Archmed: Perspective

If I, as a person, am "storing some toxins" in my body -- let us say emotional biochemical not vented, stored under the myelin sheath of the nerve, such as the model of Johnson's Biogram -- I would have to store them somewhere.

It doesn't matter that your leg or wrist or 3rd spinal vertebrae did not have that emotion, at least as perceived (that caveat is critical). They might be the storage depot for that particular energy. More energy mapped to that energy/issue will store there too. Stuff enough biochemical in there, long term without venting, and all kinds of unpleasant results ensue, starting with psychological issues (denial/avoidance) and continuing into physical problems.

Why this is so--nobody knows. Dr. Johnson was working on psychocartography -- mapping the body to the mind -- when I studied with him and still when he passed away some years later. There was enough corroboration with 'common sayings' (especially historical, when culture was a little less abstract), and with 'psychological profiles of disease', and with the BG therapy and visualizations and effects, to testify there was something to it:

The body is the subconscious "manifested". The body isn't so much a 'map' as 'the territory itself' -- but most people have a hard time grokking that.

If your shoulder aches, your thighs are too big, your face is too flat, your eyes are myopic, those biological manifestations have an equivalent in the psychology, and if you're open minded you'll find that has an equivalent on a more esoteric level too. Find any one level that you can face, and you might be able to heal the other.

Well, maybe. Or like me you'll just have insight into the fact that they're related, and good tools for inquiry, but still have fat thighs 17 years later. Nobody ever said learning and doing were the same thing. I may live only to serve as a warning to others...

The energy body is just as real as the one we know better. Actually, 'energy body' is a ridiculous misnomer when you think about it. Even the physical body is just vibrating energy. There is no difference in your elbow and your astral elbow but their frequency, and the fact that one hurts like hell when you slam it into something.

The self is a whole "spectrum". I call it 'The Rainbow of Soul' which is such a great woo-woo phrase. The red band is the physical body as we know it. The spectrum from that to the 'mental' (yellow) band is the 'orange' band -- the so-called "astral body." (Which as a term I suppose is more accurate than 'energy body' or at least not as redundant.) Bottom line though, just because we don't normally see or feel it, doesn't mean it isn't physical in its own sense--it is, just not as "densely" as the one we know.

Everything is energy at root. So when you store a physical toxin such as in your leg, that is an 'energy' that affects the 'other levels of you too'. Not all of them, but at least those closer to the physical plane. I'm going somewhere with this, bear with me.

Until recently, I never wondered "where" my energy problems, blocks, repressions, distortions, wounds, or other "issues" were "located". Mind you I did think a lot about where my physical and emotional 'issues' were 'located' physically years ago when I was into Biogram study. But not about the less tangible energy issues. (Or, tangible but I do not recognize that manifestation as them, or it is below my radar for biology effect.)

I notice a funny tendency in both me and in stuff I read by others, to do this sort of vague hand-waving generality-without-locality when it comes to metaphysical "energy issues." The funny thing is that even left-brain retentive sorts like me, who will just nail the hell out of people being even slightly illogical in other topics, sometimes when it comes to metaphysics, it's like a lot of practical thought just goes out the window.

I think it's because a lot of metaphysics requires such suspension of disbelief to function that once you gain this as a skill, one tends to OVER-do it. It is a lot more difficult to find the sliding scale and fine lines and so on.

Say that I have some problem, who knows what in this example, but it's an 'energetic' problem at base. (Well, all things are, yes, but let's say we can't "see" any physical correlate besides some emotional issue that makes one react with upset to something.) I go on blithely talking about this energy, the 'archetype' that is the sum-composite-manifestation of that energy in my imaginal realm, the energy that I 'deal with' or 'let go of' or whatever. But I never until recently wondered:

• What is being affected by this energy besides me?
• "Where" is this 'energy issue' taking place in terms of the larger universe?
• Are there are other landscapes and life forms, geometries or other things, in the "frequencies" where that particular energy is obnoxiously residing?

In the early-mid 90s I had a meditation that showed me a shift in "perspective" that related to this.

My life had all these sudden traumas. Big problems. Stuff I worried horribly about. Why oh why was the universe DOing this to me?? It was so unfair. I was so angry at all of it, about it, at life itself. I was archetype meditating on it all as a whole one night, in a deep trance. I was working with the archetype which I couldn't even see very well when it happened.

It was as if the archetype or something grabbed me by the feed and flipped me upside down very suddenly. And when it happened, my entire "perspective" seemed to flip upside down as well. I could hear these terrible cries, these wails of such lonely agony it sparked my heart chakra in mercy, and in desperation to save those poor sweet things, I rushed toward this totally dark area from where I heard it coming.

I found myself in what seemed like a very small outdoor prison area, a little like some big animal keeps have, every cell made of stone, with bars. (I was familiar with something akin to this and with variations it took that form.) It was dark, but I could see just enough. I ran to each cage, and the moment I began, I understood with horror and grief that _I_ had imprisoned these creatures, and that their wailing cries, in that dimension, were the 'manifested problems' in MY dimension. And instead of responding to the 'cries of pain' -- the 'cry for attention' -- I had been angry at them for inconviencing me.

{All pain is a cry for attention. Why do we often accept this when it's physical, but not when it's on other levels or types of manifestation? - P}

When I was done, I went to the gathered group of them, feeling such apologetic, blown-away feelings about the whole thing. They forgave me, and I 'understood' from touching them, that it was pieces of energy I had at some point taken, and kind of "bound up inside me," as if to keep it for myself and from others selfishly, and then or later in response to their earlier cries, I had "stuffed it down deep" -- suppressed this energy so it did not have expression -- and it was lonely. It was part of the universe cut off or unflowing, and it needed to be part of it, the way a small child needs a mother but worse. It was I who had transgressed against them.

Right up until I'd been flipped upside down, I had been so angry, feeling that all these events were 'doing something' to ME. As if I had not a damn thing to do with it and they were so unjust. But I ended up crying and apologizing and feeling such love for them my whole chest just pulsed with it.

Within a few days every seemingly impossible situation totally resolved, even though I couldn't even imagine how it could possibly ever be ok.

Now I assume that this is "modeling." I mean, I figure nothing or almost-nothing is "literal" in the inner world, right. Surely there were not 'entities of energy' that were "trapped in stone and bar prison cages in the dark." I assume this is just a creative world, in human-modeling, that my mind helped create in that imaginal middle-realm, much as I assume it surely must be that way for the old Captain of the Guard experience (although that was a 'spontaneous insight' not an archetype meditation).

But still it leaves the question: if we have some "problem energy", whether it is only perceived by us as metaphysical, or is stronger and is also perceived as psychological, or is really dense and actually manifesting physically... what is going on at the 'level' where that particular energy (frequency) vibrates?

What world, what possible life, is being affected by a bum knee, or a fear of spiders?

Is it possible that for all the obnoxious results we may see in our reality, that it's a whole lot worse or more direct at the level where that energy is directly manifesting?

This is just something I was thinking about earlier.

***

So I spent awhile just... "being and talking" with Nero and IG. Not in an official "doing something" meditation. Just asking them for a variety of things and griping to them as if they were sympathetic friends who had nothing better to do than hear my rambling angst.

They did give me some feedback but I don't remember it all much.

At one point I looked at Nero and said, Is it energy? Do you need more energy to be more proactive with me or get through to me better? I'll give you energy, no problem! He seemed to protest about that not being it, but I was distracted by the input from my cynical mind, Great. He's like the 'friends' in real life that seem like friends, but in one respect or another you kinda gotta pay to associate with them. That kinda made both of us laugh. Then before he could say anything else I blurted out a formal prayer that was like a blank check for energy allotment as needed. Then I said, There you see? I'm actually BRIBING you. So get to work! and we both found that amusing. It's always interesting to me to feel 'humor' from some internal identity.

I do remember at one point getting the feeling that just like the Four and the Aeons were introductions that needed to happen, and that in fact I deeply wanted I just didn't know it, that this new inner identity with the bizarre name in English (Ackrck) was along those same lines. That if I were serious about growth, I would quit asking and requesting and pleading of everything and everyone, and then instantly rejecting and bitching about anything spontaneous that comes through. I had a pretty strong sense that this is a pattern with me, and that -- well they don't feel "exasperation" but it was something mildly akin to that.

***

I did the Aeon round this morning and it took me 4x as long and I had to drag myself back to every one of them repeatedly. I could not keep my brain focused for the 20 seconds it takes each, repeatedly. I couldn't believe it. I've never had it be anywhere near that difficult.

This afternoon I went to see my mate/twin of The Four and made some official requests and security/resistance "override" commands in me for him.

