Working With Symbols

"The past is but a prefiguration of the future. No event is irreversible and no transformation is final.... Time but makes possible the appearance and existence of things. It has no final influence upon their existence, since it is itself constantly regenerated....[therefore] history is "free" and always "new".... events repeat themselves because they imitate an archetype - the exemplary event."

- Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return

We can be grateful for the archetype of Transformation, the fact of perpetual rebirth that is prefigured in every human psyche. Once we learn how to work with its principles and energetic forces, we can settle into the knowledge that we never have to be stuck in any way of life that no longer works for us.

Before any new creation, however, there is always chaos. But to think of transformation as chaos – wow! What a scary concept this is for nearly everyone! When chaos hits in our lives, it is usually unexpected, and very quickly things begin to go topsy-turvy. We are usually ill-prepared to deal with it effects, nor do we trust that our lives will ever settle down again.

Yet, entering into a state of chaos must always be the first step in any process of creation … which, by the way, is known as individuation in the creation of one’s Self. And many of you today are in some of the major stages of your individuation process! I’m hearing from several of you by phone, email, or at our workshops. So this article is written just for you, to hopefully bring you solace through a greater understanding.

First of all, the word ‘individuation,’ remember, means the act of stepping out of a whole societal or familial belief system that had always defined you, which you’d never questioned, and becoming a statement of one’s own unique Self. And this is never easy. Society’s mainstream standards provide much security and the ease of never having to think for oneself. So leaving this is like having to enter the giant Unknown, the act of becoming a free thinker. So, when correctly understood, chaos is the giant Unknown, but actually a positive concept; it is the all-encompassing energy field where unlimited uncreated potential spins in minute colorful particles awaiting our recognition and focus. And by our attention and intention, we enter into this to formulate new possibilities. But until we actually enter into ‘the spin’ and order that which we wish to design, nothing new can ever take form – mentally, emotionally or physically. The potter must have his clay; the musician, her instrument of potential musical notes, for a master-piece to come forth. Simply put, we create the new by bringing order out of chaos. And upon a higher plane, we are materializing Spirit here on earth by our intense desires and focused intention.

Now! This is heavy stuff – and frankly, defines our very reason for being here on earth. So ponder this article slowly, and really take it in. And fortunately, many are learning today from their own direct experience how to undergo this perpetual process of transformation, gathering data from each particular, and even predictable, stage, about how to live on a higher level of consciousness one laborious step at a time. And sometimes, through the gift of Grace, a leap in consciousness happens, and something comes clear all at once.

This personal evolutionary task has now been taken up by those who are avid seekers of wisdom and love, as well as certain professional areas such as transpersonal psychology, systems biology, subatomic physics, holographic theory, and integrative medicine. So there is hope that science and spirituality are about to merge. In the future, an even more esoteric psychology will come to the fore whose holistic principles will guide us to an even greater understanding of ourselves. And subatomic physics is right with us here. We’re discovering that we are energy beings connected to the higher dimensions of Reality… the bigger patterns, and our bigger story. So in the meantime, we must trust the process and our own abilities to know truth and pay heed to the fact that psychology and even science is evolving, as are we.

Thank God for the well-worn path of direct knowing! Without this as a given in our evolutionary growth, we would be at the mercy of what the old-paradigm science tells us is our reality. And this cause and effect, exacting science is never creative; it only measures and hypothesizes about what has already been. So unfortunately, with rare exceptions, scientists tend to undermine our belief in these natural rites of passage that re-create us and carry us to wholeness. Not only do these logical positivists disavow these processes, they give us nothing to replace them, nothing that gives us further insight into the truth of our becoming. We must turn to myth and the mystics where often we will find clues through our universal stories and the wisdom of the ancients about the true workings of creation as the way to transform.

When we review human psychology’s course through time we’ll see that Sigmund Freud brought us the awareness that the unconscious mind must be accessed before we can understand our behavior. He observed that our motivations emanate from these unconscious processes that, until made conscious, have power over us. Carl Jung increased our knowledge of this great unconscious mind by showing us that we are not only dictated by our own little personal unconscious (the subconscious mind), but we are intricately interwoven into humanity’s collective unconscious mind as well. He called this vast unconscious mind the pleroma, which means "the fullness of divine ecstasies and powers." Therefore, he once commented that we can never separate from our archetypal roots any more than we can separate from the organs of our physical body without experiencing a severe neurosis; we are ourselves these divine powers and archetypal structures. They are the "organs" in our psyche’s " body."

Your psyche is therefore both human and divine, and already conditioned to know how to bring purified order out of the creative bed of chaos and give an archetypal event another chance to take form. Entering into sacred time like this, we gain access to "the power of the gods" to be used for the process of transformation itself, but never for selfish use. To learn how to bring order out of chaos is to understand the relationship between energy and matter, or between spirituality and concrete reality.

To bring the desired order out of chaos, our conscious mind must maintain a relationship with the chaos. Whatever we intend to materialize must be consciously recognized and reflected to come into form. In this manner it is always possible for something new and pure to emerge from the undifferentiated whole. When we can just surrender, stay consciously awake, and allow this process to reveal itself to us, nothing will stand in the way of our advancement upon our unique life’s path. You’ll discover there is a "truth detector" living inside you who already knows what’s right for you and what isn’t. The key is to learn to turn inward and listen.

The "new" physics is backing us up on this. It has observed that in particle/wave theory, the particles remain unformed, spinning in the background as part of the wave function until actually observed. Once observed, they pop out and reveal themselves – in pairs – one spinning in one direction, the other in the opposite direction! Ponder on this and you’ll see how vital is our Observer Self function….and how two things going in opposite directions make up the whole. Fred Alan Wolf says what we observe and call real is what creates Reality! So, it isn’t that we see it then believe it; we believe it, then we see it! And someday all of science will catch up with this amazing fact!

