Category Archives: Core Power Archetypes

Three Essential Rules to Getting the Most from Your Archetypes

Archetype Management Isn’t Easy – Three Rules to Getting the Most from Your Archetypal Team

Leadership is our biggest challenge ever - and leading our inner archetypal team is as challenging as leading other people!

Leadership is our biggest challenge ever – and leading our inner archetypal team is as challenging as leading other people!

Who says leadership is easy?

Whether you’re Chairman of the Board, or managing a group of pre-schoolers, we all know that getting people (even toddlers) to cooperate on a single mission or goal is a hugely difficult challenge.

In the company that I co-founded prior to my current one, my job was to be the Chief Scientist – the resident genius.

Being a genius was the easy job. The CEO’s job was much tougher!

The CEO had the hard job; he was managing much more complexity – different people, different groups of people, and each had their own sense of what was most important. He had to work with each person (or group) differently to get them to really come on board with his view for what we should all be doing next.

But just like learning to be a good CEO – or good Chairman of the Board – is a learned skill, learning to manage our inner archetypes is also something that we learn.

Three essential rules help us manage our inner archetypes for not just greatest effectiveness, but greatest inner calm and serenity as we create what we desire in life.

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Rule #1: Keep It Simple

The pure sheer force of our inner archetypes is not some abstract, fuzzy-wuzzy concept. Instead, each powerful archetype pushes and pulls us towards circumstances in our lives.

Our inner archetypes have strong desires and tendencies; these lead to immersing ourselves in activities and committing to relationships and obligations.

Case in point.

My young colleague is brilliant. Truly a creative genius. She also has the drive, the passion, to make her visionary creations become real.

The result? Her inner Magician is one of her most dominant archetypes.

Because of her strong inner Magician, she’s in graduate school – and of course, in a very challenging major.

She pushes herself harder than her course-of-study demands. She takes courses that are not absolutely necessary to get her degree, because she sees that what she’ll learn is essential for what she’s creating. She does research, she builds systems that will let her experiment with her novel ideas.

All of this would be just fine – but …

She’s also a mother. Let me make that Mother, capital M. She wanted to be a mom. She fought hard to be a mom. And it didn’t come easy; numerous heartaches and personal sacrifices just to get her child.

So of course, her child takes time. Mental, emotional, and physical time and energy. And she gives this very gladly. This is her Empress/Isis archetype, with a very strong lead.

So now she’s got two of the strongest archetypes going full-tilt, and their demands are non-negotiable.

Even this could be handled. But … (you knew this was coming, right?)

Her income is essential to the family’s well-being. She is forced – more by life-circumstance than by personal desire right now – to spend a lot of time in a job. When you get right down to it, non-negotiable. This means that she spends a lot of time also being an Emperor; a major bread-winner for her family.

Three core power archetypes. Each of them needs – no, demands – a whole lotta time.

How do we deal, when we are in this (not uncommon) situation?

Ruthlessly prioritize how we use our time. Everything that is not essential to our archetype-needs must go towards rest and replenishment for ourselves.

Illustrative example (my colleague’s case):

Taking the child on a Disney vacation during school break. Good call. Doesn’t matter that my colleague had papers to write, experiments to run, and was just simply dragging-her-heels tired. Doesn’t matter that the vacation was damn expensive; meant ratcheting up a credit card. It created good memories. Fun family times. A much-needed break from routine and from consistently putting energy on papers, experiments, etc. Good use of time, money, and energy.

The money and time involved can be recouped.

The pictures that she, her husband, and her child took – irreplaceable. And there will never be this moment with that child again.

Now a not-so-good use of time? A family reunion when there’s emotional tension, demands, dynamics. When said young colleague feels drained after every interaction. She leaves this so-called “vacation” far more depleted than when she began.

See the difference?

When it comes to supporting our archetypes, we can recoup losses of money and time. If we have to borrow to start a business, go to school, whatever – we’ll recover.

It’s a lot harder to recoup from emotional bleed-outs; from situations that get inside our defenses with criticisms and nagging. From people who drain our psychic energy, for whatever rationale or reason.

The lesson from Rule #1: If we’re managing a tough archetypal challenge (three, or even two) dominant and demanding inner archetypes, and if we’ve committed to their aspirations and goals – everything that does not support these commitments must go.

This does not mean that we don’t take time for prayer and pleasure (High Priestess and Hathor). What it does mean is that we don’t let commitments to others sap our reserves; our reserves are necessary to keep ourselves going.

Ask yourself – how do I feel? – after each of these extra commitments or interactions. If we’re short on sleep, but bubbly, then yes – go for it. If we’re drained to the core, then – look more closely. A whole lot more closely.

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Rule #2: Deliberately Involve Your Supporting Archetypes to Help with the Major Ones

Suppose that you’re managing a team that has some real hot-shot players. Something like a football team with a fabulous quarterback, or a basketball team with Michael Jordan. (At this point my sports-analogy-abilities run out. But you get the idea.)

The smart coach will make the big plays off the star players, right?

And he (or she) will train the team so that the other football players clear the field for the quarterback. Or they set up the throw for the basketball super-star.

This is a lot like taking the family on a Disney vacation. (See above.)

A lot like; a little different.

If we’ve got one, two, or three major archetypal commitments, then the rest of the archetypes must go into support mode.

Not everyone can be the quarterback.

Not everyone can call the shots.

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Rule #3: Use Desire More than Drive in Mobilizing towards What You Want

I tend to write either in the middle of the night, or in the earliest hours of the morning.

This morning (really, closer to midnight), I woke up, and thought about writing to you. The injunction that all blog-writers have in their minds came up – how important it was to stay steady and consistent. I felt motivated, but it wasn’t really enough to get me out of bed.

Then I thought about how much I really wanted to connect with you. Some of you, I know in person, or via email exchanges. But with some of you (brave soul that you are), we’ve never met. Our relationship is strictly through this blogging channel.

Yet still – just by my showing up to write, and you showing up to read – this is a relationship.

What got me out of bed this morning wasn’t drive, it was desire.

Drive pushes from behind (we all know how good that DOESN’T feel!); desire pulls us forward.

Has Your High Priestess Been Shortchanged This Year? (How to Fix)

Your High Priestess and Your Empress Archetypes – Are Both Their Needs Being Met?

Introducing Julie Marie Rahm, certified YUEN Mastery Practitioner and Instructor

Julie Marie Rahm, the Resultant, is a  certified YUEN Mastery practitioner and instructor.

Julie Marie Rahm, the Resultant, is a certified YUEN Mastery practitioner and instructor.

This week’s Guest Blog by Julie Marie Rahm, the Resultant, gives us insight on how to regain our center when we’ve over-extended ourselves by nurturing and caring for others.

Julie applies YUEN Mastery, the New Science of Achieving Immediate Results; a blend of insight and logic with a dash of quantum physics. The bottom line – if you’re ready to be free of stress and pain, if you’re ready for self-mastery, if you’re ready to know what’s really going on in the world, then read her articles or schedule a one-on-one results-guaranteed telephone consultation with Julie.

Note from Alay’nya: Curious about the Yuen Method? I was. And I had my own consultation with Julie just yesterday. Learn more about this method in this week’s post from the Alay’nya Studio (look for the link two days from now, Thursday, Jan. 30th), and in next week’s blogpost here in The Unveiling Journey. (I’ll put the link in when I write next week’s post.)

It’s been less than twenty-four hours, and I can already feel the life-changing difference!

Our Inner Empress – Feeling Good through Helping Others Feel Good

We’ve just come out of the Season of the Empress. She was our dominant energy from Samhain (October 31st) to Winter Solstice (December 21st).

Our Empress Archetype Is All About Connecting and Nurturing.

The Empress - Major Arcana Card III - from the Touchstone Tarot by Kat Black.

The Empress – Major Arcana Card III – from the Touchstone Tarot by Kat Black.

When in our Empress mode, we’re under the sway of the powerful neurohormone oxytocin.

As beautifully described by Dr. Shelley Taylor in The Tending Instinct, oxytocin makes us seek out and find pleasure in the warmth of human connection.

When we are pregnant and mothers of young children, we are awash in oxytocin, and it governs much of what we do until our children leave home and menopause arrives. (Usually, these two events more-or-less coincide, and check out Dr. Louann Brizendine’s book, The Female Brain.)

Our Empress Archetype Causes Us to Bond with Animals

We get a surge of oxytocin, a feel-good neurohormone, from playing with warm, furry animals. Photo courtesy Sciencephotos.com.

We get a surge of oxytocin, a feel-good neurohormone, from playing with warm, furry animals. Photo courtesy Sciencephotos.com.

If we are not maternal – by nature or by life-role – we often nurture animals. Nothing like cuddling up with our pet cat, or romping with our dog, to release a good oxytocin surge into our brains – helping us feel calmer, more soothed, and more happy with life. Meg Daley Olmert describes how oxytocin helps the human-animal bond in Made for Each Other: The Biology of the Human-Animal Bond.

Obviously, both men and women access the Empress archetype – think of the many men who are devoted fathers, or whose lives involve caring for people and animals. It’s the same neurohormone that gives all of us satisfaction in the human-human or human-animal bond.

Our Empress Governs the Biggest Feast-Days and Holidays of the Year

In our Empress mode, we get satisfaction from nurturing others - particularly during holiday feasts!

In our Empress mode, we get satisfaction from nurturing others – particularly during holiday feasts!

It’s no coincidence that our Empress time encompasses the two biggest feasting, family, human-warmth-and-connection times of the year – Thanksgiving and Christmas.

But what happens when our Empress is overextended?

This can happen so, so easily.

Our Empress is about caring; not about setting boundaries. Thus, when someone needs her, she often responds without saying, No, I need time for myself right now.

Sometimes, there’s a crisis during the holidays and people need more time than expected.

