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Mother Archetype VIII – Mom Hater

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I must confess, it’s extremely hard to concentrate these days. Sometimes I find myself poking around for hours on social media, which leaves me almost nauseated afterwards. Worst part, I can’t stop doing it. My hand reaches my phone secretly. I put it away, suddenly I find myself opening a new internet page on computer. It feels like a whirlwind. But determined, today will finish another post in the series of the Mother Archetype. The last category of daughters – the stubborn “mom-hater”.

“Mom hate” driven life

Yes, you heard it, this is the fourth category-the last of four that Jung identified. He labels this category as Resistance to the Mother or Extreme Negative Mother Complex. Mom hater knows what she doesn’t want. But is usually completely lost as to what she would choose as her own fate. She concentrates all her instincts on the mother in the form of resistance. Obviously, such resistance (or straightforward hate?) would usually take symbolic form. Such as her resistance to or complete indifference to anything that comes under the head of family, community, society, convention etc. The mother as material, “matter”, may be at the back of her impatience with objects, clumsy handling of tools and bad taste in clothes.

Highly intellectual, this type of woman creates an environment ruled by sharp reasoning, cool judgment and superior knowledge where mother’s instinctual power doesn’t have a room. Thus, anything dark, obscure and unclear in her own nature is frustrating for her. Enter her “hate” zone. And all the while the world and life pass by her like a dream—an annoying source of illusions, disappointments, and irritations. All of which are due solely to the fact that she cannot bring herself to look straight ahead. Her own nature is what she fights against the hardest. Yet, the clarity of her mind makes her indispensable in professional life and she can make a great advisor.

Private Life of Mom Hater

She rebels with every fiber of her being against everything that springs from natural soil. Simultaneously she gets dominated in negative form by what she runs away. All instinctive processes meet with unexpected difficulties. It can be sexuality does not function properly, or the children are unwanted, or maternal duties seem unbearable etc. Even resistance to the mother (as uterus) may manifest itself in menstrual disturbances, failure of conception, disgust of pregnancy, hemorrhages and excessive vomiting during pregnancy, miscarriages, etc.

Fate doesn’t stop surprising even more. Interestingly, she may end up picking a partner that has her mother’s traits. Such women tend to live a more meaningful life in the second half of their lives only if they manage to face and digest that hellish obscurity of “femininity” and “maternity”.

Read other posts of the series:
Mother Archetype I
Mother Archetype II – Son Lover of the Mother Goddess
Mother Archetype III – Don Juanism
Mother Archetype IV – Homosexuality and Impotence
Mother Archetype V – Exaggerated Maternal Instinct
Mother Archetype VI – Home-Wrecker With a Mission
Mother Archetype VII – Shadow Daughter
Mother Archetype IX – Part Human, Part Supernatural

Cover photo: Gerd Altmann, Pixabay.com

Mother Archetype VII – Shadow Daughter

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I can’t believe it has been over a month that I haven’t returned to this section. I had intended to finish up the Mother Archetype series this month. This makes me think, when the Mother, or any sort of manifestation of the Mother Archetype is in trouble, nothing matters. These four weeks have felt like a blink. The strong emotional turmoil left everything else in a dark shadow. Slowly, I am trying to pull myself together and finish up the series.

The last post was about the effects of the Mother Archetype on the daughters falling into the second category. Jung had labeled it as Overdevelopment of Eros. Now, the turn is for the third category.

Life in Shadow

Read other posts of the series:
Mother Archetype I
Mother Archetype II – Son Lover of the Mother Goddess
Mother Archetype III – Don Juanism
Mother Archetype IV – Homosexuality and Impotence
Mother Archetype V – Exaggerated Maternal Instinct
Mother Archetype VI – Home-Wrecker With a Mission
Mother Archetype VIII – Mom Hater
Mother Archetype IX – Part Human, Part Supernatural

Jung called this category “Identity with Mother”. Or simply shadow daughter. This type of woman associates herself totally with the mother and lives kind of shadow life. It paralyzes her feminine initiatives. Everything which reminds her of motherhood, responsibility, personal relationships, and erotic demands arouses feelings of inferiority and compels her to run away—to her mother, who lives to perfection. She clings to her mother in selfless devotion. At the same time unconsciously striving, almost against her will, to tyrannize over her. Personal relationship is torture for her as it robs her off the mother.

