Reflections: Our Cosmic Sacred Contract

Years ago, I introduced a body of work entitled, Sacred Contracts, in which I shared my perspective that each of our life paths is governed by patterns of power (aka archetypes), that constantly influence the experiences of our interior world. Everyone has a Child archetype, for example, and our inner Child expresses itself throughout our adult life. Our playfulness or our need for adult approval, or the sensation of intimidation that can overcome someone in a room full of adults, are intimately connected to our Child archetype patterns.

The influence of our archetypal patterns flows into our thoughts, emotions, dreams, ambitions, and intellectual ideas with every breath we take. Like a lens on a camera, each archetypal pattern has a way of forming a picture of what we see and why we interpret what we see as we do. Two people never see the same thing the same way, as each person is looking at the same thing through their archetypal pattern that is connected to a configuration of myths and beliefs that come from each person’s life journey. For example, I have a dominant Teacher archetype. Though I never wanted to be a teacher – ever – instructing, passing on knowledge, learning, and a love of sharing fascinating ideas came naturally to me. I have so many memories of wanting to learn everything I could about every subject that fascinated me, so I could report on that to others. I was always baffled as a young person – and today as a teacher and adult in the world – how people could not be interested in knowing the history of another country, or an area, or a different religion – or even the history of how an idea became so influential in the world. What makes the ideology of fascism, for instance, draw so many people to it like a magnet? One would think that after the horror of World War II under the Nazi regime that Fascism would be destroyed forever like the bubonic plague. Yet, amazingly, that pattern of power is once again animated and the many people who share archetypal patterns that make them susceptible to Fascist ideas of racial superiority are connecting to it and, consequently, to all those on the archetypal “inner net” who share in that pattern. The law of attraction is always in operation in our lives – make no mistake about that.

Likewise, we are now experiencing the emergence of new archetypes – or archetypes that are evolving to reflect the times in which we live, reflecting and inspiring positive forces of the soul in people everywhere. The Environmentalist, for example, is one such archetype, as is the Advocate. The Healer, one of the great celestial archetypes to be sure, has become a leading archetypal presence in our world yet again, forging new pathways of understanding health within an ever-expanding body/mind/spirit template.

It is life-changing to recognize a personal archetypal pattern. Once you connect with how a pattern functions within you, you start to identify the countless ways it influences your thinking, your emotions, how you see the world around you, how and why you are attracted to the people in your life, why you have the inner drives and appetites you do, why you are attracted to images of heroes or warriors or fashion models or wizards (among so many other caricatures), and why you believe what you do about virtually everything. Every single aspect of yourself is threaded in some way to one or more of your archetypal patterns.

In truth, our lives – and human evolution itself – is governed by the cosmic community of archetypes. Our personal lives are shaped by energetic or psychic content of our archetypes. And in turn, we, as members of the human community, co-create the events of our societies, reflecting the collective power and influence of the archetypal patterns that we share. Events do not just happen. We are participants in all acts of creation and all acts of creation are involved with archetypal influences.

Therefore, all that happens outside of us is also happening in some way because of us. Our personal archetypes are aligned or connected to the on-going dynamic of co-creation. As the mystics and spiritual teachers of all great traditions have long taught core wisdom that emphasizes the unity of all life: All life breathes together; What is in One, is in the Whole and As Above, So Below. We cannot separate ourselves from the vast network of life, or from each other, or from the vibrant, intimate fabric of creation comprised of the non-stop energy of all living beings.

In this workshop, I will explore the intimate relationship that exists between our personal archetypal patterns and our connection to the collective community of archetypes. It is one thing to imagine that you are a part of the whole. It is quite another to understand how that connection to the whole works, and the way in which you participate. We will explore questions in this workshop, such as: Is a pandemic an archetypal experience? What about the war in Ukraine? And what collective archetypal influences create climate change? How are you connected to these global dilemmas? Does the impersonal tension generated by global events affect your personal health? And can a collective archetypal response have a positive influence upon the future?

It truly is amazing to contemplate that we are the engines of the events that are created in this world – all events. Wars, space travel, medical discoveries, pandemics, environmental crises, accomplishments in science, entertainment, architecture – everything you can think of – happens because of the on-going collective dynamic of human choice and consequence. We are not accustomed to considering how our individual choices impact the whole global ecosystem of life – but we have arrived in that era of consciousness that beckons us to expand our thinking to consider the power of our individual choice as a force that is intimately connected to the whole.