Sometimes, there’s too much travel; too many demands on our time.

Sometimes, people come to visit – and stay longer than expected, or we have the lovely misfortune of living someplace where everyone wants to visit us over the holidays!

At the end of this time – special though it was – we need time for ourselves.

Our Inner High Priestess – Intuitive and Contemplative

The High Priestess, depicted by Mari.

The High Priestess, depicted by Mari-Na.

Our inner High Priestess is all about regrouping.

During the darkest time of winter, she’s about staying in bed for an extra hour or so each day.

Instead of focusing on the needs and wants of others, our High Priestess wants to not focus at all.

Our inner High Priestess wants to drift in a quiet, calm, contemplative space – and being forced to focus on anyone, or anything, is painful to this aspect of our psyche.

After being an Empress (sometimes for too long), we need our High Priestess to recharge.

Did you get your High Priestess time this year?

If you’re a little low on your High Priestess, you can still nurture her – and thus nurture your whole self.

Read this Guest Post from Julie Rahm to find out how.

Instant Rejuvenation for Generation Empress – Guest Post from Julie Marie Rahm, aka The Resultant

Forget about being a Baby Boomer. Aren’t we in fact the Sandwich Generation, caught in the middle?

Our adult offspring have boomeranged back home. Also, our aging parents need daily attention. Thus, perhaps an even more fitting title for our generation of women is Generation Empress.

If you are like me, you find yourself for months on end in full-throttle Empress mode, caring for and nurturing family, friends, clients.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy my family, friends, and clients. However, spending all of our time in Empress mode causes us to stagnate in body, mind, and spirit. Flow stops and unevenness sets in between others and us. Where there is unevenness, there is struggle. Struggle leads to reactions of anger and frustration.

What’s an Empress to do? Read on.

First, restore flow and thus rejuvenate by investing at least five minutes in contemplative High Priestess mode every day.

How? I recommend awakening five minutes earlier than usual. Sit in bed with the lights out. Imagine your day unfolding perfectly to your design. Most others are still asleep, so you can connect without static to the Universe and the Universe can connect back to you, supporting your design.

Then, strengthen yourself for your day.

How? Imagine a bright point of light moving quickly up and down from the crown of your head through your spine to the bottom of your tailbone. Run the light up and down eight times while saying to yourself “strengthen and delete.” Throughout the day, “run the light” any time you need a boost!

As you incorporate those first five minutes into each day, be willing to be amazed.

Expect to feel stronger and be happier.

My clients from ages eight to eighty agree that “running the light” daily is life changing. May it be for you, too!

Does Your Inner Empress Need to Recharge? (Ask Julie!)

Julie Marie Rahm, M.S., is a Resultant who resolves problems for individuals, families, schools, organizations, and businesses. How? She applies YUEN Mastery, the New Science of Immediate Results; a blend of insight and logic with a dash of quantum physics.

Julie is a certified YUEN Mastery practitioner and instructor. She earned her B.S. in physics and mathematics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and her M.S. in industrial engineering at Georgia Tech. She worked for the U.S. Navy and Department of Defense for 20 years before applying physics and engineering to the human body and the human condition. Find her online at Problems-Resolved.com.

"Where Are the Initiated Men of Power Today?" – An Answer to Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette

To Find the “Initiated Men of Power” – Seek Out the Martial Arts Masters

Leaders of the men’s movement today are addressing the question brought before them by young men:

“In a Bill Moyers interview with poet Robert Bly … a young man asked the question, ‘Where are the initiated men of power today?’ We have written this book in order to answer this question, which is on the minds of both men and women. In the beginning of the twenty-first century, we face a crisis in the masculine identity of vast proportions. Increasingly, observers of the contemporary scene – sociologists, anthropologists, and depth psychologists – are discovering the devastating dimensions of this phenomenon, which affects each of us personally as much as it affects our society as a whole.”

(See Robert Moore’s website page for this quote and also for an introduction to the excellent book by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, written to answer this question.

See also my review of Moore and Gillette’s book on today’s Unveiling webpage, Moore and Gillette; King, Warrior, Magician, Lover.

The question is a real one. In all of our mythic Heroic Quests, the young man is tutored by a sage, someone whom we’ll call a Hierophant – a “wise older man” who can guide the young man towards full adulthood. In his excellent book, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Dan Millman describes his teacher Socrates.

In the movie Star Wars, Luke Skywalker is tutored first by Obi-wan Kenobi, then by Yoda. In The Karate Kid (1984 version), Dan is tutored by a martial arts master, Mr. Miyagi.

What is consistent here? Young men are taught by martial arts masters. This is the classic initial stage of the Hero’s Journey.

Socrates, Obi-wan Kenobi and Yoda, and Mr. Miyagi – together with numerous similar characters in fiction and film – are idealizations. But the “real versions” exist!

In Unveiling: The Inner Journey, I credit two martial arts masters with whom it has been a great privilege to study. Robert Fusaro Sensei, 7th Dan, Founder of Midwest Karate Association, and Peter Ralston, founder of both the Cheng Hsin school and the martial arts discipline of that name, are masters who are substantial and very authentic. Further, diligent search of the martial arts schools and systems in most cities will reveal others who are competent teachers; not only of martial arts, but also of life.

Even those who prefer something other than martial arts can benefit by the pathway to becoming a “Superior Man,” as described by author Davide Deida.

Deida states “The two ways to bring you right to your masculine edge of power are austerity and challenge.” (The Way of the Superior Man, p. 191)

Women are aware of whether or not men are willing to do this. As we observe men, we note whether they are creatures of comfort, or if they are afraid to disrupt their own “status quo.” In essence, we note their courage – their willingness to accept both discomfort (“austerity”) and their willingness to step beyond their safety zone (“challenge”).

So for all men who are looking for a pathway: Seek out austerity and challenge, as Deida suggests. Give up the TV and the video games, and spend time in a real dojo; study with a martial arts master. Push yourself into the wilderness and into your own wildness. Then see how your woman responds to you. (Or if you are not in a relationship, then observe what sorts of women begin to be attracted to you.)

Six Top Blog Posts for The Unveiling Journey

Six-Year Anniversary for The Unveiling Journey Blog Series: Six Top Blog Posts Over Past Six Years

Over these six years, I’ve written about 100 blog posts.

The archetype overview blogs are by far the most popular in the nearly 100 blogposts, written over six years, for The Unveiling Journey – a companion blog to the book, Unveiling: The Inner Journey, published in July, 2011.

The most popular concept that people are tracking is that of our core power archetypes.

Crucial Themes for Previous The Unveiling Journey Blog Posts

Many of the Unveiling Journey blogs over the past two years (since Unveiling was published) have focused on refining and giving more context for the six core power archetypes, together with identifying and building out the two “support role” archetypes – the two rest-and-recharge ones.

Not surprisingly, the most popular blogs have been those that overviewed the eight core archetypes – either as all eight, or focusing on the six core power ones. The masculine/feminine archetypal distinctions have also been popular.

For all of these crucial blog posts, the essential diagram is the Core Archetype Octant Chart given below. It shows each of the core archetypes (six core power ones, and two rest-and-recharge ones), mapped to the Jungian Psychological Type matrix. (This subsumes the Introversion/Extroversion distinction, and focuses on the three other modalities: Sensing/INtuition, Thinking/Feeling, and Judging/Perceiving.)

Core archetypes octant chart - each archetype (each octant) corresponds to one of Jung's Psychological Types (discounting the introversion/extroversion distinction).

Core archetypes octant chart – each archetype (each octant) corresponds to one of Jung’s Psychological Types (discounting the introversion/extroversion distinction). Copyright Alianna J. Maren, Ph.D., 2013. All rights reserved.

The Six Most Popular Blogs – During Six Years of The Unveiling Journey

Here, in increasing order of popularity, are the six most popular blog posts since this blog site was established:

  • #6: Becoming a Master of the Universe: Three Essential Life-Stages – three stages, and seven steps each, describe our adult life journey – real mastery work; and the first of these (the Worldly Sequence) encompasses our six core power archetypes, followed by integration,
  • #5: Moore and Gillette, “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover” – 2 1/3 Out of Four Ain’t Bad! – Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette advance the notion of four core archetypes describing the male psyche. (Similar approach to how Antonia Wolff advanced the notion of four core feminine archetypes in her highly-regarded Structural Forms of the Feminine Psyche.) Find out why Moore and Gillette rank 2 and 1/3 as a “correct score” out of four possible points (whereas Antonia Wolff’s insights get 3 1/3 out of 4),
  • #4: Masculine vs. Feminine – Core Archetypes – particularly useful if you’re trying to understand a “masculine” archetype within a simplified “feminine” archetypal group (what does your Amazon really mean?), and vice versa, ,
  • #3: The “Unveiling Archetypes” and the Jungian Dimensions – details the relationship between the eight core archetypes and the Jungian Psychological Types,
  • #2: Mapping the Eight Core Power Archetypes to the Jungian System – introduces the notion that there can be a relationship between the eight core archetypes and the Jungian Psychological Types (this is an intro blog; you can skip it and go directly to #3, which is meatier),
  • #1 (The All-Time Winner for Blog Popularity): Your Six “Power Archetypes” – What Happens When One Doesn’t Function? – introduces the notion that we need to cultivate all of our core power archetypes – not just sit in our primary one. The idea that we would be “typecast” was an indirect result of the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory, which was invented to match incoming servicemen (and women) to military specialties during WWII. Carl Jung, in his theories for the Psychological Types, advocated that we develop all of our Type-roles over time. This realization is coming back more into mainstream recognition.