In sum, she is that passive, helpless female image that doesn’t know a thing, that suffering and injured innocent. The type that only “the true hero will rescue”. Such women are kind of empty container that will hold whatever is put into. So they will put up with whatever life puts on their plate. Their partner will mold them into whatever pleases him.

Behind Each Successful Man?

On the good side, if skilled, this type, happy with living a shadow life will project her virtues on her partner pushing him upwards. That’s why sometimes totally incapable men are in unfit positions and praised for qualities that do not have.

Read other posts of the series:
Mother Archetype I
Mother Archetype II – Son Lover of the Mother Goddess
Mother Archetype III – Don Juanism
Mother Archetype IV – Homosexuality and Impotence
Mother Archetype V – Exaggerated Maternal Instinct
Mother Archetype VI – Home-Wrecker With a Mission
Mother Archetype VIII – Mom Hater
Mother Archetype IX – Part Human, Part Supernatural

Mother Archetype VI – Home-wrecker with a mission

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The previous post was on overdose of the maternal instinct and this post will be about the other end of the spectrum. The “home wrecker” with wiped out maternal instinct who comes with a pre-destined mission. Jung labelled this type as Overdevelopment of Eros.

Woman falling into this category tends to overdevelop intellectual aspect and block maternal instincts in repulsion to the first type women. Remember that entirely instinctive, blind, love-wrapped, yet awfully dangerous hypertrophic mother type from the previous post? Yes, that one. Naturally such daughter develops deep admiration to father and idolizes him. The unconscious urge of this type of woman is to outdo the mother. How we call it now? – Daddy’s princess? Or mommy’s little rival at home?

Femme Fatale – anything but maternal instinct

Such mindset sets the background for quite some disastrous decisions and lifestyle choices. For example, series of romantic relationships and dramas with married men. It just gives them an opportunity to wreck a marriage (to apparently, outdo that rival at home). Once mission is completed, she moves on to the next victim. Apparently, no relationship should lead to where maternal instincts are involved – femme fatale with the touch of acute intellect – as we know it. They also tend to put an abnormal emphasis on the personality of others.

Here obviously, we talk about the extreme representations of the complex. As Jung highlights, none of the types exist in the purest form. The features of the dominating type often blends in many subtle shades of other types. Which in fact, could become enablers of transformation at certain phases of life.

Not your usual home-wrecker

Yet, on the positive side, such woman unconsciously reacts to men who are either strangled in an oppressive relationship or stifled with mother attachments. So she is kind of “rescuer of suffocating man”, if gone too far, a home-wrecker. So not all home-wreckers are made equal. Some have pre-destined mission of being a correction factor. That’s why, no matter where she comes in, she arouses moral conflict and disturbance. She represents the other side of the river. Yet, many times, along the process she becomes disturbed too if she awakens to her hidden purpose.

Most interestingly, according to Jung, her way to detach a man tangled in mother attachments (and complete that secret mission) passes through her own painful discovery and reconciliation with her once wiped out maternal instincts.

Stay tuned for the third type.

Read other posts of the series:
Mother Archetype I
Mother Archetype II – Son Lover of the Mother Goddess
Mother Archetype III – Don Juanism
Mother Archetype IV – Homosexuality and Impotence
Mother Archetype V – Exaggerated Maternal Instinct
Mother Archetype VII – Daughter in Shadow
Mother Archetype VIII – Mom Hater
Mother Archetype IX – Part Human, Part Supernatural
Mother Archetype X – Motherland
Mother Archetype XI – Teenage Crisis – Libido
Mother Archetype XII – Incest: Problem or Solution?

Mother Archetype V – Exaggerated Maternal Instinct

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The turn now is for females. Mothers equally shape daughters’ nature (and destiny for that matter!) too. This doesn’t intend, however, to diminish by any means the undeniable father-daughter bond. That said, ladies, let’s get going and see who we recognize in the following four posts – Our mom? Cousins? Aunties? Mother-in-laws? The lady next door? Or maybe ourselves?

Jung divides effects of the Mother Complex in females into three major categories. It ranges from exaggeration to extinction of maternal instinct and one transitional type in between.

Hypertrophy of Motherhood

Today’s category is exaggeration or hypertrophy of the maternal instinct. This means intensification of all female instincts, above all, the maternal instinct to a point where the only goal is childbirth. To her the husband is just another object to look after like house, furniture etc. Even her own personality is secondary. She lives her life through others – the objects that she identifies herself with and takes care of. First she gives birth to the children, and from then on she clings to them. Because without them she has no existence whatsoever. This type of woman, though continually “living for others,” is, as a matter of fact, unable to make any real sacrifice.