I was going to meditate this evening, but passed out before I could. Now I wake up at some ungodly hour, gah. Stay up, eat, then be tired an hour into work? Or try to sleep and likely fail? I know, I should try to meditate on something hard. That'll knock me right out. :-)

PJ

Archmed: '94 Dream Symbol (left hand)

In 1994 I had a very powerful dream that included this symbol:

I noted that somehow his death had cut my left hand in a couple of places. Deeply, and it bled thick and dark like molasses...

I told IG I wanted to meditate on that, on the wounding, on the hand and blood, on that overall energy, as I made myself comfortable and waited for the archetype.

IG: Are you sure?

Me: What? Wait, you of all people are hesitant to give me an archetype?! Yes, I'm sure.

She's so weird at the most unexpected times, I swear. We move on, and the archetype is instantly in motion, some impossibly tall, really thick writhing, a sky-high column maybe two feet in diameter that is sinuous and twisting and covered with huge barbed thorns.

I put a forcefield around it to keep it still so it won't run into me, and then realize I forgot something. Hold that thought! I tell it, and do a quick "cleansing" visualization, then come back to it. I work on pouring good energy into it to dissolve the thorns on it, until it is smooth.

It has "calmed down" now so I release the forcefield and put my hands on it and do the rain of love, light of love, wind of love, flowing over both of us together, and each one makes it smaller.

I don't really get any rushing during any of this. I feel like it's working, I just don't "feel" the result kinesthetically.

Finally I'm looking at something that is just a kind of a 'sinuous bar of light', much like the first thing but no thorns and a reasonable size and cleaner/clearer somehow, with a really dense feeling that reminds me of hardened steel but not, and it's about ten feet tall, and slowly undulating. I stare at it, wondering what it reminds me of, when it clicks: Kundalini. Yeah, that's definitely what it's acting and looking and feeling like.

I ask if it will merge with me and it does, but although the merge seems to "work", I don't really feel much.

Huh. And here IG had me thinking this was going to be some butt-kickingly powerful thing.

Me: This was no harder than any other meditation. And I don't even really feel anything sensually although it seems to be working. What part of this was supposed to be hard?

IG: There are other effects resulting from opening up this energy.

I shrug. Probably kundalini, given the symbol, but who cares, I need to be working on chakra health anyway. So I wrap it up and that's that.

Oh! I forgot to mention: Brin came for this! My former outer guide that I released. I was astounded! He implied-via-energy that this issue was something rooted in his time of working with me and so it had called his attention. That's the first time I've seen him since he left.


I did the nightly Aeon round then. And said a prayer I wrote for daily, to really feel and focus on, just to make sure all this bizarre internal cosmology isn't dragging me off the point of it all:

Dear God. Please help me to best use my relationship with the Four, my Aeons, and any other identities, to learn about myself and you. Please arrange my growth and change to best serve Divine Will. Amen.

Then I did an impromptu prayer to God about Ackrck and his femine also/other-self, asking specifically that they not be allowed to interact with me unless this communication or relationship served Divine Will and what was positive for me.

I was going to do something else but I fell asleep, whoops. Got too comfortable I guess.

PJ

Archmed: Awareness Management 1

Me: IG, I want to work with the archetype of Awareness-management, especially for meditation, like keeping track of what I'm doing and not getting lost. Also, I want to work with the archetype of an adaptive ability to not shunt-off energy or pass out. I want to adapt some other way of 'dealing with' energy like that which doesn't require that I lose it or go unconscious. But you can choose the detail on these, or combine them, or... whatever.

I was listening to a couple brainsync.com MP3s through this so I was more altered state than usual.

IG: We will do this as one.

It was as if I could 'hear' IG thinking, or 'feel' might be a better word. Something about, we needed a way that we could use consistently, so it would build as a thoughtform, that would allow me to move to 'a place' -- like we had last time when she painted my eyes and arms and then pushed against my chest. My memory flashed through several concepts, things from books and movies that I had visualized, and a few ways she had used before. She/we chose something rather like a large telephone booth, a 'pod' of sorts as she's done before.

It sealed around me and the world outside me, which had begun as my plateau, under the tree, with IG in front of me, began flashing, into what seemed like different worlds, but so fast it was just a staccato blur of colors and patterns. This went on for awhile. I had the "concept" sense that I was moving "through". I observed, If I were less trancey, I think I would perceive this as moving "down," instead. This went on for some time, and then finally stopped. I couldn't see anything outside. The pod/booth vanished around me but I still couldn't see much. I 'sensed' something there. Am I in space? I wondered, but then answered myself, No. You just can't see well, like when you can't see an archetype.

I talked to my forehead and throat chakras about it and visualized a dial on each and said, I'm going to turn you to "perceive" and I want you to be 'tuned to' the reality that is here where I'm supposed to be focused. And I did that for each, with my eyes closed, and then opened my eyes. I could see now. But it was perfectly ordinary looking and didn't look any different from the world I know, though it wasn't the plateau. The landscape was Autumn like and I was standing in a small clearing, with trees nearby.

Me: IG, this looks just like the ordinary world. I guess I was expecting... something different.

She didn't respond. Maybe the environment is the archetype, I said to myself. Maybe--

But just then a sound came in the distance, and following it I saw the sky start to fill with these large, maybe 10' diameter, silverish-outside, bubbles. Literally as if bubbles had been made of some vaguely silver reflective fluid. Maybe a hundred or so. They flew toward me and moved around a little in the sky a few hundred feet above and around me, hovering and sometimes swooping, and I realized: They actually 'perceive' me somehow. They came when they felt me here. That seemed a little sci-fi!

I watched them for a few more moments and then had an understanding: the 'swooping' some were doing was sort of... preparatory. They were 'inclined' to 'swoop down and encompass me inside them'. That seemed novel but I wasn't sure if it was good. But I figured if that was what the environ 'did' then that was the arch and I should work with it.

I remembered the nature of the arch was awareness management then. So first I focused on my feet on the ground, and then looked at the palms of my hands, and then looked around my environ, and then thought very firmly about what I was doing there and why, and then bundled those up like into a furled rose of energy and put it in my solar plexus.

Then I had this idea, this is from programming. I assigned as a label and marker, anchor name="home" on it. Then I created this concept similar to OnRequestEnd that whenever a bubble or dreamling was done or closed or whatever would happen, it would "trigger" the code #home so I would promptly return to that thoughtball of perception.

I nodded at one of the bubbles, thinking at it, "Ok. Let's do it." And the others moved aside a little as it came closer to me and then 'swooped' down across the landscape and very suddenly I was "in" it fully.

Bubble #1

I was slowly moving downward, in a semi-dark environ that felt... different. After a moment I realized I was under water. After another moment I realized I was "sitting in on" the perception of something like a whale. I could hear so many things that I don't even have words to describe. It was as if the audio was an entire world of its own much like visual is in ours.

The sense of, in general, "a large calmness", was very nice. I relaxed into it, and floated around like a passenger for awhile. Then I realized time was passing and I was in a meditation and I wasn't "doing" anything.

Me: IG, this is nice, but how long should I be here?

IG: As long as you like.

Me: But... but I don't see what this is actually "doing" for me.

IG: Sometimes doing is just "being".

Me: So there isn't a specific thing I need to change here... I'm just here like... just passing through... it doesn't have any great cosmic significance... it just IS?

IG: Something like that.

So I relaxed into my host again for a little while, it was very nice. And then I decided to leave that bubble. I imagined myself taking a few steps (any direction) and sort of popping through the skin of it, and it sort of jiggled outside and began moving away from me.

Me: Should I dissolve the bubble?

IG: Why?

I couldn't think of any good answer. So I shrugged, and turned toward others floating, and mentally beckoned to another which swooped down and I allow it to envelop me.

Bubble #2

There was no environment at all, like space but not outer space, like just nothingness, but I was surrounded by things 'within' this nothingness that were various shapes and sizes. Many were moving though, I mean within themselves, some like machines, some like something more... fluid or organic. One was like a pair of scissors and seemed like it was going to nip me, and in annoyance I whacked it away from me a little. Is this space junk again? I wondered.

IG: No. These are very new formations. Thought forms manifested.

I considered them for awhile. I 'felt' inside me that some were cool, and some were ok, and some were problematic right from the start. And a few seemed good on the outside but carried some 'core' that was likely to become very problematic.

Me: IG, can I dissolve all these like we did the space junk?

IG: If you feel that is right.

I didn't actually feel that was right, and I knew she phrased it so I would look inside me for that. I felt that I should get rid of about 30% of them, the ones I could 'feel' were problematic. But the others, they felt like...

Me: It feels like, they all have a right to exist. Like it's really not my business in a way. I mean that it's my business if their energy ... is not... not in conformance with... well maybe it is my sense of 'divine will' or something, or maybe it is my formula/pattern, I dunno. But those that feel like they are not... appropriate for that, those I feel like I should blitz, dissolve, whatever. But the others... no. It seems like they have their own right to 'be'.

I thought about how with the Four we had put a sort of 'protection' on all the 'things' that 'felt righteous' and then took on the rest.

