Let Your LOVER Be Your Guide

 

So yesterday once again I was walking the labyrinth path and received this impression:

“Let your Lover be your Guide.”

I recognize that since this is near the end of the month of October in which I have been focusing this blog around the Lover archetype, this message meant for me to let Her lead the way for me as I go forward with some wonderful new opportunities surrounding my book, Your Life Path.  I am about to step forward into a whirlwind of activity, it seems, to complete the final polishing edit and then, after it is published, to promote it so that it will reach all readers who can benefit from its life mapping Tools.

But I also realize this message is meant for you all.

LET YOUR LOVER BE YOUR GUIDE!

images are from pixabay.com

Archetypal psychology is largely about INTEGRATING your inner archetypal personas, harmonizing them to work together as Allies as you go forward to manifest your goals and to live your greatest life.  While any one or another of your inner archetypal parts-of-Self might dominate for this or that situation, putting the Lover in you first can mean,

Let LOVE lead the Way!

What would Love do, right? I invite you to contemplate and then to put into practice the Path that Love shall forge.

A Better Endings Love Story: An Affair to Remember

Why do so many people, myself included and maybe especially women, find Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant’s An Affair to Remember (1957) to be such a “classic” and satisfying love story? Apart from the dated elements from 50’s movies depicting men and women being almost different species (!), nevertheless the story still works for many of us today, as evidenced by the annual Christmastime reprisals and several attempted remakes which, however, never quite get the fabric or tonality of this story quite as well as Kerr and Grant did.

Terry McKay/ D. Kerr: “I was looking up; it was the nearest thing to heaven. You were there!”

…

Nickie Ferrante/ C. Grant: Why didn’t you tell me? If it had to happen to one of us, why did it have to be you?

Terry McKay/ D. Kerr: If you can paint, I can walk… Anything can happen, don’t you think?

(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050105/quotes)

I believe the reason this story speaks so deeply to all of us admirers is simple: this is a classic version of a Better Endings love story. The star-crossed lovers are each otherwise engaged to be married in relationships in which they would be ‘”settling,” but kismet brings them together so they can realize true love; a love which supports and strengthens each of their deepest life ambitions.

 Sleepless in Seattle is the best contemporary version of the same underlying Better Endings love story theme as An Affair to Remember. Of course it is a parable with many allusions that refer directly back to the original throughout. It culminates with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks meeting on top of the Empire State Building, so bringing to fruition a better-ending retelling of An Affair to Remember wherein McKay and Ferrante do meet up there as promised. And Sleepless in Seattle (along with You’ve Got Mail, which clearly is in the same genre of Better-Endings love tales) has the same classic longevity as An Affair to Remember, showing the universality of this theme; the archetypal character of this story.

images are from pixabay.com

Click below for your enjoyment: 

Better Endings News!

For regular or occasional readers of this blog: I’m happy to report that a Better Ending story appears to be brewing for my self-discovery/ personal development book, Your Life Path. My Super Agent (called as such in a recent article about her ), Linda Langton of Langtons International Agency, has received an offer from a publisher, and we are approaching a contract! This has been a labor of love for over 15 years in the making, with plenty of final polishing still in process but Whew! Thanks all for reading the blog and I will keep you posted. I’ll put up a widget to announce the book when that is appropriate.  My blessings to all of you and Better Endings to your Life Dreams, too!

What Really Is Love, Part Two: If I could live but only in the Moment

 

From my Lover archetype persona:

You asked me the other day while driving back from helping a friend pack and move, “What Really Is Love?” I reminded you of that movie, “The Man Eating Tiger,” that we saw on late night TV decades ago. That film had the right idea. When we love we wish only the best for the beloved. “Love is not a matter of belief but demonstration,” as expressed in a book I love by Paul Twitchell called Stranger By The River.

When we were a teenager you formed the impression (from Me) that “Love is Love.”  There is no true separation between one “form” of love and another. Family, Friends, Pet Companions, Colleagues, Students, Partners, God, Soul, Inner Master: the love we feel for each and all of these, as it is Love, is the same. Love is the essence and breath of divinity Itself. Love is the Life Force of creation, what you call as an ECKist the Audible and Visible Life Current.

images are from pixabay.com

You thought of love then (still from Me) as a “place” rather than an emotion; as a state of consciousness superseding all others! Remember Dylan’s line: “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now”? We were wiser, then, about love. Now you may need to relearn all of this.