Driven by ruthless will to power, she fanatically insists on her own maternal rights. Sadly, often succeed in annihilating not only her own personality but also the personal lives of her children. The less conscious such a mother is of her own personality, the greater and the more violent is her unconscious will to power. Ok, I’ll stop here, too scary? Who are we observing so far?

Glorified Motherhood

On the positive side, this is the image of the mother which has been glorified in all ages and all tongues. Without doubt, this is the mother-love associated with warm memories, motherland, homecoming and safe shelter from all dangers.

Read other posts of the series:
Mother Archetype I
Mother Archetype II – Son Lover of the Mother Goddess
Mother Archetype III – Don Juanism
Mother Archetype IV – Homosexuality and Impotence
Mother Archetype VI – Home-wrecker with a mission
Mother Archetype VII – Daughter in Shadow
Mother Archetype VIII – Mom Hater
Mother Archetype IX – Part Human, Part Supernatural
Mother Archetype X – Motherland
Mother Archetype XI – Teenage Crisis – Libido
Mother Archetype XII – Incest: Problem or Solution?

Gucci’s Garden of Earthly Delights …. Where to Look for It?

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What’s in there for me: Something big – a solid answer for this much debated topic of humanity. It would be naive to take The myth of Creation as a historical record. In fact, the first stories of the Garden of Eden date to a much later date than the earthed bones of early hominids, Homo Habilis. I mean, we talk about some 2 million years of difference. So, at the time the Eden’s Story was born, our ancestors already had some sort of clothing. It was not Gucci obviously but they had already covered their private parts. In short, this story is not a historical record. It is not biography of Adam and Eve either. It is a symbolic illustration of how our psyche has experienced the process of evolution, namely, the birth and separation of the consciousness. It is the way how our unconscious translated the process of growing consciously different from the rest. And it is also the story of hope. Hope for what? Read the full post to find out.

Read the blog post “That wasn’t technically fire – what was it?” to learn more about the nature of the conscious and the symbols that illustrate the pain of being consciously different.

The full post starts here.

With arrival of Alessandro Michele, Gucci has become a Garden of mystery. Some interpretations are unnerving to me, I accept. Regardless, I love scrolling their Instagram feed full of mystical and historical references.

This is my first try of Gucci and I’ve chosen a widely known myth of Garden of Eden with “fashionable” touch of Ignasi Monreal.

Rework of Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights by Ignasi Monreal for Gucci. As usual, he beautifully mixes mythical with mundane.
Rework of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights by Ignasi Monreal for Gucci. As usual, he beautifully mixes mythical with mundane. Photo: Internet

Our First Parents? Dressed in Gucci Style or Nude?

The original version of this retouched artwork is visually somehow different from “conventionally accepted” image of Garden of Eden as it carries quite some touch of author’s own visions. But the storyline is similar. We are talking about origins of universe and emergence of our first parents.

It is amusing to learn the fact that the first stories of Garden of Eden date to a much later date than the earthed bones of early hominids, Homo Habilis. I mean we talk about some 2 million years of difference. In other words, talking chronographically, when Adam was kicked out of that Walled Garden of Eternity and landed on mortal Earth, this place had already been populated with his fellow species long, long time ago. I am sure, he didn’t feel lonely. By the way, I guess they already had some sort of clothing.

Part of the original art "Garden of Earthly Delights" by Bosch. Photo: Internet
Part of the original art “Garden of Earthly Delights” by Bosch. Photo: Internet

Life in Garden of Delights – Not as Stylish as Gucci’s

Let’s see before being kicked out how was his life. Adam was in Garden of Delights enjoying his lazy and solitary yet immortal life. At the center of this Garden there were two trees – the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Immortality. There were four rivers in the garden, flowing from inexhaustible sources in four directions to keep the world refreshed. He was bored, so God created his counterpart, Eve out of his rib.

The treacherous serpent curled around the Tree of Knowledge whispered about the marvelous forbidden fruit of the Tree to the woman. Obviously she gave in, because, she herself is a symbol of temptation (in the eyes of Adam). She even convinced Adam. They tried the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and suddenly became aware of their differences and got ashamed. They got expelled from the Garden for eating that fruit. To make things worse, the God put two wrathful protectors in front of the gates so that they couldn’t sneak in.

