Posts Tagged ‘meeting unregenerate self’
Search for Helpmeet
Ain Soph – The Unknown God
Chapter 22
Fred Mayers
Genesis v. 19 and 20.
v.19: “And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air’; and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them; and whatsoever the man called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
v. 20: “And the man gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air’, and to every beast of the field; but for man there was not found an help meet for him.,-’ (English R.V.)
Most of the words in this verse have already been examined and explained in previous chapters. Some of them may require further clarification, but the chief difficulty of interpreting the verse lies in the extreme conciseness of its composition. It seems to economise in words to the point of leaving us to do a lot of “guessing.”
We give here an attempt to represent its actual wording in the original,- as closely as we can, word for word. Wherever we are obliged to use more than one word to represent one word of the original we will indicate that by small capital letters :–
“And HE CAUSED To FORM Ihoah Elohim from the Adamah all-life of the field (Nature) and the deity all-flying the heavens and He approached to-the Adam for seeing how (or, what)-he will give character to it-AND-ALL which HE CHARACTERlSED- To it-THE ADAM soul living that ITS (OR His) NAME.”
The reader will notice in that rendering the apparent gaps and uncertainties which constitute the difficulty we referred to. For instance, in each case where we have translated “chol” by “all” the word may mean equally: “the WHOLE” or “ every,” or “each,” and there is nothing apparently to show us which word would be most correct. The translators-of the English Version recognised this difficulty. They could see nothing to do but say “them” in some cases and “it” in others-for the same thing. Then, in the word: “the heavens,-’,- which the English Version translates by “the air,” the word “the” might equally be- rendered “of the” or “of.” If we choose “of,” the word would seem to mean “heavenly” instead of “the heavens”; and that translation is not by-any means an absurd or impossible- one. Again, the word approached,” or “brought nearer gives no specific indication of what it is applied to.
153 However, these difficulties are not insuperable. We have a number of signposts on the way to a satisfactory solution of the problem, in the work we have already done. We have acquired the deeper Biblical meaning of a fairly extensive vocabulary of Genesis words. – We have seen that the whole narrative, so far, has been unfolding, in a surprisingly connected and logical manner, a Cosmogony that can hold its own against all other systems that we have any acquaintance with, and-in very important and highly significant ways-go beyond them. We can continue to work from the known to the unknown. For every word in the verse that we can clear up the meaning of, we not only remove its own special difficulty, but narrow down cumulatively the difficulties of the remaining parts of the verse.
In the first place we must never for a moment lose sight of the difference between “Creation” and “Formation.” “Creation” was a Divine mental conception; it was concerned with the “being.” the “essence,” the spiritual “substance,” the “beginning.” the “end” and the “purpose” of everything. “Formation” is concerned with the “activities” and the “processes” by which the “dream” becomes “reality.’,- “Creation” was the conception of:
“A fire-mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell,
A jelly-fish and a saurian,
And caves where the cave-men dwell”:
but those things (with all the countless, unmentioned things that came in between) did not spring into existence independently,-each complete and perfect. On the contrary. We know from clear and indisputable evidence that they were progressively developed through immeasurably long periods. from the simplest embryonic forms to the infinite variety and complexity of the universe that exists around us to-day. “Formation” was the activity of the forces that produced all the developments and all progression. Then we saw in our second chapter that “Elohim” was the sum of all the powers and qualities that had been latent from Eternity in the “Unknown” Absolute “God,” flowing out into manifestation in Creation. Going a step further we found that those same powers and qualities, outwardly reflected in Creation, constituted the “Adamah” or spiritual “ground” from which “Adam” or the universal spiritual “man” was “formed.” It is clear, therefore, that the “Adam” stands in the same relation to “Elohim” in the sphere of “formation” as Elohim stands in relation to “Ihoah” (The Eternal One) in the highest spiritual sphere.
That explains all that has been told us about “Adam” being given dominion in” every kind of living creature, and in the whole earth”; it explains what we mean by “Adam” being the spiritual activity in “Evolution.” Progress from stage to stage in Evolution could not possibly be produced by the created things themselves. For instance,- once the creative idea of a “worm” has been “realised,” the worm has no power to become anything than it is. What it was millions of years ago it is to-day. If in the course of ages, new “forms” of life appear, finally resulting in a “butterfly,” those developments are the work of something higher than the worm-something with the power of continual self-transcendence, and therefore capable of producing ever new and higher “forms” in all below itself. The only “something” in the universe which possesses that power of “self-transcendence” is the “Adam”-the human spirit.
This brings us directly to the subject of the verse which we are considering; but before we go farther with that, it will perhaps be wise to make a digression, to forestall and remove any possible misconception with respect to the phrase used above: continual self-transcendence.”
If “Adam,” himself formed from the spiritual powers and qualities of Elohim, differed from everything else in Creation by the possession of the faculty of continual self-transcendence, that is. that there was no limit to his power to take into himself ever more and more of the divine powers and qualities, and so become ever more fully and perfectly the manifestation of the “Likeness” of God, it has been argued that the logical consequence must be that “Adam” must finally become a “God” himself. That contention is not so logical as it may at first appear; and a little careful consideration will show that the -idea is quite untenable. It is quite impossible to think of two or more “Infinite and Eternal” Beings. Nothing that has ever -been “created and made” could be “infinite,” otherwise, it must include the Creator, which is a contradiction in terms. Neither can a created thing be “Eternal” because it had a “beginning” and is “mutable.” There can only – be ONE Infinite and Eternal: “Listen, Israel, Ihoah (the Eternal) our God* is Ihoah (Eternal)-Unity-One” (Deut VI, v. 4). Between “Infinity” and “finiteness” there is a gulf which can never be bridged. Man can never be God ; but he can attain to union with Him, -a true union of heart and soul and Love, through,, which he can find “Peace” and “Salvation” and “Blessedness.
*Literally: “our Eloah”-the singular of “Elohim.”
There is another reason why “man” can never become “God.” It is that “Adam” is not complete in the “oneness” of his spiritual being (see Chapter XXI). He is complete only in his multiplicity, in the countless millions of individual men and women, every one with a soul that is to be a manifestation in some respects of the “Likeness” of God. No two of these millions of individuals are quite alike or equal in body, mind or spirit, or in their particular capabilities of assimilating the infinite varieties of knowledge, the qualities and the active forces, that are comprised in the “fullness of God.” They vary from the “mind-dark” idiot to the greatest genius, or the most inspired “illumine,” They may possess ability in certain particular directions, and utterly lack ability in others. The man or woman does not live who can excel in every way. Therefore, no individual can ever attain “The perfection that is God” by any possibility; and as “Humanity” is but the sum of its individuals, and every one of its individual members is imperfect, humanity en-masse can never be “perfect.” No mirror ever reflected an image without some diminution of the perfect brilliance of the unreflected object-and surely no image has ever been so dimmed and distorted by reflection as has been the “image of God” in the minds of men.
