posted September 03, 2016 11:57 PM            

One of the deeper, underlying archetypal patterns which is being constellated in the human psyche that is playing itself out collectively on the world stage is the archetype of the "wounded healer". To quote Kerenyi, a colleague of Jung who elucidated the archetype, the wounded healer refers psychologically to the capacity "to be at home in the darkness of suffering and there to find germs of light and recovery with which, as though by enchantment, to bring forth Asclepius, the sunlike healer." The archetype of the wounded healer reveals to us that it is only by being willing to face, consciously experience and go through our wound do we receive its blessing. To go through our wound is to embrace, assent, and say "yes" to the mysteriously painful new place in ourselves where the wound is leading us. Going through our wound, we can allow ourselves to be re-created by the wound. Our wound is not a static entity, but rather a continually unfolding dynamic process that manifests, reveals and incarnates itself through us, which is to say that our wound is teaching us something about ourselves. Going through our wound means realizing we will never again be the same when we get to the other side of this initiatory process. Going through our wound is a genuine death experience, as our old self "dies" in the process, while a new, more expansive and empowered part of ourselves is potentially born.

Going through and embracing our wound as a part of ourselves is radically different than circumnavigating and going around (avoiding), or getting stuck in and endlessly, obsessively recreating (being taken over by) our wound. The even of our wounding is simultaneously catalyzing a deeper (potential) healing process which requires our active engagement, thus "wedding" us to a deeper level of our being. Jung's closest colleague, Marie Louise Von Franz, said "the wounded healer IS the archetype of the Self [our wholeness, the God within] and is at the bottom of our genuine healing procedures".

An encounter with something greater than our limited ego, what Jung calls the Self, is always a wounding experience for the ego. This is symbolically represented when the mythic Jacob, after making it to daybreak in his fight with the angel of God (who was clearly the more powerful of the two), becomes wounded on the hip by the angel's touch. The event of our wounding is initiatory, as our wounding originated in and potentially introduces us to "something greater than ourselves." At the same time that something greater than ourselves wounds us, something greater than ourselves enters us as a result of our wounding, setting in motion a deeper dynamic of psychic re-organization and potential transformation. In the myth, the angel then changes Jacob's name to "Israel", "he who has wrestled with God," which symbolizes that Jacob's identity has been changed in the process of his encounter with the numinosum. Our wounding is a "numinous" event, in that its source is transpersonal and archetypal, which is to say that our wound is the very way by which the divine is making contact with us. The origin of both our wounding AND the healing that precipitates out of our wound comes from beyond ourselves, as it is beyond our own personal contrivance. Our wounding activates a deeper, transpersonal process of potential healing and illumination that we could not have initiated ourselves.

posted September 11, 2016 09:14 PM            

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"The Wounded Healer is initiated into the art of healing through some form of personal hardship--anything from an actual physical injury or illness to the loss of all one's earthly possessions. Regardless of the shape of the wound, the challenge inherent in this initiation process is that one is unable to turn to others for help beyond a certain degree of support. Only the initiate can ultimately heal the wound; if it is an illness or accident, it will frequently be one for which there is no conventional cure. The Wounded Healer archetype emerges in your psyche with the demand that you push yourself to a level of inner effort that becomes more a process of transformation than an attempt to heal an illness. If you have successfully completed the initiation, you inevitably experience an exceptional healing, and a path of service seems to be divinely provided shortly after the initiation is complete."

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Even these examples, though, do not detail the level of suffering one tends to go through on the path of the Wounded Healer. To understand that, one must understand another concept called The Dark Night Of The Soul.

The Dark Night Of The Soul

The Dark Night Of The Soul is considered by some to be an initiation of sorts, where in a person goes through great suffering to attain a higher form of consciousness and awareness. For a Wounded Healer, this often times leads the person into a state of internal healing that reaches out into the world, where they seek to be of service to others.

But calling the Dark Night an initiation, does not speak to the depths of suffering one may encounter upon the journey into it. This is because the heights to which the human spirit may soar are equal to the depths to which it can fall. And often, one may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night.

The Dark Night causes the human spirit to falter and doubt everything it has placed its faith in. Walls begin to crumble around the spirit, that once supported them and held them steadfast. Depression can set in, so deep and so painful that it can bring a person to their knees. And through it all, they feel completely and utterly alone, while those that care for them look on helpless to do anything about it, as they fall into a downward spiral of sorrow, anguish, confusion, and doubt.

This is the place where the fragile human ego potentially dies. But it is also a place where in some choose a physical death over a psychic one, because the suffering can be so powerful and so overwhelming. But when one has a psychic death, or a death of the human ego, they have fallen as far as they can go, without actually attaining physical death. And there, in that place, they have learned to surrender.

posted September 21, 2016 03:09 PM            

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Originally posted by SDragon:
A psychic death refers to tearing down the mental structures that we associate with how we perceive reality, the external world in relation to ourselves. We learn that many of the beliefs or subconscious motivations that we thought were us were actually belief systems instilled in us by parents, religion, friends, society, etc. We literally need to die to these things to find our true nature as Buddha says.

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posted October 12, 2016 11:25 PM            

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Originally posted by SDragon:
A psychic death refers to tearing down the mental structures that we associate with how we perceive reality, the external world in relation to ourselves. We learn that many of the beliefs or subconscious motivations that we thought were us were actually belief systems instilled in us by parents, religion, friends, society, etc. We literally need to die to these things to find our true nature as Buddha says.

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By the way, does Buddha claim we have a unique nature, each of us, rather that we're all the same thing? (I'm referring to our true nature which we need to discover, according to Buddha.)

posted August 14, 2017 04:31 PM            

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Originally posted by Ayelet:
By the way, does Buddha claim we have a unique nature, each of us, rather that we're all the same thing? (I'm referring to our true nature which we need to discover, according to Buddha.)

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It's the paradox of individuality - how can we perceive to be part of the wave, a drop in the ocean and yet still contain our individual essence of limitation while experiencing the vast infinite of which we came from.

It's actually not that hard, however it's paradoxically very difficult. To work towards this understanding requires that we work through and touch upon each dimension until we can truly touch upon the multi-dimensional aspect of our being... as we work towards god.

In the 3rd dimension we cling to duality, the separation, the vast chasm between the drop and the wave that carries us. It's interesting that the third chakra is the solar plexus as action and power require an object and a subject, something to which we act upon or something that acts upon us.

It's via the 4th dimension and the heart chakra that we truly realize that the separation dissolves. We were never separate and there is no acting upon or acting. The energy play is nothing more than divine interaction. However the 4th dimension plays very much in the NOW, which is where consciousness and effect on our being is the strongest. Our fears from ego and death drop away as we awaken to the fact that I AM THAT I AM, but this doesn't mean we've touched upon the multi-dimensional aspect of ourselves, it just means we're no longer caught up in duality.

posted February 03, 2018 07:31 PM            

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Originally posted by SDragon:
lol.. thanks, maybe :=)

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