Healing Through Archetypes

One thing that seems to happen almost universally in awakenings is an awareness of union with a higher force, with those energies which feel pre-existant in the world, in spirit, and in ourselves. Thales,the Greek Presocratic and the teacher of Pythagoras once said that "All things are full of gods."  In awakening this old phrase that I studied and pondered in a college philosophy course  was the object of much conjecture.  My feeling then was this went deep, but I wasn't quite sure how deep it went, or even what it meant completely.  Upon awakening, or during it, I saw how everything was tied together, made up of the same stuff, a kind of holographic universe built on orders of magnitude, and that the building blocks of all matter and life were based on this pre-existant energy which was flooding the universe and was flooding me.  It is the great cosmic yin and yang, the positive and negative, the feminine and masculine. In most awakenings, regardless of the culture, there is some kind of awareness or expression of understanding that what one feels is the very essence of union.  As this has unfolded, I see how every single form that is has its greater expression, its own "god" if you will. Or gods.  That would suggest that its not just plural, but also broad and inclusive to involve those aspects of ourselves which are present in our world and that also exist in still higher forms. In Christianity there was the Father and the Holy Ghost (which was known in Jesus's time to be the feminine aspect of the deity).  In the Hindu tradition, it was Shakti and Shiva.  Both were involved in union.  Both merged in a blissful state of union that served to reveal the great secrets of the universe.....that the world is made up holographically, that we are all interconnected....that all life is recursive, a kind of giant fractal, a lineage from a higher form (gods) to us, the earthly selves of things that exist in "larger" scales.

Our sexual identity is not to be excluded.  In higher forms, our soul resides in a state of perfection.  It seems in all encounters I have had with it (in the beginning since my first encounters were fleeting and often difficult) that somewhere within me resides this self that is in a sense above my self, above the fray and the karma and all the rest.  This is my divine parentage, perhaps what some in the eastern tradition call the oversoul. It is because I am connected and a part of that self that I can choose to let go of the river bank and swim in its waters. When I do I have an experience of satori, of divine bliss.  Since I am not a student of the eastern traditions, I trust my terminology is correct.  But the point here is that beyond all of this bru-ha-ha is a refined sense of self that can serve as a template for being.  In a real sense, it is what we already are.  Its almost as though you were handed a cheat sheet, a clear path to knowing or being.  You visit your future self, you get all the answers, you come back to your place in your own time and rest in wonder over it all. You don't have to travel through time, though, since that self is available to you.  Before awakening it was only there during certain periods of my life, and I felt it more as a burst of inspiration that would flood into my moment and would leave a series of drawings, a-ha moments and other inspiring proofs of its having been present.  I seemed to be chasing after those elusive moments and often thought of them as inspiration.  This was of course correct, but it can be a state of being because it hints at the broader potential possible in such experiences of kundalini or awakening.

We can learn to heal some pretty broken places in ourselves, a place where the floor boards have gotten beaten up pretty bad.  Part of what we have had so much trouble with for so long has been tied to our sexual identities.  Just look at us as a race and its everywhere.  We have kept down the feminine for so long.  Some have rationalized this because women should be protected, or cared for by the masculine.  Women are the heart of the home, the nurturers, and yet, we have at the same time not given credit where its due. We have kept her submerged practically and figuratively.  She has not been able to inherit property.  She has not had the right to pass on her name.  She has not had the right to vote, to sell property, or to have jobs that paid the same as their male counterparts.  Women have been considered property.  Its not been the best time in the world. All of our most divine parts, while present, have been in disrepair. our most instinctive senses have been put toward the wrong ends.  Men have been asked to be the strong ones, yet when they exhibit sensitivity or need to be cared for emotionally, many women are turned off.  Men are meant to be strong, the rock, and god forbid if they ever crack under the pressure. There are all kinds of expectations that we put to each other, and its like Annais Nin once said that we are like sculptors of people; we make of them what we want them to be, but since it is not who they are, we always wind up being let down or feeling at a loss in the end, for it never suits them and it never suits us. Its true.  And this, dear friend, is what karma does.  And this is what kundalini begins to undo to the degree that one is ready. We can begin to heal those archetypes in us by bringing those forms down from the mountains of our awareness into the valley's of our earthly existence.