I am writing another post about this lower relatedness aspect of woman as homage to the Gucci’s Great Hermaphrodite art work. Also a separate post about Snake. Stay tuned.

Absurdity All the Way

Although ridiculously absurd, this story runs along the texts of all of Abrahamic religions. Even uncontaminated cultures have their own versions with similar symbolism – precisely, the Tree and the Snake. How one can believe in this bizarre story and actually consider it as actual records of beginning of the universe while our facts are telling us a totally different story? Now one needs to ask this question – did really this place exist?

Answer from psychoanalysis is yes and no. No, because, there is no Paradise (walled enclosure) on an already well-explored Earth. Yes, because, it is our inner reality and this explains why such a weird absurdity has managed to gain so much fame. It is not a historical record of the origin of the universe. Yet it is how our psyche has experienced the process of evolution, namely, birth and separation of the consciousness. This story is manifestation of man’s longing for pre-conscious sense of totality in symbolic language of unconscious. But it is not only about longing, it also talks about hope.

Second Look at Symbols

Let’s get into translation. It turns out that it was the Knowledge, the Awareness that put us behind the protected doors. It was time for us to get out of that Garden. So that treacherous Snake – the symbol of “Eternal Wisdom” set up the “plan”.

At some point in evolution, we developed a capacity to judge everything in terms of good and bad which we perceive as fear and desire. In mythological language, our first parents “ate the fruit of knowledge” and became self-aware – the characteristic feature of consciousness. So it was the nature of our reasoning that closed those doors to our face.

Self-awareness was not the only revelation. Then it downed upon them that there is a thing called death while they are lustful creatures with desire to live. So fairy tales abound with stories about search of elixir of life and man’s desire to transcend mortality. Because, although we can’t taste that bliss any more, we haven’t lost the knowledge that there is a dimension of our nature that transcends mortality.

The Cost of Being Consciously Different

This differentiation of ourselves, development of consciousness has cost us to lose that “eternal, timeless completeness” – the period now babies experience from the moment of conception until early development of consciousness (does that explain why they are good at being happy?). Then for the rest of life try to experience it again.

Read the blog post “That wasn’t technically fire – what was it?” to learn more about the nature of the conscious and the symbols that illustrate the pain of being consciously different.

Religions are our cry for such transcendence – our hope to transcend this carnal world of duality to experience that “timeless delightful state”. Because it is when the “self-aware” consciousness will let go its petty “me and mine” game and will experience transcendence through self-sacrifice and submission to higher order. Enduring spirituality is where he hopes to experience these delights that are beyond duality of opposites – worries and desires, temptations and fears, light and dark.

Paradise… Where is it?

But not all is lost. That walled eternal land still resides inside each of us, in the depth of our dark psyche, protected by cultural ogres, fire breathing dragons, many-headed scary creatures, which we come across in myth and fairy tales. They are personifications of our worldly attachments and survival instincts. Remember, the God put two frightful monsters in front of the doors?  We are talking of the same thing now. The way to return there is to defeat all these roaming instinctual forces and give back that “fruit”, which made us aware of ourselves and our surrounding. In other words, sacrifice our consciousness. Precisely, the way to immortality goes through Death, let it be physical death or symbolic death to our worldly attachments.

Only thru total renunciation of ego-oriented attachments the return is possible to that state of eternal bliss free of worries and temptations. But this time the experience is not that of a baby. It is that of a mature person in the form of immortality of spirit. Nothing carnal.

Related posts:

That wasn’t technically fire – what was it?
The Secret Story of Symbols”
The Unconscious – The Great Mother, The Conscious – Overconfident Kid

Secret stories of symbols

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What is in there for me: Awesome tips to those who take “spirituality thing” very seriously. These days it is cool and “spiritual” to meditate and do yoga to “attract good vibes”. That is true, serious dedication to meditation would ultimately lead to some deeper connection with inner self. Yet, it has some high prices to pay. I ask myself: Would I dedicate myself to it without supervision of some sort of guru? Absolutely, NO! Because that means embarking on an internal journey towards the dark depth of the unconscious, an unknown territory for us. Plus, we have no knowledge how to deal with powerful forces of the unconscious. This journey is potentially very dangerous for an untrained rational mind.  Especially, in modern times when we tend to deny anything that we can’t explain with help of the reasoning. Before opening up its healing aspects, the unconscious throws all the rocks, bugs, snakes, monsters on the path of the one who meditates. Only the most victorious ones get to drink the elixir of life. Just like in the story of Buddha, or in the tales of Sinbad, the most precious gems are kept in the deep wells where venomous snakes live. To get the gem, the Hero should kill the snakes first. If the language gets really weird now, I’d suggest that you go on reading the post to learn why.