So we must learn to remain loyal to this union between our conscious and unconscious minds at all times, as a daily practice. The way our psyche works, it will confront your ego with some aspect of itself that is still totally unknown to you, something still uncreated. This will often come to you in the form of a symbol, a mythological dream, or an image of some aspect of life you’ve not yet recognized. To understand symbols we must enter into their dynamics; we cannot be a remote, disinterested spectator. This is a key to our awakening upon a higher level of consciousness with an ability to abide there in identity. If we realize that symbols are messengers from another dimension who carry the energies of transformation, we can merge with the symbol as we would a great Master or High Being. We can actually become the symbol in order to know it… and we will be transformed.

The proper sequence of work with any Symbol, then, is threefold

1. First, we see it in our minds as an object, something we can "wrap our mind around" and name. Examine it thoroughly. You are materializing it, bringing it into a thought form in your mind through a process of recognition. You meet it and call it real. So now it can have its impact on your consciousness.

2. Next, begin reacting to it. Think about it. Feel it. Aspects of its nature are noted. Associations, insights, revelations are summed up and made into something orderly you can talk about, draw pictures of, and work with. In other words, you meditate upon it. You are taking it in, merging with it, feeling yourself as it. The symbol, as the messenger that it is, is now giving you its qualities that come from a higher order of your Self. This is how symbols talk to us. This is the input stage.

3. Now, having absorbed its qualities, you apply them in your life. And direct its use or its purpose as fully as you can. You are now resonating with it, not reacting to it. You’re making it a physical fact. You move it mentally to give it meaning; embody it. You have now become its representative in this world, a bridge between two worlds. You mediate it. This is the output stage.

To spiritualize a thing we bring two levels of consciousness together, from "on high" to here. We picture it, give it meaning, then act as it. Our spirituality is a concrete practice of being what we are truly inspired to be. Now the two worlds have converged so we’re operating upon a higher plane of reality. By linking symbols to life we are spiritualizing this material world.

Symbols are the main keys of transformation. They open doorways and point us inward to a new aspect of ourselves or life. A key gives access to various compartments of the Self or the higher worlds. Once we learn to work with symbols we can commune with higher intelligences. Through symbol we make the ordinary extraordinary. "Innerwords" is the language of the Soul.

Now, if we will add discipline and will to this kind of work, our lives become imbued with magic. It is literally true: where there is a will there is a way! Standing upright in the light of our own soul, we start to realize that we are the upright Middle Pillar between heaven and earth; we are ourselves "the Rods of Transformation," capable of organizing and regulating all chaotic energies into useable focus. Remember, chaos turns into order by seeing its own reflection. And as the meaning-makers, it’s only by our observation that this can happen. We must enter into the dynamics of chaos so as not to be its pawn, but its partner who moves it into new creations.

Through reflection and deep inner work, we bring into materialization the cosmos of which we are an integral part. So many who have come before have already done this work; the principles and many techniques are already "cut to length" so to speak, just awaiting our use by those who recognize them as valuable truths. These symbols we encounter in our inner work are not clumps of inanimate matter; they are living energies capable of acting upon us as well as auto-reaction to one another.

On a path of direct knowing, you will notice that often you must experience things before you can understand them. You may get caught up in others’ moods and influences, or in their wants and desires, because we are naturally empathic beings. but at some point this must be corrected. The process of remaining consciously aware of who we are at the being level -- as we exist -- is the task of the today’s steward. No matter what role, task, or career choices one makes this high degree of consciousness is the stance of "the walker in two worlds", or the bridge-builder into the higher dimensions. We develop a two-way approach of seeing everything from both the old/new way of being. This is a "double vision" mode of conscious awareness. As co-creators, conscious of the fact that we are creative, we take responsibility for what we create and mis-create. For so it must be. At one level, there are no mistakes: The Powers of Creativity never judge us, and all can be used for good. Yet, at the level of ordinary reality, harmfulness often accompanies unconscious activity, whether it be mental attitudes, emotional/relational dynamics, or physical actions.

We must remember that, just as the unconscious and conscious minds are connected, so are chaos and order also connected. One without the other is never sufficient. This will require a personality change for people who are bent on the simplicity of rigid, reductionistic thought. We must all learn to respect the chaos of the unconscious symbolic processes and work with them to create a new Self. This is why transformational processes differ from those of ordinary growth. The latter leads to simple, ordinary lifestyle changes; the former to total rebirth into a whole new way of being. And our world is starving for just this right now!

When we are limited to the old ways of patterning that never vary, we lose our capacity to respond to new situations.

"The greater diversity of available responses to change,
the greater the potential to survive the unexpected."

-- John R. Van Eewyck, Archetypes and Strange Attractors

Chaos is the creative force that provides this rich pool of potential. Never sell short anything that comes to you in a dream or inner image from your unconscious mind. It’s your soul’s way of communing with you. To move from ego-domination to soul-domination, the symbolic realities of your soul’s life must take form, right here, through you and me. As Abraham Maslow once said to a group of his students, "If not you, then who? And if not now, then when?"

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Eupsychia's retreat programs founded in soul-based psychology are designed to take you on your inward journey back to the source of your being, to find what's waiting for you there. our methods are tried and proved through years of experiential work with hundreds of awakening souls. you already have within you all that you need to be whole; we're all just been called now to re-member why we came here and who we truly are.

So join us anytime you can and discover members of your soul family you've always known, waiting to greet you and support your next right step in coming whole! if you've read this far, your new life is already beginning.

Be conscious out there! In loving service,
Jacquelyn Small
www.eupsychia.com