Caroline Myss - The Prostitute (The Power of Archetypes)

the greatest acts of prostitution are not in the back alleys of cities hardly they're these subtle ones I'm about to describe and and and I know this because after doing you know thousands of readings I realized how many people were filled with self-loathing because they couldn't protect themselves their power in the way that they wanted to protect their power when they felt victimized [Music] hey everybody time for another archetype video there's so many to choose from um I decided to do the prostitute today this week because it it's one I think it's such uh I find an intriguing I consider it one of the four survival archetypes if you know my work uh there's the child the victim The Saboteur and the prostitute and I call them the four survival archetypes because what they symbolize in our psychic field and what they symbolize in our psyche and and all that they represent um these four come together in a way that converts to the challenges we face as we develop self-esteem each each one of these archetypes in its own way embodies challenges that are Universal to to I mean to all of us all of us have a an inner child and and part of the Journey of the child is for us to keep that Child Alive while not letting the child control our adulthood while not letting the wounded child control our adulthood or The Invisible Child or the the um uh an overly demanding spoiled child I mean if if and yet we have to we still need the innocence of the child in so many ways to to really enjoy life the I did the victim I think that was the one of the earlier uh archetypes that I did but I will say this that in life we are forever confronting situations relationships events in which we have to ask ourselves will am I do I feel victimized by this or do I have the power resources to be victorious to not feel victimized again and again if you look through the lens of archetypes um one of the reasons I love this subject so much is that it takes us out of the actual event and into the realm of power and symbolism and into ourselves and how we relate from the inside out to every single moment that we're in in our lives which brings me to the subject of power and I've taught this and I will always teach this that power is the fundamental ingredient of The Human Experience everything you do everything you think everything you say everything you eat everything you wear absolutely everything everything everything everything how you the car you drive where you sit in a theater what everything is a power negotiation the language you choose to use with someone how you hear things you interpret as to whether or not it has empowered you or disempowered you there isn't a thing whether you're if you oh my God I'm telling you years ago I mean United Airlines doesn't do this anymore thank you God they used to have this thing called red carpet the red the red carpet and I really felt for those employees who had to go through this every time so when when it was time to board the plane they would roll out this rag of a red carpet was plastic and rubber and whatever but they'd put it out it's just a rag of a rook can you just like a runner but it was the red carpet and so you got to stand on that if you were going first class and inevitably I thought here it comes and you'd watch all these people line up real fast because that meant something to them everything means is a power negotiation absolutely everything even standing on a dirty red rug I mean like I and I always think like a Buddhist you know that everything's an illusion this is a dirty rug and this is what you need to feel to feel important wow so if you stood on this side of the rail of the aisle you wouldn't feel as important as you do standing on a dirty red rug now imagine if they had just cleaned the clean the carpets and all the carpets were actually fresh and clean but this dirty red Runner was what they wanted to stand on because it represented that they would go on first yeah okay so power is the fundamental ingredient look at how easily look at how many cases of road rage right someone is driving and all of a sudden they cut cut you off and you're like oh well that does it and and and the lights are on right how easily we lose power and so coming back too if I can give you a jewel that you could keep forever in your pocket and pull out as a life Compass it's that everything is a negotiation of power and whenever you're upset whenever you're feeling off balance whenever something's getting you angry or something pull that out and say this is it I uh the reason I'm I'm responding this way viscerally the reason I'm I'm I'm I'm beginning to shake Quake or whatever the reason your vocabulary is Shifting to to aggressive language is because your power is threatened it's because your power is threatened and I think this is um a lens through which you can offers you the opportunity to think about what you are about to say or do or reshape your thinking instantly because it's costing you power now I call these four archetypes The Prostitute saboteur and I think I did this have a tour the victim the child um survival because they represent the lessons and challenges and the obstacle course of developing self-esteem we all have to when we all have to deal with how will I survive here what can I do how will I survive my life how will I survive in the physical world this is a fundamental question how will we survive so survival is a a major Force which brings up the fact that the child in us may well be terrified of the outside world The Saboteur in US is something we have to confront because in order to survive we have to take risks we have to constantly make choices that Empower us or they disempower us we are always on this obstacle course of of seeking opportunities or trying to figure out ways to survive which brings me to the prostitute now one of the questions we have to ask ourselves when it