. (Being a late June Cancerian myself, I can verify this!) Still, it has worked rather well to pair the Golden Child Ally with our monthly postulate of Life is a Bowl of Cherries! So, I guess there was a method in the madness of Synchronicity!

Before leaving this ‘conjunction’ of Golden Child archetype with the Bowl of Cherries postulate, I want to encourage you as you proceed forth from here to “re-member” your inner Golden Child as an Archetype Ally persona.  Re-membering (I got this from a spiritual passage long ago from ECK Master Paul Twitchell) means to put back together again or to reassemble elements of the Self into a new, holistic, synergistic Whole.

GOLDEN CHILD is a strong, vital, generally outgoing and, at its best, a charismatic persona as a member of your archetypal ensemble. All of the members of your inner Council or Assembly or Cast of archetype character allies remain in the background of your conscious awareness once you have integrated them through identification and active dialogue. They remain available to be enlisted and may choose on their own as well to ‘step up’ in any given situation.  Dorothy, when leaving OZ to return to Kansas (or to ‘Conscious’, as  Jean Houston has aptly noted in her book THE WIZARD OF US) knew that her archetypal Allies of Tin Man, Scarecrow and (no longer a cowardly) Lion would remain available as mature  energies within her own Self long after her dream adventures in the Land of OZ. So too, you have accessible within you all twelve of the universal Archetype persona figures that comprise the architecture of human role-based consciousness which this year’s monthly blog themes are presenting.

After identifying and exploring any archetypal facet of your Self, it is helpful to “ground” your connection and awareness of this internalized figure with a Symbol: an active TOTEM that will remind you of your treasured Ally. Carl Jung used the artistic vehicle of a Mandala to center and totemically ground his own archetypally integrated parts of Self. After engaging in “active imagination” episodes with his unconscious archetypal persona enrergies to the degree of achieving an integral awareness of their purpose and role in his life, Jung would paint (see his original RED BOOK/ Liber Novus) a mandala picture symbolically representing the archetypal awareness or persona in the Center, with meaningful images and/ or words surrounding the central figure to depict qualities, lessons or insights he connected perceptually with this persona aspect.

I invite you to compose a Mandala picture that represents your own GOLDEN CHILD part of Self along with qualities s/he brings forth within your integrated Self.

An easy method for composing a mantra—unless you prefer to exercise your artistic talent ‘by hand’ with any artistic medium you choose, which I encourage!—is to select online graphic images such as clip-art icons and simply cut and paste them into a basic circle shape.  Let the central image represent yourself as the Golden Child persona, and place other images artistically around this central image to represent qualities you associate with this Ally in your life.

 Place your mandala somewhere where you will remember its significance of representing your own Golden Child qualities. This archetype is one that sometimes is hidden or subdued in a culture that values humility over self-assertion. Yet it is a vital energy which in a balanced form empowers us to pursue and to claim our talents in service to life.

Enjoy the Fruit from Your Labors of Love

Life is a Bowl of Cherries means you get to enjoy the fruits of all the work you have done and the love you have given and shared as you bring about and experience the “manifesting” stages of your life. My 88 year old mother, for example, though suffering from late stage Parkinsons, has her family’s love and support for all she has given us. She has more visitors than many at her nursing home, and this is one of the fruits of her many sacrifices and gifts of being a terrific mother through the years.

How can you manifest a future wherein you will benefit from the fruits of your own labor and dedication? How will you construct this future as one filled with abundance and vital purpose? As I anticipate retirement in just a few years, I see this not as any form of slowing down or resting but as a graduation from my primary career work into a continuing adventure of service, creative productivity, and giving back to life for all I have received and learned through life experiences.

A Contemplation and Journaling Seed:

What are to be the fruits of your life’s labor of love? Some you are already enjoying Now; what are these? Others you can yet choose to manifest; what are those? How will you help these fruits to mature?

It always helps to visualize and contemplate your future of abundant growth while appreciating the bounty of the present moment as well.

Celebrate Your Everyday Miracles

“Life is a bowl of cherries” is a metaphor that acknowledges the blessings in our lives every day.

Life in this dualistic universe must always have its Ups and Downs that help us grow and learn–when we choose to–through hardships and problem-solving. Yet I find myself reflecting on this past month’s plus road trip—tonight on my final hotel stop en route back to Colorado—and contemplating about several miracles I have witnessed and been the recipient of over this past five weeks.

