The Way: A Journey of Healing & Self Acceptance

The Way: A Journey of Healing & Self Acceptance

TheWay_posterI am super happy to announce that another edition of the Archetypes & A Movie course is now available.  As the Producer of this series it’s an especially joyous occasion, not just a ‘job done’ elation but gratitude for how much I have learned throughout the process of producing the course.  My dear friend, teacher and client, Jim Curtan is doing something unique – he’s helping us See (and I mean that with a capital S) our lives in a new way by using the popular art of movies.

This new course centers around the idea of a modern pilgrimage, of our journey through the griefs and joys of life and how that path can bring us to the healing power of self acceptance.  The film used as contemplation in the course is a beautiful indie film directed by Emilio Estevez called The Way (2010).  It stars Emilio’s Father, Martin Sheen and is the story of four very different pilgrims walking the Camino de Compostella de Santiago.

Just as the last course on the Hero’s Journey was about finding out who you are, this course is about remembering who you are and all that your life contains.

The_Way_Cover_Final_500pxThe Way: A Journey of Healing and Self Acceptance is a self guided workshop available to download. It contains 3 hours of audio course, 2 pdf books and access to online discussions with Jim and fellow students.

I encourage you to check it out and have included the link to purchase below that will save you $5 off the already very reasonable price.   You can get the DVD for less than $5 and stream it for free if you are an Amazon Prime member.

Learn more and download the audio for part one of the course for free.

Click to save $5 on the course

In this course you will delve deeply into the following areas:

  • Identifying archetypes as a path of integrating Mind, Heart and Body with the Self.
  • Relating the powerful story of integration as seen in The Wizard of Oz, The Way, Sex & the City, The 40 Year Old Virgin, and more.
  • Healing and acceptance of ourselves and our relationships.
  • Rediscovering who you are and the richness of self acceptance.
  • Remembrance and resurrection.
  • The power of relationships as mirrors of ourselves.
  • The grace of gratitude for all of our experiences, both the griefs and the joys.

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Releasing Limiting Beliefs Using Archetypal Images

Releasing Limiting Beliefs Using Archetypal Images

Stephanie Meghan of Soulshine Tarot

Stephanie Meghan of Soulshine Tarot

How can you use the archetypal images of the Tarot to release limiting beliefs?  In this special edition of the Archetypal Tarot Podcast, Cyndera has a conversation with Stephanie Megan of Soulshine Tarot about just that.

Stephanie Meghan a Tarot Archetypal Hypnotherapist and owner of Soulshine Tarot an online personal development practice that uses the archetypal images of the Tarot.  Meghan is an ivy-league trained scientist who takes a no-nonsense approach to reading Tarot and helping her clients release limiting beliefs.

Stephanie offers customized  sessions with guided meditations mixed with a gentle hypnosis. Meditation is an immensely powerful and beneficial tool that can enhance your well-being and can allow you to remove limiting beliefs that cloud your path to happiness.

Soulshine Tarot Website

Connect with Stephanie on Facebook

Want to email us about the Archetypal Tarot Podcast? We’d love that!  ATPodcast@archetypist.com

Listen to the episode below or subscribe on iTunes 

Meet Your Dating Survival Guides

Meet Your Dating Survival Guides

©Kevin Dooley

Dating can feel like a trip to the amusement park, filled with excitement, ups, downs and the occasional sense of inertia. Certain archetypes can help serve as guides for keeping grounded while amidst the thrills and spills of dating life. So far I’ve written about archetypal attraction based on shared patterns, paired needs and romantic chemistry. Now it’s time to dig into some of the archetypal characters that will likely show up for everyone dating. They also can play into why some people don’t even dip their toe into the dating pool. I call these our Survival Archetypes. They are roles we take on when we feel vulnerable as well as ones that can guide us to authentically being ourselves.

We all work with the survival archetypes. Some people are so in the thrall of the unempowered aspects of them that they have a hard time seeing beyond their negative effects. It’s my hope to turn this around a bit. Each archetype should be used as a guide – not a way to judge yourself poorly. In fact they are an excellent way of spotting how you might judge yourself and how to make a more empowering choice.

The four dating Survival Guides are: The Victim, The Prostitute, The Child and The Saboteur.

The names of these archetypes might seem to some harsh or intimidating, but that’s because we tend to know them only by their pathology. They also contain a wonderful possibility that often gets overlooked.

I launched this series on dating by recommending attention as a key for getting clear on who you are and who you want to form a relationship with. Paying attention to your thoughts and behaviors by seeing them as patterns helps you get clear on your options. That clarity can get lost however if we use the pattern to judge ourselves poorly or condemn ourselves.

