HERO/HEROINE
The Quest for Wholeness / The Descent
The Quest for Wholeness / The Descent
The worship of the divine man, or the unknown hero, is an archetypal i!ea of which you find traces all over Freece and it is this which is the foundation of the strange behavior of the early Christians who started the same thing" in the worship of the martyrs and so continue the tradition. if we deal with the problem of the saints from this more psychological angle we run as you see into strange depths and a great many problems. --M.-L. vonFranz
The universal hero myth always refers to a powerful man or god-man who vanquishes evil in the form of dragons, serpents, monsters, demons, and so on, and who liberates his people from destruction and death. The narration or ritual repetition of sacred texts and ceremonies, and the worship of such a figure with dances, music, hymns, prayers, and sacrifices, grip the audience with numinous emotions and exalt the individual to an identification with the hero.
~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 68.
The universal hero myth always refers to a powerful man or god-man who vanquishes evil in the form of dragons, serpents, monsters, demons, and so on, and who liberates his people from destruction and death. The narration or ritual repetition of sacred texts and ceremonies, and the worship of such a figure with dances, music, hymns, prayers, and sacrifices, grip the audience with numinous emotions and exalt the individual to an identification with the hero.
~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 68.
Alex Coroll
The finest of all symbols of the libido is the human figure,
conceived as a demon or hero.
Here the symbolism leaves the objective, material realm of astral and meteorological images and takes on human form, changing into a figure who passes from joy to sorrow, from sorrow to joy, and, like the sun, now stands high at the zenith and now is plunged into darkest night, only to rise again in new splendor as the sun, by its own motion and in accordance with its own inner law, climbs from morn till noon, crosses the meridian and goes its downward way towards evening, leaving its radiance behind it, and finally plunges into all-enveloping night, so man sets his course by immutable laws and, his journey over, sinks into darkness, to rise again in his children and begin the cycle anew
~Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation; Para 251).
The finest of all symbols of the libido is the human figure,
conceived as a demon or hero.
Here the symbolism leaves the objective, material realm of astral and meteorological images and takes on human form, changing into a figure who passes from joy to sorrow, from sorrow to joy, and, like the sun, now stands high at the zenith and now is plunged into darkest night, only to rise again in new splendor as the sun, by its own motion and in accordance with its own inner law, climbs from morn till noon, crosses the meridian and goes its downward way towards evening, leaving its radiance behind it, and finally plunges into all-enveloping night, so man sets his course by immutable laws and, his journey over, sinks into darkness, to rise again in his children and begin the cycle anew
~Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation; Para 251).
Heroes and Hero Makers
The myth of the hero is the most common and the best known myth in the world . . . classical mythology . . . Greece and Rome . . . Middle Ages . . . Far East . . . contemporary primitive tribes. It also appears in dreams . . . obvious dramatic . . . profound . . . importance. P. 101 . . . structurally very similar . . . universal pattern . . . over and over again . . . a tale of . . . miraculous . . . humble birth . . . early proof of superhuman strength . . . rapid rise to prominence . . . triumphant struggle with the forces of evil . . . fallibility to the sin of pride (hubris) . . . and his fall through betrayal or a "heroic" sacrifice that ends in his death. P. 101
. . . another important characteristic . . . provides a clue . . . the early weakness . . . is balanced by . . . strong "tutelary" figures . . . who enable him to perform the superhuman tasks that he cannot accomplish unaided. Theseus had Poseidon . . . Perseus had Athena . . . Achilles had Cheiron . . . the wise centaur, as his tutor. P. 101
These godlike figures . . . representative of the whole psyche, the larger and more comprehensive identity that supplies the strength that the personal ego lacks. P. 101
Once the individual has passed his initial test and can enter the mature phase of life, the hero myth loses its relevance. The hero's symbolic death becomes, as it were, the achievement of that maturity. P. 103
. . . the image of the hero evolves in a manner that reflects each stage of the evolution of the human personality. P. 103
. . . more easily understood . . from the obscure North American tribe of Winnebago Indians . . . four distinct stages . . . Trickster . . . the Hare . . . the Red Horn . . . the Twin. It represents . . . efforts to deal with the problem of growing up. P. 103
Trickster . . . earliest and least developed period of life . . . physical appetites dominate his behavior . . . mentality of an infant . . . gratification of primary needs . . .cruel . . .cynical . . . unfeeling.
Hare . . . not yet attained mature human stature . . . appears as the founder of human culture . . . the Transformer. This myth was so powerful that the members of the Peyote Rite were reluctant to give up Hare when Christianity began to penetrate the tribe. He became merged with the figure of Christ.
Red Horn . . . ambiguous person . . . winning the race . . .proving himself in battle . . . defeats giants . . . has a powerful companion whose strengths compensates for . . . weakness. We have reached the world of man . . . the aid of superhuman powers or tutelary gods is needed to ensure . . . victory over evil forces . . . p. 106
This basic theme . . . how long can human beings be successful without falling victims to their own pride or . . .to the jealousy of the gods? P. 106
Twins . . . sons of the Sun . . . originally united in the mother's womb, they were forced apart at birth . . . yet they belong together . . . it is necessary . . . though difficult . . to reunite them. In these two children we see the two sides of man's nature . . . "Flesh" . . . mild, without initiative . . . "Stump" . . . dynamic and rebellious. P. 106
. . . for a long time . . . invincible . . . they eventually sicken from their abuse of their own power. . . their consequent . . . behavior brings retribution . . .the punishment they deserved was death. P. 106
. . . we see the theme of sacrifice or death of the hero as a necessary cure for hybris . . . the pride that has over-reached itself. P. 107
. . . in European mythology . . . the theme of ritual sacrifice is more specifically employed as a punishment for hybris. P.107
. . . in any case the next stage in human development is one in which the irresponsibility of childhood gives way to a period of socialization, and that involves submission to painful discipline . . . p. 110
. . . the concept of "shadow" . . . Dr. Jung has pointed out that the shadow cast by the conscious mind of the individual contains the hidden, repressed, and unfavorable aspects of the personality. Buthis darkness is not just the simple converse of the conscious ego. Just as the ego contains unfavorable and destructive attitudes, so the shadow has good qualities . . . p. 110
The ego, nevertheless is in conflict with the shadow . . . in the developing consciousness . . . the emerging ego overcomes the inertia of the unconscious mind, and liberates the mature man from a regressive longing to return to the blissful state of infancy in a world dominated by his mother. P. 111
The battle between the hero and the dragon . . . shows more clearly the . . . theme of the ego's triumph over regressive trends. For most people the dark . . . side of the personality remains unconscious. The hero . . . must realize that the shadow exists and that he can draw strength from it. He must come to terms with his destructive powers if he is to . . . overcome the dragon. I. E. Before the ego can triumph, it must master and assimilate the shadow. P. 112
The idealism of youth, which drives one so hard, is bound to lead to over-confidence: The human ego can be exalted to experience godlike attributes, but only at the cost of over-reaching itself and falling to disaster. (Icarus . . . carried up to heaven on . . . fragile . . . . humanly contrived wings . . . flies too close too the sun and plunges to his doom. ) All the same, the youthful ego must always run this risk, for if a young man does not strive for a higher goal than he can safely reach, he cannot surmount the obstacles between adolescence and maturity. P. 113
