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This is part 3...I believe, in a series I am doing on Jung's book The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious TLDR (Too Long Didn't Read...): Jung shows that beneath our personal unconscious lies a deeper collective unconscious, filled with archetypes that shape human life everywhere. The Hero, the Shadow, the Mother, and the Father appear in myths, in Scripture, and in stories like The Lion King, Star Wars, and Tangled. These patterns are powerful. If we ignore them they can take us over, but if we recognize them they can guide us toward wholeness. Scripture reminds us that “what has been will be again” (Ecclesiastes 1:9), and for Christians, the deepest archetype, the Self, points to Christ in whom all things hold together (Colossians 1:17).
The Two Depths of the Psyche The unconscious, Jung says, is not one thing but two. The first is the personal unconscious. This layer contains what each of us has forgotten, repressed, or simply failed to notice. Jung describes it as “lost memories, painful ideas that are repressed, subliminal perceptions, and contents that are not yet ripe for consciousness” (Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, p. 42). Think of it as the attic of the mind, filled with boxes you may not have opened in years. The second is the collective unconscious. This layer is different. It does not come from your personal story. Jung explains, “The collective unconscious is not individual but universal. In contrast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of behavior that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals” (p. 43). This means the collective unconscious is an inheritance shared by all human beings. This diagram above helps make this clear (I hope). At the top we find consciousness: the Ego, the “I” that makes choices, and the Persona, the mask we wear for society. Beneath that lies the personal unconscious, where our complexes reside. Deeper still lies the collective unconscious, which contains archetypes. At the very center is the Self, the image of wholeness that unites the whole psyche. Complexes, then, are personal. Archetypes are collective. Complexes come from our personal histories. Archetypes come from humanity itself. Scripture captures this sense of depth beautifully: “Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls” (Psalm 42:7). Our private depths resonate with a universal depth. Click the image or follow this link to learn more about Jung and his art: https://artsofthought.com/2022/04/12/major-jungian-archetypes/ Archetypes as Forms Without Content So what exactly are archetypes? Jung writes, “The contents of the collective unconscious are made up essentially of archetypes” (p. 43). He describes them as “forms without content, representing merely the possibility of a certain type of perception and action” (p. 44). This is an abstract definition, but Jung gives us an image. “Archetypes are like the axial system of a crystal, which, although not visible to the eye, determines the crystal’s shape” (p. 44). The axis is hidden, but every crystal grows according to its pattern. Think of archetypes like cookie cutters. The dough changes, but the shape remains. The Mother can be Demeter in Greek myth, Mary in Christianity, Sarabi in The Lion King, or Hannah with Samuel in Scripture. The Father can be Zeus, Mufasa, Gandalf, or God the Father who speaks at Jesus’ baptism. The Hero can be Odysseus, Luke Skywalker, Rapunzel climbing down her tower, or David facing Goliath. The mold repeats again and again. This explains why stories feel familiar even when they are new, this is why they stick with us and move us. When Simba flees and later returns, when Luke leaves Tatooine to face Vader, when Rapunzel leaves the tower and discovers her royal calling, we recognize the journey because it's already inside us. Ecclesiastes 1:9 says it plainly: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
And we see it in modern stories. Simba is torn between two worlds: the carefree refuge of Timon and Pumbaa, and the royal calling of the Pride Lands. Luke Skywalker is torn between farm life and Jedi destiny. Rapunzel is pulled between loyalty to her false mother Gothel, who seeks to keep her trapped, and her true identity as the daughter of the king and queen (some Gnostic themes there). We live this too. We are children of our families, but also children of God. We belong to this world, but we sense we belong to another. The archetype of two mothers names this universal tension. Archetypes as Instinctual Patterns Jung takes the idea further. “The archetypes are the unconscious images of the instincts themselves. In other words, they are patterns of instinctual behavior” (p. 44). Think about that and really take it in... Instinct is translated into image through archetype. The instinct to nurture becomes the Mother. The instinct to fight becomes the Warrior. The instinct to guide becomes the Sage. Instinct lives in the body. Archetype lives in the imagination. Together they shape us. Because they are tied to instinct, archetypes carry enormous force. Jung warns, “There is no lunacy people under the domination of an archetype will not fall a prey to” (p. 48). He saw this in history. Reflecting on the rise of fascism, he wrote, “Thirty years ago anyone who had dared to predict that our psychological development was tending towards a revival of the medieval persecutions of the Jews… and that onward millions of warriors ready for death would lure instead of the Christian Cross an archaic swastika, would have been hooted at as a mystical fool” (p. 48). Yet this is what happened. An archetype possessed a nation. The same lesson appears in story. Scar in The Lion King is the Shadow. When he rules, the land withers. When Vader in Star Wars is the Shadow, the galaxy descends into tyranny. Gothel in Tangled is the Shadow. She