Within each of us resides both masculine and feminine in different degrees.  Each person has a drop or two of their opposite in them, its how the universe works.  Its less that you are divided down the middle, but a swirl of elements which you could consider masculine and feminine.  These make up who you are.  For people who have been defensive for a long time, you will find that your psyche has been ringed with masculine energy.  Why?  Well, its that part of you that is strong, the protector.  We call it masculine.  Its in truth HUMAN.  It does, though, have an energetic signature that is different from its seeming opposite, the feminine.  In my own experience, I grew to be very armored, protected from hurt.  I did this from a very early age due to trauma and hurt I had received.  I knew no other way and also was not fully aware just how armored I had become.  Wilhelm Reich, the psychologist who broke with Freud's analysis of how the psyche works delved in this armoring and how to remove it in order to heal.  As I learned to surrender in my awakening, I also let fall the walls all around me.  Boy, they had been up a long time!  It was a relief to feel them come down.  I felt like a different person.  it also meant that my ego, which had been monitoring the perimeter had grown very strong.  It seems that a lot of people who go through this sort of thing develop strong egos perhaps as part and parcel of trauma.  It gets you out of the feeling side and into a less emotional part of you....but boy, what a messed up part that is!  It is the interplay of these two elements within that can teach you how to loosen and become more supple spiritually. I discovered that my feminine essence was protected by a ring of masculine.  Everything that made me soft and sensitive was to be protected at all costs!  And it did.  it grew up feeling like it could ride to the aid of others, for it was perfectly suited for the job.  Again, there is karma!

As I have moved through this, I have stopped asking so many questions and have sought in a new way how my life ought to be.  I have not always had the answers, I have not always understood where I was going or where I was being led.  I often didn't know what was divine inspiration and what was karma.  As I have moved along I have found how accessing the two opposites within has led to peace.  The great secret is that as I access them, I am aware that I am accessing a universal field of energy and feel a still larger sense of moving the universe through me.  I can remember reading something that a zen buddhist had said about reaching these states.  He described it as sitting quietly as all the sand grains in the deserts passed through your hands.  This is, I think, hitting upon the same idea. There is a lot there.  If I am quiet and calm and centered, I can feel the pulse of the masculine moving through me and a current of something that seems a little beyond my ability to fully understand of feel, but that nonetheless is present.  It is me, but it is also something larger. I imagine my hand goes up and I feel its energy moving through my hand as I move it through fields of energy which need healing.  Unlocking and healing, this warm presence is beyond the hurt and pain of our past.  He does not seek to plunder or take or control.  He is gentle and kind.  He is fully aware that he is like a warm raw of sunshine warming an otherwise cold day.  He moves through all things, and like heat, he soaks in and heals. He does not take, but he gives.  He is content to simply be who and what he is, perfect essence, compassionate and freely bestowed.  At his source, he knows that the Source of all Life is this.  Loe is not bestowed upon only a certain righteous few.  This essence moves through and animates all things.  This happens, though, not on his own, but in consort with the feminine force of the universe, the Great Mother of All. It is in this interplay between them, the push the pull, the cool the warm, the hard the soft, that the world moves into dance and is animated, coming further and further into reality.

This awareness has been healing, it has helped me to crack open the hard places within me.  By centering on the hardness, being aware of it, I tell myself that it can all soften, and it does.  As I heal, I imagine the world heals right along with me.  One compliments the other, as the essence of the male is made more beautiful by that which adores him.  Somehow, her magical presence brings awareness of just how beautiful he is.  It is because he sees through her eyes to see how she see him that this is so.  But in similar fashion, she looks out through his eyes to see how he sees her, and realizes just how beautiful he finds her essence to be. He is aware that she is aware that she has many many manifestations in endless worlds down to the smallest speck, and he knows that they are both the parents of all of this. Long ago we had the rite of Hieros Gamos, most often a pagan kind of rite that involved intimate union with a god.  It emerges in a number of ways in different places and times.  The idea is that we ascend into that place into the godself.  Whatever the particulars have been in these rites, I do know that the moment that kundalini comes in, it is the very essence of this union.  As their union presides over the healing of the self, its power can be felt more and more.  Its true essence can be known more and more.  Since their union is eternal, there is no sense of separation.  There is not an intention to be one, for it has always been.  Theirs is less a river you learn to navigate as something that you simply jump into because it is what you are.  We may seek to ritualize it, but in truth, it is here in this moment through surrender and intention. We say kundalini rises in order to reach ultimate union, but from the moment kundalini emerges, it IS in union.  All that you do, though, is to learn how to be one with IT.  As you do, things become simpler.  No rituals, no dogmas, no religions, too.  Its in you like gravity.  You don't need a religion for that, or a belief for that.  That is why, when it comes, you will know it unmistakably.  No guesswork.

Here we are, in this moment.  We can choose bliss, follow it and hold onto it and then ask what it is that remains.  It may not always take you where you thought you would go, but it will always lead you to healing if you let it. As this happens, the bliss teaches and softens more.  Some problems simply cannot be solved.  Let them alone.  Forgive them.  As you do, your heart opens more deeply and feels a greater sense of this love that is less FOR something as it IS something unconditional and rapidly moving out of the old paradigm and into the new.