An Archetype Workbook

[rva_jeremy]

The answer doesn't seem that abstract to me. From my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong, Jeremy) - Jeremy is asking about the process of catalyst/experience, and if experience is catalyst having been distilled to the other side of the veil. Q'uo basically says no and says that basically there is more nuance than that, because much processing of catalyst remains unconscious, and that, because of the veil, it's easy to conflate what is catalyst and what is actually distilled experience. Before the veil, things were obviously not hidden. But with the veiling, there is still a lot of confusion in this process.

That's more or less correct in my view. My intent was to have Q'uo speak to the way catalyst is conflated with experience. Everybody talks about catalyst in the sense of "bad things happening to me" but that's actually, I suspected in asking this question, a conflation of the catalysis with experience. I thought experience was much more about the emotional and phenomenological character of the "lesson", how it presents in our lives as opposed to what is behind the presentation, behind the things poking at us. Q'uo agree with me that this conflation occurs but disagree with the (unrecognized by me) implication that catalyst and experience are really one concept bifurcated by the veil. They are distinct archetypes, as Jade said. Moreover, Q'uo say that the veil, far from creating the distinctions between the two archetypes, actually muddies them, and that in an unveiled condition, the archetypes are much more obvious in their operation and significance. So the veil plays a role, but not a foundational role in the archetypes of catalyst and experience.

I think there is a flaw in Jeremy's question (no offense!) because, for the mind cycle, while Catalyst is the female portion, and Experience in the male, Catalyst is the female portion ennobled by the conscious mind, and Experience is the conscious mind ennobled by the subconscious mind. So the subconscious mind is still thoroughly in play in the Experience card even though it is represented by the male principle. I believe the concept that Jeremy is talking about, distilling experience to the point of piercing the veil for use in a conscious manner, is more of a Great Way type energy.

Yeah, I think we may just have a difference of opinion here, Jade. I do not consider the female to always represent the unconscious mind, or at least not solely the unconscious mind. Instead, I consider the male/female dichotomy an abstract representation of, for lack of a better word, the directionality of the cycle's subject. For example, the male/female dynamic in the catalyst/experience archetypes of the mind to indicate that experience strives towards the catalyst. In other words, experience is the more accessible archetype, but it functions, so to speak, through aspiring towards the catalyst, the true lesson. It does happen that indeed, in the mind cycle, the female represents the unconscious -- but this is, in my opinion, because that is the female aspect of the mind. In other words, I don't think the female in the experience of body indicates the unconscious -- instead, I think it indicates, roughly, that experience of body is about a receptiveness to the random body catalyst. 

As you can probably tell, I think this subject and the answer given definitely crosses into the land of the intensely abstract, precisely because it evades our ability to model concepts with language. This is also why I am really, really bummed we don't have a person with the vocabulary of phenomenology channeling Q'uo any longer. Philosophy does have rough terms for the kinds of concepts included in the complexes of the archetypes. It is language that is the barrier here. I mean, the exploration of archetypes might even be easier in a language like German, for instance.

Like Jade says, there's a lot of homework involved here, and I'm on record as not finding a great deal of value in talking about the archetypes much. However, I think if we were to make a dedicated study of the archetypes and involve Q'uo as a teacher (who, after all, includes Ra as a component of their complex), we would be able to have dialogues that would shed light on the subject, however narrowly subjective and personal the study may be. I often keep in mind that the Ra contact only affords us an understanding of archetypes in terms of what three people were able to see, grok, and explore. There is likely much, much, much more.