appears as a mother but is really a thief of life, draining Rapunzel’s light to preserve her own youth. These figures grip us because they reveal what can happen in us. Scripture tells the same truth. Pharaoh’s hardened heart, Saul’s jealous rage, Judas’ betrayal. These are not only historical episodes. They're archetypal. They show what happens when instincts, unchecked, rule the soul. Archetypes are like fire. In the hearth they warm. In the forest they consume. The difference lies in whether we recognize them and contain their energy. That is where our ego, and "carrying our own crosses" comes in. The Method of Proof How do we know archetypes are real and not just interesting ideas? Jung offers a method. “This is done by examining a series of dreams, say a few hundred, for typical figures, and by observing their development in the series” (p. 53) One dream could be coincidence. But when the same image appears across many dreams, changing and unfolding like a character in a story, then we are in the realm of the archetype. Anyone who has worked pastorally or clinically knows this too. People come with recurring dreams. A house keeps appearing, or water, or a journey. The details shift, but the form remains. These are not just private symbols. They belong to humanity’s deep inheritance. I've experienced it myself. This section closes with a striking example. Jung describes a patient suffering from megalomania who declared himself both God and Christ. That might sound like delusion, but in his visions appeared the motif of the “ministering wind.”
Jung notes, “It is in the highest degree unlikely that his vision had anything to do with the rare medieval representations of the same motif” (p. 52). Yet the image arose spontaneously. For Jung, this was proof. Archetypes erupt on their own. They are not invented by the individual. “We must look for motifs which could not possibly be known to the dreamer, and yet behave functionally in his dream in such a manner as to coincide with the functioning of the archetype known from historical sources” (p. 49). For Christians, the symbolism is powerful. The Spirit comes as breath and wind. In Genesis 1 the Spirit of God hovers over the waters. In Ezekiel 37 the prophet calls on the breath to revive dry bones. In John 20 Jesus breathes on the disciples. At Pentecost the Spirit arrives as a rushing wind. Jung’s patient, even in illness, stumbled into imagery that belongs to humanity’s sacred story. Why It Matters These ten pages remind us that our lives are not just personal. They are archetypal. Our dreams and struggles connect to humanity’s larger story. When you dream of rebirth, you are in the archetype of renewal. When you feel torn between loyalties, you are in the motif of dual parentage. When you wrestle with temptation, you are facing Scar, Vader, or Gothel within. This is why myths, films, and Scripture endure. They echo what is already alive in us. The Exodus is the archetype of liberation. The Cross is the archetype of sacrifice and transformation. The Resurrection is the archetype of renewal and new life. Jung observed this in psychological terms. Scripture says it directly: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Archetypes are timeless. If we ignore them, they can possess us. If we recognize them, they can guide us. This is the task of both psychology and faith. Both invite us to face the Shadow, to honor the archetypes, and to move toward the Self at the center. For us as Christians, the Self points to the image of Christ, who Colossians 1:17 says is “before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
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This Sunday’s message is called “Found in the Search.” It comes from Luke 15:1–10, two short parables that many of us know by heart. On the surface, they are simple: a shepherd carrying home his lost sheep, a woman sweeping until she finds her missing coin. We have seen them in children’s Bibles and Sunday School lessons. They are comforting, familiar, almost like something you would expect to find on a Hallmark card. But Scripture is never just simple. The Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, able to cut through our clutter and show us what is missing and what needs to be restored. These parables are more than cozy pictures. They are mirrors. They invite us to look at our own lives and ask, “What in me has wandered? What in me has been buried?” Here is the passage we will be reflecting on, from the New Revised Standard Version: Luke 15:1–10 (NRSV) Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. “Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” In the sermon, I share how these stories are not only about people “out there,” but about us. They are about the parts of ourselves that wander or get buried, and about the God who refuses to shrug and settle for ninety-nine when one is missing. I also talk about what it means to search in our own lives: to notice what is missing, to light a lamp, to sweep patiently, and to rejoice when God restores what has been lost. You can watch the full sermon here below ⬇️ and on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@shawngaran/video/7550173686435728670 Wherever you are in your journey, whether weary, wandering, or feeling found, may you be encouraged. God is already searching, already sweeping, and already rejoicing over you. Blessings, Rev. Shawn Today I read pages 21 through 31 of Jung’s Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, and here is what I got out of it. Edward Edinger once called Jung an epochal man, someone whose thought reshaped the way we understand ourselves. I think he is right. There are days when I simply read books to move through them, but when I read Jung it feels different. His words pull me in. I feel as if I am in conversation with him across time, as if he is helping me put words to my own inner experience.
