love shana's statement: Is this in some way our culture’s denial of the underworld, of the descent into the unconscious where a real transformation could occur if we were willing to undergo the rigors of initiation?
my brief thoughts this morning have to do with the concept of doing things for the wrong reasons and then finding justification for them, finding "heroes" and/or mythic entities to support our desires/wishes . .
intended (self-fulfillment, greed) and unintended consequences to these actions
what archetypes are we unconsciously stuck in, the archetype of conquer?
how do we make a paradigm shift, what are our leverage points, what would Donella Meadows say (weds)? where are the feedback loops to unconscious actions and can they be shortened so that the consequences come more quickly on the heels of the ignorance.
see you all in class at 10 ~
Replies
We'll go more into that next time, but for now:
I'm often struck by how thoroughly US culture overidentifies with the Hero archetype. We're so possessed by it that again and again we act out its dark side. Hillman mentions the need for "heroes of the heart," which is good; my own wish is that we step back from the entire Hero cycle and find out why it has possessed us and what the alternatives are that need our attention. (My archetypal mythology book will have a chapter on what I've been calling the Post-Heroic Journey.)
Just sharing some thoughts with you all…
Inspired by your response Craig, it came to me this thoughts, remembering the roots, the origins of the USA. Maybe there can be found some psychological causes... Leaving the Father`s (or Mother`s House), the old Europe...why had to leave…-to be expatriated…? redeeming one`s sense of worth by a new sense of self-assertion?...
Astrologically, the USA are Cancer - the Mother-Father axis (with Capricorn).The “boy competing With his father? “patronizing the world with their obsessive "aid"?
… the other polarity, Mother-Matter-Materialism…leading to exponents of capitalism that underneath has the craving for Mother-Mater, concretizing whit over consumption of Mother Earth resources what should remain and be dealt with in the literal, psychological, mythical realms.
The hero never found the treasure? It seems the "embodiment" of central issues of the Patriarchal Culture we still live in, with its central archetype of the (immature boyish puer aeternus) hero.
Another though…
If the image of the New Eradigm of the Rising Earth, with its change of center from individual to planetary consciousness, I feel a new movement will impel us from the image of our solar system (one Sun-Self surrounded by planets-ego structure) to immense suns-stars (centers of unified consciousness) in the entire galaxy. For me it is a sign that the collective (having the enough critical mass of “awaken” people) is ready for the major shift happening in both dimensions:
Personal – fulfilling individuation-dharma: from ego to Self
Collectively – from a narcissist, hierarquical, ego-based (tending to isolation) culture, to a cosmogony model rooted on a transpersonal consciousness and an universal vision, where no onlu people but aldo nations, corporations are stars-Cetrnes of unified conscious “interpenetrating” themselves with a new sense of responsibility and communion.
After all, when the astronauts saw the amazingly beautiful Earth rising, they probably “re-shaped” their dimension-identity, even for a brief moment of connection with that incredible transpersonal stage, and certainly that the entire universe turned differently…I wonder.
“I have a feeling that my boat has struck, down there in the depths,
Against a great thing.
And nothing happens ! Nothing… Silence… Waves.
Nothing happens ? Or has everything happened
And we are standing now, quietly, in the new life?”
Juan Ramon Jimenez