Those familiar with Caroline Myss know that in her work with personal archetypes, she has what she terms the four survival archetypes. These are core to each and every individual and they form the foundation of a person and how that person relates to and interacts with the world. The remaining archetypes in a person's chart are individual to them, but the 4 survival ones are commonly held.
In her work, she calls these the Child, the Prostitute, the Victim & the Saboteur.
I have been to the first session of her CMED Sacred Contracts series, but didn't go to the rest. In this first session, we worked a lot with establishing contact with these 4 foundational aspects of the Self. Since that time, I've done a lot more intensive work with them. The one that I was able to initially really get into was the Saboteur, and she told me that she was the guardian of my personal power, which includes aspects such as integrity, self-regard, and honor.
That statement was rather significant, because it radically shifted my perspective on these 4 and I began looking beyond the titles into what aspects of the deepest Self did each of these guard?
The Victim ultimately showed itself as the Guardian of Boundaries while the Prostitute revealed she was the Guardian of Values. The one that I had the most difficult time working with was the Child. What was the role of the Child?
Finally, it hit me: Guardian of Faith.
When a child is born into this world, the environment they find themselves in becomes The Way The World Works. They have to negotiate with this environment to get their needs met. This then becomes the foundation for the way that individual sees and interacts with the world. Since that way has proven effective to get survival needs met, it becomes the norm, the known, the expected. It forms the Story of The Way The World Works, the set of expectations that the growing adult carries with them into the world, into new relationships, into their own family and community.
The child is the first set of eyes with which the world is viewed. Do they learn that the world is inherently good? Or bad? Are people kind, or selfish? Does some external force control their life, or are they expected to internally drive themselves? All of these perspectives come together to form a personal Story, and the parts of that Story which are most relied on become set in stone, they become The Way The World Works.
This is faith - the belief in our own idea of The Way the World Works. As my own Child self has illustrated to me, faith has nothing to do with a divine being, but simply belief in the Story which I tell myself, a Story which helps me survive with reasonable certainty and confidence, a Story which guides my actions, my perceptions, my ideas of what is and is not possible, what I am and not worthy of. My Story sets my expectations, my prejudices, my tolerance. It is everything. The very core of my sense of Self, be that sense correct or not.
When that Story is believed in and acted from as if it's 100% true, that's faith. The more the Story is believed, even in the face of seemingly opposing evidence, the stronger the faith. When belief in the Story starts to crack, faith falters, and the foundations of our very being and the life we've built start to shake. When the Story is no longer believed, faith has been shattered, and there is no foundation. A new Story, a new faith must be found, and through them new foundations laid. Here are a few short examples of 'crisis of faith' moments in people's lives that I've known personally. Some are religious, others are not.
In one case, a friend had faith that a divine being would mete out punishments and rewards based on merit, yet her own infant son just died. Her Story was challenged in such a fundamental, powerful, undeniable way that it felt like the very foundation of her life had just been kicked away. It had. She lost faith in everything. She lost her Story. Her Child self is now raging and floundering, trying to refigure out How The World Works, trying to find Faith in something, to re-establish the foundation. Without it, her life has stalled and she is unable to navigate her way.
In another story, a friend's view of himself and what he was truly capable of was wiped away in a moment, leaving him shattered. Everything he thought about himself was wrong. His Story was irrevocably damaged, and it took him a long time to reformulate his relationship to the world and himself. A new Story was born, and he is again moving through life with confidence.
Another friend faced a similar situation, where she swore up and down she wasn't capable of a baser human emotion. Her Story was that she was too good, too kind to be so mean. When that Story was proven false, she broke in half and has yet to face the consequences of that loss of Faith. Limping along on this cobbled together Story, carried more by denial than true Faith, she now faces medical crisis after crisis and chronic depression.
In a more positive example, another friend honestly thought that humanity was abusive and selfish, the world a dark and scary place. Over time, her Story is being modified, and she's had to come to terms with that by re-discovering her Story and by extension her Faith in the World and her own ability to navigate.
When I lost everything and moved across the continent, I was terrified but I had faith that I would be okay. I knew that I could face the unknown, and had the skills needed to negotiate a radically new environment with no support. That was my Story, and I stuck to it.
I hear religious people talk about faith, and I think "how limiting". Faith is MUCH larger than just a belief in a divine being, and a crisis of Faith is MUUUUUCH larger than questioning whether or not there's such a one. I hear people proclaim proudly that they have no faith at all, and I smile because I know they think faith refers to only religion. Heck, even asking someone "what faith are you?" is a euphamism for "what religion/denomination do you subscribe to?" When I encounter the 'faithless' ones, I think: 'Of course you have faith; you see the world as XYZ and know that it is true because your experience tells you so. You have faith in that.' When someone says "have faith", that means simply "believe in your story, and act with full confidence that it is true". Believe ... in yourself.