But let us now return to our text. We are only at the beginning yet of what the narrative has to reveal to us about “Man.”
In the “Creation” story all living creatures, whether of the seas, the earth, or the air, were said to be produced from the “waters” or the “earth.” In this “Formation” narrative only two classes of creatures are mentioned, from which we infer that they alone have any direct connection with this part of the narrative. These two classes: the “beasts of the field” and “fowl of the heavens,” Ihoah Elohim is said to “form,” not from the “waters” or “the earth,” but from the “Adamah”-the “spiritual ground” or element of which “Adam” is formed. That makes it quite clear, at least, that the subject of the passage is spiritual and concerned with certain activities affecting both the creatures and Adam.
Let us examine one or two words in detail before going farther. First the word “iahbeh,” translated “He brought.” The root, “ba,” conveys any ideas of progression; graduated advance; of coming: of passage from place to place, or from state to state; locomotion, and so on.
The verb “boa” means the act of coming; forthcoming; to arrive: to become; to proceed; to go forward; advance; to enter, etc. It appears to be used in the text in the “causative,-’ form.
The next word we need to examine carefully is the word “ikra,” which is translated by “he called.” The word appeared twice in – the first chapter of Genesis (v. 5 and v. 10), where it was also translated “called.” It has, however, many significations, much more directly springing from its root meaning than “called.” The root “KR” (“car”) contains the ideas of what is incisive; penetrating; ingrained; engraved; any character; letter or writing; inscription; memorial; carving. It acquires the meaning of “call” from to “cry out,” to scream ;* to call anyone’s attention; to hail anyone; to designate; to name anyone; to evoke, convocate. (Sometimes it means an incision; to dig; a ditch; an abyss.) If we study these various significations it is quite easy to see that they all have a similar connecting idea. That idea is not “calling anything by a name,” but of giving something the distinguishing qualities or characters which are the reason why anything gets a particular name : and it is something of that meaning which it undoubtedly has in this 19thth verse. Verse 18 told us that God declared His intention to make for Adam a help’’ in reflection of himself,” i.e., as a means of self-expression. It is difficult to see any relevance in following that up by anything so childish as bringing all the animals and birds in procession before Adam, just to see what he would “call” them, so that whatever he called them would be their names. What had the naming of an animal to do with “making a help-meet” for Adam? Obviously, in any such sense as the English translation suggests, nothing! It has not even the “moral” of an Aesop’s or La Fontaine “fable.” We must look much deeper for the real meaning of the verse.
Why are only two classes of living creatures mentioned here? Delitzsch, after pointing out that if the narrative was concerned with the creation of animal life in general, fishes,-reptiles, etc., would have been included, goes on to say: “The animal creation appears here under a peculiar point of view, which the narrator certainly did not regard as its motive in general. It is the first step towards the creation of woman.” That sentence comes a long way towards the truth, but strangely enough, Delitzsch quite failed to see how animals of any kind could be “the first step towards the creation of woman,” or how it affected the interpretation of the remainder of the verse. He also omits to notice that, from beginning to end, the narrative never uses the word “creation in connection with “woman.” As a matter of fact he never realised that “creation” and “formation” were anything but one and the same thing, although he and his fellow-workers built up an immense amount of very learned, imaginative, literature on the assumptions that the words were synonymous, and that, in any case, the writer or writers of Genesis could not have been sufficiently philosophically-minded to make fine distinctions in the use of words, and that they were merely hashing up ancient fairy tales for the Hebrew people. We hope that we have already shown sufficiently that the lack of “philosophical-mindedness” was certainly not in the Mosaic writer.
However, we think we are now are in a position to make the meaning of the verse fairly clear. In the first place, the reason why two classes of living creatures only are mentioned here is simply because of what they represented symbolically. They were the correspondences of two essential constituents of human nature. The “beasts of the field” were representative of the instinctive “animal” and emotional nature in man, and the ‘fowl of the air” (or, as the text says literally, “of the heavens”) were representative of the reasoning or thought faculties of man-faculties which were not “earth-bound,” but capable of soaring from earth to spiritual regions. The writer of the narrative uses the “animals” and “birds” and “Adam’s” relations with them, in the manner of a parable, through which he could explain something which it was not easy to make intelligible otherwise.
The verse tells us that “Ihoah Elohim “formed” from the “Adamah” (that is, the spiritual foundation of the “human” being) all the “birds of heaven” and all the “beasts of the field.” The writer was not speaking either of their “Creation,” or of their being “made” as physical beings. He was speaking only of their “formation,” that is of the particular characteristics imparted to them: of the various instinctive qualities, passions, feelings, impulses, etc., “formed” or developed in the different species of the animals, and of similar representative particularities in the flight and ways of birds. He was,, in other words, dealing with the shaping and characterisation of the animal and bird “soul-life,
and to all that those things corresponded with in human nature. Now, we have said many times that this formative process in subhuman kingdoms of Nature was work assigned to the “Adam”: the “dominion” he was given “in” the lower Kingdoms constituted him the “living force” in all the processes of “Evolution.” Here it is stated that “Ihoah Elohim” does the formative work! At first sight, this seems to be in contradiction to our previous statements. We shall soon see, however, that the verse immediately proceeds to harmonise the two statements. It is perfectly correct in saying “Ihoah Elohim formed,” etc., but it also makes it clear that the “Adam” was the agency that Ihoah Elohim employed. Adam was the working force, but, as we have all along been careful to say, he was not yet possessed of any independent Will; his activities merely reflected the Will of Ihoah Elohim. The animal “souls” were “formed” by being brought into contact with the “Adam” to see what characteristics he was able to develop in them. That is precisely the meaning of “mah-ikra” in this verse.