Weakness as the Beginning of Wisdom Jung begins this section by insisting that transformation does not start in strength but in weakness. He says, “In the end one has to admit that there are problems which one simply cannot solve on one’s own resources.” He calls that kind of admission honesty, truthfulness, and accord with reality. Strong people do not like to be reminded of their helplessness, and I count myself among them. Yet Jung insists that when we stop pretending to be strong, something deep within us begins to stir. He explains that once we accept our limits, “a compensatory reaction from the collective unconscious” takes place. Dreams, intuitions, or insights may rise to the surface. “If you have an attitude of this kind,” Jung says, “then the helpful powers slumbering in the deeper strata of man’s nature can come awake and intervene.” That line caught me. Helpful powers slumbering in the deeper strata. Jung is describing the way the soul itself responds when we stop relying only on our own strength. He even compares this attitude to prayer, because prayer requires the same surrender. Prayer is not always about being eloquent or certain. At its deepest, it is about openness, about holding empty hands before God and admitting we need help. I know this in my own life, though perhaps in a different way. It is as though my soul will not let me settle on who God is or on what it means to be a spiritual person. I cannot seem to accept easy answers or tidy categories. My calling as a theologian keeps me moving, keeps me searching. It drives me to use whatever skills and gifts I have been given to keep pressing toward a clearer image of God and a more meaningful approach for people. In many ways, this calling is both blessing and curse. It blesses me with energy and passion, but it also makes me restless. I can never quite say, “That’s enough, I’ve figured it out.” Something in me refuses to stop short. I wake up each day knowing there is more to discover, more to wrestle with, more to unfold. At times, this feels like a heavy burden, because it would be easier to settle, to plant myself in certainty and leave it at that. But at other times, I recognize it as grace. This restlessness keeps me alive to God. It keeps me reaching deeper into mystery, longing for more light, more truth, more life. Jung helps me see that this restlessness is not wasted energy. It is the very movement of the soul. He shows me that what feels like agitation is in fact the unconscious stirring, refusing to let me remain content with half-truths. It is the soul itself pushing me into deeper waters, where mystery dwells, and where new meaning can emerge. Jesus once said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3). I hear those words differently through Jung. Poverty of spirit is not only about desperation. It is also about refusing to pretend you have arrived. It is an openness that keeps you seeking. To be poor in spirit is to stay restless enough to know there is always more of God to find. The Tight Passage of the Shadow From there, Jung turns to the shadow. He describes it as “a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well.” The shadow is everything about ourselves we would rather not face. It is our envy, anger, cowardice, and shame. It is easier to see these qualities in other people than to admit them in ourselves. Yet Jung insists there is no way forward without this encounter. “One must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is.” The shadow is what he calls the apprentice piece of the soul. Without first facing the shadow, we cannot build anything greater. This sounds a lot like Jesus’ words: “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye” (Matthew 7:5). The log is our shadow. Only when we stop projecting it outward and face it within ourselves do we begin to see clearly. Jung admits this work is constricting, painful, and unavoidable. But he also says that beyond the narrow door is “a boundless expanse where there is no above and no below, no mine and no thine, no good and no bad.” It is paradoxical, but the very act of facing what we most fear in ourselves opens us into a larger freedom. The Anima and the Spirit of Life After the shadow comes another figure: the anima. The anima is the feminine image in a man’s psyche, while the animus is her counterpart in a woman. She is not merely a fantasy. She is archetypal, a presence that shapes the soul. Jung says, “Everything the anima touches becomes numinous, unconditional, dangerous, taboo, magical.” At first, she unsettles everything. Jung writes, “The first encounter with her usually leads one to infer anything rather than wisdom.” She can appear as muse, temptress, or witch. She inspires and terrifies at once. “She is the serpent in the paradise of the harmless man with good resolutions,” he observes. What gripped me most in this section was the way Jung describes the anima as the very spirit of life, a force that does not bow to our categories of good and evil. She is primal, disruptive, and yet deeply instructive. In my margins I wrote, “So if I ask, ‘Why, O life, have you been so hard on me?’” Perhaps the answer is that life itself is not cruel but rather a teacher, and the anima is the one pressing the lesson. Jung makes clear that she is both destructive and creative, both dangerous and essential. To resist her is to resist growth. To submit to her is to discover that even suffering and failure can become teachers. He writes, “The most terrifyingly chaotic things reveal a deeper meaning.” In her presence, even hardship becomes charged with numinous significance. She reminds us that life is not tame, but it is purposeful. This vision of the anima