from fate to destiny using archetypal awareness

The groundbreaking work of one of our earliest Western psychologists, Karl Jung (1875-1961), was the beginning of a revolutionary shift in our understanding of the human psyche. Thanks to the voluminous and extensive work of Jung and those who followed in his footsteps, it is easy to understand how human beings can become so divorced from their authentic expression. We are instead taken over by our unconsciously-driven archetypal patterns created in response to our childhood environments, born out of our natural instincts to belong, to be safe and to be of value. This could be likened to developing a 'masked' identity that enables us to manoeuvre safely and effectively in our environments, but simultaneously cuts us off from our authentic self and truth-telling abilities. But thankfully, at certain points of our life, we may experience a cracking through of this 'authentic self' in its desire to express itself, creating havoc in the beginning stages, but ultimately leading to self-discovery, self-healing, and transformation. 

Jung defined archetypes as universal patterns or forces in the human psyche, much like instincts. Instincts are like biological urges. When we trigger an instinct, it immediately activates a pattern of behaviour, like running a software program on a computer. Simply put, just like we don’t have to think when we drive a car, because the subconscious automatically does that for us, our various archetypal patterns from childhood run many aspects of our adult life, without any awareness on our part. 
 
Our archetypal patterns are influencing everything we think, do and feel. Each pattern has its own habitual energy, expressions, gestures, urges, thoughts, feelings and vocabulary. When we can observe an archetype operating in us, we have differentiated ourselves from it. This allows us the option to pivot into new consciously-created patterns, better aligned with the truth of who we are. And with this, our life direction has the possibility to move from an unconsciously-driven fate into a consciously-driven destiny.

There can be a number of archetypal characters driving our adult personality, both helpful and unhelpful. As examples, we may appropriately morph into a Professional archetype when at work, but inappropriately, be unconsciously driven by an Abandoned Child archetype in our most intimate relationships. This 'Abandoned Child' pattern may trigger us to 'act out' in various ways to relieve this historic fear of abandonment even if that fear holds no legitimacy in our present-day context.
 
A universally experienced archetypal pattern by all human beings is the child archetype. The child archetype is where our psychological template was first set up, laying down a foundation for our safety, belonging, and self-worth. But there is a certain limit to our psychology as children, as we are simply not mature enough to understand the complexity of the human psyche at such a young age. With our subconscious mind designed to track any threats to our safety as a child, it was unlikely to perceive our father's anger or mother's depression as having nothing to do with us. Instead, any issue belonging to the adults around us had the potential to be perceived as 'our fault'. If we take on the pattern of a Wounded Child it will usually recruit other patterns to hide its insecurities and find ways to adapt in a 'culturally acceptable' way. This is where the Conformist, Perfectionist, Rescuer, Helper, Achiever, Co-dependent, Inner Critic, Victim, or even the self-focused, self-reliant Shapeshifter/Chameleon/Lone Wolf or Narcissist archetypal patterns may develop, just to name a few. If you can relate to any of these archetypal expressions, we can think of them as seeing, thinking, hearing, perceiving and choosing for us, way beyond our childhood years, leaving us with a skewed perception on reality. Aside from the fact that these patterns block our ability to truly KNOW OURSELVES, they also sabotage our perceptual clarity as mature adults, as we continue to unconsciously project our wounded child's reality onto the people and environments around us. 

This leads me to speak into the highly attuned, empathic child archetype. If you can relate to this temperament you will know you were exquisitely attuned to the expectations of your environment growing up. You perhaps picked up on the repressed emotions and energy of those around you, potentially found yourself sharing wise insight with people (whether they were ready to hear it or not!), or were shamed for having multi-sensory experiences outside of our mainstream 5-sensory cultural perceptual framework. Moreover, being a part of a culture where our qualities were seen as 'less than ideal'; such as feeling our feelings intensely, becoming overwhelmed by too much external stimulation because of our depth of perceptual processing, and/or ongoingly being told we were wrong when we definitively knew we were right, can lead to self-disconnection, self-abandonment and distrust in our natural instinctive knowing.  With little education or support, which simply didn't exist in previous generations, on how to read, manage and use our high attunement in a helpful and beneficial way, the potential for feeling 'less than' was very real. The message was clear: DON'T BE YOU and YOU DON'T FIT.  Furthermore, there was simply no education provided to let us know that its ok to be you, and here's how to work effectively with a multi-sensory system like yours. 