There is another little point in this connection, which explains the apparent confusion, which we pointed out, in the use of “them” and “it” in the English Version: All the “animal” and “bird” “souls” are said to be brought into contact with the “Adam”; that necessitated the word “them” when referring to them; but the work of the Adam was necessarily different for every species, each species received different qualities according to its nature, so when the separate species are referred to, each one is called “it.” The phrase then is: “to see what characteristics he would give to it.” And whatever the characteristics were-whether they were the particular qualities that make the lion a “lion,” the lamb a “lamb,” the eagle an “eagle” or the nightingale a “nightingale,” those were the distinguishing characteristics by which each species was recognisable-that is, its “name.” appellation the Hebrew acceptation, a “name” As we have said before, in it is that which makes anything knowable, distinguishable, remarkable-the outstanding qualities of anything.
This brings us to verse 20
“And the man gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for man there was not found a help meet for him.”
Having arrived at the meanings of the words used in verse 19, we are relieved of further trouble in that respect with this verse. The only word in verse 20 which we have not met before is matza,”- “found,” and the meaning of this is not in any way in question.
The way in which verse 20 is worded gives further confirmation of what we said about verse 19. The original conveys a somewhat different meaning from the English Version. It says in effect: “And the Adam produced in all the various species the distinguishing qualities which called forth their names. There is a little modification in verse 20 of the animal types that Adam had given “character” to. Verse 19 spoke of “beasts of the field” and “birds of the air”; verse 20 says: “all cattle” (i.e., domestic animals) and “birds of the air” (heavens? and then adds that Adam’s activities had extended to ill “beasts of the field” in general. (The word “field” should really be understood as “Nature” generally.) The probable meaning of the change is that the highest types of animals, those that are fitted to be most useful to man, and to be in the closest relations with him, were considered to be of chief importance in the search for a suitable “help” for Adam, although he had had his part to play in the “characterisation” of all species.
‘The reader will notice how, even in English, the words expressing the meanings of the root, “KR,” contain the same root themselves. (Note the sound rather than the letters): character; inscription; carve; cry; scream.
The verse ends with the statement: “yet for “Adam” was not found any “help” “in reflection of him.” There is no difficulty whatever in interpreting the narrative, in the light of what we have already learned. The “Adam,” as we have said so often, was the active spiritual force that produces all evolutionary developments. He was, himself, “formed” from the spiritual qualities and powers that constituted the “Being” of Elohim. He was given a “being” of his own; and, as that “being,” he was still in his universal “Unity.” Although “Adam” was the first being to be formed from the “Adamah,” he was the last to be given physical” expression in bodies of “flesh and blood,” though which he could become “fruitful and multiply.” The most primitive of all “living creatures” were the first to be given existence in physical form, and all the higher life forms followed progressively. Spiritually, Adam pre-existed all other life forms, and his activities gave to each “soul of life” the special forms, characteristics, and capabilities that distinguished it, just as far and as fast as its physical evolution permitted. Beyond what the physical form of any species was capable of expressing, be could not go; but he could provide the spiritual prototypes for the production of new species of higher forms up to the limits of what we call the “Animal Kingdom.’
He was aware that all the creatures below him had one thing that he still lacked, and that was “sex differentiation,” by means of which they possessed the power of propagating and multiplying their like. He was aware also that in every species of living creatures, the male and female elements were in exact correspondence with each other, in nature. But none of them corresponded at all to his nature. He was aware of qualities, 160-faculties, and potentialities within himself, that differentiated him from all lower beings so essentially that they constituted -him an entirely new Life Kingdom-a Kingdom as different from the “animal kingdom” as that was from the “vegetable kingdom.” He could only form a “human kingdom.” His “help,” therefore, must needs be of his own human nature. It was necessary for God to bring about sex differentiation from some element of Adam’s own being.
·This is fully confirmed by all scientific evidence.
Back to Chapters List – Forward to Chapter 23
The Archetype of the Shadow
The shadow archetype is depicted as a shadowy figure, often the same sex as dreamer but inferior; a zombie or walking dead; a dark shape; an unseen ‘Thing’; someone or something we feel uneasy about or in some measure repelled by or frightened of; drug addict; pervert; what is behind one in a dream; anything dark or threatening; sometimes a younger brother or sister; a junior colleague; a foreigner; a servant; a gypsy; a prostitute; a burglar; a sinister figure in the dark, a person or thing that we can see but not put a face or defined form to. Usually there is an air of disrepute about the person, or of danger. In literature we find the negative aspect of the shadow depicted in such stories as Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Frankenstein’s monster or Lurch; Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray; Hesse’s Steppenwolf, and in many stories about werewolves or haunting. Ackroyd, in his Dictionary of Dream Symbols, even points to Cinderella as a shadow figure, as she is seen as inferior by her socially accepted sisters, and is kept shut in the house, thus repressed.
But as usual we all live a dual or many sided life. So there is what Carl Jung called our ‘Golden Shadow’; this is the creative, loving and powerful side of our nature that we also tend to keep hidden, repress or do not believe we are worthy of. Many, many people hold themselves back maybe because their sense of themselves arises out of your personal misery, out of depression or emotional pain. Is that how you see yourself? Is that the limit of what you know yourself to be? Is that the lie that you have taken to be the truth? If that is so it is a tragedy. It is from that painful, tiny and limited world that you are rescued by the action of the core. When you recognise that it enables you to transcend the prison bars of those limitations. See Opening to Life
In occult literature the Shadow is called The Guardian of the Threshold. It is described as a great – subjective – figure we meet at a certain stage of growth. The Guardian holds in it all the negative and positive actions and deeds that have been repressed aspects of self committed or developed in the past, even in past lives, which must be met and transformed or allowed to grow more fully. See: guardian of the threshold.
The Shadow is any part of ourselves that we reject, and so do not allow sufficient expression in our life. We may so dislike aspects of our nature we fail to recognise them altogether and instead see them in other people and criticise them. Nations as well as individuals do this. The Nazis projected all problems onto the Jews. The Americans have not wished to see their own social sickness, and looked instead at the Russians. No doubt the Irish blame the English, and the English use the class system, with its projections between employee and employer. It is easier than looking at one’s own shadow. The foreigner is one of the favourite shadow projections. This may be because through living in our culture we develop certain likes and dislikes, certain value judgements and ways of doing things. In other cultures their normal and acceptable values and ways of living may be vastly different. In dealing with the foreigner we therefore meet our own unconscious potential for living in a different way. Many individuals who worked in the British Commonwealth in vastly different cultures to their own, started out loathing the native customs, and then changed their life to live within the new culture. In the English language it was called ‘going native’.