Me: IG, can I use 'wildcards' for this kind of thing? Can I say, like, all the forms which are not in alignment with me, all the forms I sense the problem potential in? Can I make that my 'target' like in RV and select those out from all these others?

IG: Yes.

So I did that, and I worked to be aware of myself as within the Four, and just as I went to 'dissolve' them, I felt somehow that wasn't right. One or more of the Four had a different opinion; they thought we should be pouring energy into these forms to heal and clean them, 'from core inception' upward. So we were changing their fundamental nature, but allowing them to live, just in a more 'ideal' form that would be in accordance with us.

OK, I thought at the Four, and I imagined energy going through us and into the 'core' of all those forms. It was very powerful, I felt it through my entire body the whole time we were doing that.

Then I stepped out of the bubble, and "onRequestEnd" came to mind and "#home" came to mind and I was where I began. I decided that was working unusually well.

Bubble #3

I was in a city, initially in the air but floated down to standing on the sidewalk, looking up at skyscrapers. They were right next to each other, like you see in pictures of Hong Kong or something, but they were very uniform, unlike our world, mostly the same height, shape, color, etc.

On the top of every building no matter what size, were these... they looked like fat vertical tentacles, as if they were 'grown' across the entire rooftop of every building, reaching into the sky and slightly in motion. They reminded me vaguely of the shapes I use in reality-meds sometimes except longer. I had the feeling that they were interacting with both sun and air in some way. I stood there for awhile.

Me: IG, I don't have any feeling about what I'm "supposed" to do here.

IG: There isn't "supposed to" involved. You are simply within that sphere, within that world. You can do, or not do, as you choose.

I decided that I had no particular reason to hang around this metropolis-world, I mean there were many other bubbles some of which might be more useful, and I stepped out of the bubble, letting it float away from me and go back toward the sky.

But when my anchor triggered and I was more fully 'home', there was a man standing about 10 feet from me. I 'knew' that he was from the world/bubble I'd just been. He had... followed me here, like psychically or something.

Something about his face slightly frightened me. But the Four were with me and from them I had the sense that on his own he was ok, but that my "relationship with his energy" had some 'distortions'. So we sent good energy at him and I did the same stuff I do with archetypes - water and light "of love" etc. - and after a few moments he seemed like just a normal guy.

(I wondered, When people are ugly to me, in form or in personality, does it also simply man that I have 'distortions' in my 'relationship with the energy'? As if the wrongness is not me and not them but the energy between?)

Me: IG... how did he get here? Is he dangerous? What do I do with him?

IG: He can visit here, just as you can.

I considered him for awhile. He seemed like just another person. His world seemed similar to mine. And yet, I met him in this... other... layer or whatever it is, so...

Me: So he's a lot smaller than me, yeah? I mean you know, like in terms of awareness?

IG: What makes you think that has to be?

I realized she was right, that I was assuming that, and I felt the Four's awareness that I psychologically needed to feel that was so, that my 'bias' of arrogance hid fear. I didn't have an answer for her but was disturbed by the implication. So 'equals' could be encountered? Gods, what if I run into something bigger than me?! I thought and felt my mate/twin laughing in response to that idea -- he felt as if, this was SUCH a given, but I was so very sheltered, and it was endearing but amusing too.

Me: But what does this mean? Something could follow me home??

IG: He followed you here.

Me: But this is -- ohhhhh. I see, I think. So is this part of why you took me far away to some other level? So anything coming with me would have to come to some interim world and you control the energy and what could affect or follow me at that point?

IG: In small part. But mostly because this (she 'felt' an indication at the bubbles) happens to be here.

Me: This is like some kind of place that lots of worlds can 'plug into' somehow. That's weird but cool. But what do I do with that guy?

IG: You should be talking with him about this.

I looked at him, standing there staring at me.

Me: Hello. What is your name?

Him: __ill.

The first sound was like a consonant but not one of ours. I went through the entire alphabet trying to find it but no luck. It was like a couple different letters plus part of a third. I get this effect in "intuitive" stuff sometimes, like english is just completely insufficient in several ways, and there is a language perception where there is so much 'depth and complexity' to a sound, and our sounds are like... two dimensional or something, comparatively.

Me: I have to call you "Will" because my mind can't find a language form to replicate the first sound. Why are you here?

Will: I'm just curious. Who are you?

Me: I'm Palyne. I'm from another world. I think. My spiritual guide brought me here. There's all these bubbles here in the sky and they're each worlds, like doorways to those worlds.

He didn't say anything, but nodded at me, and walked away toward the trees. I thought he was going to call down a bubble but then he just vanished.

Me: IG, I feel like I should do lots more of these and could. But I also feel like I've done as much as I can remember for writing down and I want to learn from this so I want the info consciously available. Can I stop this meditation and blog it and then come back and do more later?

She agreed, and I came here to write it down.

I think there is a bubble I have completely forgotten. Hopefully if so it will return to mind and I can record it. Gah! Hate it when that happens.

PJ

Archmed: Work Enthusiasm

I told IG I wanted to focus on work. On being more enthusiastic, more dedicated, more responsible, and so on. Lately I've been having some passive/aggressive sneaking into me and that really bothers me. Work is important to me and I want to do well at it. So while I was at it I told her, you know... I do have to be able to "do" the meditation, as a caveat (I was thinking of the Knight of Wands that took me 6 months--don't want to ever have another archmed like that!), but I think... I think I would really like this to be powerful in effect, and I think I could, you know, take on more than normal in some fashion, like I'm willing to "try harder" if needed for seeing it or healing it or whatever.

Then I called Sun, and each of the planets in turn including Earth (that I had no merge with whatever, as if we were already full-up it felt), and then the Angelics, and then Responsibility, who turned on his sexy+ persona and made me drool and asked me to come "want" him with real passion again soon and I agreed. Then I imagined them all standing in a group behind me together and for some reason, the minute I "accepted them as together and within me" I got massive body-rushing for a good 30 seconds while I hyperventilated. It reminds me of one time when I did something similar, in that case I invited literally everyone I could think of and whole categories of entities in the universe, and that time, the rushing was un-freaking-believable and hitting me in 'waves' for a long time. (I fell asleep that time barely into the med! Sheesh!)

IG used a couple fingers to paint my whole eye areas with something, the lids to brows and below them, that was odd. She did a few stripes on each of my upper arms. I had my eyes closed and then I felt her, with her whole hand covered with this sparkly paint like stuff, throw out her palm and softly hit me in the chest, pressing right against my heart chakra, and I "found myself abruptly" in another world.

--and the instant I opened my eyes, big monsters were nearly on top of me around me snarling in mid-leap and in insta-panic reaction I flashed into Responsibility ('the ultimate warrior') and did a sky-high leap up into the top of a tree nearby, registering as I did that I was in the middle of a forest, and landing with a big heavy gun in my hands. No no no! I felt many ideas at once -- Don't shoot the archetypes! Which then seemed kind of hilarious. Just a triggered reaction, I guess!

I looked down at them. There was one huge one, one slightly smaller one, and then one that was about the size of a person and one that was small, like half that size. They were all brownish and "monsters" without a great deal of visual detail. I was distracted though, because from my high tree, I could see over a big part of the landscape, and quite some distance away, in a small clearing -- I saw a creature I know. I couldn't see it well at that distance but the way it walked gave its nature away. I was shocked to see it again.

I met this creature in 1994 I think it was. It was very, very weird. Its legs were the most recognizeable part from a distance, it looked in that area like some creature I cannot remember from the later levels of one of the early DOOM video games. It's some mythical creature, with impossibly huge "haunches", huge long legs that bend in this funky way so about 75% of the height of it is actually legs. I think there's an extra joint in the legs, so they bend from the hip and come up high like almost near the shoulders, and then there's a knee-like section and it turns and goes down and out front for a few feet, and then another knee-like section and it turns and goes down and back, toward the ground where some kind of foot is. But the legs of the mythical creature weren't the most memorable part up close. That was the face and eyes.

But it's a shamanic creature, I said to myself in confusion. Why would it be in this archetype meditation? I wanted to go see it, in fact, more than I wanted to deal with the archetypes. I couldn't come down from the tree without dealing with them. And I had this odd sense of concern that they might be dangerous to the critter. So thinking, I imagined a big noisy rock-bell combo and I threw it way far away in the forest, to make noise when it hit another tree, to distract the monsters. They all ran after it and soon as they were gone I flew over to where the creature was. I stood near it, I'm shorter than it is, and looked at it close up. Yep, this was the same creature, or same kind anyway.

It had the head of a human. Which was way too small for the body frankly. And it had the face much like some rare men I've known, it's difficult to describe, a certain look that is kind of narrow-faced and the part of the face with the nose is real noticeable as if that area all comes forward a little. The skin is fine-striped in grey, grey and white, all over. And the eyes ... are way too sentient in a wild, foreign way.