Full post starts here

Signs Are Not Symbols

Our daily language is full of metaphors, symbols, logos, trademarks etc. But not all of them have the same power and impact over our psyche. Jungian psychoanalysis divides them into two generic groups – Signs and symbols. Which falls into which group? To describe very roughly, signs are man-made but symbols are produced spontaneously by the unconscious. How we decide which one is which? Here is the differentiating factor: Signs by themselves do not mean anything. They acquire a certain meaning due to deliberate use of that specific sign over an extensive period of time for a specific purpose. For example, when we see Golden arch of McDonalds, we know what it stands for. Other globally perfect examples would be Android, LG, Pantene, UNESCO etc. In other words, Signs are products of the conscious and used for a specific end or reason beyond which they do not express much.

Allusions to celestial spheres in Valentino piece. Dream motifs. Photo: Internet
Allusions to celestial spheres in Valentino piece. Dream motifs. Photo: Internet

On the contrary, symbols are produced by the unconscious and their meaning stays more less the same. Normally, they have more to their meanings than what we know about them. If we muse over them, we may get some vague sense about their meanings, but it will be impossible to fully decipher them. Their unconscious meanings have so many intertwined layers and far reaching connotation that it is almost impossible to exhaust with interpretation. They express what is inexpressible in words. They talk about the realities of our psyche in a dimension that logic can’t penetrate. They are the “letters of the alphabet” of the Unconscious and influence us on the unconscious level. This is the reason religions and moral doctrines resort to picture language. Those images transcend boundaries of duality and make logical explanation fail big time.

Faces of Symbols

Our instincts are psychical urges, like hunger, sex-drive, self-protection, fears, desires etc. But they have their own way of self-manifestation in the unconscious. These urges get personified and take a relatable shape in our psyche. So they have a living nature. The ogres, monsters, fairies, sirens, centaurs we read about in fairy tales, or falling, flying, life-regenerating breeze, deep waters, pregnancy (in case of men) and all sorts of bizarre dreams are not to be taken literally. These symbols are shared across humanity. Jung has called them “archetypes of collective unconscious”.

Their job is to kind of represent the processes happening in our soul in a highly symbolic form. But they are not produced randomly, without a purpose. They are kind of transmitters of traditional wisdom that lays in the unconscious. They call the consciousness to act upon the troubles going on in the emotional life of a person. Among other things, they talk about the psychological challenges of adaptation in different periods of human life. Going even further, they give hints about what expects us at the end of different paths. They pass this wisdom on to us in dramatized language of myths and fairy tales.

Power of Symbols

These symbols are no joke. Without doubt they underlie the patterns of our conscious behavior because they are pure manifestations of our life instincts.  Yet we fail to recognize them when we come across them in pictures, monuments, riddles, myths, fairy tales, dreams, religious texts, hallucinations etc. Because they are alien to logical thinking.

They are products of creative energies of the unconscious and possess enormous energy projected on certain images. This is why religious pictures and objects hold so much emotional charge for devotees.  Even though we do not understand their meanings, we feel that they hint to something hidden.  They pass their messages to us on a very deep level. They are in a sense numinous. They evoke deep, inexplicable feelings inside us like Mecca for Muslims, cross in Christians, idols for idolater etc. If recognized and integrated, the healing aspects of the unconscious manifest itself. Put in religious terms, the grace dawns upon. If not, they turn into repressed energies chasing one in form of hallucinations, morbid dreams, inexplicable sufferings, loss of interest in life until they drive one into pure madness and schizophrenia. If I put this in the language of our unsuspecting ancestors – one becomes possessed by daemon.

Yet their power lies in this enigmatic nature. Once explained logically, they lose that power of spell over our psyche. Just like Sun has lost its “God” image once explained with the help of science.

What are specifically those symbols and myths? Follow fashion posts to learn about them.

1. That wasn’t technically fire…what was it?…

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“The light was lit to illuminate the temple of soul”
“Prometheus stole fire from Gods and Zeus condemned him to a life of perpetual torture”.

