Self-Change - ctrpoint - October 2008

The ancient Mayan Temple of the Sorcerer in Uxmal, Mexico strikes me as a remarkable object for reflection on the human mind.

Physically, its immense base rests on Mother Earth, at whose core the fiery energies of molten magma surge and churn, seeking that eventual release which erupts at the surface to create the world upon which we walk.

As the rest of the edifice rises toward the sky, it is continually narrowed and channeled to a temple top that is a relatively small and restricted space compared to the rest of the structure.

It is only there, in that small space, that the public temple rituals are performed.

All of this can be seen as an outward expression of the inner realities of human consciousness, in the depths of which untamed natural energies roil and blaze, and flash and even sparkle, until they too find release in the world above - the world of human action.

It both cases, what is below greatly outweighs that which is at the top.

Our conscious perception of ourselves, others, and the rest of world is really quite narrow, confined, and restricted.

Nevertheless, it is the realm in which we enact (and regularly reenact) all the rituals of our daily lives.

Very few of us turn our attention to the underlying structure which supports that consciousness or to the deep existential processes which energize it.

Some great minds have done so, of course. In our own time, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell number among them.

The Temple of the Sorcerer reveals something to us which Jung and Campbell, with their keen grasp of myths, might see most clearly.

In Mayan mythology, the Sorcerer himself is a dwarf, born of a witch, who does battle with a king and thereby comes to rule the kingdom.

Virtually all the cultures of the world give these three mythic types very similar characteristics. The witch is closely connected to the primal feminine energies of existence and can manipulate them to her advantage. The dwarf has unusual, often magical, masculine strengths, powers, and abilities. He is human but in a seemingly imperfect way, which can cause him to be dismissed, rejected, and underestimated. In this instance, because his mother is a witch the Sorcerer represents masculine and feminine powers operating together. The king rules from the top - the head. He is indeed the Head of State. He represents rational order.

The kingdom is a simile for the individual lives of those who understand the myth.

At his mother's urging the magic dwarf challenges the king, who is at first bemused. He becomes worried, however, when the dwarf bests him time after time in trials of physical strength. He then challenges the dwarf to a final trial. Each is to break a bundle of hard battle sticks over the head of the other one at a time until one of them is felled.

After the king has expended all of his sticks to no avail, the Sorcerer takes his turn. He kills the king in short order and ascends to the throne.

The king represents our rational consciousness. He naturally chose a final trial involving the head, which was his ultimate strength.

Moreover, he chose battle sticks as his weapons of choice. These are straight in form and represent the masculine, linear quality of the rational mind.

Had he chosen something more feminine in nature - something more curvilinear or circular, like a rope and lasso - he might have ensnared the sorcerer and won the contest. But his reliance on straightforward rationality prevented that.

The point of all this is that in the personal and interpersonal enactments of our daily rituals with others, we must take care not to act out of either our physical nature or our heads alone.

Yet, for all its importance, masculine rational consciousness is but a relatively small part of our greater, truly magical, mind.

All the powers of our minds are available to us only when we remember not to make the mistake of dismissing, rejecting, and underestimating any of them.

What happens when we make that mistake?

They rise up from the depths to strike us down one way or another.

Therefore, listen to the whispered intuitions of your inner heart.

Take time to think about messages from your dreams.

Pause now and then to quietly experience and observe feelings you do not yet understand.

Attend to all these things and much will be revealed.

Learn from them and your own mind will become a magic temple from which you can successfully guide the course of your life - empowered from within.

It's easy. Every Wednesday
for a few minutes between
10:00 and Noon sit down and
turn inward - through prayer,
meditation, self-hypnosis or
any modality you choose -
and send out good thoughts
to everyone else in the circle.

J. Kingston Cowart
www.self-change.com
619.561.9012
Post Office Box 19005
San Diego CA 92159

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Keywords: Action, attention, Carl Jung, consciousness, dreams, dwarf, energies, feelings, feminine, intuition, king, Joseph Campbell, magic, masculine, Maya, mind, mythology, perception, power, reason, rational, ritual, Sigmund Freud, sorcerer, temple, witch.