The Power of Coincidence (24 page)

Archetypes are recurrent typical themes of the human psyche that appear as images or characters in stories and myths the world over. The archetypes are fields of psychic energy within the Self. They propose a spiritual challenge to the ego to live out each energy or at least relate to it in others. Archetypes include themes familiar in world religions: death-resurrection, transformation, epiphanies, ascension, mystical marriage, judgment, punishment, etc. Archetypes are also personified in stories as the hero, the shadow, the wise guide, the trickster, the earth mother, the sky father, etc. Individuation happens as we consciously integrate these unconscious drives—or instincts—toward wholeness. Wholeness is in fact the integration of the archetypal potentials within us with those around us in our relationships and experiences.

Most dreams come from our personal unconscious and tell us about our ego work, that is, how to function in the world so that we can fulfill ourselves and relate to others more effectively. These are our psychological challenges. Some dreams, however, come from our collective/cosmic unconscious and declare an archetypal task, that is, a spiritual challenge. Archetypal images come to meet us in a dream, carrying with them a grace or power to assist us in our conscious choices. This visit has a numinous quality. It is a spiritual vision that beckons us onward and empowers us on our human trek toward wholeness. Marie-Louise Von Franz puts it this way: “Whenever we contact the deeper archetypal reality of the psyche, it permeates us with a feeling of being in touch with the infinite.”

Archetypal dreams grant us a glimpse of the invisible world, the province of spirituality. Marvels of synchronicity are constant in the psyche, a realm where nature’s laws are not obeyed and ego limits are continually transcended. Archetypal dreams are thus initiation rites into our spiritual work. Archetypal dreams occur in moments of crisis. They herald a transition, a time when a new strength is ready to surface or a new attitude is required to meet new challenges. The old or one-sided attitude no longer suffices. Oracular, ego-transcending wisdom of the archetypal Self emerges from deep in the psyche. The Delphic priestess has always been sitting here inside us, but we may never have traveled far enough within ourselves to consult her. Archetypal dreams are emitted from deep in nature, where she sits. They speak to us in her now-ready-to-be-audible voice.

How can we tell the difference between archetypal and personal dreams? Archetypal dreams unfold like an epic story, a journey, a struggle, a discovery. There is a sense of channeling, as if the dream came from a realm far beyond our routine world. We may feel a power that contains us; we do not contain it. Synchronicities will abound in waking life to match the motifs of such dreams. Strong feeling characterizes archetypal dreams and the memory of them. In fact, archetypal dreams are unforgettable—unlike many personal dreams. There is a strong sense of the numinous, the otherworldly in such dreams.

Archetypal dreams point directly to transformation. For example, I may dream that I am drowning in a vast and turbulent sea. Suddenly, a ghostly woman appears. She is hovering over the water beckoning to me to join her. I feel paralyzed and cannot manage that. A dolphin then arises beside and I look at him but do nothing. He then leaps up to her without me, splashing me with such force that I now seemed doomed for certain. I awake with fear and the sense that an opportunity to go beyond my habitual limits has been missed. I recognize the woman as a force of feminine power that challenges my reluctant consciousness and even offers me new powers and perspectives in the form of her dolphin friend. I keep pondering this dream throughout the day. What flying leaps am I afraid to take? What assisting force am I not hopping onto? What voice am I saying No to? What waters of rebirth am I still not allowing to drown my ego?

In times of strong feeling, the psyche will often produce an archetypal image in waking life. This is synchronicity. The psyche has a complete lexicon of images both from our life experience and from our ancestors’, and it knows exactly which one fits an occasion. This is how our soul/synchronicity is helping us do our work. To work a conflict through in one’s inner life leads to less need to obsess about it or dramatize it in one’s daily life. This is because we focus on that center in ourselves where images are generated and where opposites are reconciled. As we relate to our own ego-transcending center, we make visible the wholeness that is already and always in us. Archetypal dreams connect our finite world of ego with the infinite world of wholeness.

Dreamwork is meant to be practiced with archetypal dreams, not just personal ones. Jung says: “Dreamwork releases an experience that grips or falls upon us as from above, an experience that has substance and body such as those things which occurred to the ancients. If I were to symbolize it, I would choose the Annunciation.” The Annunciation to Mary by the angel Gabriel is an archetype of being open to receiving the tidings of destiny. The scene conveys in metaphor how our receptiveness to spiritual messages leads to the embodiment of transcendent purposes in us. Mary, symbolizing the willing ego, says yes unconditionally and becomes pregnant with Jesus, an archetype of wholeness. Synchronicities abound in this moment: the meeting of the angelic and the human, the male and the female, the immortal and the mortal, the transpersonal and the personal, the finite and the infinite, virginity and maternity, ego and Self, limitation and wholeness. Archetypal dreamwork facilitates such combinations.

The Annunciation means more than receiving tidings. In this event, we are touched by the zeal of the divine to enter our human condition and the joy of human nature to participate in it. “For every step the ego takes toward the Self, the Self takes one hundred toward the ego,” wrote Jung, referring to the zeal of the Self for an embodiment in us.

D
REAMWORK AND
A
CTIVE
I
MAGINATION

Synchronicity requires consciousness. In dreamwork we activate our conscious imagination to amplify the unconscious messages of dreams. Dreams want to find expression or completion in our waking world. Active imagination facilitates this since it activates the transcendent function of the psyche. Dreamwork is our synchronizing of unconscious message and conscious work. It is a way of expanding upon the themes and images in our dreams by dialoguing with them. This process becomes synchronicity as it honors the transcendent function of the psyche to unite and synthesize conscious and unconscious realms within us. The psyche channels images from the soul treasury within/beyond us. The psyche presents in dreams and in active imagination precisely the image that is required here and now for our rise in consciousness. This is the essence of the synchronicity of dreams, letting the light through so we can see in the dark.