The above examples do sound like total absurdity when we try to analyze them literally, don’t they? Talk about tricky and allegoric language of the unconscious!

This is the very first post and I am still not sure how to enter the topic. I’ve changed it million times already. Especially after second birth and months of breastfeeding, I think, some part of my brain has really shrunk. I think, before talking about unconscious, I should probably, talk about definitions ascribed to conscious. After all, that is the realm where we function in general. So, simplicity in mind, I’ll try my best.

Gucci bag featuring Unicorn. The Unicorn is symbol of spirit, which is associated with reasoning and intellect (Soul is feminine, receptive). Now, reasoning has a penetrating nature that's why in the Unconscious it is linked with masculinity. To rephrase it, in the depth of our psyche reasoning and masculinity are linked due to their penetrating nature. Photo: Gucci.com
Gucci bag featuring Unicorn. The Unicorn is symbol of spirit, which is associated with reasoning and intellect (Soul is feminine, receptive). Now, reasoning has a penetrating nature that’s why in the Unconscious it is linked with masculinity. To rephrase it, in the depth of our psyche reasoning and masculinity are linked due to their penetrating nature. Photo: Gucci.com

 

Evolution….Not a Joke

We humans, obviously, are the product of long, tedious journey of evolution. Nature has been polishing functionality of our body to meet our physical needs and capacity (which itself kept evolving along the way). That means the same evolution process has taken place in our psyche as well. It is a part that we do not see, however it is the very part that has been honed and shaped the most by the evolution process. Just like how a huge tree grows from a single seed, the consciousness has grown into its current state over countless years… Does it make sense? If it does, we’ve started on the right foot!

Prometheus is representation of acquisition of consciousness. Since the moment He stole fire, he became different. He was aware of his difference. He couldn't be like the rest of living things any more. So he was condemned to eternal punishment of being consciously different. On the other side, compulsive impulses rising from depth of psyche are always after him trying to swallow him back. Photo: Wikimedia
Prometheus is representation of acquisition of the consciousness. Since the moment He stole fire, he became different. He was aware of his difference. He couldn’t be like the rest of living things any more. So he was condemned to eternal punishment of being consciously different. On the other side, compulsive impulses rising from depth of psyche are always after him trying to swallow him back. Photo: Wikimedia

Here Came that Light – Conscious

Let’s dig a bit deeper. Way back in times of our ancestors some big change took place. Extremely slowly, yet surely – our grannies acquired a new skill – The Consciousness! In language of the unconscious he learned “a well-concealed secret of revengeful Gods”.  Thus “The Light illuminated the darkness of abyss”. In other words, reasoning shed light over the bottomless unconscious… Prometheus thus stole fire. Jung calls this painful and slow process “the Battle for Deliverance”. Just like how difficult it is to totally separate oneself from mother, separating itself from Great Mother (the unconscious) was the “mission impossible” for consciousness. It separated itself through a painful process. To make it worse, it had to fight hard against violent and compulsive impulses of the unconscious not to relapse. Or not fall into possession of one of them. In other words, He had to fight against “revengeful Gods” to keep this fire.

Now, let’s see why consciousness is symbolized this way and who are those revengeful gods? Once differentiated, The Conscoius – the New Hero became aware of himself just like a baby recognizes herself in the mirror for the first time. He was different and he became aware of this.

With it came a different mode of seeing and understanding things. His mode of thinking wasn’t vague and could control the train of thoughts. Also, his judgement was causal. For him everything had a cause and effect in a way that he understood. Thus, his mode of thinking was deductive, mathematical and calculated. He reasoned for the first time. Unlike predecessors, he rose above the free rein of instincts and felt, still very dimly, the capacity to control them. This new realm of psyche had its own small center, which we call Ego today. He was the intellect illuminating the dark mass of unconscious, the Great Mother.

Revengeful Underground Gods?…Seriously?

Here comes another question, who are those revengeful gods that condemned Prometheus to a life of eternal torture? They are our own instincts, urges, impulses, all the impetuous animalistic tendencies. They are our desires and fears that inhabit in the depth of our psyche. In the unconscious landscape they get personified just like in fairly tales and myths. They are living realities that are out of conscious control. They are capable of full manipulation of our mind. In a sense, they are creative powers of cosmos such as sexual desire, hunger drive, survival instincts etc.  But if experienced in destructive form, they turn into obsessive impulses chasing one to insanity. These are the cases they are experienced as wrathful Gods and underground frightful creatures. This battle has been one of the major themes of fairy tales, myths, monuments (Rome is full of it), paintings etc.

