The Entered Dragon (6) : figures in the mist

Continued from Part Five

Centre stage, the King smiles at us. His gaze is strong but gentle. As our eyes touch his, we feel the sense of purpose he holds. Courage and force reflect in the subtle colours that draw us into his very being. We feel renewed by this contact, shown that the burden of what we must face in the day-world is only a necessary stage in our lives; that the sense of inner royalty he represents will carry us far beyond its confines – if only we will hold those eyes…

The scene pans backwards from the purposeful orbs. The gentle hands of the Queen still rest on his shoulders. She smiles, knowing that we have absorbed the essence of this encounter. She brings her face closer to that of the King, and, as their skin touches, we feel her perfumed presence close to our own. It races through our being, filling us with a love and longing that leaves us agape.

In this final part of the series, we examine the nature of what Carl Jung named the ‘Archetype’. Archetypes are an active part of our shared unconscious. They are energy patterns at work within the most fundamental part of us. When we come into contact with them, we are seeing a personalised representation for our life, alone. But the type of figure, represented, for example, by a King, is shared with all humans. In this we can see why such types have been with us in myth, legend, poetry and song for as long as we have remembered and recorded our most meaningful experiences.

We have seen that the whole of the human unconscious is simply the other half of what we are, consciously. Our lives contain what is embraced and what is rejected. But what is rejected does not go away. It is part of our experience and was/is there for a reason. Like the ancient yang and yin, it is the rhythm of alternation of dynamic and passive – simplified, often, as male and female, but more subtle in reality.

Both have their own power, there is a time to be resistant and a time to embrace, we need to know when to use both, and watch the flow and dance of the harmony of our lives, free, within their selves, of society’s expectations and rules. The unconscious gives us this power, liberating and releasing its vast energies… if we can learn to communicate with it.

There are two techniques we may use to allow the unconscious to communicate with our waking intellect and emotions. The first is by being more conscious of our dreams; the second is a technique known for thousand of years and held sacred within the heart of whole civilisations: active imagination.

Our personal unconscious tries to communicate with us using images and symbols. It does not use our daily language. Dreams are full of images. We normally dismiss these as simply a stream of random recollections from a brain that is half-asleep. But investigation will reveal that they are more than that. They are our own unconscious trying to communicate important perspectives to us. These might include the deeper nature of a current problem causing us great distress.

Habitually, we pay little attention to the detail of dreams. We have to relearn to be aware of the content of dreams, and allow a residue of what we observe to lie in a part of our memory from which we can retrieve it in the morning, writing it down as soon as we wake so that we have a record. Later in the day, its vividness will have faded, but, if we get used to a personal way of noting down the details, we can return to their important points.

As an example, one of my recent dreams was of a black and white comic book. In the dream the actual events of my life were being rendered as part of this book. What did this mean?

Here we enter a second stage of understanding our dreams. We need to take that ‘kernel’ of the dream and let the conscious mind ‘fly free’ with it so that it may make an interpretation. This is not a matter of intellect. Our intellectual minds are used to dominating how we perceive. We should try to maintain a gentle and passive state, forcing nothing, but allowing a reflective part of our minds to ‘mull over’ the stored nugget of the dream. If we make this a habit, the dream kernel will become a trigger and suggest to us the personal relevance of the image or symbol, without needing the use of reason. In my own example above, I concluded that the part of my life illustrated in the ‘black and white comic’ was not receiving the attention it deserved, and would shine in colour if I corrected this…

The other route by which we may converse with our unconscious is what Carl Jung called Active Imagination. Here, we deliberately let our waking consciousness follow a conscious script of imagination. This may be provided for us by a book, or be part of a series of imaginative journeys created by a school such as the Silent Eye. The essence of the induced, inner experience will be a journey of some kind. In that journey we will find archetypal figures like, for example, Kings, Hermits, Warriors, Lovers and Chaste Maidens. We may encounter withdrawn figures who hide from life, but whose knowledge is great. We may find that our King is withdrawn, but strangely not defeated. We may find that he (or a corresponding Queen) is waiting for the arrival of a Hero, one uniquely equipped to heal a rift in the land.

Such an inner journey of active imagination needs to be based upon time-honoured principles in order to engage the unconscious. It is the true work of any school of the mysteries to provide these, and guide others through the journeys – though the real value is the unique experience to be had by the ‘hero’ of the hour – the person carrying out the active imagination.

I suspect that Carl Jung did know of the ancient use of such techniques within magic and the mystical. His great gift was to investigate it, rigorously, and describe it in terms acceptable to the world of psychology. We owe him a great debt for his insight and the descriptive language he bequeathed.

The stage is quiet. The King and his Lover have gone. But one image remains, that of a pair of eyes. Unafraid, we draw closer, finding them strangely familiar. As the swirling mist clears, we realise that they belong to us, that they are a living mirror, yet subtly different, of our self’s eyes. They have much to say to us, as we come together in the laughing depths of our own most secret place..

Other parts in this series:

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five This is Part Six, the final part.

©Stephen Tanham

Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, a not-for-profit teaching school of modern mysticism that helps people find a personal path to a deeper place within their internal and external lives.

The Silent Eye provides home-based, practical courses which are low-cost and personally supervised. The course materials and corresponding supervision are provided month by month without further commitment.

Steve’s personal blog, Sun in Gemini, is at stevetanham.wordpress.com.