Scales fall from my eyes, transforming mere concept into lived reality. What I have long seen through a glass darkly, I glimpse face to face.
I refer to an encounter with the negative mother archetype.
Meeting negative mother
I resolve to post to my blog regularly but, as I put in the time and effort, insidious thoughts creep in. “Who do you think you are?!!” they ask. “No one cares what you say. You don’t amount to a hill of beans! You are an invisible nothing … an insignificant nobody!” On the third day I ‘believe myself’ and stop writing.
My hubris (yeah, yeah…I’ve read about archetypes, I know how they work) withers next to this up-close and personal attack. Shall I congratulate myself for uncovering the ghostly intruder, or flagellate myself for allowing her through the door?
Alarmed by the conditions in my psychic house, I turn to metaphor as a way into negative mother’s character and the power she wields.
Describing negative mother
Negative Mother is a malignant cancer. A devouring, dangerous and cunning predator. She lurks within thought like a Trojan intruder, designed to infiltrate and corrupt. She is a sticky web of bondage. A boa constrictor's embrace. Her goal is to discourage, derail, smother, dismember, confine, suffocate, crush, poison, and annihilate all life—all vitality—except her own.
Escaping negative mother
My ‘aha!’ experience reminds me that archetypes are big while I am small, strong while I am weak. Like Gods and Goddesses…Powers and Principalities…Archetypes do what they will. I am mere human but I am determined. Protections and precautions, hacks and armor, wait for my discovery.
I tweak the Bible verse, “do this in remembrance of me,” to “do this in defiance of her.” My escape plan begins with lavish attention to activities that renew me. I do not know all that lies ahead, but I prepare for battle.