“Imagination acts by impressing the stamp of humanity on inanimate or merely natural objects,” says the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Dreamwork is active imagination, engaging in a dialogue with an image or a figure from a dream. I let this image take me where
it
wants to go, no matter how outrageous the trip. The hero goes with the flow of events with a sense of wonder. The end of wonder is the end of staying on the journey. A fully developed experience or change is usually not possible in a dream state. A conscious elaboration is required: dreamwork, active imagination in the day about the night’s dream.

Active imagination (described below) is like alchemy, in that attention is paid even to the lowliest elements, and their transformation follows. Active imagination makes an accommodation with our predicament, thereby negotiating a path through it. Active imagination is not simply a technique to observe the unconscious. In it the ego asserts itself and helps our unconscious see how its demands can or cannot match the conditions of reality. Dialogue helps us relate to the figures in our unconscious rather than be possessed by them, stand in awe of them, or be frightened by them. Images are immensely responsive to the compliment paid to them by our contemplation. They are given a voice by such attentiveness. This is how the active imagination expands and completes an image.

“Make the night joint laborer with the day,” says Hamlet. Dreams initiate and present our work to us. Dreamwork is our way of picking it up from there. Dante recognized this during his three nights and three days in Purgatory. Each night he had a dream that he took time to contemplate during the following day. His dreams while unconscious were all part of the work of purification he was experiencing consciously. We are being freed and freeing ourselves night and day from our limited ego to expand into the wholeness we already are in the depths of ourselves. Active imagination is the daylight contribution we make to match the psyche’s nightly contribution in dreams. There is optimistic synchronicity in that joint venture.

T
HE
C
ARE AND
T
ENDING OF
D
REAMS

Consider your dream from each of the following three perspectives:

Intrapersonally: see all the figures of your dream as parts of your inner world.

Interpersonally: your dream shows you your way of relating to others.

Transpersonally: your dream tells you about your spiritual life and destiny.

Amplify your dream by using the various forms of active imagination described below.

Empty your mind of left-brain or distracting thoughts: “I let go of ordinary thinking and analyzing. I am open to the voice that wants to come through to me.” “Empty” also means empty of fear and attachment, that is, empty of ego.

Look at the image in your dream that most engages you, noticing the “felt sense” of it: As I hold this image, what do I feel, and where do I feel it in my body? Which of the seven chakras, or physical-spiritual energy centers within the body, is this image most comfortable in: survival (base of spine), sex (genitals), power (solar plexus), heartfulness (heart), release of free speech (throat), wisdom, or spiritual power (above the crown of the head)?

Using your dream journal, dialogue with (and become) the image. Add the phrase: “This is part of myself” to an image, or “This is my life (or body)” to a scene. Make associations until you reach an “Aha!”—a satisfying sign of finding your personal meaning in a dream.

Choose nine words from all you have written to create a poem.

Ask for a gift or message with thanks for what may come.

Form an affirmation or aspiration that declares the message or central point of your dream and use it throughout the day.

Perform a ritual that enacts the message, including thanks for all it has meant to you.

8

Synchronicity and Our Spirituality

The more we become conscious of ourselves through self-knowledge, and act accordingly, the more the layer of the personal unconscious will be diminished. In this way, there arises a consciousness no longer imprisoned in petty personal interests. This widened consciousness . . . is a function of our relationship to the world . . . bringing us into an absolute binding and indissoluble communion with the universe. . . . There is no individuation on Everest.

—C
ARL
J
UNG

Spiritual work does not begin with action but with centered attentiveness to the messages of our inner Self in synchronicity, dreams, and intuitions. Now we understand that our inner Self refers to an unconscious depth in ourselves that we share with all humanity and that funds our lives with spiritual gifts when we are open to it. In such a spiritual world, we keep finding exactly the discarded pieces of ourselves that clamor for reattachment to our psyche. This is how synchronous meetings and messages impel us to wholeness.

Spirituality is the intersection of three paths: letting go of ego, an unconditional Yes to the conditions of human existence, and universal compassion. Synchronicity meets us on all three of these paths. These paths open by work on ourselves—steps we take—and by grace from assisting forces around us—shifts that happen. There is synchronicity built into this combination of effort and grace. Effortful steps open us to effortless shifts. We work diligently on ourselves and transformation happens from and within that momentum.

Work on ourselves means traveling the three paths of spirituality in psychologically healthy human living. Here is an overview of this work:

Letting go of ego
means freeing ourselves from self-centered entitlements and from the need to be in control. Such letting go is a challenge to the part of us that insists on being first and right. It is a nonviolent style that drops competitiveness and self-seeking in favor of humility and equality. Synchronously, just the right people and events will come our way so that this can happen. We will definitely get our comeuppance and be liberated from our ego inflations as we meet up with our fellow pilgrims. They will also help us transform our neurotic ego into a healthy ego.

We say Yes unconditionally
to the conditions and predicaments of our existence: things change and end, suffering is part of growth, things are not always predictable or fair, etc. We assent to these givens of life because we trust them as necessary ingredients for us to grow and deepen. Spiritual progress does not mean that we are always serene or happy but that we have a formula to accommodate any state of mind: an unconditional Yes to what is unfolding. This Yes is how we become synchronicity. We then identify our personal story with a larger picture. When we reconcile ourselves to the conditions of our existence, when we reconcile the opposing forces in our psyche, and when we reconcile ourselves to others, too, many stunning marvels begin to happen.