I called my mate/twin to be 'with' me. He is related to you somehow, I said, remembering. I had seen the creature in an area just before, in that same area, I had seen my mate, and his mate in his real-world. I spent a few minutes talking to the creature, just saying nice things to it. It's so cool, I said to my mate. HE is so cool, he said in response. Not IT. That seemed a little pedantic to me, but I "felt" through us that he was responding more to a feeling I had, that I was sort of 'dismissing' it as a 'thing' in a way. I apologized and talked to them for a bit more and then decided I needed to get back to the meditation. I flew back to where I'd come in, surrounded myself some feet away with a protective force field, and whistled for the monsters, who promptly came running to get me, ran into the shield and then paced around it.

I told them thank you and a little more along those lines. Then while they were outside being all snarly I did the rain of love and I talked to them through that, and the light, and the chem, and I kept talking to them, imagining feeling good energy coming from all my chakras and being carried through my words as well. They all started changing while this was happening and while still monster-ish, they were all smaller and neater by the time that was done. I let the biggest one inside the forcefield and worked with him awhile until it was done. I did that with all of them. There's a lot of detail I'm leaving out because I'm boring myself at this point and I'm in a hurry to go shopping, but one thing was interesting:

In one of them I had it on a medical table and there was a lot to 'deal with' but I wasn't clear on detail. And I had a "dreamling" -- I haven't had one of those in awhile! -- a full-blown spontaneous dreamworld I was abruptly in the middle of -- and I recognized what it was, and I was able to say, "Stop--pause--hold still!" and 'hold that in place' while I turned my attention back to where I was in the meditation, and created a thought-anchor for myself, a clear 'memory-moment' of where I was, what I was doing, what I was seeing -- and then I marked it "hold still" in a sense, and then I flipped back (like flipping windows on your computer with alt+tab) and I was back in the middle of the dreamworld, which was like most dreamlings surprisingly vivid.

I was up close to something I hadn't seen before but I sensed was a space station of some kind, an artificial satellite. I was too close and had to back off a little. All around me though, there was STUFF. Big ol' hunks of crap all over the place. It looked like a lot of scrap metal, rocks, all kinds of stuff. I could "feel" that this was like "space junk" and it wasn't supposed to be there, and that it was causing a problem for the people who were in the station trying to use their instruments and such. I put my hands toward a big floaty 'thing' of metal nearby and imagined dissolving it into its component energy abruptly. I felt a little rush as it disappeared. Then I imagined doing that for another thing a distance away, and same thing, I got a little rush as I dissolved it, which tells me it's a good thing. I did a couple more and then thought, oh brother. This is going to take all day!

So I called in the Four to be with me, "accepted I had the power" (this is Senior's influence), and then we just put a 'safety' around any object in that galaxy that was 'righteous', and everything else, we blasted into the oblivion of its component energy. Rush-rush-rush, very cool! And when that was done I saw that there were several of these station-things. I "understood" they hadn't been able to talk together because of all the junk in the way. Now their communications were totally unimpeded. I gathered up my energy and poured a lot into all of them, to go to their core of time, concept and build, and then send the energy forward, so they would be "the ideal" of their potential. When that was done, they were all a bit larger and seemed more advanced. I felt that the dreamling was 'done' and as I thought that, the whole world of it collapsed like a bubble into nothingness and I found myself with my anchor, which worked brilliantly, I was instantly back on track without any confusion or wandering.

The dreamlings and "managing" them often make me feel like I have challenged my brain to do more things at once than it normally does, somehow.

Anyway, here's hoping the results of the meditation are powerful and prompt, for my sake.

Oh! I forgot! Edited to add: I asked IG:

Me: "How did that creature get here?!"

IG: He lives here.

Me: You mean this 'place' is like a level, layer, frequency, world, whatever?

IG: Yes.

Me: Weren't the monsters dangerous to him? Did they exist even without me here?

IG: Their energies did, but he has been able to {something like 'survive'}.

Anyway so now I'm thinking, hmmn, I'm not sure why she "sent me somewhere" as opposed to standing under the tree like normal, but she does tend to be more creative than prior IGs in this regard. But it made me wonder, if some of my 'issues' are quite literally mucking up the worlds at the layers that energy inhabits. Er, if this makes sense to anybody but me.

PJ

Mapping the Inner Realm

Geez, I just had an epiphany. Well it feels like that!

In a previous post I was talking about ways of mapping the inner realm, and how Steinbrecher uses the astrology/tarot model, but I feel that probably any way of mapping the universe ought to work and be a good model for archetypes and relationships. I wondered-on-paper what other models might work for this. How is the universe divided up, energetically? I gave some ideas, from i Ching to colors.

I wondered to myself the other day, when looking at a star chart: who creates constellations? Why do they choose some stars and not others? We have an entire cosmology made from a lot of assumptions, but those stars could be 'grouped' in any numbers of ways, and most are left out entirely. Different cultures group them differently in many cases.

Who made the tarot? It's much the same but there are some variations in inclusions and interpretations. Both these things are "cultural" maps. The QBL Tree of Life is a cultural map; as is the i-Ching, as is astrology (which varies quite a bit depending on culture and even chosen framework), as is Tarot.

That's great. But still that's not really world wide let alone solar system or universe wide, that's people wide, and only the current crop of people we know about (most history of the planet is unknown to us). I wondered, is there anything that is NOT limited by culture? Anything that really is fundamental to everybody, to the universe outside that we are looking to access, understand and map from the inside?

Now, I'd forgotten this, but a few weeks ago we watched an episode of SG-1 where they go to this world and find what seems to be, Daniel figures out, 'a language'. He says, if you had some super advanced races and they had to find what was the ONE thing that radically different life forms, no matter their biology or culture, might have in common, what would it be? It was a novel idea. I hadn't thought about it since, however.



I was at amazon.com looking at books for the kid's homeschooling tonight when I chanced on one book that looked really great, more layman than textbook. The cover was really cool too, everything had this nifty colorful cool looking symbol. Then I chanced on another book that is a focus on a big beautiful photograph of every element in the periodic table. And it hit me upside the head.

THAT'S IT!

THIS is how the universe really IS 'divided and mapped'!

It isn't culturally based. It's a fundamental. The building blocks of reality!

Anything manifest is powerfully dense energetically. I "feel" this is more important than I'm even capable of comprehending right now.



I have no idea how archetype work using the elements as archetypes would go.
I have no idea how working them together would go.
In fact my brain is still working on wrapping around all this.

But at the moment it occurred to me, it seemed so profoundly "right!"

It seemed like one of those things that is so simple, and so obvious, that you wonder how on earth it wasn't obvious to everybody all along!



I suspect all mappings are possible in that realm, and this one seems just as valid to me as astrology. Maybe to me as a left-brain sort it's actually more interesting in its own way.

I'm not sure how to imagine it; how the psychology and inner world would deal with this, and what relevance the energy of 'copper' might have in my life or reality. (Whoa. Deja vu while typing that!)

I wish that IG was more "conversational" because I'd love her opinion on this in detail. I can hardly wait to get the book with the summaries and photographs!

I keep editing this post with new ideas. I can't shut up! OK look at this:



How can this NOT look like a more advanced version of an Enochian Tablet? If I combine the elements of a given color, will I get a daemon?? Is combining certain elements in the inner world the equivalent of a 'constellation'? Or well, working toward that?

"Every man and every woman is a star." Is this incredibly LITERAL and we just think it's some kind of symbolic meaning?

Humor: If I'm talking to each of the 'identities' on the periodic table, I think I have taken the use of the term "elementals" to a new level! :-)

I'm including the following super-simple overview of atom-to-compounds for reference:

What is an Atom ?

All substances are made up of matter and the fundamental unit of matter is the atom. The atom constitutes the smallest particle of an element. The atom is made of a central nucleus containing protons (positively-charged) and neutrons (with no charge). The electrons (negatively-charged with negligible mass) revolve around the nucleus in different imaginary paths called orbits or shells.

What is an Element ?

An element is a substance made up of atoms of one kind. There are about 82 naturally-occurring elements and about 31 artificially-made elements as listed in the Periodic Table

What is Atomic Number and Atomic Weight ?

• Atomic number of an element is the number of protons in the nucleus of an atom. Since atoms are electrically neutral, the number of protons equal the number of electrons in an atom.
• Atomic weight (or relative atomic mass) of an element is the number of times an atom of that element is heavier than an atom of hydrogen. The atomic weight of hydrogen is taken to be unity.
• Mass number of an element is the sum of the number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus of an atom.

The elements are arranged according to increasing atomic numbers (along with their atomic mass) in a table called the Periodic Table.

What is a Molecule ?

A molecule is formed when atoms of the same or different elements combine. A molecule is the smallest particle of a substance that can normally exist independently. Examples:

• Two atoms of oxygen combine to form a molecule of oxygen [O2].
• One atom of carbon combines with two atoms of oxygen to form a molecule of carbon dioxide [CO2].