How do you define a miracle? This varies somewhat for each of us but to me a miracle manifests the extraordinary in a manner that protects, or intervenes, or heals such that Divine or spiritual/ universal intervention appears to be fortuitously playing Its hand.

Miracles might be small or large, life-saving or sometimes even playful. My sister rolling her second all-aces Yahtzee within just a few turns while the lyrics “Do it again!” were playing was enough to capture our attention and for me and two of my sisters to call into question the Law of Probability, especially when just two turns later I also rolled the same all-aces Yahtzee. We wondered if our father, who had always been a gaming sort, was trying to communicate from the Beyond!

Then there was my dear Mother, who is experiencing late stage Parkinsons disease, sitting up in her wheelchair to eat a hearty, pureed meal at her nursing home on the very same day she was subjected to multiple tests and a procedure to drain fluid from around her lungs at a hospital; this was a miraculous, joyful blessing indeed. I have learned to appreciate from Mom’s patience with her condition how the smallest kindness from others in her physically incapacitated state is itself a blessing of universal, divine love.

But five nights ago, a miracle was needed in a life-threatening emergency, and there it was.  I could have been injured terribly when I stumbled and fell from my sister’s stairway, falling full-body backwards into her dining room furniture, landing on my back. Fortunately—no, in retrospect miraculously, fortuitously—I had set up a stainless steel, 5 foot tall pet gate, wrapped into several overlapping layers, at the base of my sister’s stairs to provide a boundary between house floors for my dog Sophie. When I fell, I landed squarely upon the central gate panels, which crashed down with me into my sister’s dining room. The several overlapping steel gate layers bent from the weight of my fall but cushioned my back and also somehow prevented me from hitting my head. I laid there on my back for several minutes, both me and my horrified sister fearing the worst but then I got up, my back, left ankle and knee sprained a bit but I was not seriously injured at all. A great “energy-healing” massage a couple days later and I am fine, gratefully aware of how this ‘convenient’ gate possibly saved my life or bodily well being.

Reflecting later on the “anatomy” of this miracle, I realize what a “set up” had occurred in advance. My sister and I had talked at length when I arrived about whether I needed to set this gate up, and overlapping the panels was done in a way that would protect her wooden floor which, in the end, was also miraculously not marred by the crashing fall!

******   ******

So I invite you to take some time to reflect and count the everyday miracles in your own life that have helped to put you where you are right now. Even unforeseen difficulties can count as miracles if they lead to greater personal awareness or understanding. I mean, even if my fall would have turned out badly, that could also have had a miraculous element to it if it would have led to later experiences I would grow from.

I believe we are all in the hands of loving care, if only we ask to be and/or if we can remember to recognize the value of even the smallest “set ups” or shifts of conditions in our own and in others’ lives.

So let’s celebrate our tandem connections with Spirit/ the Universe; what Jung would call Synchronicity.

I value and welcome YOUR Comments and Stories.

Cherry Picking

As a life mapping tool, one activity that can help you to identify and manifest your future aspirations is what I like to call “future casting.”

STEP ONE: Imagine an ideal future scenario. Dream big! This is your Life is a Bowl of Cherries dream future, with no limitations.

STEP TWO: Now then, after envisioning your ideal or even a utopian dream future, I invite you to look over what you have forecasted here. What VALUES and what specific FEATURES of this ideal future would you really like to manifest in your future in a practical way? List the VALUES your ideal Future Cast represents (e.g. self-sufficiency, freedom, committed love, etc.?). Also list specific features or elements of this ideal scenario that you really would like to manifest in your practical future (e.g. a beautiful environment, proximity to cultural events, good for pets, etc.).Let’s call this “cherry picking,” hand picking those elements or seeds, as it were, from your Life is a Bowl of Cherries ideal future cast, that you really do wish to include in your bowl of life conditions as you come into the realization of your actual future goals.

STEP THREE: Next then, I invite you to engage in a Fantasy Future Force-Fit.  Using those VALUES and desirable features or elements you do want to have in your REAL future, imagine/ creatively visualize and then journal about or describe a fully practical sort of future scenario that is attainable from where you are now and based on realistic future planning that can include these same values and elements as your “ideal fantasy” future.

