I Am Currently Undergoing the Most Profound Jungian Experience of My Life

The Same Person (Archetype) in Different Bodies

Something remarkable is happening to me at the moment. An experience which is validating so many of the concepts I have picked up from the work of Carl Jung, Joseph Campell, and even James Joyce. A person from my past has returned in the guise of the new person. A perfect archetypal representation of the same individual from my past and one who had profoundly affected me.

It began about three years ago when this person came into my life having read a book I had written, and she thanked me for it. Almost immediately I felt that this woman was interested in me more than just being a fan of my writing. She had a certain charm about her that was somewhat childish and endearing. She had an almost rube-like lack of sophistication, that was most certainly not off-putting. If anything, her naivety revealed a sense of honesty found in such people. The same feeling of wanting sympathy and protection from me was also there. The use of language and her relationship with animals was identical. She was also the same age the previous woman was when I had first met her. For a time I even wondered if it was the same person incognito and playing tricks on me. I checked. It was not her.

However, this has not been a problematic experience by any means. My interaction with this woman has become very healing. In many ways, some of the expressions I had not been given by the initial woman were - on some strange, but highly authentic level - presented/granted to me by this person. I have never once told this new person about my previous experiences.

The entire experience and interaction come with a sense of this new person almost wanting to make amends for the damage and understanding of my pain her previous archetypal manifestation had left within me. It was almost as if I had created her in the same way that James Joyce had created Molly Bloom to deal with his own intense relationship with Nora Barnacle.

I have no intention of ever meeting this person. Her arrival and emails have been enough. They have given me the sense of peace I have longed for all along, including a compelling feeling that my (and your) realities are paintings or stories we can personally refine (both passively and actively) through the archetypal characters we encounter with each manifestation they take within different bodies as they arrive into our lives.

From the perspective of my own life, the meme at the top of this page is 100% true. The same human archetypes come into my life - in repeating cycles - and there appears to be an element of continual personal and responsive refinement, compassion and maturity needed with each time they arrive.
It's incredibly spiritual when you are aware of these cycles and what your own responsibility/reaction is towards them when confronted with the same archetype showing up in a new person. This is the real enlightenment. Not meditation. Getting out there and showing up for life regarding ones improving the outcomes of each archetypal association cycles. These echoes come back to us for a reason.

Nothing last forever except for the experience it leaves us with. That's the map of the territory being made known to us piecemeal as we progress through the course of our own monomyth.

Thomas Sheridan is the Author of Sorcery: the Invocation of Strangeness. 
Available HERE