If You Had to Pick Just One

The most useful blog out of these six is not the one that’s been the most popular. Instead, it’s the most recent one: Masculine vs. Feminine – Core Archetypes. Three reasons that I suggest this as your starting place:

  1. Most useful and relevant content – in the eighteen months between posting the first blogs on core archetypes and their integration (these would be the three most popular blogs), I’ve had plenty of time to refine, distill, and make more concrete the essential ideas,
  2. Clearest overview of the eight core archetypes – including their match-ups to the Jungian Psychological Type dimensions, and
  3. Best encapsulation of the “feminine archetype” and “masculine archetype” bundles – gives a concise summary of how women use their Amazon archetype as a short-hand notation (or “bundling”) for their four masculine archetypes, and how men use their Lover archetype as a “bundling” for their feminine ones – the pros and cons of this “bundling” for each gender.

Over the past two years, I’ve been “filling in the blanks” for each of the core archetypes. (A detailed Guide will appear in a forthcoming blog.)

In the next few weeks, I’ll divulge the Editorial Calendar for the coming year – important topics, major themes, and essential insights (useful for helping you navigate your own Journeys). In addition, starting in 2014, we’ll introduce several Guest Bloggers – people who have important messages to share about their own JourneysHeroic, Integration, or Great.


Alay'nya - author of "Unveiling: The Inner Journey"

Alay’nya – author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey

Very best wishes as discover and empower each of your core archetypes during your own inner journey!

Alay’nya
(Alianna J. Maren, Ph.D.)

Author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey
You are the Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus. Become the Jewel!

The Unveiling Journey blog details the theory – archetypes, life journeys, integration.

To experience your own Journey in a structured, safe, and gentle (yet effective) setting, visit Alay’nya’s website, and consider either a workshop with Alay’nya or one-on-one coaching.


Resources

Connect with Alay’nya and the Unveiling Community


Unveiling, by Alay'nya, currently has an overall five-star Amazon rating.

Unveiling, by Alay’nya, currently has twenty five-star Amazon reviews.

This blog series develops themes originally published in Unveiling: The Inner Journey, published by Mourning Dove Press.

Unveiling currently has twenty 5-star Amazon reviews, and has been recommended by luminaries:

  • Dr. Christiane Northrup – “This book is delightful”
  • Midwest Book Review, in Bethany’s Books – reviews by Susan Bethany – “highly recommended”
  • Nizana al Rassan, writing for (the now out of circulation) iShimmy.com – “a fascinating read with so much wisdom and solid advice.”

 

 


Julie Marie Rahm, aka America’s Mindset Mechanic on Unveiling: The Inner Journey

What does Julie Rahm, America’s Mindset Mechanic and author of Handle Everything: Eight Tools You Need to Live Well and Prosper have to say about Unveiling: The Inner Journey?

Julie writes:

Unveiling is the definitive guidebook for women who want to experience lives of joy and fulfillment, and who just want to exhale into each day. Alay’nya reveals powerful, personal stories of her own life journey to fascinating womanhood, sensuality, and self-acceptance in ways that struck me like a velvet hammer. Her fresh approach to living illuminated my own bind spots. It is impossible to read Unveiling without awakening to new and possibly shocking self-awareness. For women ready to make real and lasting changes toward enlightenment and bliss, Unveiling is a must-read..”

Read this and more reviews of Unveiling: The Inner Journey.


 

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Kindle

 


Julie Marie Rahm, America’s Mindset Mechanic

Check out Julie Marie Rahm!

Julie Marie Rahm, America’s Mindset Mechanic and author of Handle Everything: Eight Tools You Need to Live Well and Prosper and also Military Kids Speak (great for parents, teachers, and coaches of military kids) uses a great technique that can help you clear energy blockages, ranging from those from this life through the influence of your ancestral karma. Connect with Julie at info (at) americasmindsetmechanic (dot) com to learn more about how she can help you.

Books by Julie Marie Rahm, America’s Mindset Mechanic

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Copyright (c) 2013, Alay’nya (Alianna J. Maren, Ph.D.). All rights reserved.

Related Posts: Archetypal Roles and Everyday Life

Inner Stillness Leads to Your Palace of Pleasure

The Pathway to Your Pleasure-Goddess Hathor Lies in Finding Your Inner Quiet Core

Are you ready to break the chains?

Are you ready to break the chains?

Are you feeling that your life is run – much too much – by your commitments and your “to-do” list?

Are you seeking to bring more pleasure into your life?

Are you actually desiring to reframe your entire life so that pleasure is at your center and your core?

In short, are you ready to start making you your own top priority? Not your job. Not your husband or significant other. Not your family (could be parents, could be the kids).

Not even fitting into your own earlier expectations for yourself.

These are ones that you may have carved out for yourself much earlier, and now find to be way too much of a straightjacket.

In short, are you ready to bust loose? To find freedom? To discover and embrace who you really are?

Welcome to the club, dearest one.

Pioneers in Pleasure

One of the strongest advocates for women finding their own pathway to pleasure these days is Regena Thomaschauer, aka Mama Gena. An early interview with her, for Glamour magazine, cited some of Mama’s suggested reading. Among these were a book by Dr. Stella Resnick, The Pleasure Zone: Why We Resist Good Feelings and How to Let Go and Be Happy.

Naturally, I did what you would do: I jumped into the book using Amazon’s Look Inside feature. And I found the most fascinating little vignette:

At that point, I felt I couldn’t just go back to my hectic life in San Francisco. It was time to confront my pain and loneliness and discover what was keeping me so unhappy. A month after my mother’s death, I moved to Mount Tremper, New York, a town int he Catskill Mountainst near Woodstock. The few people I know ther had summerhomes, and in winter they came jp only for an occasional weekend. I found a small house surrounded by woods, without a TV, and signed a lease for a year.

I spent that year in the country more alone than ever before – bht this time it was a chosen solitude. For guidance, I read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden…

At first, my days were terribly lonely. I cried a lot and felt sorry for myself. I read, wrote in my journal, and took long walks in the woods… In winter, I chopped kindling to feed the fires in the two potbellied stoves and fireplace that kept me from freezing.

What I began to discover during those endless days was how little I knew about how to be happy on a daily basis. I knew how to drive myself to succeed. I knew how to criticize myself … But I didn’t know how to take on a day and enjoy it…

Finally … I had a flash of insight… It isn’t enough to know what you are doing wrong, you have to know how to do it right…

I had no role models of happiness… I knew how to have a good time and to distract myself … with external pleasures… I could relish being admired by others and indulge myself in a material success … But I didn’t know how to get off my own case and relax, to enjoy the inner pleasures of a quiet mind and ease within my body.

So that becamse my grand revelation, what I had intuitively placed myself in exile to learn. I had not come to figure out what was wrong with me… I had come to experiment with how to do things differently. More than that, I had come to discover what was truly right with me.

One of the first actions I took was to turn all the clocks toward the wall and to tape over the clock on the stove. Even though I was completely alone, I still found myself fixated on time – what time to wake up, when to eat a meal, how much time was left in the day, and how late I was staying up. I realized I was uncomfortable with open-ended time.

It was hard at first, but I came to appreciate the freedom in the open space… When I released myself from the tyranny of time, I became more attuned to my own natural rhythms … If there was a choice … I saw how easy it was for me to be hard on myself. More and more I began to choose kindness. [pp. 7 – 10, The Pleasure Zone, by Dr. Stella Resnick]

Here we have it – one of the most essential keys to finding our true sense of inner pleasure.

It’s not necessarily the physical things – the special objects that we crave, or being pampered at a spa, or going out and having fun. These are all good, and way too often, we are pleasure-deprived.

So please – bear with me on this.

By all means, we should go for that which makes us feel good, and sometimes, that is pure, sheer fun, or physical sensation.

But there is this deeper level within ourselves, and our true sense of pleasure is embedded in this more internal core.

What Keeps Us from Our Pleasure Zone?

Dr. Resnick writes about how, at first, she had to deal with massive waves of negative self-talk. She had to penetrate these before she could find her inner self.

So very often, as soon as we start to unwrap the very tight constraints that we put on ourselves, the first thing that happens is that all of our internal self-talk gets very, very loud.

It’s hard to turn this off. Zen masters and yogis spend years in meditation, just trying to bring the internal noise level down. So should we expect it to be easy? Of course not!

But we can get through it.

Dr. Resnick got through it much like putting herself into a “mindfulness boot-camp” for a year. No distractions. No TV, no Twitter. Just herself and a lot of hard work; chopping enough wood to feed the stoves through the long winter nights.

Brutal, but effective.

Most of us won’t take a year off. (In next week’s post, though, I’ll take us through another story of a woman who did.)

What we can do is start to notice how we fill our lives with distractions in order to put a lid on the noise of our self-talk.

That’s it.

The most important thing that keeps us from having more pleasure in our lives is that our self-talk is so negative, we’d rather be under huge pressures and horrible deadlines; we’d rather listen to any banality on TV, or trace through jungles of Facebook links, that be quiet inside.

The Turning Point

The most telling point in Dr. Resnick’s story was when she turned all the clocks to the wall and taped over the clock on the stove.

Do you know what she did with this one, final, extreme act?

She called in her High Priestess archetype, in a major and extreme way.

This was an act of extreme courage.

It may not have seemed like this to her at the time. It may have seemed like the only thing that she could do – to start knowing herself aside from the superimposed mind-chatter. It may have seemed like an act of desperation – something that only the soul in its extreme state would do.

But it worked.

From this point on, she began to know herself.

This tells us something that we all need to learn.

In order to access our inner Hathor, our inner pleasure-goddess, we first need to bring an extreme interrupt-signal to our mind-chatter. This includes self-judgments and expectations, as well as the constant vying of our other archetypes (most often our inner Emperor and Magician) who insist that survival depends on action.

Who Is Our High Priestess, and How Does She Help Us?

In order to understand our inner High Priestess, it helps us to review our masculine archetypes. After all (writing to you in late September), we’ve just been through two quarters dominated by masculine “energies” – Spring (the metaphysical Season of Air), and Summer (the metaphysical Season of Fire). So, for the past six months, our studies (and sometimes our lives) have been dominated by masculine archetypes.

