The fourth survival archetype is one I will label the
Mercenary. I have seen it labeled as the “Prostitute,” but the word doesn’t
work well for me because it is so closely aligned with a female
occupation/avarice. The word prostitute is hardly neutral. So, I’ve chosen “Mercenary”
because the word, to me, seems to embody more of the thought/symbolism behind
the archetype.
Mercenary is defined by the Oxford dictionary as “concerned
with making money at the expense of ethics.” As you can see from the
definition, this has a much broader application, that the other descriptor that
closely identifies with a specific set of ethics. Again, the Mercenary is
neutral, and has both light and shadow sides depending on how far we take that
part of our survival. The Mercenary is
concerned with the sale or negotiation of our spirit or our authenticity. On
the positive side, the Mercenary helps us regulate when we draw the line – what
our “price” is. The Mercenary also helps us regulate our locus of control, or
our power we influence on others. It also helps us with our ideas of
self-esteem and self-respect.
On the shadow side, the Mercenary in us pushes our spirit to
sell and negotiate our spirits in favor of the largest gain. When we take a
high-paying job we hate, or we stay with someone for financial gain at the cost
of our authenticity, that is the shadow Mercenary at work. Think of the
Mercenary as the selling of your talents, ideas, and any other expression of
yourself. The shadow portion takes us so far into the selling of our talents
that our inner-self rebels against how much of ourselves we have sold simply
for gain and not for satisfaction.
Here are questions to determine how balanced or unbalanced
your Mercenary is:
What organizations or groups that I didn’t truly believe in
have I “sold out” to? Have I stayed in a situation solely for the financial
security at the expense of my inner satisfaction? Has my desire for power over
someone else cause that person to compromise his or her moral ethics or
authenticity? Have I ever demanded someone’s loyalty just to have my way (used
guilt to manipulate someone for your own gain)? Do I judge others who
compromise themselves? Do I think of myself as better than those I judge? Have
I ever been tempted to “sell out” in a situation, but been able to refuse that
situation?
The story I presented the other day, “La Llorona” had
aspects of the Mercenary in it as well. Go back and re-visit the story, to find
what you can see of a Mercenary…
For purposes of the remaining archetypes and stories, I want
to say this. In storytelling, the story symbolically represents your inner
self. Each character is an aspect of your psyche. There are numerous
storytellers and writers who understand this. Before most people could read,
there were stories. Before modern medicines, there were stories. Before the
modern age of psychoanalysis, we had stories to heal our minds and souls. This
age has moved away from the symbolic and into the world of the measurable and
tangible. Perhaps part of our problem is that we have lost how to heal
ourselves with stories. I’ve included some quote about storytelling that will
hopefully give you some food for thought before I include any more stories or
archetypes. Read them at will. Take a look back at some of the stories I’ve posted.
The repetition of stories means that we hear them again and again, but we get
different things out of them at the time we hear or read them…
“I will tell you something about stories, (he said) They
aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see, All
we have to fight off illness and death” —Leslie Marmon Silko
“The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles
that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in.” —Harold
Goddard
“There have been great societies that did not use the wheel,
but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.” —Ursula K. LeGuin
“Stories are how we learn. The progenitors of the world’s
religions understood this, handing down our great myths and legends from
generation to generation.” —Bill Mooney and David Holt, The Storyteller’s Guide
“Those times of depression tell you that it’s either time to
get out of the story you’re in and move into a new story, or that you’re in the
right story but there’s some piece of it you are not living out.” — Carol S.
Pearson
“Story is far older than the art of science and psychology,
and will always be the elder in the equation no matter how much time passes.”
—Clarissa Pinkola Estes
There are many studies demonstrating how an unhealthy mind
can make a person sick. As stress goes up, so does illness. Negative self
thoughts initiate diseases. On that note, I want to include a final quote, one
that speaks to why we might think our culture, our world, is in need of healing…
“A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they
tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we
would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation….Stories can conquer
fear, you know. They can make the heart larger.” —Ben Okri
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