The ritual has a sorrow . . . that is also a kind of joy . . . acknowledgment that death . . . leads to a new life . . . it is the same drama . . . of new birth through death. P. 113
As a general rule . . . the need for hero symbols arises when the ego needs strengthening . . . p. 114
. . . rescue symbolizes the liberation of the anima figure from the devouring aspect of the mother image. Not until this is accomplished can a man achieve his first true capacity for relatedness to women . . . freeing the psychic energy attached to the mother-son relationship, in order to achieve a more adult relation to women . . . and, indeed, to adult society as a whole. The hero-dragon battle . . . symbolic expression of this process of "growing up". P. 118
This important point . . . illustrated in a man nearing 50. All his life he had suffered from periodic attacks of anxiety associated with fear of failure (originally engendered by a doubting mother). Yet his actual achievements . . . were well above average. Frequently felt threatened by the shadow of self-doubt . . . no longer necessary to fight the shadow . . . accept it. . . no longer driven to a competitive struggle for supremacy . . . such a conclusion . . . leads one to a truly mature attitude p. 119
This change . . . requires a period of transition . . . expressed in forms of initiation. P. 119
The myth of the hero is the most common and the best known myth in the world . . . classical mythology . . . Greece and Rome . . . Middle Ages . . . Far East . . . contemporary primitive tribes. It also appears in dreams . . . obvious dramatic . . . profound . . . importance. P. 101 . . . structurally very similar . . . universal pattern . . . over and over again . . . a tale of . . . miraculous . . . humble birth . . . early proof of superhuman strength . . . rapid rise to prominence . . . triumphant struggle with the forces of evil . . . fallibility to the sin of pride (hubris) . . . and his fall through betrayal or a "heroic" sacrifice that ends in his death. P. 101
. . . another important characteristic . . . provides a clue . . . the early weakness . . . is balanced by . . . strong "tutelary" figures . . . who enable him to perform the superhuman tasks that he cannot accomplish unaided. Theseus had Poseidon . . . Perseus had Athena . . . Achilles had Cheiron . . . the wise centaur, as his tutor. P. 101
These godlike figures . . . representative of the whole psyche, the larger and more comprehensive identity that supplies the strength that the personal ego lacks. P. 101
Once the individual has passed his initial test and can enter the mature phase of life, the hero myth loses its relevance. The hero's symbolic death becomes, as it were, the achievement of that maturity. P. 103
. . . the image of the hero evolves in a manner that reflects each stage of the evolution of the human personality. P. 103
. . . more easily understood . . from the obscure North American tribe of Winnebago Indians . . . four distinct stages . . . Trickster . . . the Hare . . . the Red Horn . . . the Twin. It represents . . . efforts to deal with the problem of growing up. P. 103
Trickster . . . earliest and least developed period of life . . . physical appetites dominate his behavior . . . mentality of an infant . . . gratification of primary needs . . .cruel . . .cynical . . . unfeeling.
Hare . . . not yet attained mature human stature . . . appears as the founder of human culture . . . the Transformer. This myth was so powerful that the members of the Peyote Rite were reluctant to give up Hare when Christianity began to penetrate the tribe. He became merged with the figure of Christ.
Red Horn . . . ambiguous person . . . winning the race . . .proving himself in battle . . . defeats giants . . . has a powerful companion whose strengths compensates for . . . weakness. We have reached the world of man . . . the aid of superhuman powers or tutelary gods is needed to ensure . . . victory over evil forces . . . p. 106
This basic theme . . . how long can human beings be successful without falling victims to their own pride or . . .to the jealousy of the gods? P. 106
Twins . . . sons of the Sun . . . originally united in the mother's womb, they were forced apart at birth . . . yet they belong together . . . it is necessary . . . though difficult . . to reunite them. In these two children we see the two sides of man's nature . . . "Flesh" . . . mild, without initiative . . . "Stump" . . . dynamic and rebellious. P. 106
. . . for a long time . . . invincible . . . they eventually sicken from their abuse of their own power. . . their consequent . . . behavior brings retribution . . .the punishment they deserved was death. P. 106
. . . we see the theme of sacrifice or death of the hero as a necessary cure for hybris . . . the pride that has over-reached itself. P. 107
. . . in European mythology . . . the theme of ritual sacrifice is more specifically employed as a punishment for hybris. P.107
. . . in any case the next stage in human development is one in which the irresponsibility of childhood gives way to a period of socialization, and that involves submission to painful discipline . . . p. 110
. . . the concept of "shadow" . . . Dr. Jung has pointed out that the shadow cast by the conscious mind of the individual contains the hidden, repressed, and unfavorable aspects of the personality. Buthis darkness is not just the simple converse of the conscious ego. Just as the ego contains unfavorable and destructive attitudes, so the shadow has good qualities . . . p. 110
The ego, nevertheless is in conflict with the shadow . . . in the developing consciousness . . . the emerging ego overcomes the inertia of the unconscious mind, and liberates the mature man from a regressive longing to return to the blissful state of infancy in a world dominated by his mother. P. 111
The battle between the hero and the dragon . . . shows more clearly the . . . theme of the ego's triumph over regressive trends. For most people the dark . . . side of the personality remains unconscious. The hero . . . must realize that the shadow exists and that he can draw strength from it. He must come to terms with his destructive powers if he is to . . . overcome the dragon. I. E. Before the ego can triumph, it must master and assimilate the shadow. P. 112
The idealism of youth, which drives one so hard, is bound to lead to over-confidence: The human ego can be exalted to experience godlike attributes, but only at the cost of over-reaching itself and falling to disaster. (Icarus . . . carried up to heaven on . . . fragile . . . . humanly contrived wings . . . flies too close too the sun and plunges to his doom. ) All the same, the youthful ego must always run this risk, for if a young man does not strive for a higher goal than he can safely reach, he cannot surmount the obstacles between adolescence and maturity. P. 113
The ritual has a sorrow . . . that is also a kind of joy . . . acknowledgment that death . . . leads to a new life . . . it is the same drama . . . of new birth through death. P. 113
As a general rule . . . the need for hero symbols arises when the ego needs strengthening . . . p. 114
. . . rescue symbolizes the liberation of the anima figure from the devouring aspect of the mother image. Not until this is accomplished can a man achieve his first true capacity for relatedness to women . . . freeing the psychic energy attached to the mother-son relationship, in order to achieve a more adult relation to women . . . and, indeed, to adult society as a whole. The hero-dragon battle . . . symbolic expression of this process of "growing up". P. 118
This important point . . . illustrated in a man nearing 50. All his life he had suffered from periodic attacks of anxiety associated with fear of failure (originally engendered by a doubting mother). Yet his actual achievements . . . were well above average. Frequently felt threatened by the shadow of self-doubt . . . no longer necessary to fight the shadow . . . accept it. . . no longer driven to a competitive struggle for supremacy . . . such a conclusion . . . leads one to a truly mature attitude p. 119
This change . . . requires a period of transition . . . expressed in forms of initiation. P. 119
Golden Knight, Klimt
As mythologist Joseph Campbell described, "[Heroes have] moved out of the society that would have protected them, and into the dark forest, into the world of fire, of original experience. Original experience has not been interpreted for you, and so you’ve got to work out your life for yourself. Either you can take it or you can’t. You don’t have to go far off the interpreted path to find yourself in very difficult situations. The courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities into the field of interpreted experience for other people to experience—that is the hero’s deed."
