Posts Tagged ‘alone’
Archetype of the Outsider Outcast
Like many other animals, humans are very territorial and suspicious of anyone who is in some way different. Thus, living as an immigrant or child of an immigrant; being abused or abandoned in some way by ones parents; not having the skin colour or language of the majority; having a malformed body or being ill in some way; having greater intelligence or a different mindset, can all lead to a sense of being an outcast, and thus a connection with the archetypal feelings of abandonment or alienation. This has been such a common experience throughout the evolution of the human body and mind, that it is a powerful archetype and still strongly at work in individuals and groups today, where alienation is common.
Living out this particular stance in life leads to various attitudes that people throughout the ages have used to survive. There may be an intense form of independence, or hidden feelings of anger toward the nation or society one lives in. One may rebel against being a part of normalcy, even to rebelling against ones personal sexual characteristics; or else one hides within a formed group such as a religion. There is often a powerful drive to fight to become recognised as part of the group, or even become an active against what is the norm, being a criminal or even murderer.
The alienation can also occur because for one reason or another you cannot live within the patterns of behaviour accepted, or built into, your family or social group. This is particularly evident in religious or political groups, which, to function well, require a high degree of conformity.
There is often a high level of anxiety linked with this stance, as there is a great deal more vulnerability living outside the group than there is in being an integral part of it. The extant story of Adam and Eve is a fundamental expression of this sense of being outcast from ones very self – not even possessing oneself. In some degree we all feel as if we have lost our home – the place where we would be at ease and welcomed – and we long for it. See Adam and Eve
There is a very positive side to this archetype however, and it is one that is enormously potent in our times. This is described in the following words by a man meeting this archetype.
I committed myself to this direction of the outsider, and yet to a love of life. I need to remember that. I am not sure if I had said it clearly in my language for my son, but I need to say to my son and to those who tread this path, “This is an ancient path. It was first opened by people who were outcasts from their tribe, or their race. Maybe they were outcasts because of disease or illness. They deepened this path because they either descended into despair or developed a new life, a new awareness, a new relationship with themselves and the world. They changed something inside of themselves, and that change became a possible new pattern for other human beings. Some of these people, in today’s world, would be judged as crazy or unbalanced in some way, perhaps fanatics. If we look back into the past we see there were groups of people living the life of hermits in deserts or in isolated places. Some of them tortured themselves in various ways, such as starvation or flagellation. It was out of such strangeness that a new type of inner life developed, a new way of relating to the world arose. Of course, those early pilgrims on that path were unclear about what they were doing, and were often confused, and so included many strange and unnecessary practices.
But through their lives they began to form the possibility of a new direction for human beings, a new inner or mental life. It developed alternative ways of experiencing oneself, or living in society, and of discovering ones inner resources. And out of those many lives and the new ways they developed of relating to their mind, their body and the world around them, a new paradigm has arisen that I see is now transforming the unconscious life of many people. It is reprogramming them while they sleep. It has great power because it is so relevant in today’s world where enormous numbers of people feel alienated from what is going on around them.
However, we cannot really understand this archetype of the outsider or outcast without some understanding of what has been called the serpent power, or in India, kundalini. A great deal of mystery has surrounded this, probably because it was not clearly understood, but in practical terms the serpent power is the psychobiological energy that expresses in you as the many processes and functions of your body and mind. It is like the electricity that flows into a house, that while it is not the picture on the television screen, or the movement of the cooling fan, is the power underlying all the many things arising from electricity.
The serpent power, your psychobiological energy, is at the same time the energy underlying your physical movements, your digestion, heartbeat, your emotions, awareness and thinking; and also a potential that has not yet been expressed or manifest. It is particularly relevant to the outcast because he or she does not express themselves in the same way as the ‘normal’ or average person. Very often their sexual expression or social expression is not flowing easily. All that energy backs up like water behind a dam. It creates a pressure that will seek to flow somewhere. In many cases it moves into neurosis. In other words, because it is not flowing outwardly and satisfyingly into social and sexual relationships, it may turn inwards, enlivening the usually unconscious and disturbed patterns of feeling. Then the person lives out neurotic ways of expressing sexually and socially. They may for instance express anti social behaviour in violence or destruction. They may express in destructive sexual behaviour, or be even more introverted into deep depression.
Example: “Meeting death, the bodiless state, is just like another big fear. It is like the fear of going it alone without mum and dad. Can we face just consciousness? Can we live in the world of the mind minus the body? Can we live in the body minus mum and dad?”
“Yes, I’m not doing too badly. I’m not a genius, but I’m not doing too badly. I feel unafraid of the bodiless state because I have experienced it and can exist in it. Like swimming, I can swim a few strokes so have no great fear of water.”
