Over the Weekend beginning Friday the 29th of April, and ending on Sunday the 1st of May, 2011 we witnessed two archetypal events, one in the bright sunshine of a London morning and the other in the dark of night in Pakistan. From the marriage of the archetypal Prince and Princess to the slaying of the Evil Prince in the far off land by the avenging Hero, we watched, and experienced a deep healing in the collective consciousness. These two events could be no more different, and yet they are part of a huge shift in human consciousness. When we recognize that we, the human family, are part of one great entity whose story we are all in the process of living, then we can step back and marvel at the beauty and the mystery of what we are all in the process of becoming and relinquishing.
When I speak of symbols and archetypes, let me first explain for those who have a tendency to scoff at the silly women and some men who were caught up in the “fairytale wedding” (actually 2.5 billion people, men and women, watched the Royal Wedding worldwide), that stories, and most especially myths and fairy tales, are not fanciful tales told just for children. Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Jean Houston, among others have helped us to understand that these - stories, myths, fairytales - derive from our deep collective subconscious, and were understood in ancient cultures, and even now in modern-day indigenous cultures to have the power to heal and transform.
A good friend of Carl Jung, Laurens van der Post, a philosopher as well as a medical doctor, and citizen of South Africa, went into the bush country often to care for the sick in the bush tribes. At one point he was unable to travel to the tribes for several months. When he finally was able to visit he found everyone happy and healthy. He asked if anyone had been ill while he was away and was told, yes, a few people had been sick. He apologized for not being there to help and asked what they had done to heal the sick people. They responded him, “We just told them a story.”
In our modern global culture, our stories are played out on television and the internet for all of us to hear and heal through. So, when 2.5 billion of us, which represents over one third of the world’s population, watch the Royal Wedding, something pretty big in our collective consciousness is being acted out, not just for few people who are playing the archetypal roles, but for the cultural collective consciousness.
Of course the stories we saw last weekend did not begin then. These particular parts of our collective stories/fairytales/myths started thirty years ago when another prince and princess wed. On that day, when the fairy tale princess arrived in her royal coach to the Royal Wedding chapel, the world cheered. This was the answer to all our woes. The world culture was in the process of a transition from a male dominated culture, and the growing pains were acute. The prince finding and marrying his princess was a comfortable old story that we could nestle back into. This old story was about an older prince who would be the dominating force over his young princess. They would live happily ever after, and we could stop this nonsense of women stepping into power next to men. This princess was a shy girl whom we all adored. She didn’t threaten the old order-a fairytale, a symbol, of the old ways. Perfect. But alas, all was not as it seemed. The shy princess did not like having her rights taken away from her. She did not like that her prince was in love with his mistress. She did not like her children being raised by the prince’s mother, the queen. And though she was shy, and though she was young, and though she was very wounded, she stood up against the old order. And we collectively stood up with her. She became known as “The People’s Princess” because she was the symbol, the archetype for all the women in the world who were standing up and saying “no” to the old order, and the men who were standing with them. And no one person in the world was more loved than she. Why? Because we loved the Princess Dianna within ourselves. We, who felt a little uneasy about these steps we were taking to bring parity to our society, saw her struggling like we were struggling. We saw her stumble, and we saw her stand up again. We saw her stand up for her two young sons and fight for what she knew was right for them. And we saw her love them. And we loved how she loved them. And that helped us, as we loved our children.
And then the worst of the story happened in 1997, seventeen years after the fairytale began, the Princess, died. Was killed in a crash. And we mourned. We mourned for weeks. Billions of us. Because we felt we had made great strides. She was living the life she chose, even though she was thrown out of the palace. Out of the old order. She had become more than ever Our Princess. She was still doing her kind and caring work in the world. She was still raising her sons with love. So, when she died, our hearts broke, not just for Our Princess, but for the hope that she represented within each of us. The hope of a new kind of world. A world based on love, caring, and kindness.
It was a terrible time.
Then something interesting happened in the fairytale Royal family, and let me just pause her for a moment to address those who say that Britain’s Royal Family has no real purpose. My dear ones, they are playing out an extremely important part our evolutionary story. But let me go on. Something new began to transpire in the fairytale family. The prince, who had been a mean prince who stood for the old-order, suddenly gained a backbone, and he stood up against the queen and demanded that he marry the woman whom he had loved long before he married the shy princess at the order of the queen. The queen acquiesced. She was learning something from all of this. Excellent. This was a reflection of letting down old barriers throughout our entire culture. And as the prince stood up for love in his life, he was able to begin paying attention to his young sons, and he even began to love them. This was an extraordinary transformation. Men in our culture have not traditionally taken over the care and love of their children when the wife has died. The new wife would have that job. Also, at this time we were beginning to see men paying more attention to their children, and giving them more love. This was not as heavily publicized as the change in women’s roles was, but it was happening and still is happening worldwide. But like the prince’s new care for his sons, which included taking them out of the public eye and protecting them, men and their new caretaking of their children was a quiet shift in the collective consciousness.