By definition, all of the masculine archetypes are – using the Jungian framework – very goal-oriented. Some are more so than others. Our Green Man, for instance, may set hiking to the top of the next hill as a goal. Our Magician and our Emperor, however, are extremely and dominantly goal-oriented.

Our society reinforces the value of our Magician and Emperor archetypes. Thus, not only do we have them – as “inner voices” – telling us that they and their needs are important; they should be in charge – but all the messages that we get about success and survival reinforce that we should be in Magician or Emperor modes as much as possible. (Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In is just one such recent example.)

But if we’re focused on Leaning In, then we’re not giving ourselves permission to step back, are we?

When we Lean In, we’re putting our Amazon archetype (our bundle of the four masculine archetypes) in the forefront.

And yes, whenever we get an Amazon in the room, she tends to take over, right?

It’s much more difficult – it takes almost an extreme situation – to get our Amazon to release control, and to let our High Priestess have a moment.

Because our Amazon is a bundle of all our masculine archetypes (and we women use this sometimes just for simplicity, not for accuracy), she is – like the masculine archetypes themselves – very goal-driven.

All the masculine archetypes are Judging. They like to come to closure. They like to cross things off the list. “On schedule, on budget,” is their creed.

In contrast, our feminine archetypes are Perceiving, rather than Judging. They are by nature open-ended. One thought or connection leads to another, which leads to another.

Authors Bill and Pam Farrell expresses this by saying, Men Are Like Waffles, Women Are Like Spaghetti. (See the Farrell’s Men Are Like Waffles, Women Are Like Spaghetti YouTube vid, and for an absolutely hilarious vid on this subject, click on What Attracts Men the Most About Women.

The masculine archetypes tend to focus in.

The feminine archetypes tend to expand out.

When we invoke a feminine archetype – in any form – our minds go into Perceiving mode. Our thoughts spread outward like ripples on an a lake.

If we’re in Empress mode (and we will be, in just five more weeks), we think about people and animals and their needs. Thoughts about one person lead to thoughts about another. Our lives fill up with caretaking and nurturing.

When we’re in Hestia mode (a less feeling, and more thinking, mode), our thoughts are about maintaining our homes. One task or chore leads to the next. “A woman’s work is never done.” It’s not so much that we’re task or closure-driven, it’s that one small task leads to the next, which leads to the next one.

When we’re in pleasure-seeking Hathor mode (as is our desire right now; we’re getting there), one pleasure opens the door for the next.

When we’re in High Priestess mode – if we’re successful in shutting down our internal noise – we have a more diffuse awareness that extends out from ourselves. We don’t try to chase down thoughts. Instead, we begin to notice what emerges from within.

And this becomes our real source of pleasure. We begin to notice that which truly speaks to us.

As expressed in the Latin American folksong Guantanamera,

The little streams of the mountains
Please me more than the sea

Men as well as women need to invoke their High Priestess, and they do. (Read a lovely interview with William O’Shaughnessy, who reflects on that line from Guantanamera.)

Taking This Home

So – the abstract concepts of Hathor and High Priestess – what do they mean to us in our day-to-day lives?

Starting now, and for the coming six months, we’re exploring our feminine archetypes. Right now, we’re entering into our Hathor mode – we’re opening ourselves to pleasure, in all its forms.

Soon, just in time for Thanksgiving and the Christmas/Hanukah/Solstice holidays, we’ll be focusing on nurturing those who are close to us – and even extending love and kindness to strangers. This will be our Empress time.

With holiday festivities over, we go into the deeper, quieter, and most introspective time of the year – our High Priestess time. And just as we feel like moving about again, we’ll engage our inner Hestia – goddess of hearth and home – as we start spring cleaning.

We don’t have to wait until January to invoke our High Priestess, though. Not when we need her tranquil presence to help us discern that which we truly desire, versus that which we feel we should desire.

Thus, as we seek the pathway to pleasure in our lives, we can begin with High Priestess-type actions.

We can go for a walk. (Julie Cameron describes this as an Artist’s Walk in her book, The Vein of Gold.)

We can journal. (Julia refers to this as writing down our Morning Pages in The Artist’s Way.)

We can pull out magazine-images of things that inspire us – or even strike our fancy – and put them into a box, or even get fancy and put them into sheet protectors in a three-ring binder, or make a collage.

The weather is going to be beautiful, darlings!

The summer’s heat has been cooling off. The colors are vibrant. The farmer’s markets are showing the best of late-summer harvests; flowers and luscious fruits and veggies.

Why not make a sensual adventure this weekend of going to a farmer’s market, tasting wonderful samples, and bringing home something for a special meal?

Enjoy it either outside (if it’s a sunny, warm day), or set a table for yourself (and perhaps some special others) near a window where you can see the best that early autumn has to offer.


Much love to you, darling, as we learn to bring more pleasure into our lives!


Alay'nya, author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey.

Alay’nya, author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey.

To your own health, wealth, success, and overall well-being –

Alay’nya (Alianna J. Maren, Ph.D.)
Author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey
You are the Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus. Become the Jewel!

Check out Alay’nya’s YouTube Channel
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Unveiling, by Alay'nya, currently has an overall five-star Amazon rating.

Unveiling, by Alay’nya, currently has an overall five-star Amazon rating.

This blog series develops themes originally published in Unveiling: The Inner Journey, published by Mourning Dove Press.

Unveiling currently has twenty 5-star Amazon reviews, and has been recommended by luminaries:

  • Dr. Christiane Northrup – “This book is delightful”
  • Midwest Book Review, in Bethany’s Books – reviews by Susan Bethany – “highly recommended”
  • Nizana al Rassan, writing for (the now out of circulation) iShimmy.com – “a fascinating read with so much wisdom and solid advice.”

 

 


Unveiling, by Alay'nya, currently has an overall five-star Amazon rating.

Unveiling, by Alay’nya, currently has an overall five-star Amazon rating.

This blog series develops themes originally published in Unveiling: The Inner Journey, published by Mourning Dove Press.

Unveiling currently has twenty 5-star Amazon reviews, and has been recommended by luminaries:

  • Dr. Christiane Northrup – “This book is delightful”
  • Midwest Book Review, in Bethany’s Books – reviews by Susan Bethany – “highly recommended”
  • Nizana al Rassan, writing for (the now out of circulation) iShimmy.com – “a fascinating read with so much wisdom and solid advice.”

 

 



P.S. What can you read that will help you understand yourself more?

Dr. Stella Resnick

The Pleasure Zone by Dr. Stella Resnick

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Unveiling: The Inner Journey

Learn how you can bring more pleasure into your life starting in Part V of Unveiling: The Inner Journey.

 

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Copyright (c) 2013, Alay’nya (Alianna J. Maren, Ph.D.). All rights reserved.


Related Posts: Hathor – Leading Up to This Point

Related Posts: The High Priestess – and how she relates to Hathor

Related Posts from the Alay’nya Studio Blog: Expressing Your Inner Hathor through movement and dance

Masculine vs. Feminine – Core Archetypes

Your Masculine and Feminine Core Archetypes: How Are They Different?

yin-yang-recursive

Have you wondered yet how much you really need the archetypes of the “other gender” in your life?

That is, if you’re a man, have you wondered how much you “really need” the four core feminine archetypes?

And if you’re a woman, have you wondered how much you “really need” the masculine qualities in your life?

If so, you’re not alone.

Yin and Yang not only embody classic masculine and feminine qualities, but each carries the “seed” of one within the other

 

The Core Masculine and Feminine Archetypes: A Quick Review

There are four each of the core masculine and feminine archetypes. Three of each are the “power archetypes” – those which we must understand and incorporate during our first adult life mastery journey. And one of each is a “reserve” or “battery power backup” archetype – designed to give us a bit of extra “juice,” or to give us a little “breathing room.”

Core archetypes octant chart - each archetype (each octant) corresponds to one of Jung's Psychological Types (discounting the introversion/extroversion distinction).

Core archetypes octant chart – each archetype (each octant) corresponds to one of Jung’s Psychological Types (discounting the introversion/extroversion distinction).

Four Core Masculine Archetypes

All the masculine archetypes are on the bottom half of the core archetypes octant chart above.

Notice also: the Thinking archetypes are on the right-hand-side (for both masculine and feminine archetypes), and the Feeling archetypes are on the left-hand-side (again, for both masculine and feminine).

  • Magician: (NTJ, or Intuitive-Thinking-Judging) Being a visionary, creating reality according to your “big dream,”
  • Emperor: (STJ, or Sensing-Thinking-Judging) Bringing your desired reality into fruition; building and stabilizing your “empire,”
  • Hierophant: (NFJ, or Intuitive-Feeling-Judging) Becoming a guru/guide, and
  • Green Man (a reserve battery archetype): (SFJ, or Sensing-Feeling-Judging) Escape to the “great outdoors,” breaking out of the molds that civilization puts on us.

Four Core Feminine Archetypes

All the feminine archetypes are on the top half of the core archetypes octant chart above.

  • Hathor (The “Love Goddess”): (SFP, or Sensing-Feeling-Perceiving) Reveling in sensual beauty and pleasure,
  • Empress: (NFP, or Intuitive-Feeling-Perceiving) Connecting, loving, nurturing,
  • High Priestess: (NTJ, or Intuitive-Thinking-Perceiving) Being contemplative and intuitive, and
  • Hestia (a reserve battery archetype): (STP, or Sensing-Thinking-Perceiving) “Mending and tending.”