Love=Love means you do not need any other to ‘bring’ love or to feel whole. Love is who you ARE; so be Love! Be a vehicle for love to flow out into your world everyday in every way, never asking for anything in return.

 

 

What Really Is Love? Part One

I’m going to give voice to my inner Lover archetype for this and the next post. We had an internal, “active imagination” dialogue while I was driving from Denver to Colorado Springs last night around the topic of Love.

I mean, really, who am I to speak of love? Apart from spiritual, unconditional love, which I do have abundantly from many decades of spiritual practice and positive relations generally, this is a topic that most would see in the context of romance, marriage and family, and I consider myself “post” relational, except nowadays for deep Friendship with my dog and cats, family, and close friends. I “did relationships…” but I have relinquished that pursuit for over 13 years—as I mentioned in the last post I have a Shadow Lover facet of Self going on…

Anyway then, Part One (this week) as an expression from my Inner Lover to the page is a Better Endings story that She/I like a whole lot and have never forgotten. Part Two (stay tuned!) will be an open expression from my Lover persona archetype about ‘What Really Is Love?’ that we will subtitle: ‘If I could live but only in the Moment.’

A Better Endings Story about ‘What Really Is Love?”:

One of the best love stories I have ever encountered was in a late night movie I happened to catch some 30 years ago on TV. It was titled “The Man Eating Tiger” (or something close to that). It was about a mercenary sharp shooter during WWII who was hired by an African village to track down and kill a Bengal tiger that was terrorizing the community and had already killed many residents. Now as the story goes, there was also a female nurse serving the village who just happened to be a woman the mercenary had been in love with before his best friend and war buddy had married her instead. She was the person who had recommended him for the job of taking down the man-eating tiger. As a plot twist, this nurse’s husband had gone Missing in Action from the WWII  front lines as an Army infantry soldier, and it had been months already since anyone had heard of his whereabouts so that he was considered to have likely been killed.

Now then, the plot thickens as the Mercenary is once again stricken with feelings of love for the nurse, his missing best friend’s wife that he now sees daily but only for so long as he will stay at the African village to complete his mission and take down the Tiger.  He becomes deeply conflicted—as does she but less so—about whether to act on his feelings in his friend’s absence (and probable death). Should he proclaim his love?

The scene I like so much and that I will never forget from this story involves an evening walk that the Mercenary takes with an Indian woman he has befriended, also a nurse in the village. He is able to open up with this wise Indian woman about his deep feelings of love he has for the Nurse and how conflicted he feels about being in the village without being able to declare his true feelings. He WANTS her; he sees the condition of her missing husband as an opportunity to have what he most desperately wants in his life: Her.

But the Indian friend speaks to the Mercenary about the true meaning of Love.  She tells him she has observed Americans and other Europeans to have gotten the reality of love all mixed up and topsy-turvy. She points out that to Europeans, what they—including the Mercenary—think of or speak of as love is much too often little more than possessiveness. They pursue one another by wanting to possess the love “object.” That is wrong. Instead, if they truly were meant for one another, if they truly held genuine and authentic love for one another, they would want ONLY that which would be the very BEST for their beloved. They would be willing and happy in fact to LET GO, to detach from any relationship less than fully conducive to the total freedom and happiness of their beloved.

images are from pixabay.com

Maybe I shouldn’t tell you the rest of the story as it was portrayed in the movie. I will tell you that the husband does come back and that in the jungle whilst the Mercenary is about to catch up with the Tiger, his MIA friend shows up (not yet having arrived at the village to present himself to his wife) and the Man Eating Tiger is about to pounce on him! What do you believe the Mercenary will do? Will he shoot the Tiger and save his rival friend? Has he yet learned what Really Is Love?

Can you relate to this story metaphorically?

I welcome your Comments and Stories!

Lover and Shadow Lover

My own Lover persona archetype (part-of-Self) is bipolar. I mean, it/She has a positive, Strength polarity as well as a deep, Shadow side.

As a Spiritual Lover, I feel happy, loved, cheerful and I love all life. I have gratitude especially for my family (including highly my pet companions), spiritual community, dear friends, and colleagues. I feel so blessed to be among them in this world. From this perspective, everyone I meet I also see the light of God shining within, and I am happy to interact with every Soul that is, in their own way, a spark of divinity, an eternal molecule in the Ocean of Love and Mercy. We are all Here to give and receive love. Life, the very life force that activates and animates all beings, IS love. What else?

“Soul exists because God loves IT.”