A few years after the death of Our Princess, another larger than life event took place in our global story. This story also started in the 1980s with the explosion of new wealth, money as God, and “greed is good.” Materialism, consumerism, the dot com boom. “The economic bubble.” The rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer. Then in 2001an evil prince from a far off land, attacked the great symbol of this economy gone crazy, and subsequently killed thousands of innocent people. (Were they innocent if they worked in the Towers, or were they complicit in the story of greed?). So after the event that happened on September 11, 2001 people worldwide stood up for the people who were killed in the towers, the symbol of economic greed, because those people were us. They were the part of us, who had been complicit in the greedy consciousness. And millions of us sent money from our hearts to the families of those who died, to the survivors, and to the brave police and firefighters. This archetypal moment was a demonstration of the truth within the hearts of the people, that love and caring, the consciousness of a new order, were beginning to emerge through the dense fog of the era of greed.
But as the story progressed, fear gripped the homeland of the fallen towers, and the old order again took a firm hold. Wars were fought to rid the world of the evil prince who had killed the innocents. Many more innocents died. The old order was getting all the story points, but the new order continued to simmer under all the noise and the guns and the terror. A new hero was beginning to arise in the land of the fallen towers. Not a prince, but a commoner, one so common that his skin was the wrong color for the old order, but a hero, who upheld the belief in peace and fairness.
For ten years the Evil Prince in the far off land was the symbol or archetype for all that was bad in the world. Was he really the most evil of all people? Perhaps, but, but no matter, he was playing the part of the Evil Prince in the great human story that was unfolding. The evil prince must be killed. But should so many others be killed in what the collective was beginning to see as senseless wars based on greed, and the old order? The new hero, who was emerging thought not.
Now, we arrive at the weekend of April 30-May 1, 2011. The Fairytale wedding of a new prince. The prince who was born to Our Princess. The prince who was loved by his mother and father and taught to honor his wonderful mother, the archetype of the new emerging strong, kind, and caring mother, powerful in her feminine-ness, not in her hardness. He, the oldest of Our Princess’s sons, met and fell in love, not with a princess, but with a commoner. Alas, something forbidden to princes in the past, including the young prince’s father. But now, as Our Princess’s son, he stood up for what he believed in. And the queen, the old order, said, Yes. The bride-to-be of the young prince was very sure of herself. She knew who she was. She was the daughter of a successful business woman, college educated, and she and the prince had been together for nine years as lovers. Horror of horrors to the old order. Perfectly natural and smart to the new. And so they wed. They wed, the son of Our Princess and the beautiful, smart, commoner. And it was a Royal Wedding observed by 2.5 billion people who cheered across the world, for the archetypal happy ending to our story. The story of men and women coming together, not in the old way, but in the new. Balanced and loving, the woman and the man being honored in the match. Of course, the happy ending isn’t a sure thing. But for now it is the best we’ve got. Because this is our cultural developing story.
Meanwhile back in the land of the fallen towers, the new hero, a man of color and integrity, became the leader of the country with promises to bring peace to the world. Little did he know how invested the old order was in war and fear. But he persevered. It would take some time to end the wars, but there was one thing that he could do. As a hero, in the story of the people of the fairytale land known as The Earth, he must slay the evil prince, who represented the evil of the entire Land.
And so two days after the prince and princess were married, the hero slew the evil prince, without war, without thousands being killed.
These two events are the symbols of our greater emerging consciousness. These are the main characters of our own psyches. They are not to be scoffed at with cynical derision. They are to be honored as the characters of our own evolving natures. And the evolving consciousness of our world. Are there still unbalanced marriages? Of course. Are there still evil people threatening the peace of the world? Of course. But the rejoicing of billions of people at the happy marriage and the end of a purveyor of terrorism helps escalate the healing and shifting within ourselves and within our collective consciousness. These stories are our stories of our consciousness evolving, told not by a story teller of old, but by the story tellers of the new era on our televisions and computers and cell phones throughout the lands.
We were not rejoicing at the wedding of a Royal Prince and Princess. We were rejoicing at the new archetype of marriage. We were not rejoicing at the death of a man in a Pakistani compound, we were rejoicing at the archetype of the end of evil in the world.
We are all part of this great story of the human race. The story lives inside of us and outside of us in the archetypal events and characters. Everything is a reflection of our inner lives. Rejoice. The Prince and Princess may just live happily ever after. And the evil prince is most certainly dead.
Explore inside yourself. How are these archetypes evolving within you?
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New White Light Meditation Video
This week I recorded a new meditation on Youtube.
In this meditation I address the idea of using
the White Light for protection as well as healing
Click here to watch.
Barbara,
ReplyDeleteThis is brilliant and should be shared with everyone! With your permission, I wish to share it with my entire Reiki Practitioner email listing.
with love,
Patricia
You certainly have my permission, Patricia. Please send it on.
ReplyDelete