We Often “Bundle” the “Other Gender” Archetypes in Our Minds

Some of the very good thinkers in archetypal psychology have suggested “bundling” of the “other gender” archetypes. Here are two examples:

Women Tend to “Bundle” Their Masculine Archetypes into Their Amazon Persona

The first person to do a good “psychology of the feminine” was Antonia Wolff, protégé (and later the lover) of Carl Jung. While Jung wrote many books, Ms. Wolff wrote only one – and it was more of a “pamphlet” than a book. However, Antonia Wolff’s book was the inspiration and “launch pad” for Dr. Toni Grant’s later book, Being a Woman – a book that influenced millions of lives. Wolff’s pamphlet, the Structural Forms of the Feminine Psyche, has been translated from the original German and is available to read online.

Wolff succinctly outlined the elements of feminine psychology into four different modes or dimensions:

  • The Hetaira (Companion) – corresponding to Hathor (The “Love Goddess”): In Wolff’s formulation, this Hetaira (Courtesan) archetype is defined in terms of and in relationship to men,
  • The Mother – corresponding to the Empress (Isis): Wolff describes this as “motherly cherishing and nursing, helping, charitable, teaching,”
  • The Medial Woman – corresponding to High Priestess: “The medial woman is immersed in the psychic atmosphere of her environment and the spirit of her period, but above all in the collective (impersonal) unconscious,” and
  • The Amazon – corresponding to the “bundled” masculine archetypes of Magician and Emperor: [whose] “interest is directed towards objective achievements which she wants to accomplish herself.”
Thracian Amazon woman with sword.

Thracian Amazon woman with sword.

When women simplify their inner masculine archetypes into the single Amazon, they lose valuable distinctions.

We see that Wolff’s Structural Forms include two masculine archetypes, bundled together into the Amazon.

She omits the Hierophant, which is a teaching/mentoring/coaching role. For Wolff, the Hierophant is subsumed into the nurturing aspect of the Mother archetype.

She also omits the Green Man from her “masculine archetypal bundle,” together with the Hestia archetype – which is a feminine one. None of these omissions are surprising when we look at them in more detail, which we’ll do in a later blogpost.

(Historical note: Did the Amazons Really Exist?.)

The impact for woman of a “bundled” collection of masculine archetypes?

If we were to think of our inner Amazon as just one archetype, we’d miss the significant distinction between being a creative visionary genius (Magician) and being the implementer of structure and order (Emperor) .

Yves Saint Laurent (right) and Pierre Berger (left).

Yves Saint Laurent (right) and Pierre Berger (left).

Think about this. During his most creative years, Yves St. Laurent had as his close associate Pierre Bergé. St. Laurent was the creative genius, Bergé was CEO and marketing.

Bergé and St. Laurent – the Emperor and the Magician.

When we are clear as to whether we are in “creative” (Magician) or in “sustaining” (Emperor) modes, we can better understand not only our roles and responsibilities, but also our strengths and weaknesses.

For about twenty years, I’ve been the lead creative scientist in two different companies. When I’ve been in “creative” mode, I bump into walls. It’s been vitally important for me to have others in the CEO (and COO and CFO) roles.

Similarly, creative geniuses in the performing arts – say, choreographers and conductors – need the support of an Executive Director to carry out the business responsibilities, and an effective Board of Directors to shape the organization.

Visionaries need Sustainers; Magicians need Emperors. Being clear about this distinction helps us understand how to shift gears and allocate not only our time and priorities, but our long-term attention within our professional lives.

 

Men Tend to “Bundle” Their Feminine Archetypes into Their Lover Persona

love2

When men simplify their inner feminine archetypes into the single Lover, they also lose valuable distinctions.

Just as women often “bundle” their masculine archetypes into one convenient catch-all Amazon, men similarly tend to “bundle” all of their feminine archetypes into one convenient Lover mode. In my recent blogpost, Moore and Gillette, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover – 2 1/3 Out of Four Ain’t Bad!, I analyzed the work of Moore and Gillette, whose book bundles the core feminine archetypes into the Lover.

 

“Bundling” is a Convenient Shorthand, But Doesn’t Solve the “Big Picture”

leaning-tower-of-pisa-facts

When we “bundle,” we tend to simplify too much.

An “unbalanced understanding” leads to being lopsided – like the Leaning Tower of Pisa!

For real life mastery, we need to know, understand, and cultivate each of our six core power archetypes (both masculine and feminine), and know how to use our reserve or “battery-power back-up” archetypes as well.

Each Core Archetype Comes in Both Masculine and Feminine Forms

Each archetype has its own masculine and feminine complements.

For example, the High Priestess also appears as the Sage, or Wise Man.

The Green Man appears in feminine mode as Artemis or Diana, the original “woman who ran with the wolves.”

Even those archetypes that would seem to be most gender-specific have their complementary realizations within the opposite gender. For example, the building and sustaining aspect of the Emperor is found in the Roman goddess Minerva, who sprang (fully formed) from the head of her father Zeus.

Think also that the passionate and free Hathor archetype finds her masculine complement in Dionysus, who was fond of both sex and wine. (Think of a “Dionysian feast”!)

The Best Strategy

The best strategy is to master each archetype, in order, one by one.

Casablanca.

Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca.

Ultimately, we need to combine – within ourselves – the strengths and values of each of our core archetypes.

Let’s keep in mind that we have an “end-game.” We’re shooting for a final stage (for this particular “journey”) of integration – being able to access and use each archetype at will.

If we desire to be creative, we need to have both our Magician and our High Priestess archetypes. the High Priestess gives us the opportunity to “fill our well.” (See Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way.

If we desire to lead effectively within any organization, we need the ability to “treat people warmly” and “treat issues coldly.” We need both our Empress and Emperor. (See Micheal F. Andrew’s How to Think Like a CEO.

For whatever tasks and challenges lie ahead, we need to access all of our potential. This is the fist stage in the path to personal mastery.


Alay'nya - author of "Unveiling: The Inner Journey"

Alay’nya – author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey

Very best wishes as you unveil yourself to yourself in your own inner journey!

Alay’nya
(Alianna J. Maren, Ph.D.)

Author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey
You are the Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus. Become the Jewel!

This Unveiling blog is the theory – archetypes, life journeys, integration. For the practicum, go to the Alay’nya Studio blog – body awareness, movement and dance, Fountain of Youth (energy circulation exercises), and more!

Resources

Connect with Alay’nya and the Unveiling Community


P.S. Learning about an authentic women’s pathway was important in my own breakthroughs.

Valerie Frankel has written several books on this subject; I’ve discovered them since writing my own book.

Check out Valerie’s works:

  • Did you grow up with Buffy? Is a sister, niece, or favorite student a Buffy fanatic? Help her learn how Buffy defines the Heroines’ Journey – and so much more! Read and give Buffy and the Heroine’s Journey: Vampire Slayer as Feminine Chosen One.
  • Ever wished that there was a book like Campbell’s “The Man with a Thousand Faces” – written for you? Your own heroine’s archetypal journey! What do myths, legends, fairy tales, and folklore from around the world have to say about you and your own journey? Valerie Frankel’s From Girl to Goddess is applicable at all stages of our lives.
  • Game of Thrones devotee? Valerie has other great books out. Check out Valerie’s Game of Thrones e-book on Amazon!

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Valerie Frankel, Author of From Girl to Goddess, on Unveiling: The Inner Journey

What does Valerie Frankel, author of books such as From Girl to Goddess and Buffy and the Heroine’s Journey: Vampire Slayer as Feminine Chosen One, have to say about Unveiling: The Inner Journey?

Ms. Frankel notes:

“She approaches her topic with devotion but also practicality and a deep intuition of human relationships, explaining though personal experience as well as intense research how the archetypes work and how a woman can channel the lover, mother, amazon and mystic to be all she is meant to become. Teachings of Jung, Murdock, Starhawk, and more appear, from ancient myth to modern culture.

“This is not the hero’s journey but one specific to the woman, or rather, many women on many different stages of journeying.

Read this and more reviews of Unveiling: The Inner Journey.

 

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Copyright (c) 2013, Alay’nya (Alianna J. Maren, Ph.D.). All rights reserved.

Related Posts: Dynamics of Masculine and Feminine Archetypes

Core Archetypes Year-Long Study Guide – The "Big Picture"

Your Master Plan for Understanding and Integrating Each of the Core Power Archetypes

Suppose that you’ve been studying – and using – the power of archetypes in your life for a while now. What will make this year the year in which you achieve personal mastery? What will make this year your breakthrough year, and launch you to a new level of personal success and victory?

You may already understand that as we grow, we go through archetypal “growth stages.” Perhaps no one explains this better than Carol Pearson, in The Hero Within. She walks us through how we go from the not-so-empowered Innocent to the fully-empowered Magician.

You may also know, from reading Caroline Myss’s Sacred Contracts, that we simultaneously access and use several different archetypes. In fact, she has us select “current” and “desired” archetypes from a roster of a few dozen possibilities.

With all these great teachings, there is still something missing when we seek to fully capture the power of archetypes in our lives – the power to be in the right frame of mind for different tasks, relationships, and intentions. This “something missing” was actually laid out for us in the first seven cards of the Tarot’s Major Arcana.

A Master Plan That Goes Back Thousands of Years

The background story tells us that this knowledge actually has a much older provenance than we may have thought. The earliest known Tarot decks are several hundred years old. However, the Major Arcana are based directly on the twenty-two “pathways” connecting “spheres” (Sephiroth) in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. The Kabbalistic written tradition goes back for hundreds of years; the oral tradition to perhaps a couple of thousand of years. And since the Tree of Life is the earliest known base for esoteric teachings in our culture, the origins may even be earlier. The Tree of Life is mentioned in the earliest known human writings.

In short, it is very likely that a certain “esoteric teaching” – based on mastering six core power archetypes – goes back at least hundreds, and possibly thousands, of years.