(The Shariyat-Ki-SUGMAD/ Way of the Eternal, Bk. I, Paul Twitchell)

But then there’s also Shadow-Lover-Linda.  I don’t want to dwell on this aspect overmuch, but I put it forth because I know that many readers may relate to this side, too. The experience of being human— or perhaps in any physical embodiment— encompasses duality.

To know the Light we must also embrace, at times, the darkness. This part of me, my Shadow Lover, feels Alone.  Cast off or adrift from the Totality or Unity of life as ONE, from here I perceive the divisiveness of people in the world; the apparent coldness and indifference, the non-embrace, the self-absorption in others or in my own emotional experience.

I want to cry out, sometimes to cry, to give love and be received without judgment, without mental analysis or critique, without prejudice of first— or developed— impressions.

This world can be so hard. We learn we must give unconditional love to all yet reserve the “warm,” tender, gentler expression of love for those we trust, and in this world, sadly, waves of trust can rise and fall, wax and wane like flickering shadows or fragile candle flames..

I prefer the Light. But I also embrace my Shadow-Lover-Linda. I carry her with me and try to give room for her in my heart consciousness, always.

images are from pixabay.com

I welcome your comments and stories!

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?

When I was young, I remember asking my sister this question one day. We were in the kitchen. I was about 10 and she was 6.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

(pause, deep thought, and then) “I know! A Bunnyrabbit!”

What a great image! And do you know, my sister did grow up to be a bunny rabbit, in her way. She is very active and holds a lot of responsibility that helps a lot of people. Plus she has a tremendous group of very active friends, and most of all for the last several years she has been our family’s primary caregiver for our 89 year old mother who suffers from late stage Parkinsons at a nursing home near to my sister’s home.  My sister’s home has become, because so near to Mom, the nucleus for our family visits. So, she is always hopping!

How did or might you have answered this question while you were young:

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP? (You may print this out and use the space below to journal in.)

 

 

Now  then, WHY (did/would you have answered this way)?

 

 

 

 

 

I have found an interesting pattern from asking this question, and then following it with: “How would you answer that same question today/ What do you want to be now when you ‘grow up’ (and, ‘Is there a difference between how you would have answered as a child and now/ Why?'”).

The way people answer this question reveals something about the dominant ARCHETYPE influences they identify with. Here’s a list of The Twelve primordial persona archetypes identified by the late Dr. Charles Bebeau of the Avalon Archetype Institute (as adapted by Debra Breazzano, MA/LPC) :

ELDER LEADER  ARTIST  TEACHER

LOVER  IDEALIST  COMMUNICATOR

WARRIOR  GOLDEN CHILD  HEALER

NURTURER  DESCENDER  MYSTIC

For example, I have found that people holding a childhood dream of becoming an Aviator or an Astronaut show when they complete the life mapping process I offer that they have a strong IDEALIST archetype orientation.  People who say they wanted to be a Superhero (a common childhood ‘fantasy’) later often show a strong WARRIOR archetypal persona. And those who wanted to become a veterinarian, for instance, tend to embody and gravitate to the HEALER mode, etcetera.

Which of these twelve persona archetype figures do you recognize as primary personas within yourself?

People (Adults) often say the difference in how they would have answered this question as a child, and now, is that now they have “matured” to accept more “realistic” limitations. To the extent that some of these early archetypal influences may be less strong in later life (many are still present but expressing in more subdued form), some of these archetypal impulses could be suppressed or repressed. That is why it is good to renew this question and see how you FEEL about pursuing your ‘childlike’ Dream from here forward.

You can still BE that Superhero; you still ARE that airy-fairy inner Explorer/ IDEALIST. It can help to get in touch with all of your inner “parts of Self” that relate especially to the significant Themes in your life (e.g. Parent / Teacher/ Lover/ Spirituality oriented/ Artist, etcetera).  Jung would say it benefits us all to attend to and to INTEGRATE these various sub-selves, to orchestrate them, I would add, in pursuit of our Life Mission and goals.

images are from pixabay.com

This month, October, is associated astrologically with Libra and the LOVER Archetype.  This is an opportunity to call your own LOVER forward to partner with you this month.  Get to know your LOVER persona. How does S/HE express in your life? Is S/HE in Strength mode (positive outlet) or in Shadow (if so how/ why?) What does S/HE, your Inner LOVER part-of-Self, want of you or for itself? How can you include your Inner LOVER in your outer life more fully? These are some questions you might explore.

I invite your comments and stories!