For me, for instance, an idealized future would combine living in Ireland, Hawaii and New York City. Why? Values and specific features of a traditional, historically substantial cultural lifeway, natural abundance of beauty, and an active intellectual/ spiritual community all appeal to me. Ideally I would have homes in all three of these locations and use them as bases for wider global travel, for engagement in local community interactions, and for providing workshops and classes to benefit a wide range of peoples. But one central location well chosen could accomodate many of these desirable elements in a more practical way. That’s why I have been planning a retirement move in a few years to near the Chautauqua Institution in New York State, a choice I have arrived at from applying a life mapping tool using “cherry picking”  

I invite you to try this out and I welcome comments or stories about YOUR results from applying this Seed.

An Attitude of Gratitude

This month’s Life Metaphor postulate is “Life is a Bowl of Cherries!” and we are approaching this postulate from the perspective of the GOLDEN CHILD persona archetype—one of your own Archetype Allies. I find that many people in expressing their Golden Child aspect of Self in a positive way express an attitude of gratitude for all of the bounty in their ives, and they tend to see this bounty everywhere.

Life is “a bowl of cherries” no matter what your circumstances are, when you choose to pay attention to and be thankful for that which is positive, even in the most dire conditions.  When you are thankful  every day for the abundant blessings in the smallest details of your life and world, then the GOOD we aim to manifest in our lives is already present, Here and Now!

I invite you this week to make a list every day of what you are thankful for Now/ Today/ this Moment!

I’ll start with an immediate list for myself right now:

I am grateful for having the freedom and ability to travel and visit my family and friends.

I am grateful for my dear dog companion, Sophie, and for my cats Loki and Emily who are home with my family friends in Colorado, Gm and A.

I am grateful for my family.

I am grateful to my mother for how she raised her family for each of us to stay connected yet to follow our own dreams.

I am grateful to my sister C., who has been an angel to my mother in her later years and who has established an anchor point for our family as a whole.

I am grateful for my spiritual freedom to explore and experience Reality at a deep level.

I am grateful for the Beauty in the world.

I am grateful for the VARIETY of people, beings, and environments.

I am grateful for my friends.

I am grateful for writing and for this blog vehicle and its readers.

So look around yourself and within your Self. What are YOU grateful for NOW?

How can your attitude of gratitude bring about even further abundance?

I welcome your Comments and Stories!

 

 

Positive Self-Postulates (from your Golden Child)

Your GOLDEN CHILD archetype certainly would be one to express this month’s metaphor of Life Is a Bowl of Cherries! I have known a few GOLDEN CHILD-dominant personalities in my life, often Leos but not always. They are ready to claim the Brass Ring as their own, and not without reason. They express an attitude of entitlement, usually positively but sometimes not. They tend to be highly successful at what they set their hearts—and votes—to accomplishing.

 

Positive affirmations are in a GOLDEN CHILD’s core vocabulary. “I can do it! I CAN! I will! I am!” all carry the self-assertive energy of the Leonine persona. So for this next few days, I invite you to allow your own inner GOLDEN CHILD Archetype Ally to state some positive affirmations that can (will!) help you with any current issues or that can (do!) propel you toward fulfilling your most desired future goals.

 

Some trial-run personal examples:

• I will accomplish my heart’s purpose on this visit with my Mom. (Tuesday night: Yes! She survived another trip to the hospital today and is back in her familiar, beloved nursing home environment.)
• I will shift the balance of a nagging work situation back to a win-win situation for all.
• I am a vehicle for love, trust and clarity!

This is fun…and it works! It feels very empowering and focused. So I invite each of you who are reading this blog to let your own INNER CHILD proclaim positive affirmations for YOU. And then… Be Here Now to live them! I welcome your Comments and stories!

Your Own Midas’ Touch

Consider the Sun, which beams equally upon all depending on its nearness. It shines forth of its own nature, unquestioning. All within the scope of Its worlds is illuminated; everything the Sun’s rays reach may prosper. Its thunderous Light is self-perpetuating and long lived.

How may you be most like the Sun in your own life? Is this the fabled Midas’ touch we all might seek? Then contemplate how to give as the Sun gives, never asking for anything in return.

