Tag Archives: soul mate

Chuck’s Place: Beyond Archetypal Bondage

We are all part of this vast collective we call home... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We are all part of this vast collective we call home…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Carl Jung broadened the scope of who we are as human beings by introducing us to the Collective Unconscious, a vast region within ourselves that we share in common with all human beings, in fact with the entire planetary being, planet Earth.

Earth is a living being whose survival is ensured by a powerful governing body that Jung defined as the Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. All human beings are equally impacted by these governing forces that emanate from the deep unconscious of the planetary being Earth, of whom we are all a part while in human physical form.

Archetypes are rules and definitions existing independently of human beings. Preceding our personal selves, they shape our perceptions, interpretations, emotions, and actions in each moment of our lives, inhibiting our ability to be present in the purity, in the actual truth of each moment.

In a dream, Jan and I go to visit my long-deceased mother in her apartment on a holiday. She has been ill, physically incapacitated and limited in movement. I suggest immediately that we go out to eat. This is a visit to Mother who must be honored as special, treated royally on this day of celebration.

Jan says, “No. Ask her if she really wants to go out.” As suggested, I ask Mother. She says no. She’s relieved at not having to rise to the occasion. Relief for all.

The dream illustrates how the archetype Mother precedes the reality and the true physical disposition of the human being who resides in the apartment. The archetype demands reverence, honoring, special action, excitement, and celebration. The human person needs only rest.

Archetypes generate fear, anger, love, anxiety and awe. Archetypes define life and judge our ability to do the right thing. This dream clearly illustrates how the archetypes of Mother and Child take over the feelings and expectations of an encounter, so removed from the actual needs of the moment.

We too are earth-bound beings first... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We too are earth-bound beings first…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Archetypes correspond with chakras. The first two chakras, the root and the sex chakra, are concerned with individual survival and survival of the species via copulation. The planetary being, Earth, has control of the chakras around these issues to ensure its own survival. Two archetypes at this level are the Child and the Soul Mate.

The child archetype evokes very powerful emotions of protection in adults, as they see in the child ultimate vulnerability and innocence. The helplessness and fragility in the newborn and young child evokes the necessary responses from caretakers, spurring them to make great sacrifices in their own lives and attend to the survival needs of these deeply dependent beings. Failure to thrive by a young innocent life can evoke the most powerful sadness in adults, as they find themselves powerless to assist the failing child.

The healthy child archetype serves to spur the core survival needs of new life on Earth. However, too often the child archetype continues to govern beyond necessity and when this happens the opportunity to become an independent autonomous being is delayed or totally denied. In such cases, the child archetype rules well past its usefulness, resulting in a being who is ever-dependent on others for their survival.

Inwardly, the child archetype can distort one’s relationship with one’s own inner child. When the archetypal child takes over it can evoke an overwhelming sadness that induces utter despondency in a bottomless pit of helplessness. Sometimes we may be tricked into thinking we must release our sadness in a great catharsis of tears, expecting relief and healing, only to discover that the wound never heals. This is not human activity, this is the child archetype ever-extracting our energy, keeping us in the grip of powerlessness and woundedness.

We must vehemently stand up to this archetype and shoo it away if we are ever to be able to take hold of our will and achieve adult autonomy in life. If we are ever to develop mature relationships with our families we must break away from the rudimentary archetypes that govern family relationships. Our spiritual development requires that we all become independent equal beings, no matter what our roles once were within the family. We must grow up to become mature adult peers facing the same destiny: death and preparation for what comes next.

The soul mate archetype at the second chakra level is ruthlessly interested in having us hook up and make babies. The power of the sexual instinct under the rulership of the archetype controls most individuals for the better part of their lives. If people are completely honest, the drive for sex and children dominates life from puberty through midlife.

Drawn by powerful archetypes... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Drawn by powerful archetypes…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Most relationships shine with promise in the beginning, sprinkled with the fairy dust of the soul mate archetype. Post-coitus, and particularly post-children, the archetype deserts a couple as its job is done. There’s nothing in the archetypal program beyond coitus. If you want a mature relationship you’re on your own. Many relationships break up at this point, partners split, often to be drawn once again, by the reactivated archetype, to feel the entitlement of promised magic and wholeness projected onto yet another.

I recently recalled a haunting song that I always felt stirred the soul mate archetype, Wicked Game by Chris Isaaks, a brooding song of archetypal projected love. I found a video that he made for the song on Youtube, one I’d never seen. I include it here —Wicked Game— as it is a wonderful exposition of the powerful draw of the archetype, a man possessed, a woman responding but clearly merely playing a part. There is no personal relationship here. The archetype is a witch’s brew—Watch out!

