More About AwakenArts

“It baffles many people at first to hear that the imagination is an organ of coherent communication, that it employs a highly refined, complex language of symbols to express the contents of the unconscious.” 

Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work

 

Awaken Arts. -- Mission 

 

--To contribute to the body of transformational art and literature

--To illustrate the Process of Individuation

--To explore the symbolic and archetypal path to wholeness

--To demystify the territory of the personal and “collective unconscious”

 

A Path to Explore

 

Awaken Arts offers a self-paced guide through the process of personal and collective awakening, exploring archetypal and symbolic images, and sharing the happenstance, or phenomenon of the awakening process.  The path is a process, what Jung described as The Process of Individuation, an ordinary occurrence manifesting in extraordinary ways.  The images on this site are wholly authentic, having occurred without conscious effort, and having both “image and affect” contained within their often circus-like shapes as symbols, two criteria Jung believed were needed to identify and validate archetypes.

 

“Dreaming and imagination have one special quality in common:  their power to convert the invisible forms of the unconscious into images that are perceptible to the conscious mind.” 

Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

 

“Archetypes can only express themselves through symbols, since the archetypes are deeply buried in the collective unconscious, unknown and unknowable to the individual.  Nevertheless, the archetypes are constantly influencing and directing the conscious behavior of the person.”

A Primer of Jungian Psychology, Calvin S. Hall and Vernon J. Nordby 

 

A Journey to Freedom

 

“When we live too much through our unconscious patterns, we create unconscious lives.”  

Laura Day

The unconscious plays havoc when it is unobserved for its own instinctual and primordial energies.  Imagine that, in order to say a thing, archetypal images point to the exact opposite with pointers to both sides.  They do it through images, a two-way mirror where both sides of all things can be found.  One-sidedness is one lesson that repeats throughout the process.  “The long and winding road,” has meaning.  The study of archetypes isn’t a new or exclusive study at all.  The mind accommodates its own heroes and adversaries, but how, why, and to what end?  The archetypal or symbolic journey leads to understanding.

 

Introduction to Archetypes

 

Importantly, the mind’s energies are polar energies, as with all visible or invisible energies. Archetypes are emissaries from the unconscious, dream and fantasy images in archetypal scenarios appearing throughout our lives like a complete Shakespearean library. Archetypes are discovered through dreams, art, music, theatre, or even people.  Dream and fantasy images, when recognized for what they are (often they are not), come in service of enlighenment.  Their content is always illusively grasped since archetypes are dualistic and polar by nature. 

 

It comes down to a metaphorical language that the unconscious uses to traffic information to make it conscious.  Any duality that is perceived as belonging to the image is a centering place for the integration process to work.  Anyone who experiences archetypes, that’s everyone with a sense of self-awareness, can imagine a certain identity, a part of them, a personality.  Jung’s work was superior in this area.  We unconsciously conform to prototypical roles and character types, so there are many individual adventures through the unexplored psyche.  Be careful to establish a certain bond with this imagistic character side that appears around you and through you.  There is a cast of characters and energies that are a part of the world’s energetic all, and a part of your life as well.  Awaken Arts promotes healing by revealing the nature of archetypal energies and patterns, and provides a path to awareness, a path to freedom from an unconscious life.  As the path unfolds, symbols and archetypes reveal how dream & fantasy images illuminate personal and collective life experiences.

 

Eckhart Tolle, one of the most renowned Spiritual Teaches of our time, shares that, “Awareness is the greatest agent for change.”  Symbols and archetypes are in simple terms, language leading to awareness.  They are important agents for change and paths to presence when presence is defined as awareness, alertness, and mindfulness.  It is commonly understood that awakening processes are connected to Higher Intelligence, God and Spirt.  A successful effort to create harmony between conscious and unconscious energies ends, to a large degree, the battles of “a psyche at war with itself” (Jung, 1990, pg. 402).  The personality or “the Self” takes shape in Oz-like fashion to determine a center that is not overidentified with ego and physical self.  Freedom is to be no longer at the mercy of the fragmented self, recognizing that the process is a form of reconciliation.  The path leads through natural opposites, for instance, good and evil, yin and yang.  The psyche becomes balanced and centered, free from the ego’s stronghold over unconscious forces which actually drive individual and collective processes.  Coming to terms with this manifold view of ourselves through a process of integration, essentially the Jungian modality, sets the course to wholeness and freedom.  

 

We travel in the direction of our thoughts, and our lives ae shaped by the way we think, acting much like an internal compass.  Venturing into our individual and collective unconscious, we discover a well-traveled path, the same path documented in many ways.  Clearly, it is important that we become aware of such a vital part of us, the illusive energies that affect our lives without our knowing.  Awaken Arts is able to retrace the steps of such a path, making use of footprints (images) left along the way.  As a genuine experience of archetypes and archetypal energies, Awaken Arts is able to reveal energies that exist within all of us.  We can be limited or empowered them.  There is a path to freedom in knowledge we have and thchoices we make.  

 

Discovering Archetypes Through Dreams and Dream Images

 

As Jung recorded the dreams of his patients, he discovered that the dreams were not isolated occurrences, but that the dreams streamed together in a non-linear way to form a meaningful whole; he referred to the dreams as a “dream series.” Jung discovered a universal process behind the dreams.  Sigmund Freud referred to dreams as “the ‘royal road’ to the unconscious.”  Freud created a scientific basis for the study of dreams and the effects of the unconscious on the conscious psyche.  Freud had a relatively narrow definition of the unconscious, believing the unconscious to be an extension of the personal psyche.  Jung, like Freud, assisted in the healing process of his patients by amplifying dream images through associations.  He furthered the role of dreams and dream content by expanding the definition of the unconscious to include a spiritual and a pre-existing nature of the psyche that he termed the “collective unconscious.” 

 

A successful effort to create harmony between conscious and unconscious and to end the battles of “a psyche at war with itself” (Jung, 1990, pg. 402) leads to the healing transformation associated with the process of individuation.  The personality or “the Self takes shape, no longer fragmented but whole, a reconciliation of natural opposites, good and evil, yin and yang.  The psyche becomes balanced and centered, never totally free from life’s demands, but free from the ego’s stronghold over unconscious forces that, nonetheless, affect individual psychic processes.  

 

 

Discovering Archetypes through Myths and Stories

 

Our cultural myths and stories are known for their archetypal characters and situations.  And they provide an eye-opening view of the process that awakens.  Alice in the well-known story of “Alice in Wonderland” followed a rabbit into a rabbit hole, which symbolizes a journey into the unconscious.  Many such myths and stories are significant in universal and archetypal ways.  Another common example is “The Wizard of Oz” where Dorothy is whisked away in a whirlwind, a strongly archetypal scenario.  It wasn’t a conscious effort on Dorothy’s part to be spun away to the unconscious realm of Oz.  The story is one of great symbolic interest as it illustrates the journey, and the path, so well.  It is as if we have all lost our way through histories and personal stories at some point, as though parts of our conscious experience have been lost, needing recovery.  It is as Rip Van Winkle or Snow White asleep, waiting to be awakened.  It is as though we are meant to experience the journey. 

 

The most common and most recognizable way that unconscious content materializes or manifests into awareness is through dreams and dream symbolism.  Dreams that are connected to universal images and themes, and dreams that create an experience beyond the limits of the forgotten or repressed personal conscious, reveal a connection to the “collective unconscious.” It is as though the dreamer has gone away and returned with stories from another place, a place unknown to him, and a place he describes universally, through a language of images. It is as though such places, persons, and events actually do exist – as they have exited through time eternal.