Campbell also suggests, "It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure." And, "One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that. " "The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature." These have become societal goals of our collective awakening from materialism, not just individual ones.
Hero:
An archetypal motif based on overcoming obstacles and achieving certain goals.
The hero’s main feat is to overcome the monster of darkness: it is the long-hoped-for and expected triumph of consciousness over the unconscious.["The Psychology of the Child Archetype," CW 9i, par. 284.]
The hero myth is an unconscious drama seen only in projection, like the happenings in Plato’s parable of the cave.["The Dual Mother," CW 5, par. 612.]
The hero symbolizes a man’s unconscious self, and this manifests itself empirically as the sum total of all archetypes and therefore includes the archetype of the father and of the wise old man. To that extent the hero is his own father and his own begetter [Ibid., par. 516.]
Mythologically, the hero’s goal is to find the treasure, the princess, the ring, the golden egg, elixir of life, etc. Psychologically these are metaphors for one’s true feelings and unique potential. In the process of individuation, the heroic task is to assimilate unconscious contents as opposed to being overwhelmed by them. The potential result is the release of energy that has been tied up with unconscious complexes.
In myths the hero is the one who conquers the dragon, not the one who is devoured by it. And yet both have to deal with the same dragon. Also, he is no hero who never met the dragon, or who, if he once saw it, declared afterwards that he saw nothing. Equally, only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the "treasure hard to attain." He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of his self and thereby has gained himself. . . . He has acquired the right to believe that he will be able to overcome all future threats by the same means.["The Conjunction," CW 14, par. 756.]
The hero’s journey is a round as illustrated in the diagram. [Adapted from Joseph Campbell, Hero with a Thousand Faces, Bollingen Series XVII (Princeton University press, 1949), p. 245.]
Hero
In myth and legend, the hero typically travels by ship, fights a sea monster, is swallowed, struggles against being bitten or crushed to death, and having arrived inside the belly of the whale, like Jonah, seeks the vital organ and cuts it off, thereby winning release. Eventually he must return to his beginnings and bear witness.
In terms of a man’s individuation, the whale-dragon is the mother or the mother-bound anima. The vital organ that must be severed is the umbilical cord.
The hero is the ideal masculine type: leaving the mother, the source of life, behind him, he is driven by an unconscious desire to find her again, to return to her womb. Every obstacle that rises in his path and hampers his ascent wears the shadowy features of the Terrible Mother, who saps his strength with the poison of secret doubt and retrospective longing.["The Dual Mother," CW 5, par. 611.]
In a woman’s psychology, the hero’s journey is lived out through the worldly exploits of the animus, or else in a male partner, through projection.
Campbell also suggests, "It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure." And, "One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that. " "The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature." These have become societal goals of our collective awakening from materialism, not just individual ones.
Hero:
An archetypal motif based on overcoming obstacles and achieving certain goals.
The hero’s main feat is to overcome the monster of darkness: it is the long-hoped-for and expected triumph of consciousness over the unconscious.["The Psychology of the Child Archetype," CW 9i, par. 284.]
The hero myth is an unconscious drama seen only in projection, like the happenings in Plato’s parable of the cave.["The Dual Mother," CW 5, par. 612.]
The hero symbolizes a man’s unconscious self, and this manifests itself empirically as the sum total of all archetypes and therefore includes the archetype of the father and of the wise old man. To that extent the hero is his own father and his own begetter [Ibid., par. 516.]
Mythologically, the hero’s goal is to find the treasure, the princess, the ring, the golden egg, elixir of life, etc. Psychologically these are metaphors for one’s true feelings and unique potential. In the process of individuation, the heroic task is to assimilate unconscious contents as opposed to being overwhelmed by them. The potential result is the release of energy that has been tied up with unconscious complexes.
In myths the hero is the one who conquers the dragon, not the one who is devoured by it. And yet both have to deal with the same dragon. Also, he is no hero who never met the dragon, or who, if he once saw it, declared afterwards that he saw nothing. Equally, only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the "treasure hard to attain." He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of his self and thereby has gained himself. . . . He has acquired the right to believe that he will be able to overcome all future threats by the same means.["The Conjunction," CW 14, par. 756.]
The hero’s journey is a round as illustrated in the diagram. [Adapted from Joseph Campbell, Hero with a Thousand Faces, Bollingen Series XVII (Princeton University press, 1949), p. 245.]
Hero
In myth and legend, the hero typically travels by ship, fights a sea monster, is swallowed, struggles against being bitten or crushed to death, and having arrived inside the belly of the whale, like Jonah, seeks the vital organ and cuts it off, thereby winning release. Eventually he must return to his beginnings and bear witness.
In terms of a man’s individuation, the whale-dragon is the mother or the mother-bound anima. The vital organ that must be severed is the umbilical cord.
The hero is the ideal masculine type: leaving the mother, the source of life, behind him, he is driven by an unconscious desire to find her again, to return to her womb. Every obstacle that rises in his path and hampers his ascent wears the shadowy features of the Terrible Mother, who saps his strength with the poison of secret doubt and retrospective longing.["The Dual Mother," CW 5, par. 611.]
In a woman’s psychology, the hero’s journey is lived out through the worldly exploits of the animus, or else in a male partner, through projection.
Ricardo Fernández Ortega - born 1971 in Durango, Mexican contemporary artist oil painting, 2012
Trust in the infinite unfolding life
Trust in the infinite unfolding life
THE DREAM JOURNEY AS HEROIC QUEST
Iona Miller, 1989
http://dreamhealing.iwarp.com/whats_new_8.html
ABSTRACT: There is a parallel between the phases of the heroic quest and the process of personal transformation encountered in therapy. Experiential therapies, such as dream journeys, provide permission to immerse oneself in the imagery of the deep subconscious psyche. Each dream journey is based on the archetype of the hero's departure and return. It is a metaphor for the growth and maturation of the ego in its spiritual quest.