Given these cultural circumstances, and additionally if born into a family with unresolved issues or dysfunction, it was highly likely for an emotionally abandoned child archetype to develop in many highly attuned children. And to mask their Wounded Child's insecurities it was also likely to have recruited a variety of archetypal expressions to compensate for its perceived shortcomings. It makes total sense that they would have unconsciously utilised their inherent gifts, such as their attuned listening skills and ability to read other peoples needs, to funnel into patterns that helped them feel esteemed, loved and a sense of belonging. They may have taken on the patterns of the Parentified Child (parenting their own caregivers), Adult Child (becoming self-reliant to the extreme, due to  distrust in the adults around them) or Codependent Empath (managing other peoples feelings to manage their own safety and emotional regulation), just to name a few. They may have even recruited a hyper-vigilant Risk Assessor and Chameleon to shape-shift around the varying situations in their childhood settings, trusting no one and learning to adapt quickly to the wide range of expectations and needs of those around them.

Shutting down our inherent gifts in this way, by recruiting them instead for the hypervigilant management of our environments, is likely to burn us out or leave us feeling very alone and disconnected from ourselves and others over time. This understandably puts us at risk of recruiting even more sabotaging patterns, like the addict (workaholism included!) or tuned-out 'daydreamer' or 'fantasiser', to provide us with some temporary relief from the discomfort of the long-term self-disconnection we are experiencing. The silencing or cutting ourselves off from our authenticity can also affect our individual biochemistry, impacting our physical and mental health, and making us prone to becoming pathologised in today's culture. And whilst medication may play a role in helping our biology to heal, we also need to identify the archetypal patterns that maintain our biochemical imbalance.  By identifying where our archetypal patterns originated, we can learn to accept these parts of our selves and 'hug them in' graciously, understanding that they helped to keep us safe back then, but utilised in excess NOW, are sabotaging our precious life force energy, inherent gifts and creative potential. 

To move into new self-chosen archetypal patterns, in alignment with our personal truth and inherent moral code, is more than just having awareness, however. It is a process, that will take as long as it takes, to move from your recruited childhood survival team to a new consciously-chosen empowered one. To do this, trauma recovery and a review on your conditioning is required, oftentimes not without some discomfort and grief along the way. I often refer to this as a 'Dark Night' process of 'becoming a nobody to become a somebody again', as we humbly own our own part in some of the choices we have made in our lives as a result of our recruited childhood patterns. Getting both trusted human and faith-based support through this process can help us heal as we shift from, what can seem like an initially emotionally-tolling and messy interior landscape to perceptual clarity from a self-aware and mature adult perspective. And it is important to remember throughout this transformative process, that a healthy 'reclamation of one's true self' has the potential to be hampered by our automatic default patterns, such as our 'Inner Critic' or 'Perfectionist', blaming ourselves, or 'Victim', blaming others. Our job instead is to notice these default patterns and pivot towards a more healing orientation, knowing that there is no right nor wrong, just simply DATA to be TRACKED through a NEUTRAL lens, as spoken about in previous articles and videos. 

Using an archetypal framework is a powerful roadmap to understanding the human psyche and helps us to see ourselves more clearly, and therefore others too. As we start to identify the uncomfortable shadow parts of our psyche, we can peel back the layers of the inauthentic 'masks' we have accumulated over time and shed their inaccurate perceptions. This can be confronting, especially if we have recruited self-deprecating, self-sacrificing and even self-focused patterns to cope with life. But as we are released from the grip of these patterns, we have the ability to move through life in an entirely different yet empowering way, aligned with the truth of who we actually are. It also enables us to detect those same shadow expressions in others, and therefore not take others behaviours so personally. For the most part, we come to understand that many people are predominantly being run by childhood programming that has never been identified, let alone addressed, to support their own healing towards authenticity and wholeness.

For many multi-sensory beings, the search for truth and healing through self-reflection is something we feel naturally drawn to, and our own inner transformation opens a pathway for healing to occur in the wider systems around us. With each of us who dare to tread this often invisible and solitary, yet immensely courageous path, we know intuitively that we contribute to the healing and evolution of our family lines and therefore, human consciousness as a whole. To anyone who resonates with this journey, I salute you. I see you, I hear you, I feel you, I honour you, I love you and I thank you :) 

In sincere gratitude to the work of teacher and authors, Robert Ohotto and Caroline Myss, for their extensive and advanced body of work based on Karl Jung's archetypes, both of whose work can be found on the internet.