The Archetypal World of Internity

    One day a young songwriter "woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across [his] head" and recognized he had music in mind again.  But this time he felt that it was an already established composition, something he must have heard before, maybe from his musical father's generation.  He worked it out on the piano and assumed it must be a "standard."  He asked many others to help him identify the song but nobody could.  The song kept running through his consciousness (calling) and he continued to assume that eventually he'd realize what "standard" it was.  He hummed along with the melody but couldn't quite place the lyric.  So, he started singing gibberish until one day he sang, "Scrambled eggs..." and some other rhymes to go along with eggs.  One time, instead of "Scrambled eggs" the songwriter's gibberish came out as, "Yesterday..."  From that point onward the composition revealed itself in its entirety.  And it was, in fact, a standard waiting to be brought into the world and acknowledged as such.  In effect, the song used Paul McCartney as a conduit to make itself known.  The common emotionality of the song "Yesterday," as music does (and the rest of the arts do), revealed and reflected the shared pathways of human Potential, Relationships, Experiences and Perceptions from both our individual and collective mind.     

     It's these shared pathways of the mind, the psychic stirrings and callings of Internity, that I find so fascinating.  Jung described them by using the term "archetype" which I understand as an original image, ancient patterns, or "pre-existent forms...which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents."  (This is why the arts are vital to the experience of being alive: First, because they give conscious form to the psychic stirrings and callings of Internity.  Secondly, they point out hypocrisy, jingoism, cant, jargon, etc.  Finally, the arts abhor mediocrity.)  I understand archetypes as images, energies and emotions coming forth from the collective unconscious and made conscious through the use of symbol (the art and invention of imagination and image-making).  Another of Jung's claims is that "our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors."  This claim, as it concerns our bodies, in spite of their own complexities, is not really that astounding for our scientific and evolved brains to comprehend.  But the idea that our souls - the images of the mind as well as our instincts and emotions - are also "composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors," makes me wonder even more about the transcendence of human Potential, Relationship, Experience and Perception.  Jung also describes archetypes, these psychic stirrings and callings, as "the mind of our unknown ancestors, their way of thinking and feeling, their way of experiencing life and the world, gods and men."  I think Joseph Campbell's research on the consistent and striking similarities of imagination and image-making throughout all mythologies is proof enough of ancient and shared pathways.

     The image below is how I've learned to think about the archetypes of the collective unconscious, the shared pathways of "How I Am: Being Human."  This is what I mean by the psychic stirrings and callings of Internity.   

The middle of the image is composed of the results - physiological, psychological, social, mental, emotional and spiritual - of all the individualized elements of the "How I Am: Being Human" diagram of previous posts.  This is the centering place of ego-consciousness where discoveries, expressions, connections and meaning of others and otherness take imagistic, instinctual and emotional shape as some level of awareness and Self-respect.  I think this centering place is what determines the level of guidance or hauntings from the psychic stirrings and callings of archetypes.  If the Potentials, Relationships, Experiences and Perceptions of "How I Am: Being Human" are given conscious form in protection, empathy, nurturance and sustenance then the archetypes have a better chance of making themselves known as purposeful behaviors guided by imagination and image-making.  Anything less makes one susceptible to purposeful behaviors based on the fear of archetypal hauntings (i.e., disconnected opposition).  In any case, consciously acknowledging the images of the mind (dreams, fantasies, memories, griefs, intuitions, half-baked ideas, unfinished songs, etc.), and the ancient instincts and powerful emotions of one's psychic stirrings and callings is an intentional step toward authenticity on the shared pathways of "How I Am: Being Human."
     My claim today is that the art of imagination and image-making is an instinctual and emotional relationship with the shared pathways of the collective unconscious.  Granted, there's only one McCartney, or Lennon, or Picasso, or Einstein, or Edison, or Leonardo da Vinci, etc., etc.  Nevertheless, we are all original in our divine capacities to discover, express, connect and make meaning out of the psychic stirrings and callings of "How I Am: Being Human."  My ultimate conviction is that every Potential, Relationship, Experience and Perception is symbolic of one's Self-respecting consciousness, ego, persona and personal unconscious in an ancient dance of atonement with the archetypal world of Internity.

And so I ask again, "How are you?"      johnmadowning@gmail.com