Archetype and Personal Growth

I dream

There is a large bull running toward me, which I am to stop. I am somewhat anxious and not sure if I can stop it. I have two cardboard gates that I plan to put up in front of the bull to stop it. There are two sizes, a large one and a smaller one. There are men there to help me, but mostly it is my job. The bull is coming. I am holding up the smaller cardboard gate. A man at the other end sees the bull and indicates that I should use the larger, wider gate. He says, “wider, wider, wider.” I put up the wider gate. The bull comes. I stop the bull with the cardboard gate and the bull falls down. I grab its horns and subdue it. The others come to assist.

In many ways this dream could be a scene out of the Mithraic mysteries where the Roman god Mithras subdues and kills the sacred bull. In other esoteric teachings of Mithraism, Mithras himself was the bull that represented his lower nature, and by slaying the bull he was sacrificing himself for the redemption of humanity. Mithras, in the form of the slain bull, lay like Christ in a tomb for three days, before being resurrected to join with his Higher Self.

I have maintained throughout my book, The Other Man in Me, that the bull in my dreams represented the Earth Masculine. This is the masculine principle inhabiting nature, that generative male procreative humid force of the earthy unconscious masculine that is also a symbol of the life-giving, death-dealing, regenerating forces of the earthy unconscious feminine—the ancient Goddess herself. As such, it was the embodiment of my bisexuality and the shadow side of my patriarchal, fundamental Christian parsonage consciousness. In its first appearance in my dreams, the bull chased me up a tree. In its second appearance I was able to enclose and contain the bull in a barn. In this dream I physically subdued the bull. In this act of grabbing its horns, I was taking on the power of the bull, taking control of this energy. This was symbolic of embracing and integrating the bull energy.

In antiquity, ritual killing of bulls and washing in their blood was believed to be necessary for cleansing, eternal life, and salvation. This was followed by a meal of the bull’s flesh. The adherents of Mithras believed that by eating the bull’s flesh and drinking its blood they would be born again. Participation in this rite would give not only physical strength but lead to the immortality of the soul and to eternal life. This dream not only mirrored remnants of an ancient archetypal process, it showed a slight shift in the archetypal story—one from salvation through sacrifice, killing, and the drinking of blood. This drinking of blood is symbolic of salvation through subduing, relating to, and the integration of the split-off, rejected shadow masculine energy.

Archetypes are invisible fields of energy that determine human existence. They are the riverbeds along which psychic life flows. Like the invisible jet stream that determines the course of the weather, these hidden currents shape our lives. In many ways we fall under their spell and live out their lives unconsciously as fate. To wake up to the influence of an archetype is to begin to participate in its drama with some awareness.

Personal growth depends on our ability to transcend the limits of our personal stories. To do that we must recognize the multiple hidden meanings beneath our thoughts, desires, fantasies, and behaviors. Beneath our seemingly conscious lives is a whole other world. Understanding these hidden currents, these archetypal forces that lie beneath our drives, our obsessions, and our longings will radically change our view of ourselves and ultimately our personal stories and our lives.

A compulsion can be understood as a struggle against a part of the soul that continues to remain unconscious and is projected onto an object in the environment. We might think of it as an undifferentiated part of the Self that longs to be differentiated and brought into conscious life. For example, in sex, especially compulsive and destructive sex, some part of the soul continues to be undifferentiated and placed onto or into the object of the desire in the outer world. To continue to repeat this behavior is to remain stuck in the personal story. To transcend the personal story is to get at the archetypal meaning or unconscious and nonpersonal meaning or purpose of the behavior.

Whenever we have a conflict or are caught in ambivalence about making a decision in a practical matter, the basis for such a dilemma is often our inability to distinguish between the concrete and the symbolic meanings of the pondered action. The concrete and the symbolic are two different levels of reality. These two levels need to be separated out and considered separately. When this is done, the objective decision is often easily reached. 

What is happening on the personal level, as troubling as that may be, is not as important as what is happening on the archetypal level. For example, a conflict between a son and his father on the personal level may be a manifestation of the archetypal story of the death of the old king—the death and destruction of a ruling consciousness. It may be that the ruling consciousness of the internalized father (in the son) is the source of the conflict—a consciousness that is in opposition to the one of the son or the one emerging in the son or the one wanting to emerge in the son. This conflict can certainly get projected out and onto the father-son relationship, resulting in fights, arguments, or outright rejection of the father if not understood from its archetypal source.

This aspect of the masculine longed to initiate me into its life. I could no longer kill or deny this energy as the Mithras ritual had done. But rather integrate that energy into my consciousness and embody the repressed and split off masculinity. Personal growth depends on our ability to transcend the limits of our personal stories. Understanding the archetypal forces that lie beneath our drives, obsessions and longings will radically change our view of ourselves and ultimately our lives.

From my book, The Other Man in Me, Erotic Longing, Lust and Love: The Soul Calling