Who among us can identify with this archetype?
What role do dreams/DLEs seem to play in the vignette of the study participant referenced in the linked item below?
Where might you detect such a role for dreams/DLEs personally?
When have you encountered a similar role for dreams/DLEs in others?
Why might there be a connection between this archetype and the spiritual emergence process?
How might an understanding of this archetype add something to our lives?
These questions are a guide to spark discussion--please know they are not intended as a homework assignment!
Reply however you feel moved to do so. I look forward to reading what you have to say!
http://saybrook.academia.edu/DarleneViggiano/Papers/178493/Wounded_Healer_Archetype
Replies
Hi Darlene, I can very much relate to the archetype of the wounded healer. I had a very abusive traumatic childhood which allowed me the gift of dissociation and the creation of a fantasy world enabled me to save very special parts of me until it was safe to emerge. My spiritual emergence came in my late 30's to early 40's when I began intensive therapy and learned the revelation of how I am. My spirituality encompasses Native American, Shamanism, Zen Buddhism and Judaism.
How I see my "self" in in the middle of this rich circle with the parts of the circle as archetypes who carried out roles as the body grew and functioned in society allowing me to get the the educational level I am at currently. I spent many years as a therapist and am now a professor. My experiences of my childhood and the wounded healer I am has provided me with the knowledge and empathy to do the work I do.
I am working with a Jungian analysis now and using my dream work to heal my soul. My dreams are replete with symbols of this spiritual journey healing the soul.
I am not sure about the other questions, and I am glad to know that I do not stand alone as the wounded healer.
There is a rich tradition of the wounded healer, and as an archetype it is of course eternal. Shamanism itself is replete with this theme, often in terms of initiation. In Zen, too, often we may hear of a blind master, for example.
As to the circle of archetypes, another participant wrote about mandalas elsewhere in the study group. It would be so neat to see a representation of this, as we did for the Tree of Life.
Dear Darlene,
Haven't been able to log in last evenings, but it is indeed an interesting case and your questions make me soul-searching. My spiritual proces / emergency started with meeting a woman who said she was my twin soul. I discovered the Other World with her, and I got my kundalini experience end of october, begin november 2010. Then I lost connection with this woman, and it was a terrible, heart breaking loss, but it was also the start of being changed. In a way: the whole process - which is now mostly in my head - moving energies, the so-called 'Golden Helmet' Chrism talks about. My feelings were healed, and the change could only come by having to leave her living her own life.
Maybe these dreams she's having or more or less initiating dreams, wisdom dreams to help here come through her experiences.
For myself I had several dreams which were more or less shamanistic. In these dreams the two halves of my body, for instance, were healed again. Or I saw my skull with thin place where light could come through (at the third eye). Or another dream in which I saw again a skull, from which the brain was eaten. So for me it's especially very organic, body-like language.
I see these dreams as guidance in this process. Luckily I still can do my job, though the pressure in my head is sometimes very hard to deal with. These dreams breath a mystic air, which helps interpreting these kundalini-feelings in my head a somehow connected to a greater cause.
So me as a healer must suffer to help other people come through the same suffering I went through.
Light, Life, Love,
Pieter.
Sounds like you met a soror mystica, in Jungian terms! I can't wait to see what you'll have to say about the vignette I'll be posting tonight!
I can relate to the archetype of the wounded healer for sure, I had a difficult childhood that my spiritual connected held me through - I can't say I have experienced the dark night of the soul through a specific experience though - it seems to me that my life roled out as it did and I was guided to find the answers I needed by my intuition and by what held my interest. That was once I was released from my restricted upbringing.
Certainly the example cited above the dream was of pivotal use for the healer in helping her accept herself fully. I can relate to having had powerful dreams myself - one of the most recent power dreams was about a year ago when I really needed to make more money and was asking for help on clearing what blocks I had and I had a powerful dream that was very instructive, and also confusing as I could feel it tug away at my deep beliefs - it left me with a phrase 'receiving is spiritual service' which foxed me for a while - after research and reading books that came up through this term I did indeed manage to turn my finances round.
I am not sure I completely understand your meaning in these two questions, I see that dreams have a role to bring forward information we are now consciously aware of and it leads us to individuation. Personally I have experienced this many times - through dreams and also through guided meditation that I 'receive'. I have seen others benefit from it too and have worked with people using guided meditation to help them access their intuition. One of the ways I help people enhance their intuition is through walking into a card and some of the reports I have had from students about what is found on doing this show a wealth of information relevant to their psychospiritual journey, sometimes pivotal, sometimes more of a nudge.
Is this the kind of thing you are refering to?
I can see a connection with the wounded healer and this spiritual emergence process and why this would be the case... I would think that because the spiritual emergence process is something so unique to each person then the most valuable guide would be someone who has walked in the territory themselves and 'knows' with confidence that the end can be reached. In a sense it is like someone who knows how to navigate in mountainous territory with a map and compass, and this is a transferable skill to walking through unknown mountainous country with a map an compass. Even though the terrain is different - cos its a different persons experience - the knowing how to trust the signs etc has been learned by the guide so the person can trust them to help them get where they need to go - the map is like the communication between the two. I know what it feels like to face a deep held fear for example so have more efficacy in helping another have the courage to face theirs, than someone who has never been to their own fears.
Is this the kind of thing you mean or am I missing the point somehow?
By the way I am in the UK so will likely be posting at unusual times to those in US
I love your metaphor about the navigator, a spiritual sherpa, if you will!
Please feel free not to worry about getting the meanings of my questions--what you're getting to is the meaning of your own experiences, and as a facilitator I'm finding this all very enriching already! I hope you all are, too!
We are also already starting to come to consensus amongst ourselves and in comparison to my research, that indeed "dreams have a role to bring forward information." It seems so obvious, but for so long there have been, and even today there are, people who argue that dreams are just flotsom and jetsom that float by in our sleep.
Hi Darlene. Thanks so much for these thought-provoking questions. I think it's a great indicator of how fascinating this study group will be.
For me, personally, I feel you've hit the nail on the head by raising the question of the archetype of the wounded healer. I suspect many of us are drawn to this field for this very reason. In my case, I had a "DLE" *Dream-like experience that plunged me into tremendous despair for many years and which I think I'm still working out
. I'm curious if you have any specific stories of others who have gone through this same sort of thing. I know much shamanic history is rife with it and I would love to build a bridge in this group into modern-day contemporary western experiences (perhaps Jung is part of that bridge) of people who have walked that line of despair and thinking perhaps they are the only ones in the world who have had an experience like this. I was VERY naive and uninitiated (maybe still :) when this first occurred and suspect if I'd had access to others who knew of it, it may have been a very different experience...
Okay, you asked for it: first, we could look at the entire Spiritual Emergence Network and offer you a resounding, "No! You are Not Alone!" Then, we could probably look at about half the entire Jungian community and again answer the same. I could point you to so many authors and book titles covering such modern-day experiences, I barely know where to begin--but perhaps you noticed that the participant I wrote about in the vignette I linked yesterday is an author herself and has written about her own experience.
I can tell you that there is a whole body of literature from Friends/Quakers, under the title What Canst Thou Say, that speaks to this phenomenon and how folks live their spiritual experiences. For some, there is a DLE harkening a dark night of the soul, and then an awakening. For others, there is a DLE that heralds an awakening followed by a struggle to metabolize and process the tremendum or awesomeness of the experience. For a few, these are all mixed together and have to be analyzed and re-synthesized.
The vignette of the wounded healer I pointed to in my first linked material is just one of seven among my participants. Each of their stories from my poster session fits your bill, but I chose to emphasize different aspects for every one. Perhaps you might relate more to another of the other vignettes, which I will highlight in the new discussion for tonight/tomorrow. Please do have a look!