resonates with Scripture. Ecclesiastes speaks of life’s unpredictability, reminding us that there is “a time to be born, and a time to die… a time to weep, and a time to laugh” (Ecclesiastes 3:2,4). Life itself teaches us that joy and sorrow, gain and loss, all belong to the rhythm of God’s creation. And Hebrews 12 frames even hardship as instruction: “God is treating you as his children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline?” (Hebrews 12:7). Discipline, though painful, yields “the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (v. 11). The anima, in Jung’s language, is this same spirit of life that knows no easy categories of good or evil but insists on forming us through experience. She teaches us to see suffering not as pointless but as a crucible. She presses us to discover wisdom where we thought there was only pain. And if we allow her, she shows us that even in chaos, God is at work, shaping us into something deeper and truer. Reflection: Trusting the Chaos As I step back from these pages, I hear both challenge and comfort. The challenge is that there are no shortcuts. We each must pass through the shadow, admitting the parts of ourselves we would rather ignore. We each must endure the chaos stirred up by the anima, with all its emotional storms and disruptions. There is no bypassing this work. But the comfort is that neither shadow nor anima is meant to destroy us. The shadow humbles us into honesty. The anima awakens us to hidden wisdom. What feels unbearable may carry meaning. What feels senseless may be the very ground out of which a new cosmos arises. The path of individuation has often left me without anything to hold onto. There have been times when all I could do was reach further into the depths, let go of what I could not explain, and trust that the soul itself would provide an answer. That trust is not always easy, but it is what sustains the journey. It is what keeps me moving when certainty falls away. Genesis tells us that God spoke into the formless chaos of the deep and creation began. Jung reminds us that the soul works the same way. Out of weakness comes strength. Out of chaos comes meaning. Out of restlessness comes the movement toward God. Journaling and Meditation Prompts If you want to sit with these ideas for yourself, here are some prompts to guide your reflection:
These kinds of reflections help us not only understand Jung’s words but also see how they play out in the reality of our own lives. I have only just begun reading Jung’s Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. At the time of writing, I am on page ten. Already, I find myself scribbling in the margins, circling words, and rambling thoughts that feel too alive to keep to myself. This blog is my way of sharing those thoughts, of putting into words what I often chase down in the quiet of my study. My hope is that as I read daily, I can also reflect daily, creating a kind of journal that others might walk alongside. In some ways, I am treating this like lectio divina. Traditionally, lectio is a slow, prayerful way of reading scripture: lingering with the words, letting them speak, and asking how they might be lived out in daily life. I am approaching Jung in the same way. His books are not easy reading, but they feel like food for the soul. Jung himself once received a letter from a reader who told him, “Herr Professor, your books are not words, they are food.” That is exactly how scripture is often described—bread for the journey, manna in the wilderness. I have come to believe that if a text, a film, a poem, or even a dream begins speaking to you, then you should listen. That is how the soul speaks. That is how the numinous breaks into ordinary life. Jung once said that “a truly religious experience has the power to heal the soul.” I know this from experience. And so here I am, ten pages in, circling two words: soul and archetype. The Soul: What is it, particularly as Jung sees it and how we might understand it as modern people? 🤔 The word soul is old. In Old English it was sawol, from the Proto-Germanic saiwalō, connected to the animating breath of life. To have soul meant to be alive, to be more than flesh and bone. Jung writes, “Being that has soul is living being. Soul is the living thing in man, that which lives of itself and causes life” (CW 9i, §56). For him, the soul is not a ghostly essence that drifts away at death. It is the living center of our inner life. It mediates between the ego’s consciousness and the depths of the unconscious. This is much the same as scripture. Jesus asked, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul (psyche)?” (Mark 8:36). Paul contrasts the psychikos person (soul-centered) with the pneumatikos person (spirit-filled) in 1 Corinthians 15:44. Scripture and Jung are both talking about the same thing—the core of our life, the center where meaning and transformation happen. Think of soul in the moments that move you most deeply: the awe before a night sky, the grief that humbles you, the joy that surprises you. These are not just emotions. They are the stirrings of the soul. This is why Jung insists myths are not primitive science. “All the mythologized processes of nature… are symbolic expressions of the inner, unconscious drama of the psyche” (CW 9i, §7). When ancient people told of the sun as a god reborn each morning, they were projecting the drama of the soul onto the cosmos. Fairy tales work the same way. They may sound simple, but they are some of the purest expressions of what stirs in the human heart. And Rumi wrote, “Don’t get lost in your pain. Know that one day your pain will become your cure.” That is soul-language: a reminder that even suffering