By the creative process we mean the capacity to find new and unexpected connections, to voyage freely over the seas, to happen on America as we seek new routes to India, to find new relationships in time and space, and thus new meanings. --Lawrence Kubie
Whether our work is art or science or the daily work of society, it is only the form in which we explore our experience which is different; the need to explore remains the same. What science has to teach us here is not its techniques but its spirit: the irresistible need to explore. --Jacob Bronowski
The real voyage of discovvery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. --Marcel Proust
Iona Miller, 1989
http://dreamhealing.iwarp.com/whats_new_8.html
ABSTRACT: There is a parallel between the phases of the heroic quest and the process of personal transformation encountered in therapy. Experiential therapies, such as dream journeys, provide permission to immerse oneself in the imagery of the deep subconscious psyche. Each dream journey is based on the archetype of the hero's departure and return. It is a metaphor for the growth and maturation of the ego in its spiritual quest.
By the creative process we mean the capacity to find new and unexpected connections, to voyage freely over the seas, to happen on America as we seek new routes to India, to find new relationships in time and space, and thus new meanings. --Lawrence Kubie
Whether our work is art or science or the daily work of society, it is only the form in which we explore our experience which is different; the need to explore remains the same. What science has to teach us here is not its techniques but its spirit: the irresistible need to explore. --Jacob Bronowski
The real voyage of discovvery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. --Marcel Proust
Come along on a journey deep into the center -- deep into the core of all being. You are in a space of shifting and roiling colors. They are boiling around you. You are in a place of undefined and pure energy "stuff" that exists beyond space and time. In fact, time itself is merely one of the colors that is mixing and boiling. The colors are more or less uniformly, but not quite uniformly distributed in space.
And yet where the colors come together, they begin to create something new. They begin to create images. They begin to create structures and forms. And these structures and forms begin to attract around the "mother" energy (matrix) which takes on the shape of the structure or form. This structure is your new self image -- your rejuvenated self.
And yet where the colors come together, they begin to create something new. They begin to create images. They begin to create structures and forms. And these structures and forms begin to attract around the "mother" energy (matrix) which takes on the shape of the structure or form. This structure is your new self image -- your rejuvenated self.
How you arrive at this place is through the dream journey, whether it is done through active imagination in therapy, or lived out in real-life challenges. Sometimes finding that chaotic place means "hitting bottom." Others would call it "finding myself." Whatever we call it, this dimension is open to explorers and those impressed into the service of the psyche. It is an adventure--the path of your life.
DREAM JOURNEY AS HEROIC QUEST
Iona Miller, Dreamhealing, 1993
The mythic dimension of the dream journey, like any voyage of discovery, is a variation on the classic heroic quest. Joseph Campbell has popularized this mytheme, outlining its principle phases.
Jung called this inner adventure "the night sea journey," wherein one learns to navigate in the profoundly deep waters of the collective layers of the psyche. The purpose and value of the entire journey is to relate the hero or heroine (which is actually the person's ego) with the primal, paradoxical forces of the transpersonal world.
The ego learns that while it may be the center of the personality, it is not the center of the whole being. On the inner quest, the ego learns first-hand about its relative position within the vast dominion of the psyche.
A dream journey uses mind, in the broader sense, to enter that domain, to find healing states of consciousness that manifest, for example, through the placebo effect. The deep layers of the psyche have been described in mythic terms throughout the ages.
They are the realms not only of transpersonal divinity, but also of the chthonic or earthy gods who have a dark nature. Therefore, the journey is as often associated with a descent into the depths as with a soaring to mystical heights. Many of the identifications in dream journeys are earthy--the fertile promise of decay, the penetrating heat of a volcano's core, the depths of a turbulent whirlpool, etc.
Other images of the profound nature of the inner depths are symbolized by such natural metaphors as a deep ocean, or a cave, or the underworld of the dead. In ancient times there were many sanctuary caves used for spiritual purposes.
Sometimes the openings were small and aspirants were pulled in feet first to symbolize a reversal of the birth process. An old alchemical maxim suggests the aspirant "visit the interior of the earth," for there one could find the philosopher's stone, symbol of wholeness and healing.
Water within the deep cave symbolizes the waters of life which spring forth bubbling with new life-giving properties. Aesculapius [Roman god of healing] , even though he was the son of the god of light, Apollo, has a dark, chthonic side. That is why he was associated with springs and groves of trees.
There is a close connection between the water of life, the tree of life, and the renewal of life, as symbolized by the serpent shedding its old skin.
All yield a rejuvenating effect. In the ancient Greek myths, Asklepios is associated with the Eleusinian cult of Demeter, the Earth Mother and her daughter Persephone, queen of the underworld. Reflecting the mother/daughter identity, Demeter and Persephone are really one in the same: "my mother/my self." In the ancient incubation rituals, it was Mother Earth who sends dreams.
In some mythic sources, Persephone is identified with Coronis, mother of Asklepios. In the Egyptian version of the dream healing cult, Serapis (Asklepios) is identified with Osiris, lord of the underworld and husband of Isis. The ancient doctrine of the soul speaks of visions with the quality of a "great dream."
These visions, revolving around the symbolism of disintegration and reintegration, bear all the marks of an initiation into the mysteries of death and rebirth, which is the hero's quest. In the dreamhealing cult, Asklepios was often imaged as a newborn infant in swaddling clothes. In this form he was identical with the incubant seeking healing.
The incubants were frequently fed infant food such as milk, honey, and cheese. Because incubation deals with the soul, it confers healing not only of physical ailments, but also of bad fate or destiny.
The dream or vision itself is the cure. It is only a slight perturbation, but it has the power to change everything. Another form of "healing" came through imaginal reunion with the ancestors.
Reunion has the connotation of "making whole." Practically, it may involve a journey down to the genetic levels of awareness, or it may imply giving one's less-remote ancestors a voice through the therapeutic process.
One dreamhealing client, a recovering alcoholic, focused a great deal of her efforts at personal integration around giving her ancestors a voice. She wanted to finally be able to express all the unspoken dreams of her female ancestors, in particular. She gave vent to their fears, frustrations, and grief through many generations of dysfunctionality and compulsive behavior. She gave her mission a broader cultural value, also.
Because she works in the recovery field, she is publishing papers on the spiritual significance of giving ancestors a voice, so others may benefit from her trailbreaking effort.
These ancestors dwell deep within, in the realm of the dead, the underworld. Dream incubation is a mystery. One is summoned to initiation by dreams, then reborn or healed, after a visit to the underworld.
It is especially valuable to do this work around mid-life when the ego has the opportunity to develop a deeper relationship with the religious function. One may be bidden by the god to sleep in a sacred precinct, but that alone does not assure a cure. Courage is an expressed requirement, for Asklepios has vowed he will not cure the cowardly who fear the treatments, such as a cold bath.
The underlying meaning is that one must undergo the initiatory ordeals in order to receive the boon of healing. For example, that innocuous bath is more likely a symbolic "drowning."