The technology of using archetypes is best served with a practice akin to Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) coupled with self-compassion. The basis of MBSR is moment-to-moment non-judgmental awareness. Awareness and self compassion are powerful practices in life and especially in the necessarily vulnerable experience of dating. Developing awareness and self compassion practices can make all the difference in being able to be authentic (you know, the real you) and attract the right people into your life. This isn’t just me talking, there are increasingly more scientific studies showing how awareness and self compassion are amazing for us in every aspect of our lives, from reducing stress, relieving pain and bringing greater resilience and happiness to practitioners. Two other pioneers in this field are Kelly McGonigal, Phd and Kristen Neff, Phd. Neff’s book Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind is an excellent starting place.

This series will focus on each of the four survival archetypes as they might show up for a single person looking to meet a significant other. They are of course useful to those already in relationship or those thinking about ‘getting back out there’. I’ll share ideas on ways to bring awareness to your actions and choices in a way that helps you enjoy yourself more in the process of creating new relationships. If we are enjoying ourselves from the beginning, we’ll be less prone to heap expectations on the person we are dating and vice versa. Sound good? Look for updates soon and links will be added to the list above so you can jump to the next exciting article.

Three Archetypes of Awesome

Three Archetypes of Awesome

Little things can mean a lot. Let’s say you’re having a crappy day and you’re at the store when the cashier pulls out a coupon that saves you a dollar. This gives you a boost and you walk out the door in a better mood.  Maybe you don’t honk at the numbskull ahead of you for doing whatever it is that annoys you.  That person doesn’t get irked with you for being a numbskull honking at them and who knows what other little improvements occur because someone did you a solid just for the heck of it.  Little bits of beauty & generosity have a tendency to carry on long after their tipping point.    Like watching a TED talk and getting inspired to write an article about something both simple and radically important about the patterns at work in our lives.

Neil Pasricha decided to do something seemingly small when he was going through a very rough patch in his life. His marriage was falling apart, his best friend took his own life and he naturally was finding it really hard to think of anything good.  He started a blog in order to record and share what he called 1000 Awesome Things, figuring that it might help him focus on the positive again.   Little did he know that this one effort would have him publishing books, calendars, TED talks and receiving a Webby Award for his blog in 2010.  All of this AND bringing a grin or a LOL to millions of readers.  Neil’s 17 minute talk about how all of this came about is totally worth watching so, go ahead, it’s right down there,  I’ll wait.  Then you can read about how this talk is an invocation of three of your core archetypes.  (Or you can just skip to the next bit.)

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Neil calls the major lessons of his experience the three A’s of Awesome:  Attitude, Awareness and Authenticity.   Each of these invokes one of your core archetypal patterns, the Victim (Attitude),  the Child (Awareness) and the Prostitute (Authenticity). These are 3 of the 4 core universal archetypes common to everyone also known as the Survival Archetypes.

Neil’s own story has a lot to do with the Victim archetype. He could have simply wallowed in his circumstances, let them take over and obscure the beauty in his life.  The unempowered side of the Victim is the part of us that can get wrapped up in anger, sadness, and blame.  We all have a Victim pattern in our lives – we have setbacks, get hurt, make mistakes, have crappy days when we feel like we’ve gotten the fuzzy side of the lollipop.    We also have the empowered side of  the Victim that makes choices to get out of the mire of blame and move on.  Neil calls this ‘Attitude’ and I see it as using the pattern of the Victim to make a gigantic difference in a few small choices.

The second ‘A’ of Awesome is Awareness and this invokes the Child archetype in us.  The Child or as Neil says, our inner three year old, can be amazed at the simplest things, see beauty where most adults just see a knot in a piece of wood.  Invoking the awareness of the Child archetype can help us enjoy something simple, open our eyes to opportunity or just appreciate something we would ordinarily pass by.  This isn’t just a mood lifter, but a way to be in the world with a deeper sense of presence. The Child can be the antidote to a fast paced world where it’s difficult not to become jaded to little pleasures like putting on socks still warm from the dryer.

The third ‘A’ is for Authenticity which believe it or not, invokes Prostitute archetype.  The unempowered Prostitute is that part of us that will negotiate our self worth away because of someone elses opinion or keep us doing something we dislike because we feel we can’t do anything else.  The empowered Prostitute reminds us that we can be authentic and make choices not based on fear but out of an authentic belief in ourselves.  Neil uses the example of pro football player Rosie Grier and his penchant for needlepoint as an example of authenticity.  Rosie could have easily kept his passion for something unmanly under wraps and let what other people might think of him control who he was (keep in mind this was the early 1970’s) but he didn’t.  In fact he published several books on his interests.  It doesn’t get much more authentic than that.

While this archetype has a  shocking name, it can be a guide for us to live authentically.  Are you not doing something because you are afraid of what people might think of you?  Are you putting the opinions of others over your authentic dreams and desires?