The shadow develops in us, according to Jolande Jacobi, because as we grow and absorb our culture, we naturally repress parts of our nature as they are not acceptable to ourselves and/or society. These grow and mature in just the way our conscious personality does, through experience and further information – except the shadow has a life under the surface – in the darkness – like any socially unacceptable organisation, criminal activity or individual. But often it is the functions or instincts in us that date from prehistory, when present day social and sexual restraints did not have survival value, that make up a large part of the shadow.
If you can think of the characteristics you loathe in others, that is a fair picture of what you repress in yourself. The great ‘ladies man’ may hide a shadow which feels inadequate sexually. The loving Christian mother might meet a shadow full of resentment and anger at how she has been taken for granted. The rigid heterosexual might hide homosexual tendencies. Meeting the shadow through our dreams is a meeting with our own reality, which in turn enables us to look at the world realistically. If the shadow can be met it leads to wholeness.
Example: During his analysis of women patients, sexual advance or assault by the woman’s father was often revealed. Freud struggled with this, wondering whether the assault was memory of an actual event, or a psychic reproduction of it. He eventually came to the conclusion that hysterical and neurotic behaviour was often due to the trauma caused by an early sexual assault by the parent. Where there was not evidence of physical assault, then he saw the neurosis as due to sexual conflict or a trauma caused by some other event. This led to Freud being rejected by university colleagues, fellow doctors, and even by patients.
This an excellency example of the shadow working in individual and society. People refused and still do refuse to see the awful side of the repressed side of ourselves and others. Fraser Boa tells the story of a man who told his analyst he had dreamt of Red Rooster – a cartoon character used in American national parks. Red Rooster is bossy and tells people to keep their litter and cigarettes and not to make a mess. The analyst asked the man if he recognised Red Rooster in himself. After some thought he said no, he couldn’t see he was like that. The analyst suggested he go ask his wife if she could see Red Rooster in him. He did this and was astonished when she said she could. After a few minutes of his attempts to suggest she was mistaken, she suggested he ask each of his three children. He took each one aside and was amazed when each said that of course they could see Red Rooster in him. He was always bossing people around and being authoritative. Red Rooster was his shadow.
A main feature of many archetypal figures, and particularly of the shadow, is their autonomous activity in us. This is called an autonomous complex, or in some schools ‘sub personality’. We experience this as an influence to act in particular ways that have a lot of feeling and motivation in them, but may be very different to our image of ourselves. For instance we may deeply criticise a man for leaving his wife for another woman, only to find later that we have the same urge, and have been denying it. Therefore, when we detest something in another person, our dislike for them is very strong and often unreasonable in its degree. So much so that we cannot stop mentioning them or criticising them. See: autonomous complex; sub-personality.
P. W. Martin says the shadow is ‘something which comes between a person and their fulfillment: his laziness, his fecklessness, his tendency to let things slide or to over-do things, his cowardice, his rashness, his self-indulgence, his carping and envious nature, his murkiness.’ It is all the negatives which we prefer not to see about ourselves.
Example: Before I started my serious yoga practice I had dreamt my wife and I had been talking about whether there were any ghosts in the house. On going to bed I sat in bed and challenged any ghosts to show themselves, certain I could handle them. There was no response, and feeling rather smug I lay down to go to sleep. Just then the door creaked open, and in walked two black men who looked as if they had climbed out of an old grave. Their flesh was falling off them and they were blank eyed. I was terrified and made the sign of the cross and said a few holy words to ward them off. It worked and they went, but not for long. This time all my signs and prayers didn’t get rid of them and they put their dead hands around my throat strangling me. I woke screaming and frightened. Some years later I dreamt of these two black men again, this time on an underground train. They were no longer zombies and were well dressed. One of them still went for my throat though. I caught his hands and wrestled with him, pulling his hands down, overpowering him. As I did so I realised this was what yoga had done – given me the strength to meet this attack. After another long period of time another dream came in which I was sitting with this black man in a circle with other people meditating. We were all opening ourselves to the spiritual power. Suddenly the power took hold of my whole body and moved me around the room, along with the chair I was sitting in. Then I experienced it moving my mouth and vocal organs, speaking through me. The word flowed through me talking to the group about the spiritual life. Afterward the black man came to me and asked if I had really been moved, or was I acting. I said as far as I knew it had been spontaneous, not acted. He said he would like to surrender to that same influence with me. What I gathered from these dreams was that originally I had repressed parts of my own natural sexual feelings, shown as the black men. They were dead because I had killed this part of myself as a teenager. But I was deeply frightened of these sexual urges because of what had happened in adolescence. Therefore, in my meditation, in trying to enter more fully into myself, I always turned back through fear, because in meeting more of myself, I met these black men – my own sexual urges. My practice of yoga had gradually helped me find strength in meeting this part of myself, show in the second dream. There was also a change going on in my unconscious – the underground train – as the men were healthy and well dressed.
However, because the shadow is the ‘out of sight’ area of our psyche, it also holds in it great treasure through its connection with our unconscious potential. In fact a great deal of our energy is involved in our ‘negatives’. When we meet our shadow or our fears, we are enormously more energised. Meeting the shadow and unfolding the possibilities held unexpressed is our life’s work. Without it we may never become the mature and full person we are capable of. As Prospero says of Caliban, we need to say ‘this thing of darkness I acknowledge mine’. Through this we gain not only our own greatness, whatever that might be, but also the acceptance of our common connection with humanity. Jung says that if we could fully meet our shadow, we would be immune to any moral or verbal insinuations. We would already have seen this for ourselves. Finding this sort of transformation to a state beyond guilt is a task for the hero/ine who has the strength to descend into the underworld and wrestle dark creatures; to open Pandora’s Jar and deal with what is revealed. See: black person; black under colour; shadow.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What do I hate in others – and what can I gather from that about what I repress in myself?
Where is my shadow appearing in my dreams – and what happens if I explore its qualities?
For help doing this see Talking As and Processing Dreams. If I observe what I think and feel, can I catch myself editing/deleting certain thoughts or feelings?
Archetype of Christ
Although people generally think of Christ as an historical figure, as a human experience he depicts powerful influences acting upon your personality. For a start, Christianity is a huge social and political force in the world. Many of us as children are educated to accept its beliefs or we meet its influence in one way or another. Therefore Christ in our dreams often depicts this enormous influence and how we relate to it – the influence can be many sided, from a recognition of the best in oneself to the hatred and anger about what organised Christianity has done to many.