Listen to Your Golden Child

This week we have been exploring together (thanks for all of your insightful comments!) qualities associated with the GOLDEN CHILD Archetype, both as an inner Archetype Ally within your personal unconscious cast of characters and as manifesting in some of your loved ones or others in your life.

Let’s take some time to ask ourselves, “What is my GOLDEN CHILD asking of me Now?”

Some of us are reticent to fully express our Golden Child archetypal potentials most of the time; our sense of “humility” might hold us back from possibly seeming brash or extraverted as much as a fully expressing Golden Child aspect could be.  But listen closely: If you could give full voice to YOUR Golden Child nature, what would it like to say or ask of you, Now?

Let me try briefly as a model (only); I invite you to do this yourself, either in an active imagination/ contemplation mode or through direct Archetype Dialogue journaling.

LW: Okay, GC, I am wanting to check in with you to see if you have anything you have been wanting to share with me/Us directly. Is there anything you want me to be saying or doing at this time that I am not expressing as well or as fully as you would like? You are my Ally and I trust you to speak forth as you desire!

GC:  Well then, that’s a welcome invitation. Are you telling me I could have full rein to speak my heart?

LW: Yes, absolutely.

GC: Hand me that mike, then! Ok…hmmm…ahem (clearing the throat, pausing to consider deeply)… First, about the book….Don’t hold back! It is ready to be launched; the new titles I’ve been helping you with yesterday and today are better, stronger, more clear. “Don’t hide your light under a bushel,” remember? And “Behold the turtle; s/he makes progress only when s/he sticks her neck out!”

LW: I hear you; these are two platitudes you have reminded me of since childhood! What else?

[Incubation throughout the day; including active contemplation before the rest…]

GC: As for the other issue we are being confronted with today…

LW: Work related?

GC: Yep. Don’t let this person take further advantage of your “good nature.” Don’t be milquetoast, got it? He will eat you up!

LW: I do know I must refuse to be codependent with an addictive personality.

GC: Then act, strongly.

LW: What would you say?

GC: {I choose not to publish this section; GC provided strong advice on how to confront a pressing personnel issue; advice I intend to follow through with.}

…  

LW: Wow…well, Okay then. Thanks!

GW: Any time. Remember to ACT!

******   ******

So then, I invite you to check in with your own GOLDEN CHILD, either as an unconscious archetypal outlook or converse with someone in your life who is not shy about expressing their helpful viewpoints!

I invite and always welcome YOUR Comments and Stories.

 

The Mythic GOLDEN CHILD

The GOLDEN CHILD persona archetype occurs in classic mythology with figures such as Theseus, Hercules and Achilles—each of whom also show WARRIOR archetypal qualities—and it shows up in many fictional stories and popular films as well. “Little Buddha” is a great film about the search for the reincarnated Buddha to become the next Dalai Lama in Tibetan Buddhism. This is an explicit Golden Child construct which demonstrates the value of this key archetypal figure as a persona that potentially benefits all of humanity and indeed all life. Yesterday I watched part of “Roman Holiday” with my family, starring Audrey Hepburn in 1953 as a young princess who tires of her royal duties and longs to have a normal life experience. Here is shown the burden that a Golden Child might have to bear in being a central figure for her or his community, as if they are always on stage or serving their public.

My own dog Sophie (full name: Sophia Grace Wattsida {the last name being the word for ‘dog’ in Zuni!}) is a Golden Child to me. Her breed and style is even called a ‘Golden’ Shorkie because of her hair color as a Shitzu-Yorkie mix. Currently she is with me on her fifth cross-country trip at 5 yrs old; every summer I pack the car and Sophie and I traverse America together from Colorado to New York state and back to visit my mother and siblings.

Just yesterday I was realizing how I can learn a lot from my little Golden Shorkie Sophie. She has the social skills I sometimes lack, ready to greet (and lick/kiss) just about anyone, and tromping gleefully into the largest of crowds with aplomb, eager for the new experience and smells. I myself have a touch of social anxiety that often keeps me away from crowds of more than a few even well known persons; parties, as my close friends and coworkers know, are my most daunting challenge; I usually feel compelled to just stay away. But last night, with my sister Lee and with Sophie on her leash beside me, I actually attended part of a concert on the lawn of a ski area, with Blood, Sweat and Tears! Sophie showed no fear and just wanted to get off the leash to dart about freely in the large crowd there gathered (I held onto her instead, of course, to her frustration). As a Golden Child I think she feels it is her obligation to greet everyone with a proper licking!