THE HEROIC CYCLE OF DEPARTURE AND RETURN
Many people are familiar with Joseph Campbell's THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, which describes the basics of the hero's cyclic journey. It begins with the call to adventure, which is not always answered voluntarily. Many of us are reluctant to go where none have gone before. This reflects the state of an individual who is summoned to therapy by dreams and symptoms.
The pressing problem provides the incentive or drive to get the process in motion. Some heed the call from the subconscious, others try to repress or ignore it. Some "heroes" are actually abducted into the journey, somewhat like what happens in a chemical dependency intervention and detoxification. Even in the beginning of the journey, s/he encounters helpers and opponents along the way.
The hero enters the kingdom of darkness either alive or dead (or in the living death of addiction), and journeys through a world of unfamiliar and threatening forces. Once the threshold of adventure is crossed, the game is afoot. It may involve symbolic dragon-slaying, crucifixion, or dismemberment.
Dragon-slaying may mean breaking free of old negative, critical parent tapes, that play over-and-over in your mind, inhibiting you and creating guilt. Crucifixion may mean being pulled in opposite directions between equally compelling, but exclusive, choices.
Dismemberment may be a metaphor for psychic fragmentation. There may be imagery of apocalypse and natural disaster as the ego glimpses its immanent doom. This ego-death is a requirement for opening to the broader realm of transpersonal reality. For Freud, being the hero meant slaying the father, like Oedipus.
To Jung, the heroic battle meant slaying the "dragon" for deliverance from the mother. In psyche's "union of opposites," both interpretations are "right." These images are relevant to addiction in its broader symbolic meaning. We also become addicted to our rigid patterns of behavior and response--addicted to particular, limited, conditioned emotional patterns.
In other words regressive tendencies, our childish self [NOT child-like, or inner child], which was randomly programmed in our earliest years. Addiction can be seen as a regressive decent back into the maternal womb and the original bliss of unconsciousness. It is incestuous in nature.
Slaying the dragon here means escaping that regressive tendency. Although most-frequently pictured as a snake or dog, Asklepios was also worshiped as a dragon on the island of Cos as late as the fourteenth century A.D. The homeopathic principle of like-curing-like means that the poison is also the remedy.
In HEALING AND WHOLENESS, John Sanford recounts how Athena gave Asklepios the dual-natured blood of Medusa: that from the left side killed, that from the right healed. In dealing with addiction (chemical or otherwise), this means divine intercession, building relationship with the Higher Power, curing the alienation which led toward self-defeating or self-destructive behavior. After the conflict, trials, tests, and ordeals, the hero gains his reward, which is a new sense of enlarged mystical and mythical reality.
The hero discovers the "New World" that transcends the boundaries of normal space, time, and mortality.
According to Erich Neumann, in "Mystical Man":
...What makes the battle perilous, and thus establishes the ego as heroic, is the descent into the depth of the unconscious, the encounter with the nonego. ...It is characteristic of the creative process that in it the ego cannot cling to its position in consciousness, but must expose itself to encounter with the nonego. ...This encounter, wherever it may occur, we designate as mystical.
Ultimately, it matters little if one mythically "slays" the mother or the father. The imagery of both the personal and transpersonal parental figures are met within. The hero comes to awareness that both are contained within, and they become harmonized on a new level so the person develops a more androgynous quality. This androgyny is different from gender confusion, or unisex.
Androgyny is one of the qualifying characteristics of the shaman, who is an exemplary culture hero. The merging of masculine and feminine energies within is symbolized as the sacred marriage, or hieros gamos. To become a mystic, the hero must cease identifying with either the light or the dark exclusively, and re-own the unlived positive and negative aspects of self.
This creates atonement, or at-one-ment. So after a period of seemingly endless wandering, overcoming obstacles sometimes by divine intervention, and gaining the treasure which is difficult to find and hard to hold onto, the hero (or heroine) returns to ordinary life with the wisdom and renewed vision of the sage.
The healing comes during the expansion of consciousness, which means freedom, illumination, transfiguration. The hero re-emerges, is resurrected from the kingdom of the dead, the transpersonal domain, and brings along the elixir of life.
The hero expands consciousness both regressively and progressively, uniting history and futurity to live out a unique destiny. However, the dangers along the way, both entering the depths and returning with the treasure to normal life are very real.
Therefore, a guide who is familiar with the way is a good helper to have along. A dream guide or therapist can lead you into new territory with assurance, since they have travelled there many times before. In every dream journey we recreate the hero's quest.
We have the opportunity to respond to the call or to wander aimlessly, to show our courage or falter, to make allies or succumb to opponents, to plumb the depths, to secure the boon, and make a successful return, integrating the wisdom we find into our daily life.
THE OVERACHIEVING HEROIC EGO
There is little doubt that the hero carries a double-edged sword in his super-achieving nature. Like any other tool, it depends largely how it is used whether it is creative or destructive.
Western man has paid a very high price for identification with the hero, including lack of feeling awareness, fear of intimacy, and authority issues. The cost for men of living up to the old heroic ideal has recently spawned the men's movement, which even transcends the role of the so-called sensitive man for an authentic masculinity that embraces, integrates, and transcends the opposites.
The defensive compensations can be let go, reducing the tension between grandiosity and true greatness of the self within. Mature masculinity is not abusive, domineering or grandiose, but generative, creative and empowering of self and others. Women have encountered the same loss of feminine values entering the workplace.
The overachieving superwoman, seeking to have it all, is an over-reactionary caricature of the hero, also. And society has willingly pushed her into this until many men and women have become equally driven by this inner archetype.
Maybe the philosopher, Goethe instigated this drive to be superhuman into our culture--but it is a restatement of myths like Hercules and Prometheus. The problem seems to come in when this urge or drive for questing and self development is turned outward into the world of daily life.
This probably is not inappropriate in the stages of career-building and family rearing, but the emptiness that surfaces in mid-life shows its shortcoming. When the drive is turned inward to the quest for self transformation, it assumes its rightful place in the psyche and functions in a balanced, noble way. Many Jungians, such as Marion Woodman and James Hillman, feel that the myth of the heroic dragon-slaying hero has moved into overkill.
Yes, we must struggle to win our consciousness from the regressive pull of the Great Mother's world. We cannot escape our spiritual destiny by unconsciously sinking back into her oblivion with our drug of choice. The Great Work was the ancient name for transformative pursuits. It requires active conscious effort--work. But, this transformative urge, taken to excess and misplaced has resulted in the technological rape of the planet, nearly killing Mother Earth.
We have "conquered" our horizontal world, rather than the vertical dimension of spirit. Theodore Roszak has covered this topic extensively in his works on Eco-Psychology, such as SONG OF THE EARTH.
In our misplaced spiritual zeal, we have exploited and ravaged the earth, with our ravenous hunger for resources. The missionary zeal of Colonialism repressed feminine values and cultures. This tendency of the hero within toward overachievment -- too much, too soon --is one reason why it is prudent to go slowly in dream healing.