Although people generally think of Christ as an historical figure, Christ is never that – even though pictures and paintings depict Christ as a human being. That is because we have been taught that Jesus and Christ are the same person. But it clearly says that when Jesus was baptised something immense happened to him. “Now when all the people were baptised, it came to pass, that Jesus also was baptised – of John in Jordan – and praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven which said, ‘Thou art my beloved Son: in thee I am well pleased.’ (Luke 3:21-22).”
It tells us that the heavens opened and something from the cosmos entered Jesus and transformed him into having Christ Consciousness. For Christ was an aspect of Godness and had always existed. It is easier to see it rather like our growth. When we were babies we grew and entered another level of awareness and ability called childhood. Later another huge change entered us and we became adolescents – again with a different mental and emotional state.
Many people have attained the change of Christ consciousness. It is a further stage of human growth. As an example Siddartha became the Buddha when he experienced such a great change. In different languages this change has different names such as Krishna Consciousness. It might shock some people to see Christ linked with Buddha and Krishna – if so you have a lot of growing to do and if you do you too can enter Christ consciousness.
Like any of the world’s great religious figures, Christ can also be a very potent compensatory symbol. Each of us have feeling responses to events. Some events lead to a pleasurable response, others to a painful response. As children, and often as adults, we are largely at the mercy of events as to whether our life is experienced as painful or pleasurable. But there is also a way of creating our own response that a few of us use consciously. If we are lonely or depressed for instance, we may read a book, go out with a friend or watch a film, stimulating feelings that displace the loneliness or despair. This ability to produce positive or different feelings is often seen in the dream process. By holding in mind an image connected with hope and love, feelings will be produced that will compensate in some measure for pain or depression we may be feeling.
But Christ is used to compensate for what may be felt as crushing or defeating life circumstances or inner despair. Such compensation may also be used to deal with things missing from ones life, such as a sexual partner or social achievement.
However, being able to achieve Christ Consciousness, or Buddha Consciousness, or even Krishna Consciousness, is much more that a compensation, it is a transformation of ones life from one in which misery is often a part to one of which is symbolised in the New Testament as walking on water. If we take it out of its symbolism it tells us that our emotions that can be stormy and difficult to deal with can be dealt with and even tamed by the immense power we hold within us, which most of us have lost contact with. I am talking about a huge force that can be contacted or allowed into ones life. Without it we are often powerless to deal with negative feelings, and so many people take the path of suicide. But with it we can meet them easily, walking over the surface of such stormy emotions.
The fundamental power of Christ as an archetypal force lies in a that direction however. As an archetype Christ enters our life with powers of redemption, of transformation, as an aid to lead us out of awful life situations, and a type of love transcending the human limitations of jealousy and dependence.
It it is a universal consciousness which is a part of every person, whatever their beliefs. To become aware of it we must somehow have broken our heart and self so be aware of such a huge awareness. See Ages of Love.
Example: It is difficult to convey the immediacy of these experiences deep in the sleep state. Over and over I experienced fantasies, the drama, of being a sacrifice. As one who expressed the new ideas, the new consciousness, I was beaten and smashed to death because I was a threat to the old instinctive order. But the fragments of my strewn body, my flesh, were eaten by those who had killed me. And my flesh was like Seeds that grew within those who devoured, and became in them the new awareness they had sought to destroy. In another of the series I was a willing sacrifice. Through the stress and ritual of being willingly lead to death, I would receive the new consciousness and in some way bring it to my people.
I am going through masses of evolutionary feelings. The struggle to develop self-consciousness, and how the Messiah was first of all a fantasy, then an embodiment of this by individuals. Then how other people lived certain aspects of it, and were taken to be the Messiah, the Krishna, whatever. They did bring into the body another type of awareness, that mankind had been struggling toward for so long. This is where the mystery of the birth of Christ comes from. Why there is no real historical person. Why there is so much myth and legends surrounding such events. It is the embodiment of something mankind needed so much, to help them out of their crisis into the next revolutionary level.
Often overlooked in this influence is the power to look at oneself and life very clearly, very honestly, without hiding behind excuses or self deceptions. Perhaps more than anything else though, Christ is a cultural image depicting the power of our own highest possibilities. It is the outreach to us of collective human love.
Christ is not the only historical figure with these associations. Krishna and Shiva in the Indian culture, Mohammed in Islamic culture, Odin in the Viking age, and Quetzalcoatl/ Kukulkán/ Gukumatz in the South American culture have the same sort of power. Some aspects of the Buddha are approached for redemption and there are many saviour heroes from other cultures such as Anansi in Africa, Cúchulainn in Eire, Osiris in Egypt and Hercules in Greece. Apollonius of Tyana is also recorded as living a sacred life. But Christianity is simply a new expression of an ancient theme.
Mithra was born in a cave, and on the 25th December. He was born of a Virgin. He travelled far and wide as a teacher and illuminator of men. His great festivals were the winter solstice and the Spring equinox (Christmas and Easter). He had twelve companions or disciples (the twelve months). He was buried in a tomb, from which however he rose again; and his resurrection was celebrated yearly with great rejoicings. He was called Savior and Mediator, and sometimes figured as a Lamb; and sacramental feasts in remembrance of him were held by his followers.
Osiris was born on the 361st day of the year, say the 27th December. He too, like Mithra and Dionysus, was a great traveller. As King of Egypt he taught men civil arts, and “tamed them by music and gentleness, not by force of arms”; he was the discoverer of corn and wine. But he was betrayed by Typhon, the power of darkness, and slain and dismembered. “This happened,”says Plutarch, “on the 17th of the month Athyr, when the sun enters into the Scorpion” (the sign of the Zodiac which indicates the oncoming of Winter). His body was placed in a box, but afterwards, on the 19th, came again to life, and, as in the cults of Mithra, Dionysus, Adonis and others, so in the cult of Osiris, an image placed in a coffin was brought out before the worshippers and saluted with glad cries of “Osiris is risen.” “His sufferings, his death and his resurrection were enacted year by year in a great mystery-play at Abydos.” Quoted from Pagan and Christain Creeds by Edward Carpenter
“Such a myth, however, consists of symbols that have not been invented consciously. They have happened. It was not the man Jesus who created the myth of the god-man. It existed for many centuries before his birth. He himself was seized by this symbolic idea, which, as St. Mark tells us, lifted him out of the narrow life of the Nazarene carpenter.” Quoted from Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung
I know I hung on the wind-swept tree Nine nights through, Pierced by a spear, dedicated to Odin, I myself to myself.