What is a Compound ?

A compound is formed when atoms or molecules of different elements combine. In a compound, elements are chemically combined in a fixed proportion. Examples:

• Hydrogen and oxygen are combined in a fixed proportion of 2:1 to form the compound water [H2O].
• Carbon and oxygen are combined in a fixed proportion of 1:2 to form the compound carbon dioxide [CO2].

Thanks to this website for that simple overview.

I'm not even sleep deprived right now so I cannot blame this 'wow'-effect on that.

I swear, I feel both brilliant and stupid right now. I feel like, the part of this my brain gets is so simple as to be idiot-level. I feel like my idea is just the tip of the iceberg, and this "model" -- this approach to "mapping of the inner realm" -- is profound.

I feel like it's a doorway of a depth I can't grasp, my brain does not even have the ability to comprehend it because I'm too ignorant about everything -- about chemistry, my soul, the universe, astronomy, plasma physics, all things that would somehow contribute to understanding WHY this matters so much.

I feel like on the surface I'm going, "Oh groovy what a neat-o idea," but I can feel that really, I only see the surface. "A way of putting the universe in pretty little boxes!" A thin layer on top that my girly love of colorful art probably got partly from a book cover.

But underneath something is telling me in my gut, "This is SO heavily important, in ways you cannot understand right now."

I was wondering... and here's my answer. Actually lately I notice that almost everything I wonder about, from 'internal' things to trivia in reality, within days at most the answer or whatever I was looking for shows up. So I guess this is an answer.

It feels important. It feels like the part of me that doesn't really relate to this, the eye-rolling part of me that is thinking, "Oh come on. It's just another way of dicing it up. Probably less intuitive than the other systems frankly." just has no idea of the depth of potential.

PJ

Archetypes: Universal, and Of Others

(I have a few posts here that have been in draft mode for a year or more that I thought I would dig out and finish.) I wanted to post about something that I've never heard anybody else address, but has had profound implications for me, experientially. I think since this original draft I've mentioned both these points but I want to do it officially in a way I can easily link to later.

The issue is: archetype work on other people's archetypes.

And: "master/universal" archeypes, as opposed to "your individual" archetypes.

I bet at least someone is thinking, "I never even thought of those differences, or doing those things." Uh huh. That's cause you're so much smarter than me.

It would be easier if many areas of meditation came with warnings. DO NOT PUT BODY OUTSIDE SUNROOF WHILE CAR IS IN MOTION. But they don't. So learn vicariously from my screwups if at all possible.

The archetype of "Power", for example, has three main categories in how you can approach it, as I'm modeling it here:

1. "YOUR" archetype of power. This is an individual thing, your relationship with that energy, and it has a certain degree of inherent energy. Archmeds usually "default" to this I believe, when you ask for an archetype, probably an IG-protective issue, or a subtle assumptive paradigm we begin with, or both.
2. "THE" archetype of power. This is a master/universal thing, not so much just your relationship-with-X as an archetype.
3. Someone "ELSE's" archetype of power. For example, maybe your friend Jim has a real hard time dealing with issue X, so you decide you are going to meditate on JIM's archetype for X. Or maybe Jim, bless his altruistic heart, thinks he'd like to do that for you.

Here is how these worked out for me. Maybe they will be different for you.

1. The first item is standard archmed work. This is what I do and I consider it true magick and fabulous. So I don't need to say much about that option. That's what we want when we go into these experiences: "My archetype of X."

2. The second item I got by accident. I believe my first IG allowed this to happen because my archetype-work teacher had actually once mentioned something about this and I hadn't paid attention. Things like 'being real specific about what you ask for, and how you ask for it', were real important to me then, and I think it was a good lesson. Certainly a memorable one.

All she said was something like, "Of course, you're not asking for the universal archetype of X, but for your archetype of X. The archetype will example your relationship with X, so if it's wounded, or dusty, or looks like an insect, that's direct information on that relationship." She did not say anything beyond that. She didn't warn me what NOT to do, she merely pointed out what we WERE to do. But I failed to pay attention to this as I should have.

Anybody who has ever done dowsing, knows that there is a rather bizarre thing about words. You can change one single word in a question, even though the question appears to still be the same question, and change your result. Perhaps it's that words are a form of energy on their own merits and, like a recipe, every ingredient matters to the outcome.

Nowdays I tend to outline my wishes or gripes or worries, and then let IG choose whatever combination of whatever she thinks is appropriate for the archetype. That may include things I've never mentioned, things I never thought of that 'underlie' what I'm complaining about in a different way than I expect, things SHE has an opinion about or wants dealt with, etc.

But when I began archetype work, I didn't know or have that trust with IG, and I'd come from a self-hypnosis background so was kind of geared to the 'specific command' mentality. I was very clear about what I asked for and how.

For example, here are some archetypes as I might have phrased them back then. I might still use this. The only difference now is my much greater allowance and assumption of creativity and wisdom I assign to IG in the process.

• My relationship with person X
• The problems I'm having in situation R
• My success at coming-event Y
• My lack of money, in general
• My need for object Z
• My archetype of concept K
• The pain/sickness/injury I have in body-part Q

If I were seriously working on a serious problem, I would come up with 2-10 different approaches to it; archetypes addressing a little bit of everything. Usually these came in obvious breakouts such as:

• My relationship with person X
• The problems in my relationship with person X
• My underlying issues in turn driving my issues with person X
• My lousy history with person X
• My ideal relationship with person X
• Person X's role as my _____
• My role as person X's _____

Do this in combination like this, particularly in a very altered-state, and I have never in the many times I've used this approach, or seen others use this approach, had anything short of staggering and damn near instant reality-change.

These are the possible results that I've seen with me and others:

• Person X changes so radically you seriously wonder who this stranger is and what has become of the person X you thought you knew. (Usually they are just so much nicer to you, so much less affected by negative energies, it's stunning.)
• Situation Y which is bringing you and person X together changes so radically that the whole dynamics of the relationship, as well as details, are altered. (One day they think you're totally wrong for the job and the next day some trivia occurs, you push a button on their computer, and they think they can't live without you. You get the idea.)
• Person X falls completely out of your life. They are suddenly moving away, leaving the company, dropping the relationship, or in some other way just falling off your radar completely. (I haven't yet seen this be "keeling over" but I don't doubt that is one of the possibilities and I just haven't run into it yet.)

Now, those examples were all of MY archetypes. Hey, maybe that's why I like shamanic work -- "It's all about me", hahaha!

That is not quite the same as a universal archetype. Not "my version" of Scorpio but some universal version. THE archetype, not MY archetype.

As I said, I think that this 'defaults to' the "my" classification, by assumption, by design, or by IG's help. But it does not have to, as I learned the hard way one day.

I had the idea that I wanted to work on the archetype of "performance."

I had a major, life-wide issue with this. Performance had been the center of my life since childhood, had been part of a huge crux-of-angst in me for years, and had been (unwillingly but resignedly) given up entirely. I didn't expect an easy meditation. But I didn't expect the one I got, either. I imagine (I never tried it again!) that if I had asked for my archetype of performance, it would have been "a difficult meditation."

But instead, I asked for THE archetype of performance. And as I'd just had this conversation noted with my teacher, about what we were asking for and I pointedly did it wrong, I think maybe my IG of the time was giving me "exactly what I asked for, but not what I wanted."

I had only a few seconds with the archetype. He was a tall black figure in a black cowled robe but made-of-outer-space (a little like the picture on the cover of the inner guide meditation book). His eyes were large and glowing red. He had a tall strong staff in his hand black like him and on its top was a spade--like in playing cards, that symbol-shape.

I was overwhelmed, impacted by his energy like it was a shock weapon that "whompfed" me like an air-gun and any second would finish destroying me. He instantly attacked, and I flailed backward trying to escape him as he yelled right in my face, leaning over me, Power! I must have power! I must have power! ...

I was body-wide reacting, on the floor screaming repeatedly, GET IT OFF ME! GET IT OFF ME! at Inner Guide when IG vanished him. Granted, only a few moments in. I collapsed in panic-breathing stunned shock, and then burst out bawling in reaction to the terror.

Yes I would agree that this archetype was clearly affected by my issues with that energy. However, that archetype felt nothing like any other archetype ever has, even the most powerful ones. It was like 100x the inherent energy. It's like going from an average 70-80 decibal radio to headphones with 140 decibals blaring through. I'd had all kinds of mind-blowing, powerful and amazing experiences with archmeds by then, but I had never met an archetype which on their own, just in the instant of first-encounter with them, had THAT kind of power.

