Lest people mistake my reticence to post recently to a dark fascination with leaving the rag-and-bone photos of those first days in the ICU front and center for all to see, I give you a thought, however underdeveloped and uneducated, on Archetypes. Not sure why, besides being struck by something I read recently on that word.
Philosopher, psychoanalyst, "disciple" of Freud, and prolific writer, Carl Jung took Freud's theory of the unconscious a step (albeit a rather large step) further, defining the confluence of all human experience as the "collective unconscious". It was his term for the vast, almost infinite psychic experience shared by all humans. This experience, according to Jung, could be distilled into universal images, symbols, or myths - shared and present in all of us. He called these images "Archetypes". We know some of them...love, lust, desire, hate, dreams, visions, our true and unadulterated selves, the wild man, etc...
I am profoundly struck by questions. Where did these Archetypes come from? Why are they common to the human experience? Don't our unique experiences shape our "seeing" of the world? Is my experience of the world really so collective? So universal? Well, I think yes.
Why does it seem universal that what we all long for and fear the most is to be truly known? Why do we all have dreams, the capacity to love, the capacity to hope? What seems collective is that living in this world threatens to beat the collective unconscious into despair, hopelessness, hatred and fear. I don't think the Archetypes came from nowhere, from our primate ancestors, from our highly evolved brains. No, I think they come from God. It seems like a simple way out of the questions at first glance. I almost hesitate to claim something so simplistic, so overused by a culture that is desperate for easy answers to our deepest questions. But alas, I must say those answers have never cut it for me. If anything, they've only opened the mystery even more for me. I used to rail against mystery, working hard to destroy it - beating myself up for not being satisfied with the answers I was given, or rather force-fed.
The Archetype that seems universal to me, and profoundly beautiful to me, is mystery. The questions. The God who is hidden only inspires a search and the search is the life of faith, hope and love. Sure, sometimes the God who is hidden elicits rage - and I no longer feel ashamed of that either. How do you not rage against the horror and tragedy in this world? How do you not rage against the darkness? I hope we all rage against darkness. I hope we all rage against darkness with love.
Bruce Cockburn sings:
When you're lovers in a dangerous time
Sometimes you're made to feel as if your love's a crime --
But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight --
Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight
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thank God for the mystery. I have become utterly thankful that I do not have the answers to all of the questions. If I did that would be grounds for true despair in this world. Much of what is and can be known here is not so good...But in God there is infinite mystery and infinite possibility. That spells hope for me.
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