Archetypal Dreamwork and the New Consciousness

Mayan Circular Calendar

Here we are on the threshold, perhaps of a new era. A new time in the Earth’s history...the long awaited “end of the Mayan calendar”. But it is really not about endings, it is about beginnings. The Mayan calendar represents time in a cyclical way, not a linear way. It is not the arrow of time, but the cycle of unfoldment...birth, death, re-birth. One can step in anywhere in this cycle and we would be in the flow, for there is really no beginning or ending.

There is a way, I feel, that it all speaks to a huge mythos that exists in our collective psyche. It is a story of inevitable destruction. It lives in us going all the way back to the great flood and the myriad other stories of the destructive force of nature. Volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, Ice ages, meteorites…the hand of God. The natural world delivers to us our destruction. The mythos unfolds as the place of great destruction; our minds interpret this as annihilation. We will be destroyed and we fear this terribly. And in our fear we become hopeless or we look to the hope of being saved. What if instead of being saved, we could all be like Christ? Be present, willing to go inside, to face our rage at God, to face our trauma, reclaim our feelings and our place in this mystery, descend so that we may rise again changed in some profound way.

In the dreamwork, the destruction can come in the same way: a great storm, a cyclone, tidal wave, earthquake. It comes to tear down the old so that the transformation and emergence of the new thing can unfold.

What if the whole destruction/rising again is co-opted by the collective pathology so that it is made into the reformation of the egoic structure which becomes about an outer world reality which is not soul based? We think we must solve the world’s problems, but what if we really just need to solve our own and in doing so we could change the mythos from beginnings and endings to healing and transformation. There is no ending, as The Girl soul revealed to Jung when she handed him a gold crown upon which the words were inscribed: Love Never Ends.

Descent, Fear & Becoming

There is something so profound about this work. Like many parts of our life journey, there’s a way that we understand that if we knew what we were in for, we might not have chosen this fork in the path. Thank goodness for the bliss of ignorance!

When we embark on the journey, we have expectations about what we will “get” out of it. But then we learn that Archetypal Dreamwork is not about feeling better, it’s not about becoming a better person, and it’s not about becoming successful in the world. It’s about finding out the truth of who we are, why we are here. Some might say that is enlightenment. I wonder. To be enlightened would be good right? But what if enlightenment is neither good nor bad. What if it is just a state of being that is about standing in the truth of who we are?  We try to be good, we want to be good, but Carl Jung says that even the hero must die.