comes to survival is through what means will I survive what do I have to bring to the world as my talents my skills my um what can I convert into survival currency do I have a singing voice am I a musician am I talented what are my talents I have to take these things inside of me and convert them into survival currency maybe it means I have to get a music education I have to do this Dad am I a writer well that means I have to throw words in my head and I have to learn how to construct sentences we have to become survival capable it also means that no that's not what I mean I want to say it this way survival currency is how we use our power it's what will we do with our power now um listing talents is the obvious you know you go to school you learn to be an accountant or you learn to be this or you learn to you learn to be a great Carpenter you learn some kind of skill that um that you can then sell on the marketplace we don't call that prostitute we don't the issue of prostitute comes up when we are not sure what we can sell so we start bargaining with our power the most precious thing we have our own life force the the greatest acts of prostitution are not in the back alleys of cities hardly they're these subtle ones I'm about to describe and and and I know this because after doing you know thousands of readings I realized how many people were filled with self-loathing because they couldn't protect themselves their power in the way that they wanted to protect their power when they felt victimized so they negotiate so what do you negotiate what is an act of subtle energetic prostitution well when you sell a part of your energetic nature a part of your energy to another person to a situation to a political party to a gang to some outside circumstance situation person in exchange for safety for a roof over your head in exchange for a salary in exchange for something when you don't um I was I cannot tell you how many times I've been in the company of couples where it was obvious to me obvious to me they couldn't stand each other they absolutely couldn't stand each other and I would think to myself what are you doing with me I can't It is incomprehensible to me it I mean it is really incomprehensible to me to exist in the same atmosphere with someone who couldn't stand me or I felt that way and inevitably I was told well you know it's the economics you know they're so tied together economically well that's when you begin to negotiate your health it's you'll put your health on the line you'll put your sense of self on the line you'll put your emotional well-being on the line you start telling yourself narratives that aren't true in order for you to sustain yourself in a situation these are interacts of prostitution you know there's this story in the scripture I think it's one of the in the New Testament that I think is one of the most powerful stories and it's when Jesus went into the desert for 40 days and he was confronted by Satan who said to him I want all your power and in exchange I will give you all the power of the Earth now these stories in the scripture are not stories about Jesus there's stories about what the what will happen to us inevitably that the more inner power we have the more we have to sell to the world and so inevitably some dark force will come knocking at our door that's what these stories are about that's why I love them so much the life of Jesus or the life of Buddha the life of these holy beings they didn't come down here to to so that we could just look at their lives from they lived their life on behalf of our Lives to say this is as you develop your interior self these are the challenges that will inevitably come to you and here's a small example of that I I frequently refer to alcohol alcoholics alcoholism Etc because I come from a history of that and also because as many of you who know me know I lost my brother to alcoholism and and he went through a few treatment programs let's but he was never more vulnerable than when he got out of a treatment program because that's when he thought he didn't need the support of AA that's when he thought he was clear when in fact he was at his most vulnerable his most vulnerable was just as he had a a taste of empowerment of just the beginnings of self-esteem he he caved and thought I can walk into a bar and not be fine it wasn't fine he died of alcoholism this is what um we all face in life when for example when we're frightened what will we sell well I look at the Senate I look at the Congress I look at what Kevin McCarthy has done he has sold his soul so that he could be speaker of the house I don't care if it's Republican or Democrat anybody who pulls a stunt like that is someone who's worth putting a spotlight on as an example of how never never to live but his fear of not having what he wants in the physical world is so enormous that he has sold every single part of himself that he requires to be a good an effective leader he has sold everything that is a prostitute right there that is the classic you'll never see him in a back alley but that's it when you negotiate your power and you sell it on behalf of something in this physical world you have to understand you are actually selling your power like like agreeing to work for a company where I look at how many people have cleared out of Fox News and they finally come out and say I couldn't work there anymore because I just don't believe a thing they say I just don't believe the way they live they're just liars they put all this lot these but they they finally broke from I don't care how much they're paying me I don't care I need my dignity I need my power more than I need that paycheck these small acts of prostitution are more our everyday occurrences in our lives small tiny acts the way which someone will sell their um agreements and they'll they'll become very agreeable not because they agree but because it's it's it's safer it's safer not to not to