Our attention and emotional excitement are drawn outwardly to events that show us our very personal drama within. Our inner director is so stupendous, we hardly realize that our outer fascination is directed from the depths of our own psyche, as it seeks to captivate the attention of our consciousness.
So held in the grip are we by certain events upon the world stage that it seems impossible to believe that they are actually reflecting something quite personal within our own selves. The movie we are drawn to see might be our own personal shadow play, or it may reflect the seismic stirrings at the deeper, unconscious level of our collective Soul life.
To discover the source, close your eyes and ask your Soul to reveal the source of your attraction, fascination, repulsion, and passion for the story it has directed you to. Allow your spontaneous thoughts and images to interact with your reflective consciousness. Prepare to take deeper ownership for the fuller picture of the many selves of your self.
The Queen’s funeral might find one unexpectedly overcome by a depth of emotion completely enigmatic to one’s conscious attitude toward the monarch and sense of self. Closing one’s eyes to the world, an image of personal mother may appear. A series of vignettes might ensue, expressing her life of self-sacrifice and service, as she provided nurturance and security to all. A wave of old grief might invite one to emotional release.
Perhaps one might be drawn instead to images of mother repressing emotion in all, stressing rules and limitations in her reign over one’s childhood. Perhaps one is then drawn into the emotion of guilt that one actually felt joy at liberation upon her passing.
At another level, one might encounter the numinous energy of royalty, the Great Mother Queen, whose coffin concealing her lifeless body draws thousands to wait countless hours to walk by and to personally commune with her Goddess energy. Welcome to the the domain of the archetypes.
Archetypes are nature’s images that direct human behavior from behind the mind’s eye. In archetypal reality, royalty is the Queen Bee, whom the drones of humanity are organized to serve. Queen and King are the ultimate mother and father in all benevolent or cruel authority figures that we encounter throughout life. We react to their projection with anxiety, awe, fear, and anger.
Inwardly, these archetypes are the ego’s parents, to which it owes its life. When ego inflates, it identifies with their power. When it deflates, it abandons all its power, as it returns to the womb in total surrender.
In Queen Elizabeth, ego highlighted the value of service—service to the established rules. Queen Elizabeth represented ego sacrifice to a higher value. Human predilection must conform to royal expectation, without exception.
Inwardly, human guilt and longing may be the consequence of our relationship to these powerful archetypes. Has my life gone wrong because I refused to sacrifice to service, that is, to what was expected of me? Is my fulfillment denied because my needs have offended the royals within? Is it time to break free of royal bondage? Am I prepared to go it alone, to honor my right to choose? And if I do, am I prepared to bear the wrath of the royal parents?
At the deepest collective level the boots of the activated Gods are making the Earth shudder. The Queen is dead, long live the King. Inwardly, this transition of power marks the emergence of a new rule, perhaps dictated by transition to a new stage of the life cycle. Clearly, the world is floundering as it seeks a new value to live by.
The Queen’s adherence to ancient precedent cannot lead us to salvation. What is needed is not adherence and sacrifice to tradition but service and acquiescence to what is truly needed for the Earth, and all her inhabitants. Can ego serve such a King?
These are the many worlds within that play for attention in our changing world without. Though we might laugh at the silliness of monarchy, perhaps if we close our eyes and discover the powers that be within, we’ll understand the reason for a tear as we listen to the bagpipes sending this Queen on her definitive journey.
“Girl in a Large Hat” c. 1645 – c. 1650 by Cesar Boetius van Everdingen – Rijks Museum
To be born means to be born physically, from mother. This event triggers the activation of archetypes that guide parents in their childrearing practices. Archetypes are latent inborn schemas, which, when activated, direct human behavior.
The powerful parent/child archetypes interact to provide a foundation for the developing personality. For instance, to be held when crying helps a child feel secure that the world will respond to its emotional needs.
Archetypes define needs and expectations in relationships. The archetypes of mother and young child cover a period of need and dependency in childhood, with the entitled expectation that the basic needs of hunger and safety be met.
The archetypes that dominate family life are so powerful that very often they dominate all of one’s life on earth. Mother’s Day was celebrated but a couple of days ago. The mother archetype is indeed the most powerful archetype. Mother is the source, period, of all human life. Echoes of one’s relationship with mother fundamentally permeate all of one’s relationships in life.
