Caroline Myss - The Critic (The Power of Archetypes)

the negative side of the critic is that um you respond to things in the outside world like almost like a hair trigger you criticize before it it can not not always but one response is that you respond to something before you know what it is you you take it at face value before you really get to know something or or examine it more deeply [Music] hi everybody time for another archetype video I am doing the critic um sort of a cousin to the judge but not quite it has its own characteristics and when you hear critic I know that every the tendency I think is to think of being critical and to uh think of someone who criticizes which is an aspect of it which is an aspect but think about what it is to develop critical sight to develop the capacity to evaluate or to analyze something with scholarship or with your professional skill to really do you know what the greater aspect of the critic is really to have critical sight to be able to see flaws uh not so much in a person for the sake of criticizing them but to actually be very Discerning to be very clear in your in your evaluation of something and so that when you when you that's the very positive side of having a critical eye and and you want that critical eye in someone for example who's evaluating your health or who's a value or an architect who's evaluating the flaws in a building there's nothing is more valuable than having someone with a critical eye um it's that it truly is an asset and not a liability obviously that uh notion of like the critical eye the capacity to evaluate with skill can be in any profession and it makes the professional I think um that's what makes the professional is someone who really has the capacity to see clearly and to evaluate Beyond any personal bias even though it's very difficult to to shed your personal bias completely I don't know that that's possible but to even realize this is my personal bias but that said this is what I am thinking about this because of I see this side and I see that side so the critical eye is an asset not a liability we have literary critics we have music critics we have um you know film critics I mean what was that team's Siskel and Ebert and they they put film criticism on the map and we and you know yeah I enjoyed listening to them evaluate films and I I you know thought what an interesting profession that is so they were in fact the most positive side of being a Critic and that's um I think they influenced the film industry incredibly incredibly um the I think if you have if you know that that is part of your nature if you know that that's an archetypal pattern let me just say that I think being critical is probably a trait versus an archetype a trait that everybody has to some extent I know people who one of the characteristics that people notice is that they're not critical is that they're just very open and and it's a it's a very refreshing part but one we are critical by Nature by archetypal pattern it could be quite difficult to deal with and so I'm going to talk about the shadow side of that now um the negative side of the critic is that um you respond to things in the outside world like almost like a hair trigger you criticize before it it can not not always but one response is that you respond to something before you know what it is you you take it at face value before you really get to know something or or examine it more deeply and and the thing about doing that whether you whether it's the criticism or to judge critical critically judge a person or an opportunity or an idea someone might suggest to you is that in doing that it's like you parameter the person's like you freeze them in a frame inner criticism and you freeze them and they can't get out of it because that's that's how you first assess them and that's the the Box you put them in and I you know let me give you an example of something I think is very common and I think we all do this and that's that um if you go to a restaurant and you have a bad meal and no doubt that restaurant has served a thousand million good meals but you have bad one and that's it you won't go back there you you won't give it a second chance you freeze it in that nope I've had a bet and it and it becomes a critical a criticism of the restaurant and you're not going back there and that's others to it and it's that criticism that just sticks with you and every time you think about that restaurant you go into that freeze that you have and that's all there's to it you're not you're not budging and that's what I mean about this critical uh a criticism is like a a Frozen something a freeze frame that you put a person in or you put an idea in and the it is a form of control it's a form of of deciding this is what that person is this is what those people are like this is what that is and I'm not changing my mind I won't let any new thought come in so that's another thing that the critic being critical does is that it freezes a situation person place thing event into this perception that you have and you disallow anything else from coming in and softening your opinion of of putting in a different perception that could open your heart or open your mind so a critical nature has so many drawbacks and one of them is that it can um limit Your Capacity to understand another person more deeply or to even be open to new ideas new places I mean I I cannot tell you how many I know somebody who's and you're not going to believe this but it's the absolute truth whose diet consists of one type of pasta pizza and burgers that's it that's it there is nothing else this person eats will not someone suggested when when he moved out to the country that he could have a garden he said what for he said there's nothing I would eat out of a garden can you possibly a plan but um his he is so critical of anything that is from a garden that anything that is not like a salad vegetables won't even won't even consider it won't even consider it so he is frozen himself in this perception that everything that is not a burger