There is, above all, the self-sacrifice of the hero-saviour: as Toynbee puts it in A Study of History, ‘A very god who dies for different worlds under diverse names-for a Minoan World as Zagreus, for a Sumeric World as Tammuz, for a Hittite World as Attis, for a Scandinavian World as Balder, for a Syriac World as Adonis (“Our Lord”), for an Egyptian World as Osiris, for a Shi’i World as Husayn, for a Christian World as Christ.’
Depending upon the culture we were raised in, we will unconsciously put an image to the power of change and transformation that we experience. People in all ages, all cultures and all social circumstances have experienced what is often felt to be a divine influence touching them in some way.
I believe through observation that such long held and powerful traditional beliefs are based on something functional. The description of compensation above is an example of this. To be able to survive crushing life experience is a real achievement, not an imagined one, and is therefore functional. Using an image to evoke hope and motivation doesn’t make it less of an achievement. But the archetype links with patterns of love and strength actually lived by others. They are then patterns remaining in the collective experience of us and can be accessed. When we touch these powerful racial memories we may clothe them in the image of our cultural hero or saviour.
To be clear about this, the power that is found is a release of our own potential emerging from our core self. So in this sense the image of Christ is a graphic presentation of our own innate wonder. The patterns of love and strength mentioned above, and other behaviours lived by past individuals that remain in collective memory, offer keys or clues as to how to release this innate potential. That such keys, as well as ones innate potential, are often clothed in symbols and traditional imagery, is simply because we have not made such parts of our potential or heritage clearly conscious. They thus emerge from our unconscious clothed in whatever imagery or ideas we can accept or allow. See The Inner Path of Christ.
So what does the archetype of Christ the Redeemer and Good Shepherd mean in this sense?
To understand this we must first remember that our ego, the sense that we have of being a distinct person, is not one and the same thing as our body’s biological processes, or of our deep psychological processes. We all have some understanding of this because we can observe in ourselves or in others, that we – our personality – may want something that is very much against what our body wants. People with eating disorders for instance may actually die from malnutrition. People who have a fear of sex may constantly fight or repress their sexual urge. A person is often at odds with the natural processes and urges that underlie their conscious ego.
Norman MacKenzie explains this very well in his book . Dreams and Dreaming. Writing about the clinical use of LSD to help patients deal with various forms of neurosis, he says that the drug enabled a massive observation of how people’s mind worked, and how people related to their unconscious drives. When a patient first took LSD one of the commonest reactions was massive anxiety. This degree of anxiety usually arises only when we are threatened physically or mentally. The patient fears the drug is robbing them of control and will overwhelm them. In fact what is happening is that the repressive defences the person uses to keep their inner drives and processes under control are being relaxed. See The Two Powers Explained.
People relate to this threat in two major ways. They either fight to keep control, and employ all manner of techniques such as keeping their attention focused outwardly by such things as talking, walking about, drawing, holding their breath or dancing – or they surrender to what is being experienced. To meet the parts of ones nature that have previously been pushed into unconsciousness, one needs to surrender in some degree. If the person fights the loss of control as the new material from within is emerging, it sometimes feels as if they are disintegrating. Their body may feel as if it is changing or dying, and they are losing themselves.
Below are two descriptions from people who used LSD therapeutically that illustrates these different responses.
It didn’t happen at first, but gradually I began to feel that if I relaxed I would not be able to hold back my emotions, that I would do something that would be seen as crazy. So I sat holding onto myself, literally tensing my muscles to hold back whatever might happen to me. Time seemed to stretch and I felt as if I would never get out of this tension and difficulty. I just had to sit through it, live through it, and hope there would be an end. I also wanted to get away, but I was frightened I would get lost, like I was a child of four or five. Maybe that’s how I felt at that age, so I had to stop myself from doing what I wanted to do. A.K.
Here is someone else’s description of a similar situation.
Early in the session I started having fantasies about being attacked. Each time it happened I put the fantasy aside because I couldn’t see why I would be having these feelings that I was being attacked. There were a lot of images flowing into my mind also about the horror of life in general – babies abused, children murdered, men and women shot or tortured. The fantasies returned and several men attacked me and were trying to drag me off somewhere against my will. As the fantasy progressed, or replayed, I began to realise that it only appeared like an attack because I was resisting the process. In fact the men wanted to show me something that was important to me. They were being quite gentle, but because of my resistance, it felt to me like an aggressive act. I then let myself be carried off by the men, and began to feel as if a great chunk of my nature has been held back since childhood because of anxiety. In fact I had been frightened to ‘live’ this part of me. I had held so much of myself back throughout most of my life that I constantly felt there was something I was missing and had to search for. But it wasn’t an external thing – it was the me I had denied. B.M.
AK was using tensions and experiencing fears he had developed in childhood to hold back feelings that he had been taught were not acceptable. In BM’s experience he learned to move beyond such tensions and fears.
In observing such struggles in thousands of people, the doctors and clinicians working with them saw that no matter what the patient was experiencing, even if they felt completely overwhelmed for a while and were lost in their fears and emotions, something within them was learning from the experience and attempting to integrate not only the insights gained, but also the various parts of their nature that were in conflict or split. Mackenzie says, ‘No one knows what type of ‘thinking’ this may be. It appears to be different both from ‘reality thinking’ and ‘autistic thinking,’ from the patterns of conscious thought and the imagery of fantasy – a kind of bridge between two types of mental process.’
Jung observed something similar in the psyche. He called it the Transforming Principle, or the self-regulating action, which constantly attempts psychic growth. He stated that one can watch this at work by noting many dreams from the same individual over a period of time. When one does this ‘tendencies become visible, then vanish, then return again. …… one can observe a sort of hidden regulating or directing tendency at work, creating a slow, imperceptible process of psychic growth-the process of individuation.’
Most religions call it the power of God at work in ones life, and many of them teach that if one surrenders to it, one will be healed and made whole. Different people and cultures represent or depict this transforming power within them in their own way. It is often represented as Christ, but equally as well as something more abstract. However, whatever we wish to name it, there is in us a potential that has in it more than we presently know of ourselves, and it has the power to heal and transform. It is observable that healing or therapy proceeds by a series of problem-solving movements. As soon as one difficulty is reviewed and removed, another appears, waiting in line to take its place.
In BM’s experience he learned to move beyond such tensions and fears. But also he says something that is at the heart of what this archetype brings. He says, “It wasn’t an external thing – It was the ‘me’ I had denied.”