(Interesting aside: you know, this actually kind of reminds me of the 'power' that I felt from the bad guy in that dreamy-experience I blogged in 'The Immortal'. No I'm not saying the archetype was a demon or whatever, just that it was that "level" of power. I mean it felt like it was so powerful that MY whole energy body would just be flattened, wiped out, solely by its proximity, and that if I interacted with it some critical mass of me wouldn't survive.)

My teacher told me that if you really get a 'universal' archetype rather than a 'personal version' of an archetype, and especially if that archetype is some common concept/symbol that has a zillion years/people of thoughtform, that this is the kind of experience that can result.

This is why some people doing archmeds without an Inner Guide have found them terrifying and dangerous -- or have even been literally screwed up, physically or mentally, from the experience.

IG has the total power in that realm and can protect you from anything, 'scale' anything or stop it if it's too much. That is one reason why I am a Steinbrecher fan, because I feel his chancing on this particular option and documenting it is so invaluable.

My teacher and I talked about my phrasing and her recent discussion on this and we theorized--just a guess--that because she had pointedly addressed that issue, and I had pointedly not done it right, that since I was constantly having IG-world experiences that were 'lessons' even based on daily life (the insight often covered much more than just the archetype work), that this was a lesson. I got exactly what I asked for. Next time, I should be more specific. I of all people should know.

I have never asked for the (or MY) archetype of performance again. Maybe someday when I am much braver....!

A short time later (few days I think), I was doing something over on the end table in my teacher's living room, and they had some little 'larson comics' thing (cube-daily calendar or whatever).

The interior of a pet store. A parrot is in a hanging cage up high. The clerk's desk is to the right. To the left, a large snake acquarium has a huge broken hole in the middle of its glass.

A pair of broken eyeglasses are visible. And a suspiciously pet-store-clerk-sized lump is inside the giant black snake, who is curled up sleeping peacefully on the floor.

The parrot, happily oblivious, is cheerfully reciting:
"Polly want a cracker. AAUGH! GET IT OFF ME! Polly want a cracker. AAUUGH! GET IT OFF ME!"

I laughed, on the floor crying, until I couldn't breathe, until I was in pain, until I had to rest in exhaustion, and then I went through it all over again. It was just so perfect.

3. Someone "ELSE's" archetype of power.

I had two experiences with this. One from being 'the person' so addressed by someone else doing the meditations, and one from being the person doing the meditations.

Once upon a time my teacher, herself experimenting with much of this, thought it might be fascinating to see if she could work on my archetypes "for" me. After all, she was a hands-on (energy) healer; she was 'reaching into me' already; was this not just another form of that?

As a person she was an unusually-good-listener, a compassionate sort. She was constantly 'healing' as a way of life. She had a great deal of developed trust/faith in 'the universe' to take care of her. She was a minister, and a counselor, as well as an energy-worker, and a teacher. She "re-mothered" me, or perhaps just 'mothered' me is the term given mine died when I was so young. It was hypnosis and past-life memories and spontaneous anomalous experiences that gradually put a crack in my skepticism and opened my mind. But it was she that opened my heart. She was nearly my opposite polarity, an airy Aquarius, although bizarrely enough, when we had our astrology charts done, even though the planets/signs/houses were completely different, the "geometric pattern" in the circle formed by the relationships was nearly identical for us, that was odd. I think these 'geometries' might themselves be a good archetype.

She observed the issues she felt I had as major challenges. I pushed people away in several forms. I was distrustful. I didn't know when to shut up, especially about negatives. I had issues with faith. With insecurity. She specifically requested MY archetypes of ____ to work with. She did this daily for a couple months, and usually we would sit together during this time.

By the end of that, I had changed radically for the better. She observed this with delight. Look, it worked! I appeared to have 'evolved' damn near overnight. The very issues she had been working on had resolved with a speed and completeness that honestly, was mind boggling.

But by the end of that, she had changed radically for the worse. I observed this with horror. I didn't make the connection back then to what caused it. She appeared to have 'devolved' damn near overnight. I did make the connection that as a surreal coincidence, she specifically seemed to have developed major life-size problems in the precise areas where I had so amazingly totally let go of them. I wondered about that.

I just didn't understand that this is another form of magick or shamanism. You sometimes hear of some yogi "taking on" something for a student and working through it for them. I was never sure I believed that was possible, personally. Now I do. She did not mean to, but look what we both learned from this: that is how it is done.

On the bright side, you free person X from that energy if you intentionally take it on for them and they allow this. On the down side, now it's yours, and not only is it just as hairy as it was for them, but worse, THEY already have a lifetime of adaptation with that energy, a whole system where it is "in context" -- and you don't.

So I was a walking-wounded, hostile, distrustful, sarcastic, faithless skeptic with a ruthlessly sharp tongue and a big mouth. I was many things, and those just happened to fit in the profile. She was a warm, compassionate healer whose whole life was based on faith, and whose primary quality was being an understated good listener for people's private concerns.

The qualities she took 'for' me were merely 'issues that needed working out' within the context of my personality. But within the context of HER personality, they were waterfall-disasters. She didn't just act out those issues as I did; because I had a life of learning to adapt to them and control them within reason and compensate for them. She didn't have those compensations in place. Worse, pretty much all her most powerful strength points were the ones that were now her most powerful problems.

The qualities that in me made a type-A, driven, ruthless left-brain skeptic, made her a monster.

She did not work through most of it, but rather, eventually, she let it go. It returned to me. And while this is likely not the only reason around that era, it's fair to say I went from being unusually well developed, spiritually healthy, openly psi and loving, filled with faith, constantly meditating, to suddenly being exactly the trauma-queen jerk with trust and skepticism issues I'd been years before--but that I thought I had "evolved out of". Actually I didn't, and I didn't deserve the credit for it. She had "helped". And when she or her own spiritual helpers finally dealt with it, and "quit helping", I got it back. It has been a very long climb back uphill.

So it was very bad for her. And while temporarily good for me, in the end it was bad for me too. This is not a practice to recommend.

I think if a person knew what they were doing and took a tiny, single point, and really tried to 'work through' this energy--I do not know how it's done, if you can fully, or what--maybe, just maybe, it's possible, and I only say this because of the stories about gurus in the east. But at least for us in the West, the bottom line seemed to be that although one can 'take on and allow to be taken on' certain energies, that in the end, everybody has to go 'through'; there are some roads you walk alone but for who is inside you; nobody else can do it "for" you.

The penalty for trying to live someone else's life at that level is that you get exactly what you ask for but definitely not what you want.

Which brings me to the next example. I had a friend who had serious heart problems. I loved him so much, and I wanted him to be healthy. One night while doing some prayer and distance healing on him (it goes without saying that one can only truly heal what the other allows of course--all embodied identities are sovereign), I had the idea that I would work on "the archetype of HIS heart problems."

The archetype scared me half to death. It was human... mostly. But something about it, and about its eyes, wild and feral, so frightened my body, more than my mind, that in gut-wrenching fear I backed away from it and left the meditation.

Which left that energy doorway open, as does not finishing any meditation. Oh, my.

I was 'haunted' by this human-ish 'monster' in my dreams. It varied from male to female. It was a werewolf; it was a horrible murderer. It ripped people to pieces in front of me, more blood and guts than I can imagine the goriest movie having, a visceral-level gut-response that is PTSD level hard-wired trauma. It made me watch while it tore them physically apart and when I cried and screamed and hid my face, it "stopped" the dream like a film, dragged my head back, forced my eyes open, zoomed in to a closer focus, and then played it again. Red red red red. And through it all was this horrifying guilt and getting-caught fear, as all of this up-close weapon-claws blood was always in some context where I was going to look like the one who'd done it and 'they' -- ordinary people -- were going to find out.

Now, stupidity might be genetic so I'm told, but I have no excuse for this one. The man in question just barely survived two full tours in Vietnam as a combat soldier. He was in every battle there you've ever heard of and zillions you haven't. He had decades of military experience and some of it was very.... very hairy. He's getting older now, but in the psychic dictionary next to "bad ass you don't want to f--- with" is this guy's picture. So how could I not have guessed that if he had heart issues it just might, mind you have something to do with the fact that he'd spent years of his life in horrible gory traumatic close-up violent combat?

I went back to IG after a week, crying, and begged IG to 'close the meditation and free me from the archetypal energies' of it. I was afraid to go to sleep at that point, it was HORRIBLE. IG did, and I was ok after that. I have not made that mistake again.

And even if I had been able to work with that energy, god only knows the effects it might have had in my personality, considering the effect that working with my archs had on my teacher.

So archetype work, at base, is exploring the universe "through" yourself. It is always YOUR archetype of-something. Not some universal archetype, some entity so powerful it nearly blows you out of the meditation. Not someone else's archetype, some energy you'd just be taking on and living (probably badly) with the consequences. But YOURS.

IG will usually do this by default, far as I know.

PJ

Book Talk, TIGM/es 02

Post 2 in a series related to Edwin Steinbrecher's book "The Inner Guide Meditation."