For some clients one or two sessions a month are quite sufficient, since they require time to digest and integrate. Dragon-slaying must be understood as a symbolic process of transformation, then the feminine is not torn asunder from matter. We are not really free of the mother when we worship her in concrete materialism, consumerism, compulsive behavior, and spiritual materialism.
As we learn to truly honor the feminine and find balance within our own personalities, we learn to stop repressing it and allow it fully into consciousness. This is one way of nurturing the growth of your own soul and creativity. The soul is the embodiment of spirit, the receiver of spirit. It is the split between matter and spirit that is the sickness of our modern society.
We heal this split by taking a stand against our compulsive appetites, and power drive, according to the Jungians. The psychological goal of the hero is to train the ego to function at the threshold of the conscious and subconscious worlds effectively.
As hero, your first feat is to clarify your psychological difficulties, clear the blocks, voyage to the edge of your own known world, and win the treasure of direct experience and assimilation of the archetypal images. Interaction with these same images was the goal of the mystic arts like magic and alchemy. It takes place in dreamhealing automatically. We learn the difference between our dream-ego and waking-ego [two different complexes].
Both experience emotions and subjective choice. Both feel like "me," but the dream-ego compensates the waking ego with its inner view. Both are subject to distorting their perceptions of reality. Dream life is an ongoing dialogue between the ego and the unconscious mind.
The dream ego, especially in a "waking dream" or dream journey, does have a real-time "impact on the complexes of the unconscious and can alter their structural arrangement," according to James A. Hall. The waking ego has these complexes for its foundation.
When they change, this is reflected in the waking-ego, especially as alterations in mood. Dreamhealing is therefore a direct alteration of the waking ego itself.
The Self acts through the dream directly on the ego. This process is not without its dangers, at least in the early stages. It creates crises and dangers (such as abreaction) which have the potential of destroying the personality as it has been in the past.
When the hero descends into the underworld (unconscious), he must discard the defenses of conscious development, such as intellect. He gains a mythical type of awareness which allows him to directly experience the paradoxical aspect of the inner world without going insane.
For example, he comes to understand, first hand, that he contains both his parental images as well as the primordial archetypal parental archetypes. This leads to a true understanding of androgynous nature, which is one form of wholeness as projected by the transcendent function. It is a way of uniting opposites within oneself, rather than overcoming them through fighting.
The goal of the hero's quest is a higher synthesis of the ego, with access to both conscious and unconscious.
Maturing through the hero means you learn to transform your conflicts into a nobler and more stable personality with deep roots in the sources of life. As hero, you are involved in a paradoxical process of ordering, which is precisely why you may be susceptible to breakdown and wounding. You are assaulted by the forces of chaos, entropy, and disorder. It is a paradoxical truth that acts of ordering can result in potential weakening of the ego.
As hero, you learn to withstand the effects of the disorder which your creative efforts manifest. You'll have to battle your own personal and historical limitations to obtain the vision of the well-springs of human existence. Then, your second task, of returning to normal life as a transformed example of the way begins.
In the initial stage, you assimilate, then you disseminate. If a would-be hero does not submit to all the initiatory tests and steals the treasures, the powers of the unconscious are mobilized to blast him from within and without. This can be imagined as crucifixion or eternal torment. And how many of us have our crosses to bear!
One face of the hero is the martyr who must learn how to give up. However, a self-centered ego can become centered in transpersonal reality. Then one may emerge as a culture hero or heroine in their own small way by making a truly unique contribution to life on the planet.
Your inner hero-self may at first refuse the call to adventure. The rough, unfamiliar terrain, the crossroads, and the gauntlet of initiatory barriers mirror the ordeals of the inner quest. But over time you come to realize that you can overcome your infantile sentimentalities and resentments. You may realize that the good and bad are contained in the law (masculine) and image (feminine) of the nature of being.
The agony of breaking through your personal limitation is the very process that leads to spiritual growth. To complete your task, however, you must return with the treasure to your mundane life, with an increased sense of integration, no longer merely ego-oriented.
You may seek a path of spiritual or religious devotion in order to continue the deepening process begun in therapy. The mystic communes directly with the divine, or Higher Power. Spirituality bears on your integrity, how you conduct yourself in all areas of existence, outer and inner.
Further Reading:
IRON JOHN, Robert Bly
FIRE IN THE BELLY, Sam Keen
THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, Joseph Campbell
THE POWER OF MYTH, Joseph Campbell
THE SYMBOLIC QUEST, Edward Whitmont
PERSONAL MYTHOLOGY, David Feinstein and Stanley Krippner
DREAM JOURNEY AS HEROIC QUEST
Iona Miller, Dreamhealing, 1993
The mythic dimension of the dream journey, like any voyage of discovery, is a variation on the classic heroic quest. Joseph Campbell has popularized this mytheme, outlining its principle phases.
Jung called this inner adventure "the night sea journey," wherein one learns to navigate in the profoundly deep waters of the collective layers of the psyche. The purpose and value of the entire journey is to relate the hero or heroine (which is actually the person's ego) with the primal, paradoxical forces of the transpersonal world.
The ego learns that while it may be the center of the personality, it is not the center of the whole being. On the inner quest, the ego learns first-hand about its relative position within the vast dominion of the psyche.
A dream journey uses mind, in the broader sense, to enter that domain, to find healing states of consciousness that manifest, for example, through the placebo effect. The deep layers of the psyche have been described in mythic terms throughout the ages.
They are the realms not only of transpersonal divinity, but also of the chthonic or earthy gods who have a dark nature. Therefore, the journey is as often associated with a descent into the depths as with a soaring to mystical heights. Many of the identifications in dream journeys are earthy--the fertile promise of decay, the penetrating heat of a volcano's core, the depths of a turbulent whirlpool, etc.
Other images of the profound nature of the inner depths are symbolized by such natural metaphors as a deep ocean, or a cave, or the underworld of the dead. In ancient times there were many sanctuary caves used for spiritual purposes.
Sometimes the openings were small and aspirants were pulled in feet first to symbolize a reversal of the birth process. An old alchemical maxim suggests the aspirant "visit the interior of the earth," for there one could find the philosopher's stone, symbol of wholeness and healing.
Water within the deep cave symbolizes the waters of life which spring forth bubbling with new life-giving properties. Aesculapius [Roman god of healing] , even though he was the son of the god of light, Apollo, has a dark, chthonic side. That is why he was associated with springs and groves of trees.
There is a close connection between the water of life, the tree of life, and the renewal of life, as symbolized by the serpent shedding its old skin.
All yield a rejuvenating effect. In the ancient Greek myths, Asklepios is associated with the Eleusinian cult of Demeter, the Earth Mother and her daughter Persephone, queen of the underworld. Reflecting the mother/daughter identity, Demeter and Persephone are really one in the same: "my mother/my self." In the ancient incubation rituals, it was Mother Earth who sends dreams.