How has this realization of the role of the Child helped me? How does viewing the Child as the Guardian of Faith make it a useful tool for me?
For one, it helped me to immediately see just how very important this archetype is. Afterall, how I view the world is the pivot point around which every decision, emotion and thought revolves. But actually seeing this, feeling the truth of it, gave me a sort of sifting tool so that I could then turn to aspects of my Story that I knew I wanted to change. For example, the entire point of this blog is my working through my own baggage with the concept of the feminine. But that's a known one. Let me take through the process that I underwent with another aspect which needed recognizing.
One of the working pieces that Robert Ohotto introduced into my vocubulary, and by extension toolbelt, is the idea of "psychic DNA". These are inhereted, familial patterns which I have taken on and am acting out subconsciously. Hearing him talk about this, I was then able to go to my Child and say "what Story have we inhereted that I'm not recognizing the full impact of?"
My Child began to pour out this story which spans 3 generations that I know of, on both sides of my family. As you read this, be sure that it is simply a statement of fact, like reading a list of ingredients. There is no emotion here any more. Recognizing through the lens of the Child defused it, so it is now just ingredients in the 'inhereted soup'.
Here's the pieces of the Story: My maternal great-grandmother was a devout (my grandmother used the word 'rabid') Church of God preacher. When my grandmother, not Church of God, married my grandfather, they did so in a different church. My great-grandmother, to her dying day when I was 5, insisted that her son was not married in the eyes of God and therefore his children (my mother and uncle) were therefore bastards. Needless to say, this caused a heck of a lot of tension in the family, to put it mildly. Switching to the paternal side, I see the same sort of behavior. My dad's grandmother was a devout Catholic, though my dad describes her as a snake who went to confession regularly to get her "incremental forgiveness" because "it gave her permission to be a complete bitch without worry". My dad's words there. When my dad and mom married, they again did so in a different church. His grandmother, the ruling matriarch of the entire clan, forbade even a single family member from attending. Only immediate family came, and since then his entire extended family disowned him. Even now, almost an entire generation later, I can't get any of his family members to respond to my queries for genealogy.
Considering the vast amount of pain and hurt caused by the abuse of religion (understand that NOW I am able to see the difference between the religion itself and the actions of some of its adherents) which I have inhereted, I had to take a step back. I look at my extreme distrust of strongly religious people and now it makes sense. The Child's Story has been revealed, because I was taught as a youngster that strongly religious people use their beliefs to hurt others. I have faith in that, it's my Story, it's the Way the World Works.
Wow. That's a heck of a thing to learn about myself. It's also very deeply ingrained, and knowing it doesn't automatically make the story change. I have to work to change it, just as I'm using this blog to change my Story about the feminine for myself. Now that I know the foundation behind this emotional reaction I have, I can begin to deal with it more rationally, more effectively. I think that's a pretty darn good use of the Child archetype.
What are some of the other ways that my view of the Child as the Guardian of Faith has been useful for me? Well, I have a heck of a lot more patience with people in the midst of a crisis of faith than I had before. I now see just how big it really is. It can make or break an entire life. That's something to be respected and honored.
Another aspect which has been helpful is in relating to other people. I recognize now that everyone's Story is unique, even if they are in the same family/religion/country/school. Everyone's perspective is different, and the oddities that they have picked up in a lifetime and incorporated into their workable view of the world, which is then used to navigate through the troubles and triumphs of a lifetime, is entirely individual. Seeing things from this perspective has really enabled to me to look at other people's actions and see a growing glimpse at their motivations, rather than just see my own projections of what I think are their motivations.
I've had my faith, my Story shattered before. I've had my Dark Night of the Soul, my "everything is meaningless" foundation leveling moment. Since the original one, there have been others. It's an on-going process necessitated by living and experiencing new things. Know this -- it's easier to rebuild after that. As Doctor Manhattan in "The Watchman" said: "Reassembling myself was the first trick I learned." If you can put yourself back together after that first time, it gets easier and easier to do. The Child archetype, the Guardian of Faith, is the engine which powers everything else. It's the first foot into this world, the first step into living this life. It is the foundation from which everything else springs. Make it your ally.
I've only shared this idea with one other person before this post, and she has found it extremely helpful. She uses it now her own blog, in her own Worldview. I figure that if it helped her, maybe it will help you.
Lioness (in training)
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