Three factors stand out when we undertake this “journey”:

  • The six core power archetypes (together with two reserve battery archetypes) match directly to three of the four “dimensions” used by Carl Jung in creating his Psychological Types,
  • There is a certain order for study and master, and
  • There is an “endgame” – that is, we don’t want to just master these archetypes in isolation; we desire the ability to pull on each one (or several) as needed. That is true mastery, and it is our goal as well.

 

What is Our Master Plan?

As with all big intentions, it helps us to have a “game plan.”

 

Our “game plan” is that over the course of a year, we will spend each semi-quarter on each archetype. Integration, we trust, will be something that we take up as we go along. (We may choose to repeat this study for a few years, each time gaining greater levels of insight and refinement,)

A second – yet very important – aspect of our “game plan” is that we’re tying in our intellectual and practical archetype study with our “lab work” – our daily practice of energy exercises and dance movements. We tie all of these together with the appropriate “season”, using the traditional Western esoteric approach of assigning and “element” to each “season.”

  • Winter: Season of Earth (pentacles, the physical body, a “feminine” season),
  • Spring:Season of Air (swords, the mind, a “masculine” season),
  • Summer: Season of Fire (rods, the spirit, a “masculine” season), and
  • Autumn: Season of Water (cups, the emotional realm, a “feminine” season).

 

Master Plan Overview

Each “element” has a set of qualities associated with it, and a particular focus of attention. Our archetypal study curriculum focuses on intellectual study combined with reflection and exercises that highlight each of the specific “archetypes” for the given semi-quarter. When we combine this with pathworking, we add in elements of spiritual discipline, emotional release work, energy cultivation exercises, and (of course) dance movements and techniques and choreography.

The archetypes that we will consider, are (in order):

Winter Quarter – Season of Earth (Pentacles, a “Feminine” Season)

  • High Priestess: Dec. 21 – Jan 31 Being contemplative and intuitive, a time for gazing into the fire, creating a “vision board” for the coming year, and being open to “dream-time”, and
  • Hestia (a reserve battery archetype): Feb 1 – Mar 20 Spring-cleaning – for our homes and our psyches; the classic “wax on, wax off” approach to opening our minds for insight and guidance.

 

Spring Quarter – Season of Air (Swords, a “Masculine” Season)

  • Magician: Mar. 21 – April 30 Being a visionary, creating reality according to your “big dream”, and
  • Emperor: May 1 – June 20 Bringing your desired reality into fruition; business plans, project management, process flows, stabilizing your “empire.”

 

Summer Quarter – Season of Fire (Rods, a “Masculine” Season)

  • Green Man (a reserve battery archetype): June 21 – July 31 Escape to the “great outdoors,” breaking out of the molds that civilization puts on us, and
  • Hierophant: Aug 1 – Sept. 20 Becoming a guru/guide for those younger than us – either in years or in skills and understanding.

 

Autumn Quarter – Season of Water (Cups, a “Feminine” Season)

  • Hathor (The “Love Goddess”): Sept. 21 – Oct 30 Reveling in sensual beauty and pleasure, and
  • Empress: Oct. 31 – Dec. 20 Connecting, loving, nurturing – sending out Christmas cards and gifts, holiday entertaining, time with family, friends, and loved ones.

 

Putting the Master Plan Into Action

For this coming year, each semi-quarter will be devoted to the appropriate archetype. I’ll offer resources and guidance, and as you feel led, you can follow up at will. Resources will include:

  • Guest Bloggers: Special invited guests for each different core archetype – Giving you insights from the “best of the best,” together with real-life stories from others who’ve achieved amazing results in different areas of their lives,
  • Suggested Readings: Links to books and online resources – Get greater depth, and
  • Exercises and Checklists (Strictly optional): What to do to get the most out of each archetypal focus.

From time to time, I’ll write about the integration process – how we can combine two or more archetypes to create “mastery” for ourselves in different life situations. I’ll also point the way to what happens after this level of mastery. (Yes, mastery comes in levels – and the whole work with archetypes is simply the first level. However, it’s the level where we need a good foundation before advancing to anything else.)

So here’s to you, with very best wishes for an absolutely awesome coming year!

Using Archetypes and Gaining Personal Freedom

Using Archetypes and the Power of Forgiveness to “Break Free” Forever!

Well, darlings, it’s time to come clean.

I haven’t written to you for over two months – not counting the little “warm-up” exercise that I did in two weeks ago.

There’s been a reason for this.

My daddy died recently, and I’ve been hugely grieving his loss. And as I shared with some colleagues and friends earlier this week, I was grieving not only the loss of what we did have as a relationship, and also – what we didn’t have.

I’ve been doing a huge amount of processing lately. And just recently have been able to do more “cognitive” tasks – such as handling emails, balancing the checkbook and paying bills, and – of course – writing.

Now, don’t get me wrong on the family-thing. Daddy was a magnificent “protector and provider.” He was a deeply honorable man.

But emotionally – there were things that I craved, and simply didn’t get. No matter how hard I tried, or what I did.

The turn-around has come only recently, as I’ve started really working with forgiveness – as described in both A Course in Miracles and in the Lord’s Prayer. (“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those …”)

So here’s the important thing to share. This is coming not as some abstract “word on high,” but because it’s been what I’ve been doing and working with in my own life, over the past several weeks – and it’s been making a huge difference.

Forgiveness shifts things.

According to A Course in Miracles, when we forgive, we actually alter the impact of time in our lives, and in our “reality.” Forgiveness extends back in time, and forward, and (as I’m sensing right now) into the lives of people who are connected with us and are around us.

Not that this makes it any easier, but I’ve found that forgiveness has been the one thing to release a huge logjam of “stuck stuff.”

Forgiveness is one of three core “principles” with which I’ve been working over the past few weeks, rebuilding my life from the inside-out. (And what better way to start the new year? The new B’ak’tun even?)

The most valuable books that I’m reading right now reinforce these three principles:

  • Own Your Power & A Course in Miracles – the importance of forgiving,
  • The Power (by Rhonda Byrne) – the importance of gratitude and “giving love,” and
  • Money and the Law of Attraction (Abraham-Hicks), and all other A-H materials, the importance of always “reaching for a better-feeling thought” – of how important it is to carefully culture and nurture good-feeling thoughts, and deliberately choosing our thoughts, as they set up vibrational points-of-attraction.

 

A Course in Miracles and Own Your Power

A Course in Miracles is a true heavyweight. It’s the basic “graduate-school level text” for spiritual growth. And it’s not real easy. I’ve been working through this book for over a year. (It’s designed as a one-year study program, with substantial “exercises” for each day). If I were to grade myself on this, I’d be somewhere between a C- (at my very best) and a D-. (That’s for those days where I’m cussing under my breath, being really sarcastic, and generally blowing the whole thing off.)

 

 

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The only reason that I stay with the Course?

Well really, there’s two.

The first is that there are only three people in my life right now to whom I will turn when things go really down. Only three people whom I know, and to whom I can call, who have the right “tone” when they address an issue. That is to say, they have real spiritual depth. Each of these persons has done A Course in Miracles. A couple have done it several times. One teaches it, another is getting ready to teach it. It’s not that another really substantive spiritual path wouldn’t do as well, but in my personal circle right now, those who’ve worked the Course are those who have worked their lives.

The other factor?

Well, A Course in Miracles itself states: “Everyone will answer in the end…” In fact, the Course makes it clear that once we start on this particular journey, we will finish it. We may stall about, but ultimately, we can’t drop out of this particular “Course.” It’s like being enrolled in a school curriculum required class. If we screw up, we just get to take the same class over again. And again. There’s no real “quitting.” Which is the only reason, some days, that I don’t quit.

That doesn’t make it any easier. And since this isn’t easy, I don’t go about recommending this book to all my family and friends, because it’s just a little bit of a big challenge.

What I do recommend, however, is a book that is not yet on the market – although it soon will be.

My dear intuitive friend Alice (S. Alice, or “Alicja,” Jones) is getting her second book, Own Your Power, published soon. Own Your Power is kind of A Course in Miracles-light. A “see Spot run” approach to spiritual teachings. More accessible. Be certain, I’ll let you know as soon as it’s released. I’ve been looking at a pre-release copy, and it has had a HUGE impact in my life already!

And so – while I’ve been reading bits and pieces of the pre-release Own Your Power, I’ve noticed some big shifts in how I’ve dealt with situations and people that were beyond irritating. Truly, this book has helped me get through some very awkward and difficult times in these past two weeks; times when I’d really have blown it unless I used Own Your Power to get re-centered. I’ll keep you in the loop for when it’s coming out.

Now I’ve told you that three principles – and three sets of books – were having a major impact and being very useful for me right now. The first was (see above) the power of forgiveness, and the relevant books were A Course in Miracles and the forthcoming (and much easier) Own Your Power, by S. Alice (“Alicja”) Jones, out soon.

The other two principles were gratitude (see The Power, which is the sequel to The Secret, by Rhonda Byrnes), and the importance of carefully aligning and shaping our thoughts – focusing our thoughts – so as to carefully establish our “vibrational point of attraction.” (See any of the Abraham-Hicks material, although I’m currently working with Money and the Law of Attraction.)

This blog contains enough to read (and enough for me to write) in one sitting, so I’ll defer the next two principles to a subsequent blog.

And then, I’ll take the “big step” and link up these principles (all three of them) to how we can work with our archetypes. Because I’ve found that our archetypes – the primary ways or modalities in which we shape our psychological core – are not something simply handed down to us at birth.

We’re not just “born with” an archetypal predisposition, as we might have thought if we’d been following a simple Myers-Briggs approach. (Please recall, as mentioned in Unveiling: the Myers-Briggs approach was adopted during World War II as a means to effectively match service people to the jobs for which they’d be most suited. The deeper, Jungian-based material on which the MBTI questionnaire was based does suggest that we access all archetypal modalities, and mature in our use of them over time.)

Now here, in brief, is what we’ll cover soon in terms of archetypes and their relation to spiritual principles, such as forgiveness.