Most mothers are, as Winnicott coined the expression, “good enough.” This means that the basic imperatives of the archetypes are met, helping a child achieve rudimentary adulthood. But archetypes are unyielding in their insistence upon perfection. Thus, many mothers are forever laden with guilt for not having done enough for their children.
But is mother ever allowed to retire from mothering? Must she nurture and be defined only as mother, for her entire life? Must she deny her full personhood, in lieu of her motherly duties, once her children are reared? At what point do adult children and parents become peers, equal as traveling companions in this great mystery of life, death, and beyond?
On the flip side are children, well along in chronological years, who feel terribly shortchanged and resentful that their basic needs in childhood were not met. The power of this sense of inadequacy and emotional need keeps one attached and dependent, sometimes for a lifetime. The archetype can be unrelenting in its entitled demand for its full due.
Adult children and their parents may remain embroiled in interactive patterns that were appropriate for the developmental period of young childhood, as they attempt to fulfill unmet needs. Unfortunately, once the critical period of childhood is over, these archetypal patterns cease to deliver the desired effect. In fact, they tend to intensify both dependency and despondency.
All adults must assume full responsibility for their journeys, regardless of the archetypal misfirings of their childhood. This is not a judgment; it’s a developmental fact. Psychological development in adulthood rests in the hands of the individual, not in the family that reared them.
The real challenge for adulthood, for all parties, is to obtain release from the anachronistic archetypes that bind them. This actually is the function of the initiation rites of both ancient and modern religions; to provide release from archetypes that interfere with transition into new roles in the life cycle.
Recapitulation allows one the soul retrieval journey to square with the archetypes that bind old hurts, needs, resentments, and blame. With recapitulation, one takes full ownership of every event of one’s life, as one reclaims all of one’s energy stuck in those old dramas.
This practice frees one of the archetypal bindings, opening the door to being born again, or twice born. To be twice born is to achieve psychological and emotional maturity and independence.
To be twice born is a spiritual birth, which happens beyond childhood where the primary archetypes that ruled family life are released, as one takes on full responsibility for one’s life as an independent physical and energetic being. To be twice born is to awaken and mature into the spiritual dimension of life in human form.
This is the journey of spirit, for which we prepare in our second birth. In our time, that journey has opened through the widespread experience of the energy body, both in our dreams and in our waking experiences out-of-body. To open to this journey we must transmute our archetypal relationships.
With detachment from archetypal binding, gained through recapitulation, we fully embody, within ourselves, the mother and father we need to be, for ourselves, to navigate our soul’s adventure in infinity. In our time, the door has opened to explore this realm while still alive in a physical body.
For the twice born, this is the deepest intent, while fully loving all, as they undertake their own journeys of discovery. Sending love to all.
“[We] are in the world to train [our]selves to be unbiased witnesses, so as to understand the mystery of ourselves and relish the exultation of finding what we really are…” – don Juan Matus*
That anxious time of year again…
Every year since I was very little, probably before I started school, I attended the December birthday party of a girl I knew. Our mothers were friends. She did not live in my neighborhood but she did attend the same Catholic School I did.
A lot of kids got invited, girls from school and girls from her neighborhood. The basement rec room at her house was packed with kids, parents and siblings, grandparents and anyone else who showed up. It was always a big affair. There was a table for presents, another table for birthday cake and ice cream, drinks, plates, snacks, etc., pin the tail on the donkey on the wall, a semi circle of chairs upon which all the party goers sat to play the various guessing games that we played year after year, guessing how many marbles were in a jar, how many shoelaces in another, how many chocolate kisses in another, etc. My memories of these birthday parties were that they were anxious affairs.
Why such anxiety over a birthday party? Well, each year this same scenario played out: I’d get invited. On the day of the party I would get ready. Where was the present? There wasn’t one. My mother never provided me with a gift to bring to the party. Instead I’d make a card and 2 or 3 dollar bills would go into the card.
My mother did not drive so I would need to get a ride with another friend going to the party. There was one other girl in my neighborhood who usually attended the party too. Her mother, who also had seven kids, like mine, knew how to drive and never seemed to have a problem stuffing any number of kids into her car and driving wherever needed. I usually got a lift with this mother.
One year she forgot to pick me up. I waited a long time outside in the cold, standing in my driveway wondering where she was. I waited patiently, aware that this mother often ran behind schedule. I finally went inside to find out if my mother had indeed set up a ride for me. Just then the other mother drove up, greatly apologetic. They had headed off to the party only to realize they had forgotten me and then driven all the way back to get me.