can become food for transformation. The Archetype If the soul is the living subject, archetypes are the forms that shape its experience. The word archetype comes from arche (origin, ruling principle, beginning) and typos (pattern, stamp, model). An archetype is a first pattern, a primordial form. Jung says the collective unconscious is “not individual but universal… it is identical in all individuals” (CW 9i, §3). It contains “primordial types… universal images that have existed since the remotest times” (CW 9i, §5). Archetypes are not our inventions. They are discovered within us. Think of the archetype of the hero. We meet him in Moses leading Israel, in Hercules, in Luke Skywalker. Or the archetype of the mother. She appears as Mary, as Isis, as the fairy-tale queen, or as the shadow figure of the stepmother. Each is a different face of the same underlying pattern. Scripture also uses this language. John begins his Gospel, “In the beginning (en arche) was the Word” (John 1:1). Paul calls Christ “the beginning (arche), the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:18). These are archetypal statements. They describe Christ as the original pattern in whom all things hold together. And Paul warns us in Ephesians 6:12 that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers (arche), against the authorities (exousia), against the powers (dynamis) of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” These powers can be understood as archetypal forces—patterns of fear, domination, or shadow that take hold of us if left unconscious. Jung would say they are archetypes in shadow form, demanding to be faced and transformed. Soul Meeting Archetype ❤️ The soul is our lived inner life. Archetypes are the patterns that shape that life. Jung observed that “primitive man has an irresistible urge to assimilate all outer sense experiences to inner, psychic events” (CW 9i, §7). We do the same. We speak of storms of emotion, a fire in the heart, or a light dawning on the mind. We cannot help but project our inner world onto the outer one. Religion grows out of this meeting point. It is not only about creeds or doctrines. It is the psyche reaching for God through image and symbol. Jung wrote, “All esoteric teachings seek to apprehend the unseen happenings in the psyche” (CW 9i, §10). Joseph Campbell put it memorably: “Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation” (The Power of Myth, p. 38). And the psalmist said, “Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts” (Psalm 42:7). Living Examples: Rumi and Thomas 👥 For me, these ideas are not abstract. I have been drawn for more than twenty years to the story of Rumi and Shams. Rumi, the poet, is like the ego: seeking, longing, trying to make sense of life. Shams, his companion and disruptor, is like the Self: the numinous figure who shatters Rumi’s old life so that his soul can awaken. Their love and loss echo the archetypal drama of ego meeting Self. Rumi once wrote, “What I had thought of as God I met today in a human being.” That is the archetype breaking through. I see the same truth in the Gospel of Thomas. Thomas Didymus means “the Twin.” In John’s Gospel, he is the doubter, the one who must see and touch. In the Gospel of Thomas, his very name points to something deeper: he is the archetypal twin of Christ, the image of the Self within us. Jesus’ sayings in Thomas repeatedly point inward: “The kingdom is inside of you and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known” (Thomas, Saying 3). Thomas the Twin is not just another disciple. He is the mirror of the Christ within us, the archetypal double who reminds us that our soul must meet its other…the Self…to awaken fully. Why This Matters 💡 Only ten pages in, I can already see that my life is not just mine. Every dream, every symbol, every margin note is personal, but also collective. The soul is intimate, but it is vast. Archetypes ensure that my story is always part of the greater human story. Jung often used the word “soul” for this very reason. It is the part of us that experiences meaning, that dreams and suffers, that reaches for God. He was updating the vernacular of scripture—giving us new language for ancient truths. Where the Bible speaks of soul, spirit, and powers, Jung speaks of psyche, Self, and archetypes. Both point to the same inner realities, just in different tongues. And Rumi whispers again: “There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.” That voice is the soul, speaking in the language of archetypes. A Reflection for the Week 📝 This week, try reading your life as if it were scripture. Practice lectio divina with a dream, a story, or even a movie that has stayed with you. Write down one image that lingers. Ask: What does this say about my soul? How does it connect to the archetypal story of humanity? Where might it whisper of God? Fairy tales remind us that even simple stories carry the depth of the collective. Psychology teaches us that the unconscious is shared by all. Myth shows us that cosmic energy flows through our imagination. Scripture reminds us that our true struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the powers and patterns that shape us from within. And Jung reminds us that “to have soul is the whole venture of life” (CW 9i, §56). And here I am, still only on page ten, realizing that my scribbled notes are not just ramblings. They are the soul at work. They are food for the journey. You can purchase the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Archetypes-Collective-Unconscious-Collected-Works/dp/0691018332 Learn more about the Collective Unconscious & the Archetypes here: |
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