Meeting with the Trickster

On Carol Leigh Rice ‘s Blog Silk Road Visions, which I highly recommend, I found a post called: Synchronicity, Trickster,  and the higher Self. Reading this post I made a connection to a personal life-expirience where I met the archetype of the Trickster. I’d like to share that experience here.

The Trickster is the initiator and guide of a transition between two different states.

He is not the kind of pleasant guide like the Higher Self.

The Higher Self relates to revelatory experiences that are incorporated to new levels of consciousness. That is the psychological experience of “growing towards the light”.

 The Trickster serves the same purpose: the expansion of consciousness (which is why I like Carols suggestion on her blog to see the Trickster as an Assistant Higher Self or the shadow of the Higher Self). But the Trickster prefers a more radical approach.

He causes a state of reversal.

In modern psychological literature this reversal has been called  enantiodromia which is, as Jung states, synonymous with “the emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time.”

The Trickster likes to enter the stage suddenly, often- but not always- in a clownish way.

And once the ego is thrown from its throne, he presents it a mirror so that it can see itself in that new situation, looking from the bottom up.

So whenever we are too sure of ourselves, we create a psychic environment that invites the Trickster.

Of course this doesn’t mean that anyone being sure of himself automatically meets this archetypal figure.

A few years ago there was a time in my life where I was quite sure of myself.

I had become a father of a beautiful son delivered from his beautiful mother. I was living in a place that I considered paradisical and happened to be on the other side of the world from where I grew up (considering the nature of immigration laws that was quite an achievement).

But most importantly, on my inner journey, I had come to a very fulfilling point. I had recently finished a 10 day meditation-retreat where I had some real revelatory moments.

There was for example that moment where after several days of meditation I suddenly had the experience of my body being just space and I could observingly float through it in any direction. This was followed by a great desire to enjoy that same experience again only to realise that that very desire was pushing it away from me.

After a full day when that desire left and I came back to pure observing the feeling of being space came back.

Then there was this peak moment where all boundaries blurred and my perception was that of a cohesive oneness, everything vibrating and alive and things just arose and passed away through changes of frequency.

It was only a short moment but enough to give me the impression that I glimpsed eternity. And enough to gave me the believe that I arrived somewhere, that I “achieved” something and that now despise whatever would happen, I would just stay centred and buoyant.  I somehow was blind to the fact that this wasn’t about achieving.

Time for the trickster to make his entry.

That happened when my little family and I where about to return to Europe for an expected 6 month (it turned out to be 3 years).

We where packing our belongings into a storage and because we lived in a sub-tropical climate it was raining since days with no end. Our whole yard was under water so I was packing the car barefooted.

The last thing I put in was our 60 cm high and 30-40kg heavy Buddha statue. When I arrived at the storage and opened the trunk the statue had moved and came falling out. It crashed to the ground directly on my foot.

One of my toe nails got teared out and Buddhas head broke off.

I was shocked because of my nail, the little blood puddle that started to build up and because I loved that Buddha, he was such a peaceful presence in our house.

Consciously I smiled that incident away, but a bit deeper I felt that it had some symbolic meaning and that my earlier thoughts of “anything can come now” might get a test.

The symbol of that moment was: “the peace is over”.

From that paradisical spot we moved to the other side of the globe to a quite depressed area into an inherited huge property that we had to renovate. The house was full of the emotional and physical baggage of generations.

Transforming that place while releasing the baggage was energy draining to say the least. We where quite isolated too, everything was dragging along slowly and for the first time after a long run of being in the right place at the right moment I was suddenly cut off from the cosmic cornucopia.

What happened to me was, what in the field of psychology would be called, an abaissment du niveau mental. The controlling elements of my psyche slowly collapsed and content from the unconscious could rise up.

It was a feeling of invading powerful energies. Almost like a rape.

I would never have thought that I can feel so much rage and anger. I had anger tantrums like a child that hurt me and my family.

Quite humiliating especially after I had such a firmly established picture of myself:

I was this centred, calm and patient man. Very resourceful and always on top of everything. And not only that I was also convinced that spiritually I had arrived at a safe harbour.

But then I really got to know aspects of my shadow and it was Trickster who guided me there.