Spiritual Archetypes vs. Spiritual People

Lately I’ve had a series of reminders why I need both spiritual archetypes and spiritual people in my spiritual journey.

This is something new for me because I didn’t always know how to discern an archetype from a person. 

Of course I knew that they were not the same, but it took a painful sequence of eye-opening personal experiences (as most of our hard-won wisdom does) to become more skillful in how I engage with an archetype versus a person, and to know which would be more helpful or harmful to me in any given moment.

I am also more skillful now in noting when someone else is interacting or projecting an archetype onto a human being or vice versa.

It has helped that as a parent of a 7 and 3 year-old I have gotten to read an endless supply of fairy tales and Disney movies nearly every day because if you are at all unclear about what is an archetype, just open up any number of children’s books or sit down and watch 20 minutes of an animated movie, and the archetypes of Jung, Campbell and Estes will jump right out at you.

Here is an image I found that artistically names a few of the major archetypes:

 I was recently re-watching the 2006 movie version of E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, and I was struck by the flawless representation of the mother archetype in the character of the spider, Charlotte, played by actress Julia Roberts.  It was perfect.

But here's the catch.

An archetype is one, maybe two, dimensional. It is consistent and predictable—which is of course part of the appeal—but it is not, and I believe not meant to be, human.

I have to say, I am very grateful to have fine-tuned this skill because in these transitioning political times it has allowed me to interact with people up close and at a distance (including those government folks in Washington D.C.) with more equanimity internally- which translates into greater openness and generosity externally during those moments of human fragility, brokenness and imperfect contradictions.

Political figures aside, I think individuals who are spiritual leaders, writers, speakers, and figure-heads are also particularly vulnerable to being cast as an archetype (e.g. hero, villain, mother, father, sage, caretaker, what have you), as opposed to a person, and I believe this is a dangerous predicament.

In psychotherapy, my day job, it’s similar to when a patient puts their therapist way up on a pedestal due to their feelings of gratitude or admiration for the credible counsel they feel they have received. 

But then, when the therapist forgets the name of the patient’s dog or schedules another patient at the same appointment time, there is only one direction that the therapist—who had at one time been way up in the clouds—can go: down, down, crashing down.

Undeniably I think it’s good practice to hold people accountable for their actions. 

But when does that decision to hold someone accountable stop you from seeing the forest for the trees.

 

For instance, I remember the first time I heard that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. plagiarized a part of his doctoral dissertation at Boston University.  (See article in The New York Times called “Plagiarism Seen by Scholars In King's Ph.D. Dissertation” from 11/10/90).  I recall asking myself the following questions:

1.)Does this change the way I feel about him?

2.)Will this information change the way others feel about him?

3.)Does this make his public persona as a model for justice, equality and fairness obsolete?

4.)If the public sees Dr. King as more human and less archetype will it help his universal and eternal message, or hurt it?

 

Or, in 2007 when Mother Teresa’s journals were published publically, and the world began to read about her extensive periods of doubt that she had kept very private during her many years of public life as an exemplar of faith. (See article in the New York Times called “A Saint’s Dark Night” from 8/29/07).

What is one to do with these apparent contradictions? 

Or are they contradictions at all?

I once heard this quote by a 20^th Century Jewish-American writer and literary critic named Alfred Kazin that I found very useful:

 

Man’s life is full of contradiction and he must be; we see through a glass darkly- we want more than we can have; we see more than we can understand. But a contradiction that is faced leads to true knowledge.

For me, the latter quotation is a Middle Path in this balancing act of accountability versus blind faith of wise people (or contempt toward the villains) who by all biological authority, are still oh-so-human.

Once I’ve clarified that individuals like Dr. King, Mother Teresa and other great spiritual figures were people (not one-dimensional archetypes), then I can view their lives as a series of unfolding moments (and mistakes), that they had a choice to grow from and awaken or remain stagnant.

On a much smaller scale, last year I read a comments section on an NPR radio show website regarding an interview with author Elizabeth Gilbert about her newest book Big Magic. 

As you recall, this is the same author of the very famous 2006 book Eat, Pray, Love.

 

On the website, among many other reflections of a different opinion, one person wrote:

I was disappointed to see that On Being interviewed Elizabeth Gilbert. Her behavior struck me as extremely narcissistic when I was only a couple chapters in to Eat Pray Love, and Gilbert's disturbing article about being a serial cheater only confirmed that impression: She has repeatedly ‘chosen curiosity over fear’  for her own benefit at the expense of others, which goes against the whole spirit of On Being.

The article this listener was referring too was also in The New York Times, and it was called “Confessions of a Seduction Addict” (6/24/15).

The interesting thing is, Ms. Gilbert’s article in The Times ended with this sentence:

I walked away alone but calm. And that’s when I realized that the better part of my life had already begun.

It would seem, after a period of engaging in a conditioned habit, Ms. Gilbert then came to a cross- roads where she chose a different path.

Haven’t we all done that at some point?

I think as long as we hold Ms. Gilbert, or any other person in our private or public lives, as a person, not an archetype (e.g. victim or villain, sage or caretaker), then we may actually find narratives about someone’s rocky awakening to be not only compelling, but also hopeful.

Because if we expect ourselves or others to be perfect in this spiritual journey, then we might as well give up right now; that is just not realistic. 

But, if we can let humans be humans (including our U.S. President-Elect) with an expectation of accountability and growing wisdom over time, then perhaps our need for archetypes (both heroes and villains) can be left to the likes of those mythical stories and G-rated Disney movies.