I recall in my twenties how overwhelmed I was by the soul mate archetype, by the flood of women in their summer attire as I moved about Manhattan. One day, I realized I was exhausted by the time I got to work at 9 a.m. from the unending stream of stimulation! I decided to fight back, to break the slavery I was caught in by an archetype bent on taking over my life.

From that day on I blurred my vision whenever I detected a woman approaching from afar. After about six months I’d completely broken the spell! I allowed my eyes to go in focus once again and realized: I just don’t have to look! The archetype never again exerted its power over me as it once did. I was able to see woman as person, period!

Ready to take your place in a different light? - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Ready to take your place in a different light?
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

The archetypes at the first two chakras are nature at its fundamental best. However, as we ascend to the heart chakra we discover that these same archetypes exist at a spirit level, beyond the domain of the planetary being Earth. Soul mate at the heart level is a genuine outpouring of compassion and love for another, a deeper appreciation for who the other is as a person and a partner. At the highest level the soul mate archetype guides to merge with our own soul in enlightenment. Similarly, the child archetype at the highest level brings us to the truth and innocent essence of who we are as we shed our egos in preparation for merger with our divine selves.

To rise to the spiritual heights, we must pass through and engage the archetypes at the level of the first two chakras, but we must refuse their dominance if we are ever to reach our spiritual completion and move beyond our cycles of bondage to reincarnated Earth lives and move on to new adventures in infinity.

Focused on moving on up,
Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Soul Mate & The Masks Of God

The active side of infinity is always seeking... - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
The active side of infinity is always seeking…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

If indeed we are the “active side of infinity,” as don Juan asserts, then our mission is to live and thoroughly bring consciousness into the myriad of possibilities of infinity that we embody.

We are probes of awareness bringing light and life into the darkness of wholeness. Through our experiences of exploring a possibility, what we call a lifetime, the universe becomes aware of itself. Infinity lights up and grows through all of our “individual” journeys.

All our individual journeys are fragments of a greater whole, with specific missions to enhance consciousness through the lives we each live. These fragments that we are create the illusion of separateness that is necessary to explore a specific part of the wholeness we are here to enliven and enlighten. Of course, behind our illusion of separateness is the real truth of our oneness with infinity.

The primary driver of the separate self, our soul we’ve come to identify with, is a longing for unity with its lost wholeness in infinity—that is, the complete union of consciousness with its wholeness—the complete union of light with its darkness.

The truth is, we are souls seeking union with our one true mate—infinity itself. The driver of that union is love.

Love is full merger with all that we are and all that is. Nothing is rejected in infinity. On the other hand, love seeks the fullness of union, and for this to happen we must release attachment to all the illusions we attach to in our fragmented journeys, all the masks of God, beings we merge with, beings that awaken our lost forgotten wholeness, who offer us temporary refuge in the lives we live.

If we cling too highly to a golden being who wears the mask of God for us in this life, we are caught in the dilemma of clinging to false gods, the essence of karma. Karma, in this context, is our journey to the completion of the true wholeness that we really are.

Where have you projected your Soul? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Where have you projected your Soul?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

There are many worlds we enter on this infinite journey where the golden Soul Mate of wholeness projects itself upon another being. We are drawn to unite and ignite with this being in our quest for fulfillment.

Jung identified some archetypal programs that govern such projections. The shadow is a projection of a side of our wholeness that we refuse, experienced in people we are compulsively drawn to fear, hate and reject. The shadow hides in the darkness, but our journey to unmask it will bring us closer to our golden light, as we come to accept the unaccepted within ourselves.

The anima/animus archetype draws us to seek completion through merging with our unifying Soul Mate. The romantic and transpersonal experiences of this archetype, outwardly projected and joined with, bring us deeper into the fullness of infinity. However, we are challenged to unmask these golden companions as well.

I spent thirty years with my golden “Soul Mate” Jeanne, only to discover, as she entered the astral realm, the deepening reality that though we had experienced Soul in this life together, I was but one “soul mate” in life. There were many soul mates in many lives, both in hers and in mine. This expanded knowing blew wide open for me the idea of the specialness we all feel as we encounter the golden mask of she/he that reflects ultimate union in this life. Sorry, I learned, the buck just doesn’t stop there.

