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The Purpose of Archetypes
Discovering archetypes is a highly personal experience. Vedic science, the ancient wisdom tradition of India, says that unless you can get in touch with that embryo of a god or goddess incubating inside you, unless you can let that embryo be fully born, then your life will always be mundane. But once that god to goddess expresses itself through you, then you will do grand and wondrous things.
These days, we tend to seek symbolic archetypes in celebrities, but we need to nurture a full expression of the archetypes in ourselves. They are part of what creates us. This is the stuff our dreams are made of. This is the stuff of mythology, of campfire stories, of legends. This is what inspires great movies.
Mythology is the wellspring of our civilization. One of the consequences of depriving people of mythology is that they join street gangs. Why? Because gangs have a leader, they have rituals, they have initiation rites–the stuff of mythology.
Mythological stories are the deepest wellspring of civilization and identity. Gangs and movies and soap operas and celebrities are seductive precisely because they strike this mythic chord. But they are second-class substitutes for mythology. Real archetypes are enacted by people like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, anyone who reaches beyond daily life into the realm of the wondrous.
They are able to achieve greatness because they tapped into the collective unconscious, which gave them the ability to see several event lines simultaneously and predict the future based on choices in the moment. These events create a shift in cognitive and perceptual mechanisms. These are the powers that bloom as myth.
Adapted from The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire, by Deepak Chopra (Three Rivers Press).
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add your comment »If mythology is the welspring of our civilization, we are out of water!
The social studies show that kids join gangs to have a "family". Most come from homes with an absent father.
Depending on how one defines "greatness" - it is normally chieved by hard work, doing what others do not want to, and in today's culture, lots of media hype.
Boy, DC really stretches things today...
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I feel the presence of a servant to Cleopatra, an alert mushroom huntress who must venture into forbidden forests to foray, an elephant protector, an ocean dwelling spirit companion of sharks, a stealth and ballsy observer, a writer and teller of stories and that is about it-- oh yes, and maybe a wet nurse or mother to more than my own. I wish I had a musician who played cello or dulcimer, a recorder or wooden flute-- I keep listening, even a harp or lyre, or little thumb thing, bells on the ankles, dancing dancing yah!!
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Absolutely,even as a little girl,tho, I didn't quite understand it-I embraced archetypes-they are smething shared by everyone,by our collective unconscious as well as our personal ones.women and men are God/Goddess incarnate,we should embrace these symbols that are ingrained in all of us.
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I think it's all about holding on to your true self! I'm not good at quotations but I do love Shakespeare who wrote in Hamlet "This above all: To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man."
Discovering who I am is for me a journey into spiritual reality, but I do get loads of inspiration from the lives of others! My thanks to all you thinkers out there!
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I really don't care what it is called....too much stuff to bother my head....as long as I feel in harmony with what is going on around me and in tune with my own soul or spirit then why label it and make it into another concept. I am done with labels and concepts...too much hassel for my brain waves. But for thoes who studie it and understsands what it is about well thats your path. I am sure it will lead back to your true self in the end. That is where it is all happening....me thinks.
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I wish we could act a little more "grown-up" and use more specific information. Several entities I know of say there are 9 (?) archetypes. Google it. What is the point though? Does anybody here get the point? Excuse me, my head just 'sploded.
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a quote "as long as you are giving you will be receiving" to me that sounds like conditional love..i choose to love seperate of anothers choice! just becuz...
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Hi Charles G.
Yes war is horrible. The archetype of war is embodied in the symbolism of Mars (Ares) the God of War in Greco/Roman mythology. What we must understand is that this archetype is exactly that...an archetype! You can't "get rid" of one, but you can guide and direct the energy into more positive areas. An archetype demands an outlet - all archetypes do. Mars represents aggression, war, andger and sex - testosterone. And everyone, EVERYONE, has it. So in order to change the reality of war into one of peace means a mass movement channeling testosterone, or the archetype of Mars, into a less destructive, but still testosterone driven avenue. We can't negate the fact that testosterone exists...it's a fact of life...of being human. Competition and winning can be positive outlets, such as in sports and academics. The Native Americans didn't own land and didn't understand it...that's true. But they did have outlets for competition...and they did make war when "necessary". The trouble archetypes is that they don't disappear. If you pretend they don't exist, they are driven into the subconscious, and will then re-emerge in a far more ferocious form than they would have been if they had been allowed to be expressed naturally. Mutual cooperation, pleasure and sharing fall under the archetype of Venus. Something that like Mars, we all have as well...But that's another story.
Thanks!
Michelle Gregg, Counseling Archetypal Astrologer
AstroSphere.net
michellegregg.wordp
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The archetype concept seems powerful; I am unclear what Authentic Heroic Archetypes are. Can anyone help me ?
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One archetype we need to discontinue is the us archetype of glorious war and listen and learn from the lessons of Ashoka!!
War archetypes permeate society and destroy our sense of interdependence with glories of competition and winning and of dominance and submission instead of mutual cooperation and pleasure and sharing. The idea of ownership of the land which some of the American Indians found so bizarre.
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