Inner Beloved

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For an exhaustive and enjoyable study of Psyche and Eros read Jacquelyn Small's Psyche's Seeds-The 12 Sacred Principles of Soul-Based Psychology

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Eupsychia Institute
PO Box 151960
Austin, TX 78715-1960

(800) 546-2795
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We begin to personify the soul through the archetype of the Inner Beloved. This form of the God-force within your psyche will move you onto the inner Path and increase the pace of your awakening. When this Inner Beloved lights the fires of inspiration underneath your feet, you are possessed with the need for union. At first you are not aware of its Presence as your contrasexual Other Half, the inner side of your that remained subjective and has never taken earthly form. This "Twin Flame" is your sacred "Beloved of the Soul," the "twin angel" of the Gnostics; this is the unmanifested part of your nature continually propelling you toward union from the subjective side of your livingness.

In the movie The Butcher's Wife, this other half was aptly called a "split-apart," a graphic description of what we feel about this "other" who complements our incarnated self, or personality. This Being lives in the subjective realities and communes with us from within–not from the objective world, though we meet many another personality from time to time who reminds us of this "Other." Most everyone is interested in finding his or her true mate, searching for some person who is truly a spiritual counterpart. But your Divine "Other" is alive and well inside your heart! And no one can ever take it away for it will never leave you. Such a loving Healer of our abandonment fears!

This true Beloved serves the psychological function of keeping us moving toward our goal, of keeping "the dream" alive. This Counterpart is the completion of your very own Soul; literally your "Other Half" on the uncreated side of life, as Eros was for Psyche.

...When your Beloved begins to activate within your consciousness, you can know that you are being called to balance the masculine/feminine polarity within you. This is the final task we undergo on our journey to wholeness. But this divine union can take many lifetimes, many suspect! And since so much glamour and illusion creep into this particular archetype, I should warn you that if you think you're almost completed with this one, you might be getting ahead of yourself. For this "initiation by fire" doesn't come about easily. Before this great dualism integrates, we'll have the famed anima and animus to deal with.

The archetypal Masculine side of your nature represents the part of you that is logical and orderly, the part that discriminates, differentiates, focuses, and defines. It is capable of providing you with assertion and power. In your symbolic life He will often be a warrior, great teacher, a protector, practical and strong, ruled by the mind.

Your archetypal Feminine side is more relational, inclusive, nurturing, more diffused, soft, and receptive. In your dream life She may come through as a beautiful maiden, a mermaid, a seductive nymph or spirit who magically entices the male into the darkness of the unconscious mind. She lures the male onto "the path." She is perfectly comfortable in the diffused, uncanny world of spirit. She is magical and spontaneous, ruled by the heart. He is intellectual and in charge; she is intuitive and inspired. (Keep in mind we are speaking of Principle here, not gender.)

When polarized and still imbalanced, we will have one side that is obviously externalized and more extreme, while the other is buried in our psyche, yet undeveloped. The undeveloped side will come in through our dreams, longings, and fantasized lovers who represent the part we deny in ourselves. We'll often protect our missing or "inferior" qualities onto someone in our life to "do" this part for us. This we do unconsciously. Remember, for the unconscious mind to project our qualities on someone, we must be in denial about something!

A "masculine-oriented" person, for instance, may choose a mate to be "feminine" and "spiritual" for them. This way, this person doesn't have to develop this side. Or it might be the other way around: A very "feminine" person will select an aggressive, dominant, logical thinker to be in partnership with, so as not to have to deal wit this side of life much at all. These imbalances are what Jung called the projection of the anima (feminine) and animus (masculine) principles. And they can make our lives miserable if we're unconscious of this imbalance occurring in our lives.

But let me quickly say: The Beloved does manifest itself outwardly from time to time in various personalities that we meet. Your inner Lover can come through any person–spontaneously–any time someone is truly portraying the qualities of this Ideal for you. You will feel the upliftment and exhilaration that matches your inner feelings of Love for your Beloved. There is that "look" on his face. That certain "feeling" just came over me. That gesture, that quality in the voice. For a brief moment, an ecstatic moment, I recall a certain "fragrance" from some far-off time when we were together as One Flame. An archetypal Love such as I am describing is "an inherited possibility" of a representation that is able to manifest in this world through us when we are clear of our shadow's hold on our personalities.

Most often, however, the other person does not even know this is occurring, for it isn't a consciously planned activity. In fact, if someone is speaking to you of such matters through the lens of romantic seduction, you can know for sure that the ego has hold of the process! When these times of outer manifestation of your Beloved do occur, if you are strongly connected to your Inner Self, you won't have to act our in this situation, which could lead to falling in love or "playing around" with someone unavailable or inappropriate, which can lead to much heartache. This, of course, is how we learn. Much glamour and illusion, and KARMA, can happen in this deluded "lover's game."

I've never met anyone who does not have feelings of hunger for total union with a mate. The archetype of Eros is the primordial human energy that causes our instinctual and ideal forms of love to merge. Sometimes our feelings of love glow with fierce fires that are both sacred and dark at the same time. Our process of psychospiritual integration will not proceed gracefully until we recognize the paradox of God's "paired nature" and we accept this archetype dilemma as fact. All the glamorous notions of how "Divine Love" works need to be cleansed from our emotional life. Otherwise, the Inner Beloved cannot get through to us. The anima/animus can carry us away into dramas and fantasies. We'll project God-like images onto one another, but we'll find that there is no human being that can make Divine Love to us.

If our shadow is all mixed up with the passions of Divine Love, we can seek partners in life to help us work these things out. And this is very important: We must eventually find the Self behind it all. [excerpt from EMBODYING SPIRIT, pg. 1157-162]

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