I got into the car, clutching my homemade card and feeling bad for needing the ride, only to be greeted by my friend holding in her lap a big, beautifully wrapped gift with a pretty bow on it. I was immediately embarrassed. Why couldn’t my mother do something like that? I covered my meager card with my hands, wishing I had a better, more sensitive mother. Didn’t she know you brought gifts to a party? I don’t remember ever having brought a gift.
At the party, I snuck my card onto the table laden with gifts hoping that no one would notice. When present opening began I cringed, waiting for my card to be presented to the birthday girl, usually last, sometimes not even noticed. Sometimes I’d see it lying there on the table long after the presents had been opened, unseen. When the birthday girl did finally open my card she was always thrilled, “Yay! Money!” she’d say, with such enthusiasm I had to believe she meant it.
With the party over it was time to be anxious about getting home. I’d hope that the mother from my neighborhood remembered I was riding with her. One year she left without me and the party girl’s mom had to find me another ride. Another year I had to stay on for several hours for my father to pick me up on his way home from work.
I don’t blame my mother for any of this. She didn’t drive until I was much older and so it was necessary for us to depend on the kindness of our neighbors. I have so many memories of other people driving me places, even to the hospital in emergencies. One time, when she was actually learning to drive, though I don’t think she had her license yet, my mother asked me to get into the car with her while she drove about 4 miles to the nearest little store to buy a few groceries.
She had me sit in the backseat with my littlest siblings while she bravely yet badly drove along the winding country roads to the store. She stalled the car, a stick shift, innumerable times, lurching down the road in gut-wrenching jolts, finally slamming on the brakes so hard as she arrived at the store that the car went into a long skid and we all went crashing to the floor. I remember thinking at the time—I was about 10 or 11—that when it came time for me to drive I would never drive like that!
When my mother did finally learn to drive she did so adequately enough, though she was a nervous driver and had numerous near misses. Several times while I was in the car with her she’d go off the shoulder on her side, veer over to the other lane, into oncoming traffic, and in just the last second somehow manage to swerve back into the right lane. “Well!” she’d say, and drive onward with a shake of her shoulders and a defiant aire.
One time she slammed on the brakes so hard I flew into the windshield and smashed it. I never knew why she’d done that, as we were about a quarter mile away from the car ahead of us. But this was the beginning of my ability to “see” and “know” things before they happened. I am convinced that this hard knock on the head activated my pineal gland and it has been active ever since.
As children we trust the adults in our lives to take care of us, to provide and teach us, to nurture and sustain us until we are ready to go off on our own. I vowed to myself quite often that I would do things differently from my mother, her bad driving and lack of party etiquette just two examples. But the truth was that for a long time I was depressed, felt deserted, abandoned, neglected by the mother I got, and I did blame her for a lot of things. Now I see the reality of her life, stuck in the country with a bunch of children, unable to drive and depressed, shy, and withdrawn herself. I have to admit, she did the best she could.
It wasn’t until I took responsibility for my own depression that things began to change. By taking on the challenges of my own life, I was able to release my mother from any blame and really go on to live my own life. And I discovered that: No Blame = Freedom. Freedom is truly releasing emotional attachment to what was, to what is. Freedom is pure acceptance of the truth, with judgments peeled away and lessons gained. Freedom carries no blame. Freedom is living as an “unbiased witness,” as don Juan suggests.
I learned how to do it right…
By the time I was in sixth grade there were no more big parties at my friend’s house. Instead there was a much smaller sleepover with just four girls that year. This was much more to my liking. The main point was to stay up all night. No problem, I couldn’t sleep anyway! Still anxious!
Oh, and at that party I brought a real gift, one I had paid for and wrapped myself, the kind of gift I knew you brought to a birthday party, tied in a big bow!
A blog by J. E. Ketchel, Author of The Recapitulation Diaries
A burst of thunder! A flash of lightning! For a moment we are leveled in awe. Somewhere, out there, is an all-powerful energy far greater than the predictable flow of everyday life. For a moment we are seized by the divine, whether it be in terror or ecstasy.
The ancients took these outer manifestations in the heavens and on earth as the moods, judgments, and actions of the gods. For the modern ego the divine forces of nature have been explained and tamed by the human god of reason, though numinous encounters with nature quickly shatter its calm persona.
Mana is the term assigned to the energy of the divine. In our modern world that energy is projected onto people, places, and things. When a child is born, and for many subsequent years, mother is imbued with powerful mana. Who cannot recall either the experience or hidden craving for attention from mana mama!
