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Saboteur Archetype
January 28, 2013
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archetype card deck
The saboteur archetype is at the heart of the reasons you do not attempt change. Each person has a saboteur, but few of us have any knowledge of how it works. When this archetype speaks it is important to decipher the message. It wants us to give up, put off, or just forget our aspirations. It offers plenty of reasons for you to be discouraged from trying any kind of change. It takes a dim view of just about everything.
What can you learn from the nagging pessimistic voice in your head that will lead you eventually to contentment? You can openly learn the language and the logic it uses in order to engage it in a meaningful dialog with you. Listen to the voice of your sceptic in order to understand how and why you stay stagnant, unable to accomplish what you set out to do. Begin to identify the script your inner critic uses to deflate your hopes and postpone your dreams. As in dreamscapes, there might be themes that are literal or more symbolic. There are deeper interpretations to archetypal insights, but basically our saboteur teaches us how to see through fear founded in insecurity. The reasons we believe we are not capable are usually unexamined. Once the issues are observed in the light, the lesson can be to use logic and wisdom rather than fear to draw boundaries. The energy and power bound up in the struggle between our whole selves and our personal traitors is a tragic waste. Sit down and have a drink with your saboteur. You both sabotage and are sabotaged in ways you do not currently recognize. Long term analysis will not bee needed to find the main talking points used to discourage you on a regular basis. As with a human bully, be firm and polite when dealing with your inner punk.
Shape Shirfting
January 24, 2013
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The archetype of shapeshifter is known as an element to build characters for plots in novels. It is also well known in mythology. Shape shifting involves skill navigating between levels of consciousness. It is related to the trickster Coyote in legend, but has less specific goals. In dreams this character can be a savvy guide. Flexibility is the theme and the great talent of the shapeshifter. In therapy or self realization the archetypes can be used to enlighten the eternal aspects of the human story. Another name for this character is spell caster.
My own direct experience with this energy came through a very funny Yaqui friend of mine in Mexico. First he effortlessly got me to wear a medicine bag made of deerskin. I am a very prissy vegetarian and asked him for one with no animal parts. He dangled it and told me it was my medicine but if I didn’t want it…I grabbed it and put it over my head faster than you could say Cachora is your shaman. It was, indeed, my medicine. A few months later he made me turn in my medicine. He freaked me out by attaching a buffalo tooth. When he gave it back with the tooth I was laughing so hard. I remember joking that next I would be wearing an entire coyote head around my neck. He announced that he would be able to be with me at night while I wore the tooth. I do still wear my medicine sometimes, although I have not seen Cachora in years. The medicine fell on the floor, breaking the tooth in two pieces, revealing the center of itself while I was at a hot spring on a personal vision quest. I thought about that buffalo. I thought it was significant, then promptly super glued it back together. My medicine still works and I still think it is funny. It reminds me to check all levels of consciousness before making moves.
Mood Magic-Forgiveness
January 23, 2013
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To alter your mood is to change your world. When you are happy and you know it you attract and notice joyful people and events around you. When other emotions dominate your mental landscape you notice others in the same boat, whatever the boat happens to be. One way to describe the mutual misery bonding is woundology. This term was coined by Carolyn Myss to explain how and why people retain rather than heal from their wounds. Contentment is not always possible, but clear intentions can be.
Pity and compassion are not the same. Solicitation of pity requires that you also pity others and the outrageous fortune they encounter. Pity is a currency of pain, highest value being placed on the heaviest suffering. The journey to well being involves mind, body and spirit. The distinction between seeking power through pity and creating well being through compassion is key to living a full life. If information and data were the source of good health we would all be very healthy. The element of forgiveness unlocks the possibility of a happy and healthy future.
Feminine Archetypes
January 20, 2013
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Hekate at the Crossraods
Toni Wolfe, colleague and lover of Carl Jung, identified 4 feminine archetypes. These cardinal qualities divide feminine characters into power centers, or capabilities. Toni understood when she created this foursome as a guide that no individual is purely one archetype on the stage of life. These are ways of looking at personality and talent, not so different from fairy tales and mythological tales.