Sometimes, we have a natural predisposition towards one archetypal mode, but have the ability to use another mode.

This is particularly true for women; I expect that we women are more psychologically flexible then men.

Sometimes, we have life events – of a variety of sorts, ranging from family influences to huge cultural surrounds – that cause us to reject an archetypal mode that would be our natural and normal “home state.” And in self-defense, we pick up another mode that we think gives us better “survival value.” (I know. Complex. More on this soon.)

When that happens, we get stuck. It’s hard for us then to make full use of all the archetypal modes available to us. It’s like having to drive a car in one gear only. Really, really tough at times.

Forgivenesss (see the reference to the spiritual stuff?) helps us break down the defenses and fears that we build up about accessing our other, rightful and enjoyable and effective and sometimes downright necessary archetypal modes. It breaks the logjam. It tears down the (often imaginary but still impactful) internal “barbed wire fence” that keeps us locked into a very small “range of motion.”

Now, as a quick overview of where this will lead us.

When we release something at the spiritual level, we release it energetically as well. When we reframe our emotional setpoints (using gratitude) and train our minds to select better-feeling thoughts (changing our “vibrational point-of-attraction”), we make it possible to have huge shifts in our physical bodies. We can release tension. We can breathe better. We can move out old, tight little nodules of pain.

But when we’ve had energetic/emotional “stuck stuff” lodged in our bodies for a long time, this physical release doesn’t come about automatically.

That’s why we need a pathway.

Specifically, we need a body/mind/psyche/energy pathway that helps move the release work that we do at the spiritual, energetic, and emotional levels into our body, and vice versa.

There are two art forms that I’ve found, in my more than thirty years of studying body-mind arts, that help us with this purpose. These are T’ai Ch’i Chuan and Oriental dance.

Yoga is good. Yoga is downright necessary, as it helps us stretch out and release tension throughout. And let’s keep in mind that yoga was designed to be a pathway. The physical yoga movements are the complement to the other spiritual disciplines of meditation, etc. So yoga can work very well.

However, for women who desire to include emotional expressiveness as part of their total life-integration and healing, Oriental dance works much more, because once we get a certain amount of technique down, the dance is all about emotional expression. Not fancy choreography. Not virtuoso technique. But rather, Oriental dance gives us the opportunity to tap into how we feel as we listen to music, and listen to our souls listening to the music.

I’ve had all my “big breakthroughs” in my body associated with dance. However, yoga, and healing therapies – Reiki, massage, Rolfing, a number of things – they have all been very powerful in helping to do “logjam releases” at the physical level.

For men, and for women who simply don’t have an affinity with Oriental dance, I continue to recommend T’ai Ch’i. It allows the same physical release and integration work to take place. And I’ve taken a number of Principles from T’ai Ch’i and applied them to Oriental dance, so that at the core, these two arts come from the same place. (At least in how I express them, and teach them to my students.)

In the next few posts, I’ll round out the spiritual principles of gratitude and deliberately shaping our “vibrational point-of-attraction.” I’ll start the new year with a survey of the major archetypes; how we can use them, and how we can move from one to another. Also, we’ll look at how we can draw archetypal complements into our lives; this allows us to primarily invoke one state, and yet get the benefit of others.

In the related blogposts for the Alay’nya Studio, I’ll develop specifics of how we can use Oriental dance as our body/mind/psyche/energy integration pathway. I’ll include specific techniques and general exercises. I’ll provide links to music, DVDs, and other resources, and I’ll share how we are structuring our quarterly curriculum.

By combining spiritual release work with the energy-cultivation and physical practice, any of us can create a much more powerful – and happy and fulfilling – way of living. Here’s to a joyous 2013 and beyond!

Cultivating Our Core Power Archetypes: First Stage in Becoming a "Master of the Universe"

Six Core Power Archetypes: First Step in Mastery

Mastering ourselves is the first step in becoming a “Master of the Universe.”

The Kabbalistic Tree of Life: A Roadmap for Personal Mastery

Several millenia ago, some very insightful mystics and seers somehow discerned that the “roadmap to God-consciousness” (and complete mastery of who they were as human beings) could be described as traversing through various “centers” or “realms of existence.” They called these “centers” Sephiroth, and organized them in a map that has been called, throughout the ages, the Tree of Life.

There are ten Sephiroth. (These are the circles on the Tree of Life to the left.) Each Sephiroth represents something very specific – not only a “plane of existence” but also an aspect, or emanation, of God.

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The Kabbalistic Tree of Life

These aspects (Sephiroth) are organized in a logical manner. The “softer, gentler, kinder” ones comprise the Pillar of Mercy (on the right), and the “harsher,” more rigorous ones comprise the Pillar of Severity (on the left).

There are, potentially, 10×9/2 different connections between them. (Each one of the ten can connect with each of the remaining nine, and then these total paths need to be divided by two, so that they aren’t counted twice.) This means that there are potentially 45 different “connection paths.” In the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, though, only half of these paths – twenty-two of them – are actually defined and used.

This means that getting from one “center” (or state of consciousness, or realm of existence) to another is not just a “random-jump” sort of thing, but more like an ordered progression. Each step in this ordered progression has a certain meaning, and that meaning corresponds to an aspect of human experience. In fact, it corresponds to a significant step in our adult life journeys.

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The Three Adult Life-Journeys

The last blogpost discussed this Tree of Life, and how the Major Arcana (from the Tarot) relate to the pathways between the Sephiroth.

We identified three sequences of seven steps (Major Arcana) each. Each of these sequences is a major adult life journey. From the previous blogpost, we recall that these are:

  • The Worldly Sequence: We access and cultivate each of six Core Power Archetypes, and integrate them – we are able to use each one as appropriate.
  • Turning Inwards: We begin to release our ego. At the end of this sequence, we start to access and cultivate intrinsic life energy, or ch’i.
  • The Great Journey: A time of destroying the last of the old “structures” that keep us imprisoned, leading to full realization of our life’s purpose and being released to do our “great work.”

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The Worldly Sequence: Cultivating and Integrating Our Six Core Power Archetypes

Our first adult life journey takes us through the Worldly Sequence. During this time, we learn to cultivate each of the six Core Power Archetypes, plus a seventh step (integration):

  • Magician (Major Arcana Card I): Power to create “something from nothing.”
  • High Priestess (Major Arcana Card II): Contemplative inner wisdom.
  • Empress (Major Arcana Card III): Nurturing and caring; runs on oxytocin, the “bonding hormone.”
  • Emperor (Major Arcana Card IV): Strength, stability, structure, and order; the perennial “Program Manager,” thrives on building and maintaining structures and things (ranging from a business process to an actual empire).
  • Hierophant (Major Arcana Card V): One of the least understood but most important archetypes, this is the mentor/teacher/guide, typified by fictional characters ranging from Albus Dumbledore (in the Harry Potter series) to Mr. Miyagi (in the Karate Kid) to (of course) Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi (in Star Wars).
  • Love-Goddess (Major Arcana Card VI): All about pleasure and play; romance, love-making, sensual pleasure in all its forms; she runs on dopamine, the “ecstatic pleasure” hormone.

Various blogposts, as well as sections in Unveiling: The Inner Journey, have described these various archetypes, as well as the seventh step, integration.

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Dec. 21st, 2012 – And the Next 60 Years

Beyond December 21, 2012: The Next 60 Years

For the past half-year, this blog has had a strategic direction. We are leading up to – and pointing the way beyond – the much anticipated “2012 Transition.”

And as we move towards that time, anticipation and curiosity mounts. Will we wake up on the morning of December 22nd to find that the world has irrevocably changed? Will we wake up at all? Or will we get into our cars or take our “usual” route to work, stop by our “usual” favorite place for morning coffee, and have a big laugh? The “2012 Transition?” we might say to each other. “It was all a big joke, wasn’t it? Like the Y2K ‘crisis’ – remember that? All ‘much ado about nothing.’ Life goes forward.”

Or will we say something in a similar vein, but have our words mask a fear-bordering anxiety. A sense of unease, as when horses send a blizzard coming down off the plains. We’ll feel an instinctual, primal urge to find a “safe place” in which to hide – but have nowhere to turn. We’ll continue reading the news, listening to our favorite pundits on TV, picking up the Twitter feeds and the Facebook links. And all of the news will converge into our heads to give us just one clear message: A crisis is coming.

In fact, that crisis is already here.

The question is: What sort of crisis? How big? How difficult?

Will we survive? If so, in what form? And what do we need to do now to prepare?

Now’s my time to “come clean” with you. I am proposing answers. But I’m not proposing “easy answers.” It’s not that I’m “middle-of-the-road” in terms of what I believe will happen, but I’m being very careful about what it is that we need to do about not only what is going to happen, but also what is happening right now.

These “not-so-easy answers” are based not on one specific area or another. So I’m not going to propose a “financial survival plan,” nor a “head-to-the-hills” approach. Nor am I going to be totally “New Age.” Yes, we’re having a “singularity.” (See work by early proponent Ray Kurzweil.) Yes, we are at a culminating point in human experience. And yes, there are a whole lot of “strange things” going on – in our lives, in the world around us – that are not part of our “normal” expectations and experiences.

But I’m not going to go all “woo-woo” on you either.

Where we are at – where we are precisely at – in human experience – is a Tower moment.

Take a look at these images. First, our recent past.

 Photograph by Spencer Platt, Getty Images

Perhaps no images in the last dozen years more succinctly capture the opening of this millenium than the destruction of the “twin towers” of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Now, a visual image describing a point in human evolution – both individual and species-wide.

The Tower card – Major Arcana XVI – from the Rider-Waite depiction.

The Tower image is deeply embedded in our cultural mythology. Specifically, we have a culture-wide deep-felt resonance with the “destruction of a tower” as signifying the fall of everything from a civilization to a person.

