Tsukimoto wrote:
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--"In the guru and in the community at Kripalu, thousands of seekers sought the perfect Dad and Mom."
--"Orphans bring a tremendous amount of idealization and projection into their relationships with their teachers. We fall in love with our teachers and with our communities, and as a result, we do not see them at all clearly."
--"With our teacher," said Jack (Engler- a psychiatrist) our longing for love and recognition, for perfect goodness and caring, for perfect fairness and justice, is so deep that we project it and see it whether it is there or not."
--"We need our powerful love objects to help us to learn to separate from them. There is nothing more difficult."
Here is something interesting from Carol S Pearsons 1989 book, The Hero Within. She suggests that all six archetypes exist within us, at all times.
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I also believe that we all have access to every mode all the time.
What "stage" we are in has to do with where we "hang out" the
most, where we spend the greatest percentage of our time. The most
oppressed victim will have moments of transcendence.
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And none of us gets so advanced that we stop feeling, every once in awhile, like
a motherless child. In fact, each stage has a gift for us, something
critical to teach us about being human.
A good guru, Sheikh teacher or therapist will assist people to claim and internalize
all the archetypes for themselves so that they will, eventually be able to leave that teacher.
Like good parents, a good Sheikh, Pir or healer will give you both roots
and wings so that, eventually you can leave that teacher.
Look to Buddhist and Sufi history (Qushyari, Hujwiri) and see how many of the best Sheikhs, Murids and Pirs empowered disciples to become teachers while the Master was still alive.
The model of a monarchical Pir who has hundreds or thousands of dependants
who cling to the shrine all their lives -- that is an arrangement common in Pakistan and one which many devout Pakistanis now disapprove of.
A dictatorial and needy teacher will monopolize the Hero or Magician role and keep the followers in the orphan role -- such a teacher is covertly immature and cannot tolerate perceived abandonment.
This chronic servitude may be concealed by giving people 'hits' -- brief vicarious tastes of feeling as though they themselves are magicians or heroes.
But the dictatorial teacher will find ways to withdraw that 'high' and again find ways to active that feeling of orphanhood.
And a teacher may tell lots of stories about how he or she once was an Orphan or Wanderer and can use this to get the followers to feel powerful and nurturing toward the teacher while the teacher is temporarily revisiting the Orphan archetype--while sitting on the guru throne in designer clothes.
But....in the end, the insecure teacher is free to shift around the archetypes and return to the Magician/Hero role--and monopolize it.
If followers show signs of growing an becoming too independent of the insecure leader, or if some try to leave and set up independent careers, that insecure leader may find ways to 'push buttons' to trigger followers to feel like helpless Orphans once again--and with only The Leader as Hero and Magician and Source of All Hope.
A bad guru or poor teacher will keep you feeling like an Orphan. Even if you are given temporary shots of bliss, you can be made to feel like an orphan any time you dare to outgrow that teacher--unless you manage to grow so very rapidly you can see the entire frame and step out of it entirely. In a case like that, you may have to take the precaution of hiding your insights and new information from the despotic teacher so that you can conceal your progress and not have it disrupted before you are ready to break the frame and escape having your Orphan archetype used against you.
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And none of us gets so advanced that we stop feeling, every once in awhile, like
a motherless child. In fact, each stage has a gift for us, something
critical to teach us about being human.
The Orphan feeling is hard to examine because it is so painful it is hard to stand still and apply insight.
But I can tell you that many mistakes I have made were made when I was in a feeling state like that of a little kid who has been found and pulled from a snowbank.
If we can learn to recognize this emotion complex at a conscious level, we can learn to be alert and identify situations where this state is being evoked within us.
Then we can learn to avoid making important decisions at such times.
This is similar to the way some fortunate persons learn their actual capacity for alcohol so that it does not become a problem for them. Such persons identify various signs that
they've reached a point where it is time to stop drinking, and hand over the car keys to a designated driver.
As Pearson put it, all of us no matter how mature, still carry that orphan archetype within us. If we are alert, we can learn to sense when we have shifted into that domain
and can avoid making important decisions.
We can also identify when someone is trying to trigger that Orphan feeling within us
---or is trying to keep us feeling like Orphans all the time.
Remember that earlier quote of how Milton Erickson went on the assuption that people did have areas of strength that they did not know they had, and looked for ways to assist clients to start utilizing these capacities in areas they didnt think to look at.
That's how a real healer works. He didnt seek to end all suffering, either--just a particular problem a client had identified and come in with. He wanted to increase the areas of autonomy in someone's life, not turn them into a long term inmate of some system of his.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/2015 11:26PM by corboy.