“There was a crazy thing mankind did in these spiritual disciplines. They are so simple. They are simply to get you out of this matrix of consciousness. Once you become an individual in waking consciousness, and you just learn to suppress any of the desires a little bit – fasting – sex – any of them – you make a little pathway of your own. That is your individual consciousness. So simple. That is your own matrix, not the patterns of the general herd or species, within the universal pathways of consciousness around you.”
“It seems that frustration of the universal drives creates a different pattern in the whole. This pattern is used, and if it is strong enough, can exist outside of physical existence in an energy, consciousness, state.”
“I think, in modern day terms I’ve got it. I have got it. It’s free of all the old moralism. That was how they saw it, in the past, and that was how it works. But I have got it.”
I then had masses of realisations or insights into many things. My experience of death, now, added to my other experience and united to form many new ideas or realisations. In experiencing death I was left with consciousness. That consciousness was beset by fantasies, fears, ideas, but it did not lose itself in them, was not swallowed up or drowned in them. If it had been, it would not yet be ripe to exist in the bodiless state.
Also, it struck me with tremendous force that the experience of waking consciousness in the body, however we explained it, was reality. Death, however we explained it, was also reality. What was happening was that I continued to experience this changed reality of death.
But the normal human behaviour is simply one of the ways we as mammals can express. The life process itself can be expressed in an infinite number of ways, as we see in the different creatures on the earth. The fact that we are as we are is simply the result of the global, environmental and social changes we have faced. What some of the ancient outcasts found was that there are possibilities beyond the normal and beyond the neurotic. They drew out of the potential in the serpent power the possibility of what we call enlightenment, a life beyond the limitations of the ‘normal’, beyond the pain of everyday living. That is how the practices of yoga, Tai chi, and many of the other personal disciplines of mind and body arose – as methods of expanding the potential of the serpent power.
Out of this some religious organisations or leader figures made rulings that their followers should not express sexual love casually or at all. The reason for this is probably dual. Firstly the frustration of the sexual flow leads to the build up of the serpent power, and thereby offers the possibility of personal transformation. Secondly, religious organisations are like large business corporations. They have enormous property and staff to deal with. They need money and goods to do that. When we flow to someone sexually and emotionally our money and goods flow to them as well. Sometimes we share our all. If it is blocked in the individual, it flows to the religious organisation or figure who tells us to block it. It does this because they promise salvation or a better life. The organisation or guru assumes wonderful charisma because the serpent power, unable to flow in its usual way, fills such a relationship with great emotional and sexual feelings. Blocking sexual and emotional flow in followers can therefore be a way of directing funds to the organisation or leader figure.
Meeting this archetype is therefore a meeting with the need to identify the causes of our expulsion from our own happiness, our own ability to love and feel loved; our own resources of fruition and creativity in this life – now. It is a time of decision about what we will do with the energy diverted from the ‘normal’ into its new channels of expression. See Individuation
The other side of the archetype is whether you can abandon or transform the life you have lived, a life that doesn’t satisfy you, and is one in which major parts of you are left buried or imprisoned. The paradox is that we may have cast out – denied – parts of ourselves, and so feel outcasts. Here is an example of such transformation.
Example: “I was in a prison cell waith two other men. I felt it was in Spain somewhere. We ate, slept and defecated in the cell. I was standing at the bars of the cell, and had the impression I had been in the prison for years. I was shouting and cursing the people who had put me in the prison, full of hate and self pity.
One day as I stood raging at the bars I suddenly realised that my years of shouting had availed nothing. The only person who was upset by it was me. I was the victim of my own anger and turmoil. It was as if I had been haunted all my life by ghosts of anger and passion. I dropped the attitudes or ‘ghosts’ and was free of them. Years went by and one by one I recognised and dropped other habits of emotion and thought that had trapped and tortured me. I realised I could be totally free within myself.
One morning I woke and sat up on the mattress on the floor that was my bed. The last ghost of inner entrapment fell away. A fountain of joy opened in my body, pouring upwards through me. It was so intense I cried out. My cell mates called a warden because they thought I had gone mad. They stood looking at me as I experienced radiance so strong I felt as if I must be shining. I was aware my joy poured into them, although they thought I was possibly insane. I could sense the enormous change in me influencing them, and I knew it couldn’t help but change them also. I realised that I might never be released from the prison, but it didn’t matter as I had found a fuller release than simply walking the streets. Even though remaining behind prison bars, I would still be touching people’s lives deeply. Nothing would ever be the same again.”