A smile from mother deeply satisfies a need for validation: “I indeed belong in this world.” The glitter in her eye as she gives special attention to what the child is doing, saying, writing, drawing, singing, etc. is utter communion with the golden nectar of divine mana.
As an infant grows and becomes a separate being the mother archetype, which at first included the entire world, differentiates and the mana of mother is distributed to other people, i.e., father, as well as to objects. In fact the well known special teddy bear or towel that the child attaches to for security and comfort was termed a “transitional object” by Winnicott.
By this he meant that the powerful mana originally totally projected onto mother now rubs off on the transitional object in the child’s possession, providing an intermediary container for the power and energy of mother that the child will eventually experience within the self-sufficient self.
The projection of divine mana in adult relationships often harkens back to this hunger for special attention first experienced in childhood. Adults often experience in others the divine mana which they are drawn to and are terrified of as well. All intimacy must work through the mana projections that lead to dependency and avoidance of connection that have their roots in mana projections.
Modern mana frequently is projected into substances that loosen the spirit’s confinement in the body and offer divine communion with mana through flights of the imagination and pleasurable shifts in perception and physical sensation. Food as well can take on a divine mana, which delivers pleasurable sensation, hunger relief, and a fulfilled self-contained wholeness.
Mana is often projected onto objects we absolutely must have. Amazon.com is really a major mana warehouse. Books are often filled with mana as we commune with information and plots that give us divine tension and satisfaction.
The crux of mana is divinity. Human animals appear programmed to find the divine spark of their own spirit selves reflected in the people, places, and things of this world. This striving for contact or union with the divine is ultimately our animal self seeking to discover and join with its spirit half.
Until we discover and recover our own mana in inner union we are led to follow its trail in encounters with significant transitional objects in this world. That is the magic of this world; it serves as the playing field for finding the divine through participation in life and relationship on the road to wholeness of body and spirit within.
Seeking to become my own true self… – Detail of artwork by Jan Ketchel
I have been writing stories about the imp inside me, the fun loving, bright being who never seemed afraid, who was impetuous and daring, who seemed to easily handle life and its iniquities. She was the light side of my normally quiet and withdrawn child self. Today I leave her for a more serious subject: Mother.
In his blog earlier this week Chuck wrote of a man’s relationship to mother and how crucial it is that he separate from her and go on into life fully available to have a true relationship with another person freed of his infantile attachments to mother. In the end he must return to mother and love her from his separateness in order to achieve full masculinity. Whether his mother was a good mother or a bad mother is not important; a man still needs to rid himself of his attachments to her if he is to truly individuate and wholly become who he is. For women it’s a different scenario.
Women have an initiation ceremony built into their DNA. Somewhere between the ages of 10 and 16 a female begins to menstruate. This is the initiation into womanhood. Like all women before them, every young girl has to accept and deal with monthly bleeding for a good deal of her adult life. Some initiation! It lasts a very long time! I remember reading a little booklet my mother gave me when I was about 11. The phrase “you’re a woman now” still sticks in my head. Just like that, I was a woman! Just like that I was like my mother. But I did not want to be like my mother!
I did not have a good witch for a mother. I got a bad witch for a mother. If you have read my books, and especially Place of No Pity, Volume 4 of The Recapitulation Diaries, you know what I’m talking about. She was harsh and neglectful, not the kind of mother I wanted, not the kind of woman I wanted to grow up to be. Nonetheless, she was the mother I got and the mother I had as a role model. I was however always at heart a kind and gentle soul, even when I was being an imp.
The shamans would call the type of mother I got a petty tyrant. A petty tyrant is someone whom you probably hate for what they do to you, for the way they torment and belittle you, but may later realize that they taught you a great deal about how the world works and, most importantly, about how you yourself work, as they relentlessly and cruelly force you to face what you are most afraid of, most angry about, most resentful about, etc. When you cease to blame them for all your problems you may begin to see just how good they are at making you confront every uncomfortable and disagreeable thing about yourself. The petty tyrants of the world are the projections of all that we must sift through if we are to achieve our wholeness. For a woman, the kind of mother I got presented quite a challenge.
During my childhood I dreamed about other mothers, wove fantasies about the perfect, loving mother, the caring being I longed to have in my life. These fantasies got me through a lot of terrible times, as I could always envision a good and comforting mother in times of need. These loving mothers, fantasized though they were, became good role models, based on my own feelings and perceptions of what a good mother would be like. So even though I got a bad witch for a mother I was able to construct images of good witches who came to my rescue when needed.