Life is circular and the core, or center of the circle, is essentially a seed from which the rest of the circle sprouts. Our DNA, birthplace and time, our circumstances at birth are at the center. We contain unique combinations of archetypal power and symbology, both in waking life and in dreams. We begin in the middle of a complex mandala, and work our way out to the edges of consciousness. Limitations are imposed for our education and edification. Dream images give us hints to our own potential as well as to danger. Fairy, Wise Woman, Lover and Queen existed in most cultures before Toni Wolfe mapped out her quadruple qualities. These can be divided, in turn, into variations on a theme.
All people have both male and female archetypes, anima and animus. These might be thought of as north and south, visible and invisible, cardinal points that must also be balanced in the fully realized being. No individual is completely masculine or feminine, good or evil, right or wrong. Tyrants represent an imbalance, a shadow or hidden quality of power, a failure to employ wisdom. Wisdom was historically embodied in the Titan goddess Hekate, guardian of the crossroads. She has three faces, looking in three directions. She carries, along with three torches, a key, a rope, and a knife. She meets you at the crossroads of life and has the power to both assist and punish humans. If she didn’t have three heads, a polecat and a pack of hounds she would resemble the Virgin of Guadalupe, and have similar intercessional powers. Her ancient symbol is a wheel with three parts.
Hekate’s Wheel
Space, Time, Alchemy
January 19, 2013
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Alchemy Symbols
Alchemy is the act of transformation. Throughout history the alchemists have studied nature and mystery. We participate in alchemy when we focus our spiritual talents on the elements of the earth. Inventors and those who are especially creative tap into alchemy to turn imagination into reality. It has been associated with medicine, but all science is the realm of the alchemist. Carl Jung brought alchemy and archetypes into psychiatry. The collective consciousness communicates through symbols and dreams. The alchemists, like wizards and magicians, use mythical power to transform or create.
Our time and space are literally created and projected by us. We are active participants in our entire experience of reality. My favorite alchemist in history is the Swiss Paracelsus, who practiced medicine and magic at the same time. He was searching for the Christian version of pagan natural magic. He promoted Jacob Boehme’s Doctrine of Signatures, a spiritual belief that plants are designed to communicate their healing properties to man. His work was both controversial and respected during his lifetime. What distinguishes the alchemist from a wizard or magician is a constant experiment. The science of chemistry was developed from the never ending experiments of the alchemists.
If you could focus your spiritual energy on nature to transform your life, what would you transform? If you were to focus do you think you could change the quality of your experience?
Cat and Mouse with the TPD
January 16, 2013
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Yesterday I received a call from a lady at the TPD who identified herself as a detective. I told her that I am Nancy Drew and she was dead silent. I asked her if she knew who Nancy is, and she replied in the affirmative. This was the first clue that I had that this lady had called to play cat and mouse, having absolutely no idea that I am a tiger. She said she was investigating a peeping Tom incident from last year and had heard that I know a lot about our ‘hood. This was my second clue.
I have seen the Police Academy movies and think the whole thing looks like a lot of fun. Something happens to them between those heady days of graduation from the academy and grinding out the day-to-day police reports that goes terribly wrong. This detective lady called to find out if I am crazy or not. I let her know, in no uncertain terms, that I am indeed crazy from reporting the same crimes over many years to the TPD, until I am blue in the face. She asked about crimes in my area, I told her a few facts, and then told her what I thought about working conditions for the cops. She had no idea how to be the mouse, so she said she was only calling about the peeping Tom last year and would not be able to investigate the other crimes we discussed. Even Nancy Drew knows there is little point in trying to find out who was peeping last year when we have active full time, already confessed under oath, felonies going on right this minute. I had to hang up when she asked me to call 911 if I see anything. There is such a thing as insulting the intelligence of the public. These guys should have studied Tom and Jerry back at the academy.
A Tale of Two Tucsons
January 8, 2013
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Coopers Hawk Fledgling
I live in the middle of Tucson like Gabrielle Giffords. She lives somewhere just south of my neighborhood in a much fancier part of town. On the anniversary of her shooting two years ago, today there are ceremonies to ring bells, hang bells, pray, and commemorate. Tucson seems to me less peaceful, less educated, more reactionary, and more dangerous than it was two years ago. The city creates PR about how we have come together as more civil and less crazed, less armed, less scary…as IF!!!!!!