ES began this road in 1969. He was using 'Active Imagination' with a Jungian psychologist and then on his own. The psych "...emphasized the dangers of the AI process..." to him. (No expectations there! Although in fairness, some of this is powerful and the result can be ass-kicking at times.) ES was an astrologer so he was working with astrology and tarot archetypes on his own. He writes:

I had also at the time just finished reading Wilhem's translation of {Jung's} ... The Secret of the Golden Flower, in which the secret seemed to be to "circulate the light backwards", or, as I interpreted it, to force the mental energy back along the same channels or nerve pathways that the projection energy flowed out on.

I attempted to do this in my imagination by inventing a staircase that would take me within to those archetypal images I was seeking. And it worked! I reached a room at the bottom of my stairway, thought of the High Priestess, and she was there, a living presence in that inner world, different from the picture on the tarot card, but without a doubt the High Priestess as a reality within me. And the experience seemed to be happening there, in some other dimension or reality, totally unconnected with the here of the normally experienced outer world.

I was delighted with my new toy. It had a reality and freshness I hadn't experienced since childhood, and there was no doubt about the experiential "realness" of it. I was with the Sun, and my body became warm and relaxed. The Magician taught me things I had never heard in my outer reality. The presence of the Fool would cause a 'pins and needles' sensation in my limbs.

But then I had an experience that acutely demonstrated the analyst's warnings about the dangers of active imagination as it is practiced in analytical psychology. I was inside the room where I came into contact with the archetypal forms when an image of Old Pan or Devil appeared, unsummoned and unwanted. It was a classic Christian devil with an emanation of "evil" as real as the beneficence I had felt when interacting with the archetype of the Sun.

He goes on to describe an experience so overwhelmed with fear that he was literally paralyzed and it took quite awhile and a feat of Will to break out of. He decided he would never again do such a process without an analyst with him. He continues:

A few months passed. Fear weakened with this passage of time, and curiosity increased. There had to be some safe way to go back "down there" without having to be dependent on an analyst's presence. It was so like a foreign country whose laws and customs I did not know. This analogy triggered the thought that perhaps "guides" existed there as they do in other foreign countries, their roles being created in response to traveler's needs. Throughout the myths, poetry, fairy tales and spiritual literature of the world, guides in some form have been spoken of or referred to [...] Perhaps if I attempted the descent once more...

He looked for and found a 'guide' who seemed loving and wise. He asked the guide if he'd help:

He stated simply that he had always tried to guide and protect me and always would if I requested and allowed him to do so. And so began the inner adventure and the beginnings of true choice and freedom in my life.

This coming up with the idea of a guide was really quite brilliant. Although in my view, it was one probability; it didn't have to arrive that way, of course. I think someone else might have come up with that idea as a logical follow-on to the inner work.

What I mean is, ES was thinking of the archetypal "realm" as so literal, in terms of, "existing archetypes like tarot or astrology were there." As if they'd been living there and he'd stumbled on their housing tract. He wasn't (or doesn't say he was) looking at it with the much larger mental-model of this being an area where he could "create" ANY thoughtform "as an archetype" and work with it. If he had been, he might have thought of "creating a guide" in the same way you can create anything else.

That is apparently not how it happened, but I think this demonstrates a little bit of the difference in mental model to start with; he perceived his "guide" as being "there" as pre-existing-ly as the other "official archetypes" of tarot and astrology were. Not like he had the ability to 'allow into focus' any energies he wanted there; more like it was a secret inner garden where those just happened to be lurking. And what do you know, a guide was lurking there too.

He was a creative guy, that Edwin, "management at heart" as I put it:

Perhaps one could resolve the energy conflicts described in the horoscope by arbitrating the "quarrels" (astrological 'hard angles' and polarization) between the archetypal energies in the inner world, by allowing antagonistic energy systems to begin touching each other and restructuring their relationships and energy flows.

This is when he stumbled more powerfully into what I call the semi-autonomous and seemingly fully autonomous nature of the archetypes in deep-state. I might add that this is greatly, and I mean hugely, affected by the state of mind in which you do these meditations. If you get yourself in a solid Focus 12 as TMI would call it, or even deeper into more theta, archetype work is both easier and far more powerful.

I think the reason is because the 'dreaming' part of your mind is much freer, making the experience much more independent, and your conscious resistance much less developed. So sometimes the intensity of experience is less about the archetype than about the state of mind, in my opinion. Even high alpha state (very alert, just closed eyes) work that you don't "feel" much with can be surprisingly effective--I don't worry much about this--but the deeper your brainwave state, the more powerful it feels and often the more radical the reality-change in terms of degree, scope, and speed.

When I was learning to do archetype meditations, my teacher was a woman who ran small classes in her living room on a variety of things. Hands-on energy work and archetype meditation were the primary focii. She had this ability to project a brainwave state, or energy, like nobody else I have ever to this day met. When I first started working with her, despite years of intense self-hypnosis and very-deep-trance work, she knocked me unconscious every time. The other few (long-term) students would step over my snoring body as they left. I learned to adapt, and as my chakras and my own meditation and energy work developed (radically), I began to be a lot more 'aware' of what she was doing energetically.

It was her ability to do a great job of putting locals in a state of mind for doing this, that made a great deal of my early experiences possible. I was very skeptical, very left-brained (so to speak), very judgemental, and this stuff was very difficult for me to allow, let alone to validate. But in addition to "state of mind" having a huge effect, awareness of energy does too, so the constant chakra and energy-work that I was doing outside of these, also contributed.

The thing I consider the BEST experience in archetype work is "surprise". The more surprising, and the more extensive the experience of surprise, the better a meditation I consider it, and the more seriously I take it. I guess I validate it more because it is obvious to me that at least consciously I am definitely not just inventing it all. I have no proof of this but I suspect that the more surprise involved, the more powerful the result, at least sometimes. Surprise seems to be more common in altered-state work.

It makes you realize, the hard way sometimes, that you are not nearly as in control of it all as initially suspected. To me this part was where it really started frying my brain -- forcing serious revision of my mental models about myself and reality. ES wrote:

My imagination took on a life of its own. Conflicting archetypal forms would not be pushed into agreement or easy reconciliations. Where I had supposed, "I'm making most of this up," I soon found experiences full of surprises. It became dramatically clear to me that these were living entities I was dealing with [. . .] they seemed to be separate, sometimes alien, entities totally unlike any familiar aspect of myself. They had their own likes and dislikes, interests and aversions, moods and temperaments. Their behaviors, as I observed and interacted with them, were often completely unpredictable. Occasionally they were hostile to me. Sometimes they totally ignored my presence, and only with the greatest effort could I attract their attention and get them to communicate with me.

I had forgotten this part until now! :

To get behavior change or cooperation from them, I usually had to agree to make changes in my outer world, modify my behavior or agree on new actions.

Bargaining with the archetypes. "What do you want from me?" Not just in 'energy trade' but in actions.

Nowdays I feel differently about this. I still consider it valid, but I consider it just an option; I wouldn't pull it out but for drastic need. To me, now, it reminds me of when I was a kid, praying to God to save me from some impending doom in my tiny little life, promising him that I swear I will not say 'shit' or 'damn' ever again if only he'd keep me from getting caught for something. I don't think this kind of negotiation is necessary. I think energetic relationships can be dealt with via energetic means, without me having to promise certain behavior which I'm usually unlikely to follow through on anyway since if I wanted to behave that way I already would be.

Also, I recall when doing this that my expectations seemed to affect the answers I got, e.g. they all seemed to request some 'healthier or more-spiritual' behavior that I expected something 'spiritual' to want from me. This made my left-brain doubt this part of the process. If they were to volunteer it when I was in a deep rapport, if it was surprising, I would take it seriously. Otherwise I started to consider it a sort of religious 'modeling' I was imposing on the process.

To me, regularly creating some new behavior I am supposed to follow, only creates yet-more guilt about how imperfect I am in my daily life. I have enough of that crappy guilt about the food I eat, the exercise I don't do, the cleaning and home/land improvement I don't do enough of already, without adding a dozen requirements imposed on me from internal identities. I'm willing to take seriously requests The Four and The Consortium might have, but not every archetype. And the 4 and C had better just ask, as I'm unlikely to be volunteering.

And so ES began to realize the "reality-changing power" that this work has, as everyone who does it seriously for awhile does:

I began to notice a new phenomena occuring in my outer world. Those people in my life whom my ego regarded as negative or destructive began to change for the better or go out of my life. It seemed that everyone around me was suddenly beginning to "get it together" as I continued to do the inner work. Problems that had been with me since childhood began to drop away. There was usually no high drama in this; I would just notice one day that a life-long problem had not occurred for a long time, and as more time passed, there was no more recurrence of it. It had quietly disappeared.

