Intimate betrayals and cataclysms: the archetypes of suffering

Hello everyone. This is Padma Menon from moving archetypes. Today we are going to explore the theme of suffering, how it is expressed and positioned in an archetypal wisdom tradition, what it means for us in our usual ways of living and in the more popular ways we understand suffering. I'm going to share a couple of stories one is my own personal story about how I'm able to look at suffering through an archetypal lens in my own life. And I'm also going to share this beautiful story about the deity Shiva, who's the God of dance and his lover consort Sati. And this story brings the connection between that intimate personal suffering and a macrocosmic cataclysm, and how they're kind of mirrors or they are expressive mirrors or imaginative expressive mirrors of each other.

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Suffering is a terrible word in our popular culture. Indeed, we would say that most of the spiritual traditions and philosophies exist, so that we escape suffering, whether it is called suffering or pain or sorrow, we have notions like enlightenment, or peace or transcendence, which are meant to escape from suffering or to eliminate or delete suffering from our lives. And who doesn't want to have a life without suffering.

There is also a view, I find in that infuses most philosophical and spiritual traditions and that is that somehow the body to be embodied itself is suffering. I've heard people say to me, well, to be born itself is a suffering. I must say, this makes me really sad. As someone who offers a tradition, our creative, celebratory, ritual archetypal tradition that is body led by disembodied, that is speaking about an intelligence and consciousness that is a gift of the body, the proposition that body is the villain, and that this gift of an embodied birth, and embodied manifestation is the suffering, I simply don't find that meaningful, or helpful or even actually true as a dancer.

I do understand though, why we would consider the body as problematic because the body is transient, it holds depth, there is an ending. The body also brings us to what I call the primordiality, which is those drives in us and I'm not just talking about the emotions which we have narrated psychologically, but I'm speaking about the deeper drives. I call them the loin longings loin as in Yoni, which means that, that loin, primordiality, our desires, our yearning, our impulses, ferocity, those kinds of impulses and sensations that simply don't rise up to the mind and to the minds control. So the body is the source of that, and the domain of that. And that is terrifying. So that is terrifying.

These kinds of sensations, these kinds of elemental sensations, where the mystery is right within our own bodies, and it's not something out there, that is terrifying.

And of course, we become old, the body to our way of living. We think that is a decline, we think it makes us vulnerable, because all our structures of life are based on this able-bodied view, and therefore we have no space or accommodation for a body that changes and transforms. So we consider that a decline and it hasn't always been so there are cultures even today and that would consider that aging of the body in a very different way as a space of wisdom and a very different kind of intelligence. But in general, we don't really hold that space anymore in the mainstream, we don't have that space anymore. So for all these reasons, the body terrifies us. And makes us feel that we don't have a control about the body that it takes us into what we consider the wideness into our mortality. And so the body is the villain because it brings us suffering, we don't like transience. We don't like not being able to control things we don't like not being able to predict things because the body is unpredictable, or sensations are unpredictable. So for all these reasons, I can understand why we would think that the body is the cause of our suffering.

So many philosophies and spiritual traditions would propose that if we transcend the body, if we can detach ourselves from those elemental impulses of the body, like desire, for example, by practicing detachment, or non attachment, or by any practice that transcends the body that locates immortality, in as an opposition to the mortality of the body, and therefore, the more we can detach ourselves from the body, the more we will be able to decrease our suffering.

And I think that to a large extent, this infuses most of the paradigms by which we live today, this disconnection or denial of the body. And what I sense is that this brings brutality. This disconnection with the body is also a disconnection with the Earth with the primordiality of ourselves, which is the connection to the primordiality, of Earth of soil, of consciousness that is immanent, that sentience that is immanent in all matter, and not just as an exclusive domain of certain life forms. When we accept all this, it is a radical shift about how we position ourselves participating within reality within Earth within nature, led by the body. Now, this is a very radical proposition.

But what we do instead is that we have these technocratic paradigms which propose connections between us and nature between the mind and the body. And I feel that they really don't bring us to that radical invitation of being within being led by nature, by a primordiality and by the body. So that's where I feel that we continue with this hierarchical brutality, where we instrumentalize everything we instrumentalized body, we instrumentalized other life forms to our own self-interest. So body as the villain in the suffering, and the rejection or denial or deletion of body as an essential part of our human experience, in my view, is not only just a tragic thing for creativity and imagination and expression, but also for, for us to live a more harmonious and connected existence. I don't feel that this body denial has decreased our suffering, I think, if anything, it has only increased our suffering.

I also want to say before I continue, that, please do approach this, sharing this exploration, not through a psychological lens, especially as the topic is suffering, it's really important to make this clear. an archetypal tradition may be connected by some people may connected to psychological modalities, but in what I offer as this tradition that is body led, I am very clear that I do not connect it to psychology or to therapy. They are incredibly valuable modalities, of course, and I go to therapy whenever I need. And so that's not what I'm speaking about. But here, I'm saying that it does require a certain contemplative distance for us to be able to approach an archetypal exploration particularly one that is imaginative and creative, which is of course the essence of archetypal traditions, one that is body led, where there is dance, it does require the possibility of a certain contemplative distance when we are being subsumed by our personal experiences. That is not the time for this kind of contemplation, so my invitation is, let's leave the psychological narrative sort of lenses or any anything about therapeutical healing modalities at the door, which is what we are asked to do in an archetypal invocation is to always leave whatever we know all of our known paradigms at the door so that we can allow the revelation and the and the exploration of this archetypal intelligence fully without being distracted by what we think we already know.