Where I live the cops do not respond for at least an hour and then they do not bother to even report the crimes you report to them. Nobody calls them because nobody wants to wait around for no reason. The gun store close to my house has had an overflowing parking lot for the last month. My next door neighbor who goes to the shooting range with a bunch of cops on Sundays told me their highly armed group is freaking out because there is no ammo in town to be purchased. They know that the government is a threat to their freedom, and want to buy all the ammo they may need to defend themselves against the government when they try to take their arms.
While commemoration is all well and good, there are plenty of mentally ill people roaming the streets where I live with instant access to weapons. Unfortunately, they have no access to or interest in mental health therapies. There are no cracks to slip through because there is virtually no safety net to treat mentally ill Tucsonans. There is a place where they can score prescription drugs, but no therapy. There is no evidence of effective law enforcement. If Gabby stayed in my neighborhood for a few days she would understand how futile law passing is. With all due respect to her point of view, nobody enforces the laws we have now. Why would adding more laws have a positive effect? I notice a frightening negative effect in the ammo buying population, all agitated and wanting more arms. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It bears repeating, gentle reader.
Black Sheep Ancestors
January 1, 2013
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black sheep in dreadlocks
When a family member does something disgraceful or distasteful the general way it is handled is by denial. The person who commits suicide or bigamy or general black sheepery is dropped from the story. Three of my grandfathers, fall into this category. My paternal great-grandfather, Edward Ewing Scott, married another woman while he was married to my great-grandmother who had 4 young daughters at home. My other paternal great-grandfather , Jason A Morse, was referred to as a bum, had a wild Cherokee wife purported to be a witch (after his boy’s mother died), and was never mentioned favorably to me. I very recently have seen his picture which was sent to me by a cousin. My mother’s father, George H Taylor, killed himself at home leaving his 10 kids orphaned during the depression. I have never seen a picture of George H, and did not know about his suicide until I was a teenager. One of my first cousins had a very elaborate suicide downtown Houston in the 1960’s which brought the subject back to light. I remember thinking how weird it was that nobody had ever told me. His wife, my grandmother, had died at home as well, in childbirth. I knew about that, but not his suicide. This denial makes it very hard to find information about the black sheep and how they blackened themselves.
This is your shadow family. This is the information that has specifically not been given to you in an effort to protect you in some way. This is the nature that is hidden in an effort to improve the self-image of the family through spin. Everyone wants to believe that his or her family represents the best and most worthy genetic material. If you can remember your parents being imperfect, then you can extrapolate how imperfect your entire tree really may be. If you look closely you may be frightened that we all descend from loonies. If you look more closely you will see how this evens out over time. The concept of the family curse is as real as the family glory and royalty. We have all arrived at this point in history together because of a long line of imperfect beings who survived and tweaked the story along the way.
Saturday Morning Puppet Show
December 29, 2012
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There is a number to call in the ad above to tell congress if you want to stop living like Jessica Rabbit in a bad cartoon. Tweet them, write them, fax them, call them, and beg for mercy on this country. Each new installment of this congress show is less acceptable than the last. We have gone beyond throwing bums out, and must address the systemic way this all came about in the first place. I think it would be good to know what happened on K Street before lobbyists moved in and started running the Howdy Doody Show.
To Tweet or Not to Tweet,
December 28, 2012
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Hamlet and skull
that is the question…..wheather it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of 140 character communication, or ignore it. Peeps who do not tweet are not neccesarily out of touch, while tweeps who do may be wildly deranged or just killing time. Considering how much time is killed in real time, we must admit that this double edged sword cuts both ways. Our challenge is to use it for the benefit of mankind. I am sure there were many fatal errors while humans became familiar with the properties of fire, but eventually the power was harnessed for beneficial uses. The printing press, and, Oy Vey!, the printed Bible have drastically changed the course of history. The tool itself must not be maligned, but investigated to find the highest and best use.
We have a tool for democracy called congress which,in itself,is not a bad idea. It was created to govern our republic. There were corporations in early America, but there were no superpacs. Carolyn Myss uses an excellent example in the book Sacred Contracts to explain the use of tools on earth. She used the example of learning to use a knife. If you grab the knife by the blade it will be painful and destructive. When the paid becomes too great you may decide to use the handle of the knife which makes the knife useful for many purposes. Then the knife can cut food and perform a number of other useful tasks. We need to grab congress by the handle now. This is much too painful. This is our time in history, post Zombie Appocolypse global hot house. How shall we handle this?
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