Here the Hero is the consciousness fighting against primordial Semi-Gods in shape of half snake-half human monsters, flame-breathing, many-headed dragons, wrathful and scary creatures, ogres, treacherous trolls, deceitful sirens etc. These dark forces persecute this new Hero each trying to assume total control. It would take this New Hero a very long time to learn how to tame and subdue dark aspects of these forces of psyche. Once subdued, Hero experiences the illuminating, spiritual and celestial aspects of those same Gods. Interestingly, during our lifetime, our consciousness repeats – in a fast pace – the evolution of conscious development.  That explains why toddlers up until five to six years can not tell difference between imagination and reality. At those ages the level of conscious development is still incipient and fragile.

Proportion of The Conscious – To be or not to be…

But this differentiation doesn’t mean that the “job” of Ego is over. Like any other acquired skill, there is always a danger to lose it. Relapsing back into the unconscious or “being swallowed by devouring monsters” is looming danger for each of us. However, too much separation of the consciousness is not good either as it will strip off that irrational, intuitional, “feeling” foundation upon which the Conscious has built its small kingdom and on which still nourishes and keeps its balance. The more separation, the greater the danger to be “possessed by daemon”. Meaning, the more danger to be associated with certain psychic forces that are already out of conscious control. So this Ego it is a bittersweet affair of mankind, which is too sweet to give up and too costly to keep in right proportion.

2. The Unconscious – the Great Mother

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Before reasoning jumps in, the unconscious readily presents tone of decision based on likes, dislikes, preferences, attitudes and biases formed through our previous memories.

These days I dream a lot about shoes. Not that I am a shoe addict (I am definitely not a shopaholic), but one day I keep dreaming that I wear a fancy, high-heel shoe, which fails me just at the first traffic light, next day I dream a bunch of loafers and espadrilles and I wonder whether I should wear them and which one. Now, I understand that if such dreams happen as a series, it is about something that really matters to me.  Also, I understand that these dreams are not about physical shoes, for in the unconscious different types of shoes would mean “different walks in life”. Rather than talking about shoes, the dream talks to me about the hesitations I am having right at that moment about which path I should choose and which ones I just can’t because of my life situation.

Design by Alexander McQueen. An example of what kind of feeling associations and connotations a basic object like shoe can obtain in unconscious. These are not mere shoes, they are manifestation of troubled mind possessed by morbid impulses.
Alien Heels – Design by Alexander McQueen. An example of what kind of feeling associations and connotations a basic object like shoe can obtain in the unconscious.
Photo: Internet

This is a very silly sample, but I think dream is the easiest way to make transition into the unconscious. Because dreams are our only direct contact with the unconscious, which talks to us through feeling associations. Down there everything is irrational. The heroes of the domain are feelings, emotions, instincts and urges that rule and decide everything, including our “rational” decisions.

Irrational “rationality”

To make my point, I’ll give some everyday examples. These examples are patterns of behavior, which we do repeatedly and mindlessly without giving much thought to how they happened.

Usually deep waters in dreams and visions represent unconscious. If water is dark or wavy, it is not a good sign.
Usually deep waters in dreams and visions represent the unconscious. If water is dark or wavy, it is not a good sign. Photo: Unsplash.com

For example, power of smell. When shopping, we tend to decide on a perfume that evokes some inexplicable warm and nostalgic memories. Over and over we return to give credit to our gut feelings and first impressions. Because after a long rational trial we realize they were right. Cases when our tongue pops out that most inappropriate thought that we were trying to hide a second ago. Many times when we do not like someone and block her at every opportunity. But when we want to judge our attitude, it becomes clear that our attitude has nothing to do with personality of that person. We do not like him/her just because she has something that we wish to have, or she reminds us someone we do not like.

The list may go on, this is just to show how “utterly irrational” motives form the basis for our “rational decisions”. These motives spring from deep down and act faster than our reasoning. Actually, they set the tone for our “rational” decisions. How?

It turns out, behind all these “machinations” is the mysterious unconscious, the master that cooks up all the moods, feelings, attitudes and prejudices which make up the “invisible base” for all the “rational decisions”.  Then the consciousness brags about “being free”.