In some mythic sources, Persephone is identified with Coronis, mother of Asklepios. In the Egyptian version of the dream healing cult, Serapis (Asklepios) is identified with Osiris, lord of the underworld and husband of Isis. The ancient doctrine of the soul speaks of visions with the quality of a "great dream."
These visions, revolving around the symbolism of disintegration and reintegration, bear all the marks of an initiation into the mysteries of death and rebirth, which is the hero's quest. In the dreamhealing cult, Asklepios was often imaged as a newborn infant in swaddling clothes. In this form he was identical with the incubant seeking healing.
The incubants were frequently fed infant food such as milk, honey, and cheese. Because incubation deals with the soul, it confers healing not only of physical ailments, but also of bad fate or destiny.
The dream or vision itself is the cure. It is only a slight perturbation, but it has the power to change everything. Another form of "healing" came through imaginal reunion with the ancestors.
Reunion has the connotation of "making whole." Practically, it may involve a journey down to the genetic levels of awareness, or it may imply giving one's less-remote ancestors a voice through the therapeutic process.
One dreamhealing client, a recovering alcoholic, focused a great deal of her efforts at personal integration around giving her ancestors a voice. She wanted to finally be able to express all the unspoken dreams of her female ancestors, in particular. She gave vent to their fears, frustrations, and grief through many generations of dysfunctionality and compulsive behavior. She gave her mission a broader cultural value, also.
Because she works in the recovery field, she is publishing papers on the spiritual significance of giving ancestors a voice, so others may benefit from her trailbreaking effort.
These ancestors dwell deep within, in the realm of the dead, the underworld. Dream incubation is a mystery. One is summoned to initiation by dreams, then reborn or healed, after a visit to the underworld.
It is especially valuable to do this work around mid-life when the ego has the opportunity to develop a deeper relationship with the religious function. One may be bidden by the god to sleep in a sacred precinct, but that alone does not assure a cure. Courage is an expressed requirement, for Asklepios has vowed he will not cure the cowardly who fear the treatments, such as a cold bath.
The underlying meaning is that one must undergo the initiatory ordeals in order to receive the boon of healing. For example, that innocuous bath is more likely a symbolic "drowning."
THE HEROIC CYCLE OF DEPARTURE AND RETURN
Many people are familiar with Joseph Campbell's THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, which describes the basics of the hero's cyclic journey. It begins with the call to adventure, which is not always answered voluntarily. Many of us are reluctant to go where none have gone before. This reflects the state of an individual who is summoned to therapy by dreams and symptoms.
The pressing problem provides the incentive or drive to get the process in motion. Some heed the call from the subconscious, others try to repress or ignore it. Some "heroes" are actually abducted into the journey, somewhat like what happens in a chemical dependency intervention and detoxification. Even in the beginning of the journey, s/he encounters helpers and opponents along the way.
The hero enters the kingdom of darkness either alive or dead (or in the living death of addiction), and journeys through a world of unfamiliar and threatening forces. Once the threshold of adventure is crossed, the game is afoot. It may involve symbolic dragon-slaying, crucifixion, or dismemberment.
Dragon-slaying may mean breaking free of old negative, critical parent tapes, that play over-and-over in your mind, inhibiting you and creating guilt. Crucifixion may mean being pulled in opposite directions between equally compelling, but exclusive, choices.
Dismemberment may be a metaphor for psychic fragmentation. There may be imagery of apocalypse and natural disaster as the ego glimpses its immanent doom. This ego-death is a requirement for opening to the broader realm of transpersonal reality. For Freud, being the hero meant slaying the father, like Oedipus.
To Jung, the heroic battle meant slaying the "dragon" for deliverance from the mother. In psyche's "union of opposites," both interpretations are "right." These images are relevant to addiction in its broader symbolic meaning. We also become addicted to our rigid patterns of behavior and response--addicted to particular, limited, conditioned emotional patterns.
In other words regressive tendencies, our childish self [NOT child-like, or inner child], which was randomly programmed in our earliest years. Addiction can be seen as a regressive decent back into the maternal womb and the original bliss of unconsciousness. It is incestuous in nature.
Slaying the dragon here means escaping that regressive tendency. Although most-frequently pictured as a snake or dog, Asklepios was also worshiped as a dragon on the island of Cos as late as the fourteenth century A.D. The homeopathic principle of like-curing-like means that the poison is also the remedy.
In HEALING AND WHOLENESS, John Sanford recounts how Athena gave Asklepios the dual-natured blood of Medusa: that from the left side killed, that from the right healed. In dealing with addiction (chemical or otherwise), this means divine intercession, building relationship with the Higher Power, curing the alienation which led toward self-defeating or self-destructive behavior. After the conflict, trials, tests, and ordeals, the hero gains his reward, which is a new sense of enlarged mystical and mythical reality.
The hero discovers the "New World" that transcends the boundaries of normal space, time, and mortality.
According to Erich Neumann, in "Mystical Man":
...What makes the battle perilous, and thus establishes the ego as heroic, is the descent into the depth of the unconscious, the encounter with the nonego. ...It is characteristic of the creative process that in it the ego cannot cling to its position in consciousness, but must expose itself to encounter with the nonego. ...This encounter, wherever it may occur, we designate as mystical.
Ultimately, it matters little if one mythically "slays" the mother or the father. The imagery of both the personal and transpersonal parental figures are met within. The hero comes to awareness that both are contained within, and they become harmonized on a new level so the person develops a more androgynous quality. This androgyny is different from gender confusion, or unisex.
Androgyny is one of the qualifying characteristics of the shaman, who is an exemplary culture hero. The merging of masculine and feminine energies within is symbolized as the sacred marriage, or hieros gamos. To become a mystic, the hero must cease identifying with either the light or the dark exclusively, and re-own the unlived positive and negative aspects of self.
This creates atonement, or at-one-ment. So after a period of seemingly endless wandering, overcoming obstacles sometimes by divine intervention, and gaining the treasure which is difficult to find and hard to hold onto, the hero (or heroine) returns to ordinary life with the wisdom and renewed vision of the sage.
The healing comes during the expansion of consciousness, which means freedom, illumination, transfiguration. The hero re-emerges, is resurrected from the kingdom of the dead, the transpersonal domain, and brings along the elixir of life.
The hero expands consciousness both regressively and progressively, uniting history and futurity to live out a unique destiny. However, the dangers along the way, both entering the depths and returning with the treasure to normal life are very real.
Therefore, a guide who is familiar with the way is a good helper to have along. A dream guide or therapist can lead you into new territory with assurance, since they have travelled there many times before. In every dream journey we recreate the hero's quest.
We have the opportunity to respond to the call or to wander aimlessly, to show our courage or falter, to make allies or succumb to opponents, to plumb the depths, to secure the boon, and make a successful return, integrating the wisdom we find into our daily life.
THE OVERACHIEVING HEROIC EGO
There is little doubt that the hero carries a double-edged sword in his super-achieving nature. Like any other tool, it depends largely how it is used whether it is creative or destructive.
