God is revealing archetypes to me of late. I’m not sure why. Perhaps you could help me figure it out. My clients keep appearing in pairs of similar archetypes, the females, but sometimes their husbands too. It has happened so often now (and even my colleague has mentioned it in her practice in an indirect way, so as to only catch my attention) that I know God is trying to make me see something.
What do I mean? I mean that the women present themselves for my care in similar stages of pregnancy (early usually), and look alike, act alike, have similar ideologies, similar stories, and even sometimes their men look alike. It is so strange, that I ran into one in the grocery store and got her so mixed up with her ‘clone client’ that I queried her about work (which she does not do, but which her clone does). I should know better because she is a repeat client, but that is how much she LOOKS like, and is similar to, her clone client. It’s like my practice has entered the twilight zone.
God made man distinct and separate from animals, to rule over all animals. Man is not an animal, so I dislike the taxonomical ranking for man (calling him Homo sapiens sapiens) proposed by Carolus Linneaus in the 1700s. I do not believe man should be identified with criteria used to rank other living creatures, because man is distinct and separate from animals. In the Bible, for example, God classifies animals in groups depending upon their action of movement, basically: swarmers, creepers, and beasts that live in the land. Birds and fish swarm, serpents and bugs creep, and livestock simply live upon the land and are beasts. I don’t mind taxonomical ranking for them, and think it helps to categorize God’s great kingdom of animals.
So how to rank and classify man? Well, MBTI and enneagram are two methods for identifying different types of people. Male and female are the 2 largest classifications, and there is even contention with that among people who feel that they embody characteristics of both genders! Jung spoke to archetypes in his book Psychological Types published in 1921. This from Wiki:
“The archetype was not merely a psychic entity, but more fundamentally, a bridge to matter in general. Jung used the term unus mundus to describe the unitary reality which he believed underlay all manifest phenomena. He conceived archetypes to be the mediators of the unus mundus, organizing not only ideas in the psyche, but also the fundamental principles of matter and energy in the physical world.”
I believe God is trying to bombard me with similar couples in my practice to get me to see that He uses forms to create man. Plato, Kant, and Schopenhauer all believed in forms or types as well. A set of forms that are recycled over and over ad infinitum. He obviously uses forms in creating animals, because if you look at cats, there are only like 7 different kinds of cats, meaning virtually every black cat looks like any other black cat the world over. Jung’s forms are simple: great mother, father, child, devil, hero, etc. But I am seeing them broken down even further in front of my eyes, even encompassing LOOKS. I have not begun to classify the forms I see in my world, but will work to do so soon.
I realize I am rambling because this concept is just now hitting me and I feel overwhelmed with its discovery, and have not even begun to sift through what it all means, or where it goes.
My main point perhaps is leading to the fact that we are not so special and unique and individual as we like to believe. Yes, God loves every one of us, and we are all a miracle of life! We all have a special and unique purpose–a unique mission to fulfill for Him. But it is not US that is special, but our perfect mission He has in store for us that is unique and special. Does that make sense? It is not about Us, but about Him, and serving Him. We can only become unique and special and break out of the form we were born into, the archetype we share with thousands of other people who came before us, and who will come after us, when we undertake His perfect and special and unique mission He has only for each one of us. Otherwise we remain a form, an archetype, a caricature that might as well be someone else.
I have undertaken part of God’s mission for me in the last few years and I can tell you that nothing has satiated and contented me like it has. It has not been easy by any means, but walking in God’s perfect will is to the psyche like putting on a body suit of perfectly molded skin that lives and breathes and conforms to you, mind and body, in a way you could never have imagined. It feels so good to do His will that everything else pales in comparison, and life becomes almost dead to you without it.
We only become special and unique when we serve Him in the way He has called each of us to. The world tells all of us we are already special and unique just the way we are, but it is just not true, and is possibly a ploy by the enemy to make us lazy, and distract us from serving the Lord GOD.
Praise Him.
~Song of Mary~ 