That is the heart of the Christ archetype. It holds in it the you that may have been crushed, denied, traumatised, repressed, in some way held back from emerging as a reality in your life. It is the potential you hold within you that has not been allowed to flower. It is the very best of what you are, not some distant possibility that you have to get from outside yourself. See: life’s little secrets; compensation theory; self-regulation dreams and fantasy;.
Here is another personal description. This time not from an LSD session, but from a man allowing the transforming action to take place while fully awake and without drugs. This makes clear what it is like to confront the power of transformation within.
In the previous week I had met a feeling I could not account for, which had left me wondering what was happening. I had the very strong impression that I had killed a man and now had the guilt of blood on my hands. This time in the group, when I surrendered, something I could never have suspected happened. I was standing with my eyes closed, but it seemed I could see, because the spontaneous mental imagery was so clear, that I was standing under a clear night sky, with the stars brilliant above. But there was a star more brilliant than the others that fell to Earth, and I knew it was something wonderful and special so hurried to see what it was. Others had also seen it, simple rural people like myself. What we found was a baby. But the wonder of it was so much I fell on my knees and couldn’t stop myself crying out again and again – A baby! A baby!
The tears and the cries were because I had the clear feeling or knowledge, a direct knowing, that all of the heavens, all of life’s mystery, had come to life in this baby. And to actually know this, to feel the impact of it, was almost more than I could bear. But part of the amazement was that this was every baby born. It wasn’t just one special baby. It was my own birth too! All the mystery of life was born in me. I sobbed with the pain and wonder of it.
Then the scene changed and I was standing by a dirt road. There were lots of people lining the road waiting. I didn’t know what for. Then excitement rose as a man came walking along the road toward us. He looked very ordinary to me. But as he got near he looked right at me and a huge feeling of love swept through me. I knew this man loved me in a way I had never been loved before. Then he walked directly to me and took hold of my hands and said, ‘You are my disciple’.
I stumbled backwards away from him. The love was too much, too painful. Looking into his eyes I knew I had been born with all that love, but I had killed it in myself. The blood on my hands was because I had murdered Him/myself. I had crushed the flower of my sexuality through fear. I had denied my own wonder and value in the world, looking to others for guidance. I had killed Christ in me – Christ who was the splendour of my own life and love if I dared to live it – my own birthright. But he had touched my hands, and I went to each of the people in the group and put my hands on them, trying to rub some of that magic onto them. Thomas.
As can be seen from Thomas’s description, the image of Christ holds in it not only the power of self-revelation for him, but also the relationship of teacher to disciple, and transforming love for one in need of wholeness. Thomas cannot help but think of Christ as separate from himself, even though at the same time he realises with deep emotion, that he is gazing at and being touched by his own wholeness, his own potential. See: compensation theory; the fundamental process.
This paradox needs to be remembered not only when meeting the Redeemer archetype, but almost any archetype. Also implicit in this meeting is the possibility that because confronting ones own wholeness and seeing ones own guilt, or the smallness of oneself, can lead to great personal transformation, it may lead the present personality, as it is at the moment, to dying and being left behind. Thus the meeting with Christ may include a personal experience of death and resurrection.
So the experience of meeting Christ may be a representation of the denied force of joyous life within – denied out of attempting to live social or religious rules and regulations, or social pressure to conform. Therefore, because ultimately we are an integral part of the universe, and have no existence outside of it, when we meet Christ/our wholeness and potential, we also become aware in some degree of the hugeness we are a part of or an expression of. We meet a sense of eternity, an awareness of the symbiotic – or cooperative processes or forces – operative in human life and the cosmos.
The Sunday School or Church Christ
This is another aspect of the Christ archetype and depicts social norms, the generally accepted morals and social rules. This ‘Christ’ comes about because the church tends to represent traditional values and national history, and attempts to press people to live these values. The dreamer may have a child-like relationship with this Christ, or if attempting to be self responsible, be in conflict with it. Some people find this Christ has a castrating role in their life, and flee in horror. In fact this aspect of social indoctrination may lead to such a burden of guilt and suppression that it can create psychic cripples. Trying to do all the ‘right’ things may lead us to the point where ‘we can’t say no to a glass of water without a pang of guilt.’
Two of the great forces that push at the human soul or psyche are, firstly, social pressure, such as the moral norm; and secondly, biological pressures such as the sex drive. Individuals may fight a lifelong battle with one or the other of these. The social criminal typifies battle with social authority pressures and rules; the ascetic and the bulimic battle with biological drives.
These two forces can be seen in the symbols of Christ and Mary Magdalene. The battle of these two immense forces is not really won until there is the marriage or unity between the two. The following dream and its exploration illustrate this dynamically.
I was in the basement of the house where I lived in London. I had taken some floorboards up because they were rotten. Underneath I saw a large white serpent or worm, somehow connected with a dead evil woman like a force of destruction and evil. I seemed to understand the evil could corrupt all of London, that it lived in a great underground lake that existed under all of London. I poked at the serpent with a piece of wood and it came to life and plunged into the earth. There seemed to be an air filled hole that I poked into and the wood I was using was wrenched away from my hands.
My family thought I was crazy because I was trying to tell them about this and sent for a doctor. I was very pleased to see him because he was very unbiased though, not believing – nor disbelieving. I explained my experience and feelings. With him there I dared to poke at the floor with a long scaffold pole. The pole was ripped from my grasp by some force below. Then we tied the pole to a beam and it ripped part of the beam off. I felt there was enough power to tear down my house if I had used it as an anchor. Then I saw Christ standing on my right, and the terrifying woman on my left, and they came together and the evil was neutralised – but so was the power of Christ. Mathew
Mathew saw the Christ figure as the moral norm in the society he was raised; a morality he had struggled with all his life. The woman he experienced as the urges such as his sexual needs, with which he had also struggled. When Christ and the woman merged he felt enormous peace.
The positive aspect of ‘Sunday School Christ’ is that prior to maturing enough to take realistic self and social responsibility, people need guidelines for behaviour. They often yearn for security or certainty. Religion in the form of powerful positive declarations of ‘truth’, supply this need for many people. For such people, making personal decisions in the face of the ever shifting external situations is enormously stressful. So organised and dogmatic religion is of great strength to them.
The Ideal Christ
This is yet another facet of this archetype, and is the psychological process which causes us not to take responsibility for our own highest ideals; our own yearnings for the good; our own most powerful urges arising against what we see as evils in the world. This influences us to wait for a sign from Christ or God in our dream or waking life in order to gain authority, or to overcome the anxiety associated with the urges. We want God to say we should act in a certain way because we are not willing to be self responsible. We deny in ourselves the core self and its divinity.
