Carol Burbank’s and my upcoming class, Myth, Mysticism, and Story, is based on my system of 12 archetypes in human development and evolution.
Archetypes are universal patterns in thought, creativity, nature and human designed things. My system, described in What Stories Are You Living? Discover Your Archetypes – Transform Your Life, focuses on archetypal characters and story patterns. These characters are the Idealist, Realist, Warrior, Caregiver, Seeker, Lover, Creator, Revolutionary, Ruler, Jester, Sage, and Magician, and these describe patterns in our minds, that affect what we do. Each of these has potentially happy endings that fulfill human desires.
This system started being revealed to me in the 1980’s, when I received an inner call to write The Hero Within which would not let me go until I wrote it. Learning from utilizing this 6-archetype system to helping people in coaching, workshops, and team-building led me to expand the 12-archetype system in Awakening the Heroes Within.
I’m very excited about collaborating with Carol Burbank in bringing the work to you. Carol has worked with these archetypes for many years using what she calls “story weaving”. She is a regular columnist for the Science of Mind Magazine as well as a good friend, a healer, an author and editor. She is also writing a companion blog for you about the 12 archetypes in story weaving.
Science of Mind, Archetypes, and Everyday Benefits
SOM teaches that everything begins with a thought. That then encourages the Creative Law to make it real, which we can understand as in and around us. Founder Holmes said that the Law gives you what you want automatically—like gravity keeps us on the ground or like a seed planted in the ground then grows. He also emphasized the need affirms the outcome as having already been attained, and also that we are to move our feet.
Holmes also said that we should keep open at the top, trusted science, and referred to his teachings as a science of mind, so had no objection to thinking like scientists, who explore how things work, not just that they do. For example, gravitational scientists now know that the mass of any cosmic body determines how much gravitational pull there is keeping us on the ground and that gravity moves in waves. Farmers and gardeners know that the seed needs the right soil, water, sunlight and to have weeds (for Holmes, negative thoughts) pulled.
So, psychology as a science along with neuroscience can help us know about elements that contribute to how achieving our desires works in us and in the collective human consciousness around us. In specific to this course, understanding archetypal stories can assist us in recognizing the psychological elements that contribute to this process by identifying what we know about human psychology—individual and collective. These can help us be more loving, transform negative into positive thoughts, and realize our desires.
And, here are some of the coolest benefits of this 12 archetype system. It can help you learn:
- How your desires naturally motivate you to “move your feet” following the plotlines available for that archetype—which your brain provides you, which then helps you notice possibilities in the world around you that fit the narrative and moves you towards a happy ending for your story;
- How the unconscious or semi-conscious stories that are holding you back could be primitive versions of archetypal patterns, which you can then recognize and evolve, so that they are expressed in more positive and spiritual plotlines leading to ever more fulfilling outcomes; and
- How each of these archetypes, when lived in conscious union with the All, can lead to experiencing more authentic expression and your mythical spiritual gifts.
Of course, a three-session evening class can only provide an introduction to this life-enhancing material, but it can begin to work for you as soon as you have names for narrative thought patterns that you did not have before. Such understandings contribute to realizing the promises of Science of Mind teachings in your authentic ways.
You can read more about these archetypes absolutely free, by going to www.carolspearson.com and scroll down on the homepage to where it says “Browse Your Archetypes.” There you can access information about each, although written for a secular audience. Likely you will be able to identify a few that are active in your life now or in other people you know or narratives you are hearing, viewing, or reading.
Sign up for the class, Myth, Mysticism and Story.
Carol Pearson is an author, educator and a member of Columbia CSL.
