HGA Gender
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@Jim Eshelman said
"I entered the work with a preconception that "God is within," that the Angel had to be some intrinsic, deeper part of me. Then as a Probationer I was just lost on the subject. In Malkuth, the Angel was decisively "outside of me," in the surrounding texture of everything, talking to me from "outside." In Yesod, He was suddenly back in side - as if I'd just discovered that for the first time, and with the snap of a rubber band! - but now easily identifiable in the flow of energy and thought and sexuality within me. And so on. It swung back and forth for a while, went into different dimensions instead of that one, etc."
Jim, was there any trend to which gender it appeared as and whether it was inside or outside? That would be interesting...
As for my self, I had my first contact a little less than a year ago. He appears to me as male. As a bisexual male myself, the homosexual element has never been an issue. Initially I took on two distinct roles in relation to Him: sexually passive (though I never felt "female") to a dominant lover, and also passive like a small child to a strong, loving father. In fact, they were so distinct that I didn't recognize that I was dealing with same entity for a while--I also didn't even recognize Him as my HGA for a long time either. Eventually, the two roles merged and I had to confront the strong, internal resistance to playing those two roles at once (implied incest and all that).
My first contacts were in the form of a totally external entity. Since then I've begun to slowly develop the ability to invoke his presence (based on intuition, analysis of a working name He gave me to call Him, and then trial and error). It's still quite hit and miss, but when it is successful, I usually experience His presence descending from above and then entering me to dwell inside for as long as I can maintain that state.
It's interesting that so many of the experiences here have involved a sexual union that would be uncomfortable if it had been with a human lover. Perhaps that in itself is a transformative process for many, also probably a lesson that this isn't like any other relationship you've ever had.
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@Iamus said
"Jim, was there any trend to which gender it appeared as and whether it was inside or outside? That would be interesting..."
No, that wasn't part of my process. It was always irrelevant. Perhaps because (like Crowley) I have a Virgo Sun, gender has seemed a flexible matter to me all my life. I was just giving this as an example of how the perception or relationship evolves.
I think mentioned above that in the specific work of invoking the HGA as a 5=6, the predominant impression was masculine; but that was hardly inflexible even then, and was primarily just at that stage.
"It's interesting that so many of the experiences here have involved a sexual union that would be uncomfortable if it had been with a human lover. Perhaps that in itself is a transformative process for many, also probably a lesson that this isn't like any other relationship you've ever had."
Or, let's say, a sexual relationship, whether it's experienced by a metaphor of a sexual act or not.
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It is important to point out tough, that while I refer to the relationship with the HGA as "Sexual", it in no way resembles a sexual relationship as most people would recognise it.
When I use the word sexual it is because it is the thing that sums up the mutual interpenetration and envelopment that I have experienced with A.'.
Sex in the normal sense is far to crude to be a really adequate symbol, it is but a faint echo, but it is the one experience common to most people, which is why I chose it.
Try not to mix it up with memories of sexual relations, with previous experiences in this area, or with Freudian phantasms, these have nothing to do with it.
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@Archaeus said
"Thats the vital point, a complex can only function while its unconscious, hence "know thyself"."
Pardon me if I am wrong:
Are you implying if a person is consciously aware of a complex it immediately ceases functioning?
In my experience conscious awareness is only the first step. -
@Uni_Verse said
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@Archaeus said
"Thats the vital point, a complex can only function while its unconscious, hence "know thyself"."Pardon me if I am wrong:
Are you implying if a person is consciously aware of a complex it immediately ceases functioning?
In my experience conscious awareness is only the first step."That was Jung's idea, a complex is necessarily under the threshold of consciousness, that's part of the definition.
What people call a complex these days is often nothing of the sort in the technical sense. Yet another example of pop-culture getting hold of a phrase and turning it into a catch-all buzz-word for a set of behavioural traits.
If you are aware of it then it's just a bad habit I guess, and calling it a complex when you blatantly have consciousness, and by extension awareness of it, is just making excuses for your own vacillations.
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@Dara said
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@Archaeus said
"That was Jung's idea, a complex is necessarily under the threshold of consciousness, that's part of the definition.