or a pizza is just not edible okay that's a freeze now um another thing that happens in the critical mind is that you convince yourself you know more than you do like I know what's going on here I know what this person is like I know what this person is up to I know exactly what they're going to do you you get to make up a narrative because of the criticism that you have about somebody I know exactly what they're doing you know nothing at all you know absolutely nothing at all and um I remember this woman I had to rush off stage because of a personal situation she stopped me and she said um could I talk to you for a minute and it couldn't I had an emergency and uh I said I can't talk right now but it was actually an emergency and I got an eight page letter from her telling me off criticizing me because she had come so far to see me indented it and I didn't even have the time I had an emergency and that has that was how she froze me just uh it's astounding with how how we think and it's not like I have not done some similar things but not quite that extreme not quite that extreme so the critic the critic has a way of freezing you of freezing you in this negative space as a control mechanism that says if I criticize something I can convince myself that I know everything about that thing I know or that person or if or even um if you've ever had been with someone and you and you know that you know you're suggesting ideas about well why don't you try this or what about this what about this and you're met with one critical response after another that'll never work this won't work I've tried it that won't that it's just this battle with their inner critic that just doesn't stop and there is just no a way to open to get in there to to thaw them out so that a possibility that they have never even considered might come in which brings me to I think one of the most challenging parts of the critic in the shadow side which is the inner critic for all the criticism that you can launch toward the outside world um the one of the most challenging is how the critic inner critic speaks to you speaks to you when that critic gets turned on yourself and gets blended into the voice of your inner self and speaks to you like this isn't good enough it'll never be good enough you'll never be good enough you'll never be tall enough you'll never be thin enough you'll never be you'll never be successful enough this what will people think what what happens if you do what if you get criticized what if you get criticized what if you're on the receiving end of what you're dishing out what if this happens what if that happens the inner critic what if you're humiliated now I'm going to tell you that in in my work what I what when I started in medical intuition you know you start out I started out thinking that the reasons people were sick were was this idea of negativity and Trauma and this goes back to the 80s what did I know and I had so much to learn but eventually as the years went by I realized that negativity and Trauma the things we see the thing are the most powerless the most powerless it's all of the sufferings we do not see that cause us the most suffering it's all of the experiences that happen within us that cause us the most pain like being humiliated and by far being humiliated is one of the greatest sufferings and that a human being can go through because it it guts a level of power and Trust that is essential to the scaffolding of self-esteem and self-respect and it it causes a person to feel that they are not capable of protecting themselves or trusting themselves as you can't trust yourself how in the world will you ever trust anybody else you won't you you'll you'll become um an incredibly insecure needy person who's constantly constantly in search of reinforcement from other people you know am I good enough am I this or that because you're that inner critic that inner that inner flaw just doesn't stop and that fear of being humiliated again or being criticized just won't stop and what often happens because of that because is that you can't hear your intuition and this is when it really becomes a major league spiritual crisis is when you cease is when you are unable to hear your own inner self your own guidance where you have no idea what do I do who am I where am I going what do I believe what are my values when you have no sense of your inner because your inner critic has so completely taken over that you don't even have the clarity to know enough trust enough about yourself to know I I may have a fear of being humiliated but I do know that I want to be an artist but I do know I want to be a writer but I do know this but I do know that but I do know I'm a good person you have to start knowing something about yourself but if that critic has managed to destroy that then what what happens is that you feel like a shell of a person and oftentimes you become critical of the outside world or frightened of the outside world because you do not know how to engage with the outside world the the role of your intuition the role of your inner self is to direct you on how to step into the outside world of how to utilize your your sacred tools your creativity your compassion your love your knowledge your the substance of who you are what in other words your charism your special Grace in the outside world and you're directed you're directed every day you're directed in all kinds of ways of how to use that Grace and it's not and and why I say you're directed is because the difference between intuitive Direction and intellectual is intellectual is a an argument of logic it's always an argument of like should I do this should I not should I do this should I not um and you know like crossing the streets I cross it well oh look there's traffic um or look at that the lights red I better not I mean it's logic it's it's survival logic now your intuition is a mystical skill it's a mystical skill and so it operates completely from a different realm entirely and it doesn't have a watch and it doesn't have logic to it it has and