speak up it's safer anytime you use the excuse for not speaking up safety you're into this archetype make no mistake I just want to avoid conflict I I just want to keep my head down right and and what you're doing is you're hemorrhaging your power and here's something actually the more you think about this the more I want to say about it when we sell our power for safety we don't actually ever get safety we never do we never get what we think what happens is what's the best analogy I can give you all right let's imagine your power is money and you get a hundred we get a hundred dollars a day okay that's our budget and with that hundred dollars we get to invest that hundred in anything we want in our lives we could invest it in our creativity we could invest it in our own inner um ideas we could invest any which way we want and and how we invest has to pay dividends because if you invest in your creativity for example you're going to get dividends back even if for example you decide I'm going to go for it I'm going to become an artist or I'm going to I'm going to go and follow my gut instincts I'm supposed to become a great carpet whatever it is even if it doesn't pay off physically immediately the dividends that come from following your inner self cannot be measured they just they just pour in they just pour in and you'll see and you find yourself saying I'll figure out a way to deal with this I'll work another job but I've got to stay doing this because I know I'm supposed to so I'll do whatever I I'll do this I'll do that but I'm supposed to do this I'm not compromising my whole self so I'll just do what I have to do in order for this to happen but I'm not going to not do this because I'm I I'm afraid that I I won't survive now when we make choices they come out of fear of survival when we for example keep jobs that we're terrified that we just we can't stand we can't stand those people we don't like what they represent when we don't speak up when political systems are full of liars and we just go along with the lie because we've got to stick with the crowd what will happen we'll lose our job we'll lose our constituency we'll lose everything you are abdicating your power and you're literally creating a hemorrhage and you're actually hemorrhaging to that magnetic field you're actually hemorrhaging and while you may think at the outset that that makes you safer because that's what it looks like in Buddha language it's an illusion in fact the more you Hemorrhage the more insecure you get the more frightened you get the more paranoid you get because you you are you are draining your capacity to access your own inner survival mechanism you because you've betrayed yourself you don't trust yourself because you don't trust yourself you don't trust any Gardens coming through and so on and so forth and so you keep selling more of your energy to get an even deeper with that illusion that they will take care of you because you feel ever more fragile and then self-hate starts self-loathing starts and in order to deal with that you have to find Outside targets to loathe because that's what these groups do look at how hateful so many of those groups are that that come together like this where where you have the the proud boys these these these groups of fundamentally weak human beings that have no power in the outside world but their power comes by abdicating it to what they think is a Cause and yet once they're isolated they're powerless but they've prostituted themselves to that and they've lost their capacity to reboot themselves to break away and to become self-sustaining energetically now these challenges you know come our way all the time like wait what will we have to exchange what's because we all need survival currency to that I would tell you nothing is more important than you protecting your soul then you protecting your power then you not abdicating your power to anything to anyone to not don't give your word if you don't mean it don't agree with something if you don't but because you you just you you just need to stay safe in the group watch what you're doing because those are acts of prostitution if you think that those actions pay dividends you are gravely mistaken abdicating power to another person because you want acceptance because you want to be in you think that you're going to feel better but I'll tell you you feel more insecure you feel you're going to need to to do it again to do it again in some way to constantly need reinforcement because you are draining your power you're not being empowered by your actions your choices and actions in your life should Empower you they should pay energetic dividends they should not Hemorrhage you and that's why honestly if I were to do another book on on the causes of illness and stress it would be at this microcosmic level of Acts of personal betrayal and the price we pay for that acts of prostitution that the the capacity not to protect our power what happens when we sell our power on the streets for safety for Prestige for political gain for financial gain for whatever reason if you sell your power oh it won't pay a dividend you invest your power you invested in yourself you invested in something positive you invested in your creativity you invest it in anything that pays energetic dividends obviously I could go on and on and on but this I'm just touching the surface of these archetypes and I I do apologize to you for that because each one is worthy of a of a of a whole seminar and and I realized that so I apologize to you for that but I hope I there's at least a jewel of wisdom in each one of these little videos that I'm doing that you can that that will help you live a more empowered and healthy and blessed life thank you so much

Channel: Caroline Myss

Views: 156,734

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Id: oRFI4SBcn6E

Length: 26min 14sec (1574 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 15 2023