Useful Questions and Hints:
Do I feel as if I am not really connected or identified with the society in which I live?
Have I been led to develop different ways of using my mind and developing innate abilities than those around me?
Am I still locked in anger about alienation, or have I moved to recognising the benefits of not being immersed in my surrounding culture?
Have I learnt to be a shape shifter – if not try Being the Person or Thing
See Summing Up – Definition of Spiritual – Life’s Little Secrets – Avoid Being Victims
A Psychotherapeutic Experience of Premature Birth
Without hesitation I begin to feel my connection with another human being. I experience that being connected with another human being is a fundamental part of life and procreation. If something threatens that connection, then it is life threatening – the reason being, I am in the womb! To lose my connection threatens my life. But my life is threatened. I am expelled from the womb before my body and soul are mature enough to be ready to be separated, ready enough to undertake life disconnected from the placenta. I feel incredibly vulnerable. Each sound, whether a bird singing or a car going by, is a possible threat to my existence. I had been physically and psychically attached to my mother. Now the bond is broken.
I realise as I experience this that the broken bond, the feeling of life threatening isolation, enormously increased my sensitivity to threats. It set me up for what happened at three when I was placed in a convalescent home and was deeply traumatised. In itself the short absence of my mother was not as potentially traumatising as it turned out to be. But because of the birth experience, I was already traumatised to abandonment. To be hit by it again increased the volume of it enormously.
I wasnt properly formed, so it was very traumatic to be separated as a baby. I am trying to heal this at the moment. I feel the struggle of resisting what has happened to me. I cry out that I dont want to be born. I am not ready. I feel deeply alone. There is in me a sense that tells me I shouldnt be alone. It is like something that pushes me to seek not to be alone. I feel lost. Im not ready for this world. Im feeling awful.
In fact I do feel awful, like I am ill and can barely move, or move only with effort and concentration. I go on to say that I have felt awful most of my fucking life. I can see from the feelings I am meeting how they have contributed to my lifelong feelings of being lost and cut off – alone. I have always called it independence, and perhaps seen the positive side of it more than the negative. But it has been a source of restlessness and a spur to seeking a bonding with someone. Of course I want to find the security of the womb. I want to know someone is deeply committed and bonded to me.
I am so alone. Even when someone loves me I cant feel it. I want to change. I dont want to keep hurting Hy by living like she isnt there at an emotional level. But that is the feeling world I have lived in – who is there for me? I was part of something and I lost it. I was part of something that was good, and I lost it. I was a part of a woman and I lost her. I was rejected. I was rejected. Now I face this struggle just to exist, just to breath, just to be. This feeling of life being a terrible struggle just to keep going has pervaded me all my life. I’ve got to struggle to exist just to keep alive. Got to struggle just to keep alive! GOT TO STRUGGLE TO EXIST – JUST TO KEEP ALIVE! GOT TO STRUGGLE BECAUSE THERE’S NOTHING THERE. I WANT SOMETHING TO HOLD ONTO. I’VE GOT TO STRUGGLE JUST TO KEEP ALIVE.
I cry like a baby. The question burns in me – Why is life like this? I cry again. Then I realise that at first when I was born I was too small and undeveloped even to be able to cry properly, so I couldnt let out my misery. It is such a relief to cry now and be understood, to have known what I felt at that terrible time.
I am aware of my connection with my stream of life having been broken – the umbilical cord. What I realise as the adult watching this, is that because of its proximity to the genitals, there is an unconscious connection made between the genitals and the connection I seek to sustain my life. So even as a baby I am reaching for that connection with my genitals. I want to be fed. I attempt to reconnect through my genitals, but the pain of the separation is so acute even when I do try in adulthood, the pain of the separation turns me back. This is the story of the Garden Of Eden. I was in the garden and was cast out. Now when I attempt to return, an angel with a burning sword turns me back. Not only was it painful every time I attempted reconnection, but I had the unconscious expectation to be fed, to be nourished. Instead of that every time I had sex I felt cheated, deceived and betrayed. I was not fed, but deeply sucked dry of what small nourishment I had managed to build up. I wasnt fed, I was fed upon by a predator. Each sexual act was a betrayal, a predation, and a torturous pain. Yet I had to find my way to the garden again, because there lay the secret of my genesis and myself. So I would return, to be wounded once more. It is even painful to look back on those years of misery now. Why is life so painful?
Seen from this level of experience, that of the uterine baby, God is a projection. You were in connection with a great creator, the mother. You were at one with them, but now you have been cast out of the Garden of Eden, so you have lost your contact with God, the creator in whose bosom you had existed. Perhaps that is why I searched so long for God.