Western man has paid a very high price for identification with the hero, including lack of feeling awareness, fear of intimacy, and authority issues. The cost for men of living up to the old heroic ideal has recently spawned the men's movement, which even transcends the role of the so-called sensitive man for an authentic masculinity that embraces, integrates, and transcends the opposites.
The defensive compensations can be let go, reducing the tension between grandiosity and true greatness of the self within. Mature masculinity is not abusive, domineering or grandiose, but generative, creative and empowering of self and others. Women have encountered the same loss of feminine values entering the workplace.
The overachieving superwoman, seeking to have it all, is an over-reactionary caricature of the hero, also. And society has willingly pushed her into this until many men and women have become equally driven by this inner archetype.
Maybe the philosopher, Goethe instigated this drive to be superhuman into our culture--but it is a restatement of myths like Hercules and Prometheus. The problem seems to come in when this urge or drive for questing and self development is turned outward into the world of daily life.
This probably is not inappropriate in the stages of career-building and family rearing, but the emptiness that surfaces in mid-life shows its shortcoming. When the drive is turned inward to the quest for self transformation, it assumes its rightful place in the psyche and functions in a balanced, noble way. Many Jungians, such as Marion Woodman and James Hillman, feel that the myth of the heroic dragon-slaying hero has moved into overkill.
Yes, we must struggle to win our consciousness from the regressive pull of the Great Mother's world. We cannot escape our spiritual destiny by unconsciously sinking back into her oblivion with our drug of choice. The Great Work was the ancient name for transformative pursuits. It requires active conscious effort--work. But, this transformative urge, taken to excess and misplaced has resulted in the technological rape of the planet, nearly killing Mother Earth.
We have "conquered" our horizontal world, rather than the vertical dimension of spirit. Theodore Roszak has covered this topic extensively in his works on Eco-Psychology, such as SONG OF THE EARTH.
In our misplaced spiritual zeal, we have exploited and ravaged the earth, with our ravenous hunger for resources. The missionary zeal of Colonialism repressed feminine values and cultures. This tendency of the hero within toward overachievment -- too much, too soon --is one reason why it is prudent to go slowly in dream healing.
For some clients one or two sessions a month are quite sufficient, since they require time to digest and integrate. Dragon-slaying must be understood as a symbolic process of transformation, then the feminine is not torn asunder from matter. We are not really free of the mother when we worship her in concrete materialism, consumerism, compulsive behavior, and spiritual materialism.
As we learn to truly honor the feminine and find balance within our own personalities, we learn to stop repressing it and allow it fully into consciousness. This is one way of nurturing the growth of your own soul and creativity. The soul is the embodiment of spirit, the receiver of spirit. It is the split between matter and spirit that is the sickness of our modern society.
We heal this split by taking a stand against our compulsive appetites, and power drive, according to the Jungians. The psychological goal of the hero is to train the ego to function at the threshold of the conscious and subconscious worlds effectively.
As hero, your first feat is to clarify your psychological difficulties, clear the blocks, voyage to the edge of your own known world, and win the treasure of direct experience and assimilation of the archetypal images. Interaction with these same images was the goal of the mystic arts like magic and alchemy. It takes place in dreamhealing automatically. We learn the difference between our dream-ego and waking-ego [two different complexes].
Both experience emotions and subjective choice. Both feel like "me," but the dream-ego compensates the waking ego with its inner view. Both are subject to distorting their perceptions of reality. Dream life is an ongoing dialogue between the ego and the unconscious mind.
The dream ego, especially in a "waking dream" or dream journey, does have a real-time "impact on the complexes of the unconscious and can alter their structural arrangement," according to James A. Hall. The waking ego has these complexes for its foundation.
When they change, this is reflected in the waking-ego, especially as alterations in mood. Dreamhealing is therefore a direct alteration of the waking ego itself.
The Self acts through the dream directly on the ego. This process is not without its dangers, at least in the early stages. It creates crises and dangers (such as abreaction) which have the potential of destroying the personality as it has been in the past.
When the hero descends into the underworld (unconscious), he must discard the defenses of conscious development, such as intellect. He gains a mythical type of awareness which allows him to directly experience the paradoxical aspect of the inner world without going insane.
For example, he comes to understand, first hand, that he contains both his parental images as well as the primordial archetypal parental archetypes. This leads to a true understanding of androgynous nature, which is one form of wholeness as projected by the transcendent function. It is a way of uniting opposites within oneself, rather than overcoming them through fighting.
The goal of the hero's quest is a higher synthesis of the ego, with access to both conscious and unconscious.
Maturing through the hero means you learn to transform your conflicts into a nobler and more stable personality with deep roots in the sources of life. As hero, you are involved in a paradoxical process of ordering, which is precisely why you may be susceptible to breakdown and wounding. You are assaulted by the forces of chaos, entropy, and disorder. It is a paradoxical truth that acts of ordering can result in potential weakening of the ego.
As hero, you learn to withstand the effects of the disorder which your creative efforts manifest. You'll have to battle your own personal and historical limitations to obtain the vision of the well-springs of human existence. Then, your second task, of returning to normal life as a transformed example of the way begins.
In the initial stage, you assimilate, then you disseminate. If a would-be hero does not submit to all the initiatory tests and steals the treasures, the powers of the unconscious are mobilized to blast him from within and without. This can be imagined as crucifixion or eternal torment. And how many of us have our crosses to bear!
One face of the hero is the martyr who must learn how to give up. However, a self-centered ego can become centered in transpersonal reality. Then one may emerge as a culture hero or heroine in their own small way by making a truly unique contribution to life on the planet.
Your inner hero-self may at first refuse the call to adventure. The rough, unfamiliar terrain, the crossroads, and the gauntlet of initiatory barriers mirror the ordeals of the inner quest. But over time you come to realize that you can overcome your infantile sentimentalities and resentments. You may realize that the good and bad are contained in the law (masculine) and image (feminine) of the nature of being.
The agony of breaking through your personal limitation is the very process that leads to spiritual growth. To complete your task, however, you must return with the treasure to your mundane life, with an increased sense of integration, no longer merely ego-oriented.
You may seek a path of spiritual or religious devotion in order to continue the deepening process begun in therapy. The mystic communes directly with the divine, or Higher Power. Spirituality bears on your integrity, how you conduct yourself in all areas of existence, outer and inner.
Further Reading:
IRON JOHN, Robert Bly
FIRE IN THE BELLY, Sam Keen
THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, Joseph Campbell
THE POWER OF MYTH, Joseph Campbell
THE SYMBOLIC QUEST, Edward Whitmont
PERSONAL MYTHOLOGY, David Feinstein and Stanley Krippner
Plasma Mandala, Iona Miller
(c)2015-2016; All Rights Reserved, Iona Miller, Sangreality Trust
[email protected]
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[email protected]
Fair Use Notice
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.