Oil Spill as Archetypal Myth by Sunny Strasburg

In the sleeping worlds, our dreams are filled with rich symbolism which gives us clues as to what is on the cusp of our waking, emotional consciousness. Our emotional world follows the events of our lives and we detangle and unfurl our feelings out in our nightly processes.

An interesting and insightful tool to try some time is to turn your waking life inside out and examine it as an archetypal dream. What if every character, every event and daily habitual occurrence in your waking reality was viewed through the lens of a symbolic dream? The synchronicities, the events, the challenges, the triumphs would suddenly become meaningful. And in doing this exercise, we are given the opportunity to use these symbols as a launching pad to look deeper within, overcome what is blocking us emotionally and move onto more productive, emotionally balanced lives.

I have a client who suddenly found meaning in the fact that her toilet broke for the fifth time and the basement flooded again. She had the profound insight that this event was symbolic of how she wasn’t processing her “crap”, allowing herself to get “backed up” and “clogged” emotionally. She realized she couldn’t suppress it any longer. This archetypal story was used as a fertile ground for processing her emotional trauma.

Whether or not these events are magically drawn to us because of our emotional process or not doesn’t really matter, what does matter is the meaning we give these events.

Shit happens (no pun intended)—how do you take what “is” and give meaning to it, internalize your sense of control, become the hero or heroine of your story and create something productive out of it? Our only other alternative is to languish in victimization—and most of us realize that only prolongs suffering and gets us nowhere.

I am a Jungian depth psychotherapist as well as visual artist, and I tend to view the world in this way--as an archetypal myth. Everything that happens to us both individually and collectively can be seen in a deeper sense as symbolic mythology.

What if, we took that individual waking reality as dream to a collective level? What if we saw cultural triumphs, wars, and ecological disasters as symbolic of the state of humankind’s collective psychological and emotional state? Are we currently experiencing an epidemic cultural psychoses in the West? I think so.

Currently, I see our collective psyche captivated—no possessed—by the Archetype of the Apocalypse.

A very essential point I want to make here is to remind ourselves what mythologist Joseph Campbell repeated over and over, “Do not mistake poetry for prose.” Don’t take the myth literally. Don’t look at a story as fact—remember to keep in mind it is a story—a myth. It is out of our cultural narratives, that our collective reality is built upon. Almost like a wire frame under a sculpture—the stories we tell ourselves, individually and collectively is what gives us meaning and identity. Story is primary. Our experience of the story becomes our reality.

Whether you are a Born Again Christian or a New Age Mayan Astrologist, by taking the Archetype of the Apocalypse as factual, you project the shadow and create a scapegoat, therefore avoiding personal responsibility. And you have a convenient excuse to throw your hands up with an air of nihilistic angst and sigh, “Well, it doesn’t matter WHAT we do at this point, it’s fate!”

Bullshit.

Let’s emotionally engage, retract our cultural projections and take some collective responsibility for the world we have all participated in creating together.

We can literally choose-- and therefore shift-- whatever archetype moves through us. As in choosing to become the hero or heroine rather than the victims in our individual lives, we can choose to become the cultural heroes and heroines rather than victims of the world’s mythical narrative.

I see the tragedy of the Oil Spill as an archetypal symbol of our collective shadow. Like the backed-up toilet I mentioned earlier, our suppression and denial of our addiction to oil, our emotional denial, cannot be ignored any longer.

Our Mother Earth, Gaia, She who has given us literally EVERYTHING, is critically wounded, gushing blood from her depths.

And Solutio in alchemy is the water element. The ocean represents the unconscious, what is not seen, what resides in the shadows below the radar of the conscious mind. And toxic oil pours out from these depths. It is, as the alchemist’s called it, the Prima Materia- the yucky, toxic gunk that must be healed and transformed into something useful and benign.

Imagine the hypocrisy! Yesterday, I was lamenting about how “Terrible the Oil Spill Is” as my friend and I jetted along I-101 in our rental car in Los Angeles at 70 mph!

Hmmm….

We Are Killing Our Mother.

When We Kill Our Mother, We Kill Ourselves.

We are intrinsically tied to the earth. As I said, the Earth gives us EVERYTHING. There is no cutting the cord on this one. There is no alternative.

I know there’s some Manifest Destiny Archetype that believes that technology can save us. The story goes, “Once we trash this place, scientists can set up some Bio-Dome on the moon for all the smart, rich, pretty people to escape to. Problem solved!”

Once again, I call bullshit.

She Dies, We Die.

And in our choices, we are polluting our birth waters—we are pouring poison down our own umbilical cord.

This isn’t a roll-your-eyes-at-the-tree-hugger sort of thing. This is really happening, we are KILLING OURSELVES. The alarmist tone in this writing isn’t just to give you a wake-up call; it’s to give MYSELF one. And I get that we are all spun out and overtaxed on empathy from all the drama and fear spewing out of the media everyday. I get it, I feel it, but we cannot choose to disengage.

I’m mostly alarmed because I’m beside myself that I allow it to go on, feel helpless and don’t know what to do to make it better. I subscribe to the Archetype of the Apocalypse.

I sit idly before the TV and shake my head in disgust at the news, chew my fingernails with angst, then go to bed and do NOTHING to change it.

I want to stay addicted to oil, god damn it! It’s my RIGHT! I want to keep flying in jets to Costa Rica. I want to drive my car all over town to buy my exotic, organic produce from Mexico. I want to type this blog on my computer. And then I want to give BP and Obama the finger from my Toyota Tundra Truck for screwing everything up!

Why is this so difficult for us to own, to grasp, to base our logic and decisions on? Why are we choosing to commit suicide- to embrace the Apocalyptic Myth rather than own our shadow and take action to change our story? Why am I killing myself at the expense of convenience? Has it just not hit close enough to home yet?

And what if we do succeed in committing the suicide of humankind? She, the Mother will no doubt, suffer for a long time, healing herself from our poisoning. But She will eventually settle into homeostasis again. She is the endless giver of life, the Creator.

The trees, the animals, the insects, the plants and mycelium will live on. Gaia’s children who have lived in harmony with her ebb and flow will survive. This isn’t meant to soothe you (back to the Nihilist again), but to awaken us that there is another way to do things. There are infinite stories to create with happier endings for humans- who’s survival, I for one, am attached to.

The Native Americans called the White People “Little Brother” because of our immaturity. I imagine they likened us to rebellious teenagers—acting like we didn’t need our elders and had everything figured out already. I think of teens who act like they don’t need their folks to guide them, to clothe or feed them, until that flow from the ‘Rents stops—then there’s that Come to Jesus moment of gratitude and humility.

Is the Oil Spill going to be that realization for us? Will we choose to honor Our Mother? Will we choose to create a different Cultural Mythology? Will we create an Archetypal Story that rewards cooperation with the Earth rather than extracting resources and abusing her does?

Part of our Cultural Archetypal Story also involves always having good endings—based on Fairy Tales, Disney and Manifest Destiny. Perhaps that is what will "save" us in the end, because that's what we expect to happen and it is our beliefs that become our reality.

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