As I grew into adulthood I had to figure out how I was different from the mother I got, just as I had to figure out how I was like her. For I am, in many ways, just like my mother. It has taken me a long time and a lot of work to accept this fact, that I too have the bad witch inside me. Though I have tended toward the good witch side, the bad witch has popped out often enough. I can truly identify with my own mother. At the same time, I had to extricate from deep within myself who I truly was, separate from her. For I am truly not my mother, I am me! And that’s where individuation takes place for the woman, in both accepting that she is like her mother but that she is equally her own being with her own emotions, feelings, and beliefs based on her own experiences in life, totally separate from mother.
My mother is still alive. Nearing 94 she now lives in a nursing home. Since my father’s death 12 years ago she came back into my life in ways I never imagined. Never a good driver and having not driven in 15 years or so at the time of my father’s death, she needed someone to take her everywhere. After a few years of accommodating her from afar, it became clear that she needed to be closer to me. Although I have many siblings I am the eldest daughter in the family and the one she calls upon most often. We moved her out of the family home and into a small apartment nearby. For several years she lived there in the company of her cat and some very nice neighbors, one or two of whom she grew fond of, until it became clear that she could no longer care for herself. Too many accidents and near fires paved the way for the next stage.
It soon became clear to me, as my mother’s demands and needs encroached on my own life, that I was not yet done with my mother. I was not going to be able to just walk away from the bad witch. We still had things to live out together. What they are continue to unfold to this day.
Demanding and petulant, like a spoiled child, she has relied greatly upon the kindness of my heart. I have met in her every permutation of the bad witch. Very rarely, she has thanked me or told other people how much I have done for her. It’s a rarity, but it does occasionally happen. However, most of the time I am the target for all of her own unresolved inner disturbances, resentments, and regrets. It can be pretty hard to be in a small room with a woman who did horrible things to you and still love her, have compassion for her, and be kind to her while she’s belittling you, laughing at your clothing, commenting on your hair, or angry because you didn’t invite her to Thanksgiving. And yet I accept all of this from her, for in her own way she has been my greatest teacher in what it means to be a woman, a mother, a lover, a kind and compassionate being.
To this day, though I sometimes quake in my boots at the sight of her angry demeanor and the mood she’s in when I visit, I am grateful for all she still teaches me. Indeed, I truly am a full-fledged woman because of all that I have learned from her about being a woman. She has often been an excellent example of how not to live, but also how to stoically face what must be faced. Every time I see her I must face myself at her age, in her physical condition, and wonder, “how will I face what she faces every day? How will I choose to face my death? How will I live out the last days of my life?” She is my greatest advisor. She has given me a lot to mull over, and I still learn things about myself and about being a woman from her.
So, to get back to the point of this blog: women, though we are naturally initiated into womanhood, still have to learn to be the woman that we truly are, biologically alike and yet totally separate beings from our own mothers.
I had to find a way to fully embrace and live life as my kind and loving self, the gentle soul I really am, so different from the mother I got. I had to learn to be this kind and loving being toward her too, even after discovering and understanding the truth about her.
But even as a child and living in my mother’s house I was always kind to her, from the time I was very young, complimenting her on her clothing or hair, and every evening at the dinner table I always told her how delicious the food was, without fail. It was almost expected. The meal could not be eaten until I had delivered my opinion, always positive, and she said, “Thank you, Jan.” Only then was the meal consumed in earnest. In a sense, perhaps a part of me was trying to placate the bad witch, being nice so she might be nice in return, but the truth is, I always meant what I said. I really am a kind person and always was, that too is in my DNA.
I am a kind and gentle soul partly because I have had the greatest petty tyrant of a mother to teach me how to be that way. She pushed me, through her neglect and cruelty, to find and embrace my true self, the kind and loving being I am, the part of herself that she always seemed to reject. For some reason that she has not ever revealed she has hated herself and been exceedingly hard on herself. But she was not going to let me be like her. In her own strange, unintentional way she made sure of that.
I often wonder how evolved a being my mother might actually be. The possibility exists that she planned and accepted the role as one of my petty tyrants in this life, and the truth is, it benefitted me! I thank her for that. And yes, I do love her.
A blog by J. E. Ketchel, Author of The Recapitulation Diaries