Our growing consciousness demands that we continuously stay only within the truth. The illusions open the door to the truth, but we cannot attach to them. Ever-deepening love allows us to broaden our connection to our ultimate Soul Mate—infinity—by welcoming all the truths, as we gracefully and with love retire all our illusions of separateness and specialness.

We must leave our little soul mates and find our true golden Soul Mate... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We must leave our little soul mates and find our true golden Soul Mate…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

All our golden encounters with our golden masks of God are truths, but relative truths—stepping stones to the ultimate wedding—union with infinity, in full consciousness.

Little bit of Soul,
Chuck

#726 Chuck’s Place: Active Imagination: Engaging Images in Action

For the seers of ancient Mexico, our apparent perception of the world is, in fact, really our specifically human form of interpreting the energy of the universe at large. Those seers maintain that we take in very little sensory data, mostly through our eyes, which we then use to quickly call forth the intent of an object. This intent is what Jung would call the inner image or inborn archetypal representation of an object that then gets projected onto outer reality. The uniformity of human intent has generated a consensual reality populated by objects believed to definitely exist, as we project them in the outer world.

From this perspective extraversion can literally be seen as the extra version, the projected version of the preexistent inner image. In contrast, introversion can be viewed as the inner version of our dancing images. In either case, our primary relationship is with our own images—as projected in the world or within ourselves.

Jung stated that everything unconscious is projected. Translation: everything we don’t know about ourselves we project upon the world. Hence, our inner unknown images, or parts, are all projected upon the world. Active imagination is a technique Jung developed to directly discover and interact with the specific images active within one’s self. This technique offers a path to self-knowledge and wholeness.

If we are primarily extraverted, we meet ourselves, our inner parts, in the outer world of relationships. If we are primarily introverted, we are preoccupied with the images within ourselves that might present as fantasy images, thoughts, feelings, or moods. Most people are a mixture of both introversion and extraversion, therefore are confronted by their personal images both within and without.

Last Sunday, I awoke with the impulse to create a retreat structure in our backyard. I spent the better part of the day walking the grounds, envisioning a multiple array of potential structures ranging from a stone tower to a cave. I even engaged in Google, You Tube, and book research on various methods of construction. Finally, hours later, exhausted, I sat with my images and realized that my ego had concretized the energy of an inner part of my self. That part was using a series of images to communicate to me the need to retreat. However, in typical Western extraverted fashion, I ran with the image as a consumer to the virtual mall of retreat structures!

What a different Sunday I might have had had my ego sat with the image and talked to it. “Who are you? Why are you presenting yourself to me? What are you trying to tell me?” I’m quite certain that new images, feelings, or words might have emerged: a connection, a discourse, a relationship, a different day, energy conserved.

The other night, after a lovely, filling meal, Jan and I sat and watched an episode of “In Treatment.” An adolescent girl was eating a fresh pizza. Suddenly, I was hungry, wanting pizza. I couldn’t possibly be hungry, but the urge was compelling. The image of pizza had stimulated something inside me. I sat with it and discovered that it was my desire body, what don Juan would call “the nation of the stomach” masquerading behind the pizza image as the physical experience of hunger. In this case, my ego, through bearing the tension of apparent hunger, was able to intercept the secret plot of “the nation of the stomach” attempting to take control of the world of the self. Experientially, once exposed, the desire body released its illusion of hunger. My ego rather gently informed my desire body that there is nothing wrong with satisfying a desire, but really, not on a full stomach!

These two examples, I hope, demonstrate how images generated from parts of ourselves can control our perceptions, needs, and behaviors with our complete unawareness. I close today with a perhaps more universally recognizable image trap. First, I will admit to being a hopeless romantic. However, I have learned that in spite of the intoxicating draw of falling in love, the real magic is in love itself.

Under the influence of feelings of emptiness and lack of fulfillment, with a need and desire for love, connection, partnership, and wholeness, we set the intent to fall in love by evoking the archetype of romance. This archetype comes complete with a standard program and a specific soul mate image tailored to address our underlying needs. The next step is to locate a suitable energetic being upon whom to project this image. When two energetic beings meet with the same romantic intent, their soul mate images may be cross-projected onto each other and, Voila!, it’s love at first sight! When these images unite, the experience is indeed magical. However, as the night fades and as subsequent days fill in the shadows, slowly the images recede, as our apparent soul mate may be revealed as a human being no longer able to reflect the requirements of our specific soul mate image. Often these revelations result in the end of a potential relationship.

My closing question: Who is falling in love when we fall in love. Hint: Images in Action!

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck