Everyday Sacred

Working with Archetypes, Part 1

There is a lot of confusion about this subject. What is an archetype? How do I "work" with one? Why even bother?
O.K. let's review some yogic fundamentals.
1. God (Brahma) is absolute awareness becoming the universe becoming aware of itself as Brahma.
2. On the atomic level, all phenomenon vibrate as standing waves. Standing waves appear with finite boundaries. Our bodies, organs, cells, etc. are standing waves. They emanate from a center point (or bindu) and radiate out harmonically in spirals of the Golden Ratio.
3. The four elements: Earth, Water, Fire and Air are archetypal standing waves, meaning they are types of arcs in the face of the wave. This is important because these make up the template of creation. They help energy become matter.

So, these are the fundamental archetypes of creation. There are multitudes of created forms and there are multitudes of archetypes. Some relate to a particular situation in the human story. For instance, women's life stages are reflected in the maiden, the bride and the crone. Men's are reflected in the lover, the king and the magician. All of them are held in the collective unconscious.

When I taught at the Barbara Brennan School for Healing, I spent years leading hundreds of people through sacred ceremonies. Ceremonial archetypes are much stronger forms than the ones you connect with in a yoga pose. I have seen people connect with this type of energy and become very disoriented and accident prone. I have seen inflated types negatively merging with the archetype only to become distorted and physically sick. Instead, you want to use these energy systems relationally. You need to stay centered and grounded in YOU and meet the archetypal pattern with a balanced mind, body and breath.

Perhaps the best thing I've ever read on archetypes is Ego and Archetype by Edward F. Edinger. This book describes Carl Jung's discovery of the collective or archetypal unconscious. Jung informs us that we are both individual and archetypal. Our awareness is informed by our personal experience and by the conscious and unconscious dreams, drives and experiences of the collective of all humanity (perhaps all life), throughout all time. Somewhere in us, everything is recorded, everything is known, past, present and future.

This treasure trove of knowledge is stored and accessed through geometric patterns, dreams, fairytales and mythological and religious images. Joseph Campbell taught us how these mythological themes recur transculturally.

The treasure trove, as well as every other bit of personal information, like the name of your first grade teacher, is stored in the Self. The ego is the part of the Self that holds your personal information. At first, ego is enclosed in the Self, but as we mature, it begins to separate from the Self. That is what we know as the spiritual journey but it is really a developmental phase of human adulthood. To be continued...

"If You Build It..." High Energy Pool Part III

Many people get to the higher realms of consciousness in a good meditation but fail to integrate them into their lives. Many others use their yoga to work out or get relaxed but fail to make any changes in their consciousness.

Ken Wilbur discusses the difference between a state and a station of consciousness. A state is an experience that you have very little control over. For instance, you have a profound, nondual experience in meditation but your ability to get back there or understand it is hit or miss. A station of consciousness is a place you can return to. You have mapped it out and you can continue to explore it. You have made it a part of your experience. This is how you stabilize and integrate it. This is conscious evolution.

Like meditation, your yoga practice is also a path to conscious evolution. It is important to develop stations of awareness so that you can grow your experience into realms not collapsed in the ego.

The path of yoga understands that the physical and energy bodies must be able to sustain these higher realms, these high energy pools. If not, you can get sick or become unbalanced. It's like asking your system to upgrade from 110 volts to 220 volts. You must know how to create a coherent container, ground it and increase the charge through the contact with the earth and the yogic breath.

If you take my class, you know how to map out the energy centers in the pelvis, heart and head. You know how to find yourself in 3 dimensional space. Many of you are exploring the techniques of witnessing and spinning. This is really just the next step. There are other energy centers above and beyond the 7th. Think in octaves and just keep going. You build a scaffold, like a radio tower, from the lower centers. Cross reference each one, connecting a lower one with a higher one. You will need to remember to root and build the power through the ujayji breath.

Once you make it up to level 8, about 4 inches above the head, you can construct a platform. Map it out, inhabit its center and spin it. Each level, or chakra, is a different dimension of consciousness.

As we come to winter's end, the pineal gland/crown chakra comes to life again. This is the season of divine inspiration that will become the vision that fuels the restlessness of manifestation. Don't miss this opportunity to hone your higher centers.

In these high energy pools, you can untangle yourself from the energetic webs of your personal stories. The webs do not disappear, you simply do not attach to them anymore. You see the whole pattern. You get it and it no longer gets you.

You can jump into the high energy pool and swim with the best. You don't have to be a shark to make it in this pool because you understand that being a predator is really the same thing as being a victim. Both are trapped in the same web, just playing opposite poles.

In the high energy pool, you balance effort and grace. You understand the web of interconnection. You want to help one another float because that helps you float. Eventually, you all ride the current home together, like the Bodhisaatva sea turtles in Finding Nemo.

How to Swim in the High-Energy Pool, continued...

In the Kabbalah, there is a realm of consciousness called Yetzerah. It is a rung up on the evolutionary scale because it is self-reflective. However, there is a point where self-reflection becomes staring at your navel, pretty self-indulgent. You spin your wheels, analyzing yourself and others along the way but still stuck in the same old places. This is what happens when we stay in the root of the yoga practice, diligently spinning the perineum, making a valiant effort but not getting much of a result. This is where it gets tricky because you don't do the practice for a result. That is like chasing after rainbows. However, you want to know that your yoga practice is changing you, totally.

There is another quality of consciousness in the Kabbalah called Briah. Briatic thinking is bigger and more encompassing. It is big mind with no boundaries. When you access the wisdom of the higher centers (chakras 6,7 and beyond), you reach Briah. It includes Yetzerah so it contains all your personal material but the personal is no longer isolated. Yetzerah is ego, Briah is Self. Briah connects you with all life, all archetypes, the conscious and the unconscious. Here, your story has a broader context. You understand trends, human nature and human frailty. You become the compassionate observer, not the victim.

This is where a good winter practice can get you. The wheel has turned. Another cycle of Spring, Summer and Fall's doing has been followed by a winter of being. Yes, your practice has kept you supple and strong but it's also given you a deeper sense of meaning and belonging. You may not really KNOW yet but you have an unmistakable SENSE of purpose stirring within you.

Coax it, sing to it, like you are charming a snake out of its dark basket. Don't just take in the world through your vision; it makes us too reactive. Listen deeply, like you are hearing the faint strains of a song, slowly making sense of it, trying to remember. Listening is the sense associated with the kidney, the organ of winter. We can hear in the womb. We can hear before the Self is obscured by layers of experience. Listen with your inner sense of hearing to the unstruck chord, to the song of your soul, calling you to swim in the vast sea of consciousness, calling you home, calling you OM.

To be continued...