The Unconscious – Mysterious Master

Below the threshold of the consciousness, our little tiny dwelling, where we keep our thoughts and ideas neat and organized, lies the unconsciousness.  In this ages old chaotic abode black is not black only and white is not white only anymore. Black is black and white at the same time. Duality of our worldly reality ceases to dictate life here, memories gain upper hand. They are lumped up together in vague shapes based on feeling associations (like in my dream – shoe is not only shoe, but representation of “walk” in broad sense). They prompt emotions, not reason. And memory is no joke.

Biologically we are wired to use impressions from previous memories as precursor to avoid dangers. This system has been in place for ages to guide us, animals with kind of complex emotional and feeling system. So, before reasoning jumps in, the unconscious readily presents tone of decision based on likes, dislikes, preferences, attitudes and biases formed through our previous memories.

The reasoning of consciousness is razor-sharp, is unicorn. However, its capacity is limited only to “reasonable facts”.  On the other hand, the unconscious has a further reach. It perceives and registers everything else that is irrational and cannot be reasoned or arrived at by reasoning. Yet is essential to how we think, perceive, behave and experience life. Besides, consciousness is a comparatively newly acquired skill. It has kind of specialized in analysis of cold facts. By now it should be pretty much clear why our emotions and feelings become ruling force behind our reasoned and “rational” decisions. Reasoning is the most precious treasure of humankind, no doubt about that. However, the unconscious is the container of ages old wisdom and germs of future life. It rules our lives in ways that is beyond our capacity to fully comprehend.

Our lives wrapped in rituals

Do we ever look at our lives and wonder how much we have surrounded our lives with rituals while boasting our rationality? They are so ingrained in our lives that we even do not realize it. Celebration of birth, adolescence, graduation, marriage, funeral etc. I am not even getting close to the most important holidays that as a rule are religious meanings of which we mostly do not understand.  Not to mention love and fame the Disney classics have harnessed just because they are based on fairy tales (the eternal stories of the unconscious). It is hard to accept that we are still busy with rudimentary play games of archaic man, but as it turns out we really are.

A bit further…

To dig a bit deeper, I am sure, like myself, there are many people who are just unable to give proper meaning through reasoning to obviously irrational language of religious texts. Especially, human-like personal Gods in Abrahamic religions. Where do they come from? From God? Then why God didn’t create just one prophet and one religion to save humanity from killing each other along the centuries in the name of sacred war?

Let it aside, when one reads lives and deeds of prophets, one realizes that they do not sound much different from schizophrenic hallucinations (judging by occidental medicinal lexicology coined by consciousness). I am referring to all envoys and saviors from Buddha to Jesus to Muhammad. So, maybe a change of perspective would solve this puzzle. Maybe their messages do not come from without, but spring from within, the depth of our psych. Interestingly, each savior is “adapted” and reflects traits of the local culture. Also, all the saviors are men. Even if there were a parallel life out there, the unconscious is the medium through which we would be communicated.

The Unconscious – Great Mother; The Conscious – Confident Kid

At some point in history the consciousness has differentiated itself. This divided our psyche roughly into two parts – consciousness and the unconsciousness. The first part takes care of our rational life and reasoning, our direct contact with the outer world. The second part is responsible for our basic instincts, memory deposit, our experience and feel of life through adding color and meaning to the gray reality of rationality.

Consciousness likes to separate, to divide until the last divisible particle to understand. It is like an over-confident kid who thinks he knows all and needs no advice. Everything that goes through the filter of reasoning loses color of emotions. Yet take away our feelings, emotions, fears and desires, what is there to live? Numbers and cold-faced calculations only? The cold fact that we were born to die after just couple of decades? Why even we are to live then? This is where the unconscious comes in. It is like a wise mother who sees the whole picture not parts.

Souls in Search

In other words, our lives in a sense are in darkness through which our souls are looking for their ways. The Unconscious, the container of innumerable years of memory is there to shed light to our ways through what we call traditional wisdom manifested in the form of religions, myths and fairy tales. But it doesn’t stop there. Its creative energy manifests itself in our quest to attain full potentiality of our lives, move forward and elevate our souls. We call it “fulfillment”. Yet such fulfillment is possible through bringing in terms these two separated parts of the psyche. Alienating any one of them would cost us a serious loss – either losing our ties with our inner guide or our physical contact with outer world.