it and here's another thing it doesn't have the same motivation as your intellectual skills because it doesn't need that's not its purpose it's not going to duplicate what your intellect is supposed to do your intellect is all about your physical survival your your physical reasoning your physical rationale Your Capacity to maneuver in the physical world and to understand physical sciences and logic and to ascend on that path there's no reason for intuition to duplicate that but it operates on the same laws but they're mystical laws and so they're not bound by time and space the way physical science is intuitive sense is not bound by the limitations of what you see here tastes smell feel so you can see somebody for the first time and your five senses have a limited capacity to discern information about that person so if you're critical about that person right off the bat right off the bat you're going to freeze them you know but your intuitive skill your intuition can download an entire understanding of what's going on in that person an entire understanding of that that person's just been through a trauma you may not get the details but you may just get this understanding of what that person's been through and that you may sense this person is terribly afraid of being criticized is very is very fragile right now and you can sense that and then you may find that a part of you is responding by saying be kind to them say a kind word to them and it doesn't make any sense intellectually but your interior says Be Be Kind to them right now just one kindness even if you walk by and greet them now if you're inner critic is up and running and if you can't hear that subtle level of constant guidance then you'll say something like what's that you'll just be critical you'll be critical of the world around you and you'll have critical things to say of others why don't they just get a job why don't they just get a job you won't see human suffering as part of the human experience and except for the grace of God go I you won't recognize how we are all in this together and that the simplest acts of kindness that are not critical that compassion is the opposite of criticism make all the difference in the world and that being critical of the world is at the end of the day a way of criticizing God a way of saying you have so screwed up look at this place it's a shambles and I hate my life and I hate the people in it and you become you have no idea what's really going on in the intuitive World Behind the Scenes you have no idea and here's the thing you're freezing it in the critical nature critical of yourself critical of others you are freezing it you are actually freezing it in the criticism that you're holding like this will never work and I'm not good enough blah blah blah people have said to me well how do I get out of you know thinking I'm not good enough well you know nothing comes without effort nothing comes without effort you just can't decide well someone's got to make that better for me you have to make it better for you you have to and you will encounter your Saboteur on this journey and so what you have to do not well you don't have to what I would suggest you do is that you you pick some thing that your voice is telling you like you'll you'll never lose weight you'll never this you'll never do that and what you do is you take one tiny morsel of that never one tiny morsel don't go overboard just take one tiny morsel and say you know what I'm gonna walk one block a day I'm gonna I'm just gonna walk because the object is not how far you walk how long you walk but that you walk but that you decide this is not about this is about me building self-respect this is about me developing us to destroying this sense of self-loathing this is about me no longer criticizing myself and so I have to give myself something that I feel good about so you it's up to you to start doing something every single day and you don't break that pattern like William James said suffer not one exception that you do and so you start walking one block a day and as soon as you feel better add one block do not go overboard because you will The Saboteur and you will win and and just say I feel really good about this I can do this because the object is to build trust and respect in yourself and that defeats the critic that defeats the critic and little by little as you feel better in yourself the critic loses its capacity to harm you Life Starts looking better things that you you stop fearing humiliation it you have to earn this this is what it means to it's like a spiritual path you earn this this is your inner gymnasium you you earn this but believe me this works this works it's an inner devotion and you become devoted to you know what I'm just gonna tell myself I'm not going to eat sugar I'll take something once a week but that's it I'm I'm cutting back there's no more sugar whatever it is whatever however it is whatever makes you loathe yourself criticize yourself will make you criticize others will make you love the world around you that's that's the hole in the damn you want to plug and start out small because if you start big it won't work my brother he always goes he decides when this happens oh I don't know how many times I said I'm going to the gym he decides he's going to get himself in shape yeah so he goes to the gym and he does this incredible workout and he does it like you know like it goes out there works for an hour and just comes back and thinks wow that was incredible the next day half hour Third Day ah the hell with it right it if he had done it with this way of I'm gonna go to the gym I'll start out at half hour and I won't exhaust myself I won't do what I cannot do I will do what I can do and then just build build it to a place where it does where he doesn't dread it and work that way that's how you do it so I hope you enjoyed this everybody see you next week

Channel: Caroline Myss

Views: 18,415

Keywords:

Id: AkBDlhidy20

Length: 28min 7sec (1687 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 07 2023