In Unveiling: The Inner Journey, I depicted the Tower role in our lives as when we suffer loss of everything that defines our ego. Most importantly, according to Tower imagery, this loss is not of just one thing. It is when we lose everything all at once. We lose our job, and the same week, the doctor diagnoses us with breast cancer. Or our husband files for divorce so that he can move in with his mistress, and our company is bought out by a mega-conglomerate – with impending re-organizations and layoffs. Or we realize that we need to move our mother into a nursing home – and take over storing and processing her “worldly goods,” while at the same time our son is diagnosed with ADD and needs extra tutoring and attention.

A Tower moment is when it all comes apart, all at once.

We have them in our lives. I’ve had multiple ones (described in Unveiling).

Now, here’s the important point: One that I didn’t make in Unveiling.

Humans have Tower moments, and so do societies. And humanity itself is now in the midst of a Tower moment.

If a Tower moment is defined as the conflux of multiple devastating challenges, all at once, we now have a Tower squarely and firmly on our hands.

Because it’s not just one thing.

It’s the conflux – the simultaneous flowing together and cresting – of our oil/energy crisis together with the population boom. We’re running out of the oil that we use for fertilizers and cheap food transport at the same time that we’re in the midst of an unprecedented population surge, anticipated to go to 9B people in the next several decades.

Oil and Population graph by Paul Chefurka, Population, The Elephant in the Room.

We have a built-up world-wide financial crisis just as we’re having increased financial challenges to deal with climate and ecological disasters. And we are certain that the horrific BP Gulf oil spill is just one of many such challenges that we’ll be facing; as we go after more and more “difficult-to-recover” oil, and rely more and more on other sources – including nuclear – we’ll have more energy-based accidents. Chernobyl and Fukushima were just the beginning. There will be more.

And the biggest point that I’m making here? It’s not just the ecological devastation. It’s that cleaning up after these massive ecological devastations will be necessary. And very, very expensive. And that will be occurring just as we need to rebuild port infrastructures and port cities, as the climate shifts and the oceans rise.

And we’re going to attempt to do this as the greatest money-generating generation of this country moves from generating money to taking money. The Baby Boomers are starting to retire. They’ll want Social Security and Medicare. Their retirement savings were largely wiped out by the 2008 financial debacle, and they’ll be needing help – instead of providing an income base to support large-scale clean-up and climate adaptation efforts.

And I haven’t even mentioned the social retooling that we’ll need as transportation costs rise, and it is more and more costly to commute to work, to take vacations, even to go to the grocery store. (Where everything is going to cost more, anyway.)

And also, I haven’t yet mentioned the near-certainty of massive plagues, unleashed with new, antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains and new viral combinations.

This is a Tower time for humanity.

Most of us keep trying to move forward with “life-as-normal,” hoping that someday soon, we’ll get back to “normal.”

My point is that there is no longer any “normal” that we can go back to.

The era of Norman-Rockwell-images – of comfortable family homes with the white picket fences and stability for everyone – is in the past. It won’t come back in our lifetime, or in the lifetime of our children. In fact, it won’t be available for our children’s children either.

We’re in the midst of a profound shift, and there’s no “normal” that we can go back to anymore.

But there is a “word of hope”; for us as a society – and as a race of human beings. And for each of us, individually, as well.

The “word of hope” is that there is something that lies beyond the Tower.

In this blog, I write about human experience – both individually and society-wide – using analogies and stories. I write using archetypes and metaphors. And fortunately (for all of us), I haven’t had to invent the storyline. (In my “sister” blog, I write from the non-linear complex systems perspective.)

The “storyline” was given to us several thousand years ago, in the form of the Kabbalah. This depicts the realms of consciousness; essentially a path towards God-realization. That’s why the Kabbalah has been studied by mystics for many centuries. (Jesus Himself very likely knew and understood the Kabbalah, together with his role in Kabbalistic terms. Another blogpost, another time.)

The Kabbalah lays it out for us. It presents the “created world” using the analogy of the Tree of Life. (See the picture to the left.)

The “centers” of this Tree are states of consciousness. The “pathways” connecting the Tree correspond to the Tarot’s Major Arcana. And also (not so coincidently) to the pre-Phoenician alphabet, which later became the Phoenician, which laid the groundwork for the 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet.

The Kaballah shows the course of evolution – both of the individual person, and of humanity overall. So people individually go through Tower moments, and survive. (I have, and you have probably done so, also.) Civilizations go through Tower moments. And now, humanity itself is in the midst of a Tower; very likely the greatest Tower time in the history of humanity.

What brings us hope is that there actually is a “step beyond.” It’s called the Star.

The Star card – Major Arcana XVII – from the Rider-Waite depiction.

Calm, lucid, clear. We get wisdom. Our life – what once was – is in shambles around our feet. But we’re still here. And without the need to preserve something that no longer serves its purpose, we are free to receive insight and wisdom. It’s as though we are naked in the world once again. However, we are naked in the midst of the flowing waters of life. We have all that we need, and more.

And beyond the Star, we have the Moon (bringing to awareness all the gifts of our intuition and subconscious awareness), and the Sun (energy, blessings, abundance). From this holy and wonderful moment, we rise in response to the Judgment call. But rather than being harshly judged, this is truly the moment when we joyfully respond to a literal “higher calling.” We “rise up” beyond ourselves. We become that which we were meant to be.

And finally, one step beyond, we are united with God, in a flowing, ecstatic dance.
This, my friends, this dance-with-God, this joyous realization of the divine spark within ourselves, is what our human experience is meant to be.

And if we have to go through a Tower moment to get there, then so be it.

We’ll do this, and we – as humanity – will survive. Not necessarily each one of us individually, but as a species, yes. We’ll survive. But we’ll survive transformed. We’ll survive as those beings that we were created to be.

Now, to specifics.

We can greatly increase our chances of survival if we do certain things.

This is NOT a prepare-for-a-financial-meltdown missive. Nor is it a prepare-for-the-rapture directive. Nor are we going to find our next evolutionary stage by forming some mental symbiosis with a world-wide network of computers, as was suggested by Ray Kurzweil. (But for a very interesting read, linking to the latest data, visit Going Beyond Moore’s Law.)

Rather, what we must do, if we’re going to get through this Tower, is to evolve ourselves. We’re going to have to let go of that which doesn’t work. (That’s a given; that’s the nature of a Tower time.) But also, we have to get ourselves completely together.

Refer, please, to my previous blogpost on the holographic nature of our archetypal experience. The lesson there (which I’ll develop more over time) is that we’re individually – and collectively – going through all of our archetypal stages all at once. Yes, sometimes one thing is much more pronounced than others. (And right now, for humanity, it’s the Tower.)

But because our lives are holographic right now – and very definitely not linear – we can go back and “fill in” what we’ve missed.

So our first big “life challenge” was archetypal integration. That was realizing and gaining mastery of the six core power archetypes about which I’ve been writing for the past half-year. (I introduced these in Unveiling: The Inner Journey. See Chapters 7 and 11; “A Real Woman’s Path (Really Does Exist!)” and “Shifting State,” respectively.) And while we’re at it, we also need to identify and access our two “reserve” or “battery-pack” archetypes – the ones that we use when we need to rest and recharge. This gives us a total of eight “power archetypes”, which we can map onto the Jungian system.

This is a starting point. And if we have to go back and do some remedial work, we can do this. In fact, as focused and mature adults, if we recognize the need to “fill in a gap,” we can probably do so very expeditiously.

We then have an “integration stage.” Actually, we have two integration stages. And the second integration step, which I’ve just gone through, is like a preamble to the Tower, only in a somewhat lower-key way. (And at that, it’s still a real toughie.) This “second integration step” precedes a sort of mini-Tower; one in which we voluntarily leave comfort, safety, and familiarity in search of wisdom.

The end result? If we go through archetypal access and integration (the First Journey), and then the re-integration and the following steps (the Second Journey), we get to a point at which we start accessing some real internal power and capability. This is the Fountain-of-Youth, or ch’i creation, which I describe in Unveiling. (See Chapter 29: “Pragmatic Esoterics,” as well as chapters leading up to that.)

Once we complete our two Journeys, we have not only “all of ourselves, altogether” (the result of integration and re-integration), but also some real vital raw energy – ch’i – with which to work.

Now unfortunately, there’s one really more scary and horrific step – even before we get to the Tower. This is where we encounter the real nasty, dark, ugly stuff inside. (Think of Debbie Ford’s Dark Side of the Light Chasers. Think of World War I, World War II, and genocidal purges around the world. Yup, been there all along – but a lot of real nasty, truly ugly has come out in the past 100 years.) This is the Devil stage, where we encounter the worst-possible. And the really worst part is that what we truly encounter is that which is inside ourselves.

It is this, of course, that unleashes the Tower. Encountering our own ego – in its worst form – is what brings about the destruction of comfort and removes the illusion of safety.

Pretty awful stuff, indeed. And the Tower time is no fun. Not for us individually, and not for humanity.

But if we can put this in context, we’ll see that it is a necessary step, and a transition to the freedom and joy that we truly desire. We move beyond the Tower, and become that which we were meant to be. And at that moment, each of us will be able to say (taking words from A Course in Miracles), “I am as God created me.”

So with that thought of love and encouragement, let’s move onward. And through.

And for those of you who live in the Northern Virginia/Metro DC area, there will be an absolutely fabulous concert on Saturday, June 2nd, at the Langley High School. Performed by The McLean Symphony under the direction of Maestro Dingwall Fleary with Special Invited Guests, it will feature Beethoven’s Ninth Chorale Finale (the “Ode to Joy”) as its closing piece.

Let’s use this to lift up our hearts and spirits, and gain encouragement for the times ahead.

We can certainly make it through the next sixty years. But a “joyful” heart will help us greatly.