Anyway, after dinner outdoors with my siblings and the concert, I had a scare overnight as my Golden Sophie was hyperventilating most of the night. She must have gotten too much sun or “too much of a good thing” in dinner handouts from me perhaps. We are many miles away from any animal emergency clinic here, so I tended her as best I knew to do with extra water and care, hoping she was going to be okay through the night. She is! Whew! She truly is a golden companion to me.

Do you have a Golden Child in your life? Often if we do not express an archetype as a primary aspect of our own Self’s archetypal assemblage, it may be present in people (pets are also people!) important in our lives.

I invite your Comments and Stories!

 

 

You Have a Golden Child Within

The GOLDEN CHILD is a universal persona archetype within what Carl Jung would call all of our “collective unconscious.” That means it is in the architecture of the human psyche, available as a figure any of us might draw upon in forging our self-expression or personality and forming our sense of identity.

Like any collective persona archetype form, your inner GOLDEN CHILD aspect of Self might be highly expressive or repressed; it might function in a very positive mode (what I call its Strength mode), or it could display SHADOW potentials. In the “positive,” GOLDEN CHILD is a very charismatic, generous, positive force of character.  It is associated with the astrological sign of Leo. In “Shadow” mode, GOLDEN CHILD could present itself as overly self-confident, boisterous, or jealous, especially when it is feeling undervalued or frustrated.

What is YOUR Golden Child nature? This week I invite you to explore this archetypal resource as it manifests both outwardly and inwardly in your life or your Persona. To do so, consider when you may have felt or acted most “like” a Golden Child. When have you felt most assertively demonstrative or even positively egotistical? When? Why? In what manner? To what result?

Last week—appropriately as this month of July began—I exhibited my own Leonine Golden Child twice very noticeably, once to a good effect in an important conversation in which I needed to represent myself clearly and well, and the second time not so positively but still with a positive effect overall, standing up for my mother’s needs in a hospital context.

Your GOLDEN CHILD nature can be a strong ALLY for you, a force for good in your world and in service to others. Allow it (her or him) to shine forth to brighten your way!

FOR A LIFE OF ABUNDANCE: Follow Your Heart

Envision a future of life fulfillment and abundance that you are already “living INTO,” Now! PLease go ahead, I invite you and I entreat you to take some time out from whatever busi-ness you are about right now; to close your eyes and dreamily, freely:

I M A G I N E 

So just think of it: Life IS a Bowl of Cherries. Okay then, what does YOUR “bowl of cherries” contain in your imagined dream of life fulfillment? What relationships or conditions, behaviors, activities, locations, etecetera comprise  the cherries filling your bowl of abundance in the parallel reality of your future dream come true?

I encourage you to contemplate, journal, walk and muse, paint or write a haiku or poem about your life of abundance.

And as always, I welcome your response in any form of sharing.

Now then also, would you need to make any specific sorts of changes or tweaks to your current life course in order to bring this abundance about? Consider how you might make such adjustments as simply and effectively as possible from your present vantage point.

My dear sister whom I am visiting has a refrigerator magnet that reads: THERE IS NO PLAN: FOLLOW YOUR HEART! Yet what if, after all, following your heart truly will fulfill your “plan”, even if you didn’t know you have one? The question remains the same by either viewpoint: How to ‘truly’ follow your Heart?

Some speak of nudges, others pay attention to their dreams and “intuitions;” still others stay centered on their current course, neither expecting nor desiring change. And you know, it’s all good: Life is Good, no matter what.

Myself, though, I enjoy creating or composing my life actively as I go along. I love adventure and creating some measure of change and flexibility to bring about variety as that “spice of life.” I enjoy the Present Moment of Nowness, yet I also enjoy musing inwardly and reflecting lightly on the Past, and I enjoy looking forward to creating a future of my own choice and design. All of that involves listening to the Heart and ALLOWING the Moment to unfold yet being an active, mindful participant.

The Here and Now is multidimensional, resplendent, full of potentials and possibilities! So take a peek into the byways of your Heart’s own rhythm and pulse, and… Follow!