As one of the most powerful, long-term relationship examples in my own life: My father, who had been a good deal of jerk to me (when not just abandoning me to the psychotic women he married) from my age 10 (when I had a significant internal energy change) until age 26 (when I began doing this work), was a topic I chose to work on. I worked literally day and night on meditations concerning him for weeks.

The result was so drastic, on both him and his wife no less, that friends of theirs spontaneously commented to me on their changes, and I am not kidding when I say that the next half dozen times I met with either or both of them, I literally thought "they were putting me on" -- that they were pretending or being sarcastic in some kind of fake niceness, and I watched them warily, as if they were kidding, and any minute their REAL intent would become clear.

They weren't kidding. But their behavior was so radically different, so positive, so proactively kind -- when it had been so hostile and reluctantly, resentfully evasive before, that I had an honestly difficult time wrapping my brain around it. That is a very key role and a very long time of someone's consistent behavior, to have change THAT much, THAT fast.


As one of the 'combined life-dramas' for example, at this time I was in a period where I had no vehicle, only a part-time job, and no place to live. I was living with my teacher and doing this work in a really major way. It was my spiritual equivalent of the Beatles in Germany hahaha. Before long I had a luxury car ('company car'), a good job (best pay ever and great position), and the nicest, large apartment I'd ever had.

I got so used to the shocking way things would manifest in my life that I made a list on my wall of the things that I wanted, that I EXPECTED that reality would "give" me if I merely had a positive intent, expectation, and relaxed, let it go and 'allowed' it. Now I should mention that a bit before this I'd had a kundalini experience, blown my crown chakra apparently, and so a lot of this manifestation was likely related to that (it's one of the predictable side-effects of that). But a lot was due to the archetype work also, and maybe those two were not unrelated.


Here's another much more detailed example, the kind of thing that is "real world daily life" of a specific problem person and situation. I had this coworker, an attorney and the company VP, who was such a coworker-from-hell that it's the kind of thing black comedy would be written about. He was seemingly the staunch cornerstone of the company, aside from the CEO who was the salesman, chairman and inventor of the (specialized) technology.

I worked for the CEO, but he wanted to believe I worked for him. I managed all the small company that wasn't engineering or legal, but to him as a woman I was a secretary to the bone, and his no less. He'd been diapered all the way through law school by family money alone, and it showed. He was incapable of keeping track of the majority of his job, this had gone on for years and snowballed into the present, and my role as hired was greatly as CEO's troubleshooter for everything that wasn't engineering--the CEO had begun to realize a lot of stuff was really a mess--so my projects were constantly putting me in the VP's realm. Like anybody of this type, he was paranoid and self-protective, and evasive, rather than helpful.

At one point, I pointed that out that he had no filing system for finding anything, and he plead his misery of not having a secretary (as apparently being organized requires a woman) (the men I work with today would dump this guy out a window into the garden as compost! it's shocking how much MEN have changed--improved--in the business world, as a result of the improvement in women's role in that world, I have noticed. Ability to type, file, and function with computers is a huge part of that I think).

I spent several days taking off my normal work just to make him an extensive filing system and get the past filed into it, in a tall lateral cabinet right behind his desk, so as I showed him, he could literally swivel his chair and roll two feet and find or return anything. This was not because it was my job (at all). It was because he was a moron and it was complicating MY life frankly, so it was worth my time to help him.

I come back to his office a couple days later and stare in disbelief. There's like 150 file folders, contents everywhere, all over the floor. It looked like a three year old had been there. He's rolling over them in his chair, which is a given because the filing cabinet is so CLOSE to his chair that there isn't room for those all over the floor. As I stared at it in soundless astonishment, he says with a dismissive shrug, "Oh, file those."

As if I existed but for no reason but to sweep up behind his sloppy incompetence. As if all my efforts were merely the setup for servitude, and worse, in something that wasn't just unnecessary but actually unprofessionally abusive. He looked at me again, apparently taking in that my look of disbelief had turned to profound insult, and he says (I am not making this up. He though he was being nice! He had some religious beliefs related to this): "Really, you should not see this work as any kind of insult. As a woman, it should be an honor to serve."

This is one of the few times I've been rendered utterly speechless in my life. I considered beating him up on the spot--oh, the temptation! he was a wimp and I knew I could do it--then turned on my heel and left and refused to go anywhere near his office again the rest of the day.

I talked with my teacher about it that night. I was shaking with repressed rage. I could not envision any possible way this could improve. The man was the VP and attorney. The corp didn't have a lot of money, not enough to outsource the latter job. He had been there eight years. Worse, he had spent much of that undermining the CEO's credibility with the investors while selling them on how it was ok because "he" was the "rational" one.

He had made such a disaster of both finance and stock and bonds that not only were we in trouble in two countries and three states with several kinds of authorities including tax, but we were missing half the records needed, and I'd just discovered that for 'financial statements' he had--seriously now--just totally made up the numbers he wanted to be there. They had no relationship to reality at all. I had not yet presented any of this to the CEO but I knew that even if I did, (a) he could not act against the guy without killing his company as the investors kept it alive, and (b) his primary response to me would be, "Fix it for me!"

But the VP had wrangled all this around, in his self-protective guile, in a way that would send my CEO to white collar prison if it all came out--not him. The CEO was a self-made man, a brilliant inventor and a master salesman, but not a businessman; he hired other people to handle that because he had serious ADD and just couldn't function well in that realm. At this point the VP was indirectly using a lot of the problems he himself created and maintained as leverage against the CEO, both for personal resentments and to keep himself employed in a way that gave him title and money but required no actual effort (well it did, but he didn't make any). He knew he was incompetent and passive-aggressive of course, so for years he'd been deviously self-protective as well.

My teacher felt that the archmeds would help in some way, at least a little. She talked me into taking it seriously and focusing totally on various aspects of this problem. We worked on meditations related to this that night, and Saturday, and Sunday.

Monday morning when I went into the office, my boss (the CEO) had gotten there early. He'd brought in some guy from a temp agency to help him physically. They had already moved the VP's office completely out and filled it with engineering equipment. I mean his DESK was gone, his computer -- there was no place for him to even sit. Apparently over the weekend the CEO, talking with the lead investor, about something maybe unrelated, had some kind of epiphany, had some kind of last-straw experience, and damn the consequences, he up and fired the guy! Holy shit!

As an example of personality, the man actually showed up anyway, ignoring that he had been fired (!) in his arrogant nonchalance that he had control and the CEO "wouldn't dare." There was no place for him to sit. Sorry, your computer is gone and the desk is underneath a machine in the warehouse. He was livid and he stomped off in a tirade of huffy threats.

And that was that. I mean literally. It was a seemingly impossible situation but 2.5 days of about a dozen deeply altered-state archetype meditations and he was just GONE from my life entirely.

That is how much of archetype results work, when you are addressing specific things: either a situation or person would improve greatly in their relationship to me, or they would "fall out" of my life with a shocking speed.

(I should be doing them much more 'in combination' like I did then, and much more altered state, if I really want to fix some life issues. I've been thinking about that lately.)

Of course I spent the next two years, crying with my head in my hands in worry and despair, working till 2am, working weekends, paying a nearby CPA cash and lunches for "talk advice", trying to keep my boss out of prison for crap that I knew he didn't even know about at the time and couldn't solve himself. He had so much stress just trying to keep us alive in an investor-dependent company already. (He'd had this R&D tech corp that a huge NZ financier bought. Then Black Tuesday hit and they dumped it, resulting in NO tech ready for anything, and 10 million (!!) in debt. That he kept it alive at all is a miracle.)

I spent much of that time negotiating with the IRS, with all kinds of official entities, trying to recreate history, fix problems, bring stock and bonds for hundreds of entities into some semblance of reality and organization -- I knew nothing of finance, or stock, or bonds, or several kinds of business taxes, but I learned fast the hard way -- and then getting to the point where we could do an official audit prior to acquiring an engineering manufacturer and rolling into a clean shell for an IPO. Which was partly also a result of developing a relationship with the investors who finally felt, despite my lack of being an attorney (I was a corporate officer at that point but so what), that someone was finally 'taking care of things' in a way they felt good about.

So I've wondered if maybe as part of this meditation, it wasn't merely about me and that guy, but on some level, perhaps my energy was working out a future, and a promise, with the CEO that he could depend on me to 'fix it' for him, that he could lean on me and letting go of the VP would be ok and not a disaster for him or his company.

Maybe there were "commitments" on my part that I didn't even know about, is what I'm saying. And those 'trades' might have been the energy that made significant change with my boss and the investors, that could not have happened without that.

So what I'm also saying is that while we are "dealing with" problem-energy-X, we may also be making substantial changes in our future on other levels, with other people, in other areas, that we are not aware of at that time. I say that I am not promising an archetype that I will say, drink more water; but maybe on some unconscious level I am promising an archetype that I will make the decision to do a certain thing. And in my conscious life I may think that decision is free conscious will... but maybe it's really not.

PJ