Example: ‘I stood outside a castle. It was closed and guarded by soldiers in armour. Wondering how to get in I thought that if I dressed and acted as a soldier I would be allowed entrance. It worked and inside Christ met me and said he had important work for me to do.’ Sonia.
The closely guarded secret is Sonia’s own impulses to do some sort of socially creative work. She doesn’t want to own them as her own. It is much easier if she can say ‘Christ told me to do this.’ In this way she avoids direct encounter with opposition and has a feeling that she has greater authority than her own. Joan of Arc might well be seen in this light.
The Healing Christ
The Christ archetype has powerful healing influence for many people.
Example: ‘A fierce battle was raging with bullets flying. I immediately fell down and ‘played dead’. It wasn’t that I was hurt in any way, but I didn’t want to be at any risk in the fight. As I lay there I saw a tall well built man in soldiers uniform walk to me. He gave no sign of any fear concerning the bullets, and quietly knelt beside me. I felt he was Christ, but was confused by him being a soldier. He placed a hand on my back and gradually worked his fingers under the shell of a large limpet type creature that I had never before known was parasitically attached to my back. I could feel him pull it away, but knew its tentacles still ran right into my chest. It seemed and alien had entered me. He then sat me up and told me how I could rid myself of the tentacles and so be healed.’ Peter Y.
Peter, whose dream this was, had a debilitating psychosomatic illness at the time of the dream, causing pain where the tentacles ran. The shell is his defences against feeling his own hurts and inner conflicts. The dream shows him contacting a strength which is not afraid of his internal battlefield or conflicts, and can show ways of healing real human problems. The healing rests upon the dreamer’s conscious action, not Christ’s, suggesting the dreamer taking responsibility for his own situation. Peter realised he had been avoiding his own internal battles, but felt he had found a strength – in the Big Man – which would support his efforts to find healing. In fact he met his conflicts and grew beyond his ailments.
Peter’s conflicts were between his love for his children and his love for another woman. The Christ he met was his own undammed life, the flood of loving sexuality, the strength to burst through social rules and regulations because love or life pushes. When we find it in ourselves we don’t give a hang about bullets, death, right or wrong, because we have a sense of our own integral existence within life, and our own rightness and place in eternity.
The Integral or Cosmic Christ
Each of us have, perhaps deep in their unconscious, a sense of connectedness with the whole, with the cosmos. Perhaps it is best to call this our own wholeness, which incorporates all the light and darkness in us, all the expressed and the potential. We may be little aware of this. We may be denying it sceptically as Lester is in the example below.
Example: ‘I am a journalist reporting on the return of Christ. He is expected on a paddle steamer going upstream on a large river. I am very sceptical and watch disciples and followers gather on the rear deck. The guru arrives, dressed in simple white robes. He has long, beautiful auburn hair and beard, and a gentle wise face. He begins to tap a simple rhythm on a tabla or Indian drum. It develops into complex intermingling of orchestral rhythms as everyone joins in. I now realise he is Christ, and feel overwhelmed with awe as I try to play my part in the music. I’m tapping with a pen and find myself fumbling. A bottle or can opener comes to me from the direction of Christ. I try to beat a complementary rhythm, a small part of a greater, universal music.’ Lester S.
Finding this inner connection with things can enrich all that we do in life, even if it is a very humble thing like Lester’s can opener. The awareness of connectedness and wholeness brings with it a realisation of taking part in the unimaginably grand drama of life. It gives a feeling, no matter what the state of our body, crippled or healthy, that we have something that makes any faults insignificant. It doesn’t take all the difficulties out of life, but it is a wonderful companion on the way. We come to know that at base we are a wonderful shining being, and that life and its circumstances and events, are a way in which we are learning to let that internal wonder shine out.
Another way of looking at this is by seeing Christ as a process. Christ might then be seen as a collective identity arising in the consciousness of humanity. This relates to us as individuals much as our identity relates to the cells of our body. Just as our identity survives the death of billions of cells in our lifetime, so the Christ consciousness survives our death and change, integrates our experience, transcends our function, and has a personal relationship with us.
Example: We are each living that mystery play – that mysterious drama of which the Christian myth is a summary. Each in our own way play out that drama we call life. Each of us give birth to or abort the divine in us. Each of us chooses whether we are going to wash our hands of meeting that splendid call of our own being, or whether we will crucify it on our own political, monetary, or power hungry demands. Each of us makes the decision of whether we will denounce our relationship with the love that is in our own heart.
We don’t have to be a saint to live that Mystery. We are living it now! We live every tiny part of the story. For some of us, one tiny part of that grand story becomes a central theme for us — motherhood, the loss of the lover, the departed parents, the betrayal, the struggle with the forces of evil, or that grand search for the beloved.
What part of the story are you experiencing? Is it the raising of the dead? The healing of personal blindness? Feeding the hunger of the multitude? Working in the garden of life? Being a shepherd?
In dreams and religion Christ is also represented as the son of the Cosmos or God. This aspect of Christ possibly comes about because of a sense many people have that the origin of their personal life is from beyond the Earth. This powerful urge to see oneself as more than a physical body is symbolised by Christ, a being who transcends physical boundaries. Perhaps this is why the film ET is so moving for many.
Human beings of all ages have, when opening to the influence of their larger perceptions during meditation, trance, prayer, or drug use, experienced awareness of love existing behind the creation of things, a love that is the source of the big-bang itself, a love that willingly died that we might exist. Humanity became aware of this at a particular stage of the development of self-awareness. The arrival at this stage of self-awareness was expressed in what we know as the historical Jesus. The internal awareness of the love that gave us being was projected outwardly and became the Christian Myth.
As one man who encountered Christ said, “Christ is like the sun, a principle of nature. No one can own it, although different individuals or groups can relate to it or use it in various ways, as happens with electricity. The Roman Catholic Church cornered the market so to speak. Prior to the Council of Nicaea there was a free market. You could say the church fenced off a beach and started charging people to go to it on Sundays. And there are different names for this natural principle in different languages.”
See: meetings with Christ; religion and dreams; Archetype of the self.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What aspects of the Christ archetype, if any, am I influenced by?
Am I repulsed or held by the influence of the ‘live by these rules’ pressure?
Am I helped by the belief there is a divine loving presence?
Do I feel the power of an inner wonder and potential I am allowing into my life?
In recognising my relationship with Christ, can I evolve it to something more satisfying?
Try Talking with a Dream Character.