What people call a complex these days is often nothing of the sort in the technical sense. Yet another example of pop-culture getting hold of a phrase and turning it into a catch-all buzz-word for a set of behavioural traits.
If you are aware of it then it's just a bad habit I guess, and calling it a complex when you blatantly have consciousness, and by extension awareness of it, is just making excuses for your own vacillations."
I agree. I've seen people when the main persona switches off for short periods and they are completely unaware that their shadow has come out to play.
By adopting an archetypal role, the HGA seems to work with the main persona in a participatory manner that see's it grow and evolve, making the functions of the shadow redundant so that the shadow disintegrates due to lack of use. That's a very different strategy from classic psychoanalysis where the therapist tries to get people to become conscious of the shadow and integrate it back into the core persona."
I'd qualify that by suggesting that rather than dis-integrate, what actually happens to the shadow under the influence of the HGA is that it in-tegrates, so that it, being now part of the whole, ceases to behave as a seperate entity, and thus the term "shadow" becomes redundant.
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@Archaeus said
"If you are aware of it then it's just a bad habit I guess, and calling it a complex when you blatantly have consciousness, and by extension awareness of it, is just making excuses for your own vacillations."
From how I am looking at it (never read any Jung):
The complex is the source of the habit.
If one is aware of the complex, the habit can be manipulated, even removed.
However, if one is not aware of the cause of the complex
The habit can easily manifest in a difference sense
Rather, I believe it is better to examine the relationship between the complex and the habit by which it manifests in order to better understand what is occurring.Basically, I am making a distinction between being conscious of a complex and understanding its source and manifestation.
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Labelling the contents of the shadow as "always an immature aspect of the psyche" misses the mark a little.
The shadow is made up of everything we simply reject about ourselves ("Not me! I'm not like THAT!"). For instance, if a person is latently homosexual, then there is an attraction to the same sex that is denied and rejected. To label such an attraction "immature" only serves to wrongly justify its repression when the case may actually be that wholeness and fulfillment would require that the attraction become conscious and dealt with consciously, without being labelled "immature." Such negative lables are precisely what needs to be removed from aspects of the rejected self in order for them to become integrated.
If the HGA is taken to be a symbol of the fully integrated self - the actualization of one's full potential - then interactions with the HGA force examination of the aspects of self that are currently rejected and cast into the shadow, and the process of learning the characteristics of the HGA and of learning to accept them for their existential purpose and to love them in the HGA involves reintegrating these rejected aspects of selfhood back into conscious awareness of their holistic purpose and function in the individual.
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Some aspects might be seen as immature.
Often though, the bits that cause trouble are those parts that for one reason or another were rejected by the ego (such as rejected homosexuality ruining the mental health of many young men back in the day when it was seen as a sin).
Sometimes the newly forming ego rejects things out of hand, for many reasons really, not only because they are embarrassing or dangerous, but sometimes simply because we care about what others think about us, and so we bury some things because we don't want to be seen as weird, or different.
I think blanket labelling them as "immature" doesn't really help the integration/individuation process. I think a ot of it has to do with putting things in their right relation.
In fact, I can sum it up in one word:
V.I.T.R.I.O.L.
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Either way, she's mischaracterized Jung's theories and added her own twist before rejecting them. It sounds to me as if she's taken Jung's Shadow and reduced it to Freud's* Id*.
If you define the whole shadow as nothing but "immature aspects of the psyche," then the shadow itself can be characterized and demonized as merely the "immature self." If you then allow her to substitute "immature self" for the concept of the shadow, her conclusion makes sense: "I disagree with the standard wisdom that what we integrate is the shadow [read her: "immature self"], and I believe it can be quite psychologically dangerous to attempt to do that actually... for all sorts of reasons." But you have to pervert the theory to come to that conclusion. What she presents and rejects is not, in fact, "the standard wisdom."
In Jung's theory, the contents of the shadow can be positive or negative. It's simply what is rejected from consciousness for whatever reason. Its contents can as easily include the impulse to murder as it can include the impulse to arrange flowers, or the impulse toward rape as easily as the impulse toward being a philosopher. What matters is only that the shadow's contents are rejected *for some reason *by the individual.
And I'm not going to get into it with her, so judge for yourself:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_(psychology)
www.lessons4living.com/shadow.htm