The word suffering in Sanskrit has many more nuances than the English word suffering. For example, it is connected to the word for patience. Now, as it happens in English as well suffering is connected to patience, because we think of patience as enduring suffering. But suffering in Sanskrit is also connected to words like meditation, it is connected to words for a passionate and committed attention or invocation. And it is also connected to the usual words that we think of like pain or disturbance, unease.

What becomes clear in these connections, especially to things like meditation, and to that committed focused devotional attention is that suffering is inherent in archetypal invocation, we can say that suffering is inherent in life. Of course it is, it is universal, who doesn't have suffering in their lives, of course, we can say that we live in times of great suffering today, there are wars in many different places, there are natural disasters, there are economic issues and health issues. But there has always been suffering, especially at an individual level, we have in our domestic lives in our everyday lives, everybody has suffering. So it is a universal experience. And in the archetypal tradition, they don't relinquish suffering, we relinquish the narratives of suffering, but an archetypal tradition is always about everythingness. And therefore, the suffering is acknowledged as part of this invocation, the suffering.

In a philosophical way, when we consider the philosophy of consciousness, there is the primordial consciousness, which is something that is elemental something that is of Earth of soil, of body which means it is a consciousness that is not mind created, that pre exists the mind and then there is the mental consciousness which is that separation, that consciousness that is about separation, defining categorization, linearity, hierarchy, and philosophically, the suffering is located in the separation, the movement of separation from the primordial hole into this intelligence of separation and definition, is that movement of separation. And then, when we are able to dance, these two dimensions, they are two dimensions of the same consciousness. When we're able, it's like the, the mental consciousness cleaves away from that more whole primordiality. But when we are able to dance, the dynamic between the two, then there is a balance. Now this dance, it's it we can say it metaphorically, but in an archetypal tradition in an embodied archetypal tradition, it literally becomes the dance itself and it is also about expression.

So expression is a very important component in this. In this interplay, it must be expressed, and it must be expressed in an archetypal way, which is where what we might call the imagination comes into play, it is not a mind led imagination. Rather it is an imagination means it can be free from what is known and allow itself to explore the propositions of an archetypal wisdom, which is always radically different than what is what is a mind let imagination. And so, when we are able to express this dynamic, then there is a balance, it is not a deletion of suffering, neither is it a celebration of suffering, it is just the suffering and the dance and this word and is a really important word in archetypal traditions, because it is not about this or that in an archetypal tradition, as I have said before, in my videos, it is about the end. So, it's the suffering and the dance. And that that coexistence is what it is, we are able to then express this experience rather than suffering the suffering, we are able to express this experience in a poetic way, which is what I am speaking about the imagination way in a poetic way, it is not in an analytical way, but it is in a poetic way. And this poetic approach towards suffering is expressed in dance for example, as the.

When there isn't possibility of this interplay and when there is this cleaving or separation happening, there is a sense of betrayal. It's like we betray the primordiality we betray the wholeness of the primordiality through our impulse for separation, never to return never to participate in this interplay. In archetypal narratives, this is portrayed as for example, the relationship between the divine masculine and the divine feminine as the lovers. So the divine masculine is the is the mental consciousness, the divine feminine is that primordial consciousness, of body of Earth of the cosmos. And they are when they are in unison, when they are loving when they are making love together. That is the dance that interplay. And when they separate, then there is this longing and yearning.

So it's proposed that, if there is what we call the suffering, when we manifest or when we are embodied, it is this yearning. It is as if we remember somewhere in our depths, and I call it like the loin, longing, the loin the Yoni, which is that depths the primordiality the for example, in yoga, it could be the first two chakras, although in the dance tradition, which in my view is older than the yogic tradition. You see it as that the lower the Yoni or the between the hips region, where there is the earth, water and fire the bowl of earth, water and fire, and this loin longing, this longing for union for uniting bodily making love.

It's as if we hold a memory of it, this yearning, sometimes which we can't even find anything outside of us. We try and throw it onto objects onto people onto purposes onto meanings and yet the earning yearning persists. And this is what in an archetypal tradition is referred to as our primordial yearning, that yearning which remembers the primordial oneness from which this mental consciousness cleaved itself and therefore, returning to that dance returning to that lovemaking is to restore that, that harmony and that balance, but of course, it is inevitable that it will separate they will be the separation again, and this is the reality, so there is no permanent state that is proposed in a tradition that is why these traditions have Dunn's, which is like the language of transience, so that nothing is the same, nothing remains permanent, but that there will be this constant, separating, yearning, longing, and if we have the inclination and the good fortune, to be able to turn towards the call of primordiality the call of the goddess to recognize that yearning of our mind which is throwing itself outside, but actually, it is for our own primordiality, then we are able to have those moments, those that taste of that dance, and we at least we know that it is possible to return to that dancing time and time again to reignite that union. Again and again.

There are so many archetypal stories here about the betrayal about where this goddess exists, because she has been betrayed by her consort. For example, that there is a story about the dancer, the archetypal dancer who's called Urvashi and who is in a loving relationship with a mortal, and at a certain time she exhibits because she says that this the her lover, was following a kind of a template he was seemed to be doing all the right things. He was going out and conquering cattle bringing in wealth trying to increase his wealth. And he was making love to her three times a day, she also hears this technocratic model of connection, ticking the boxes, doing all the right things. And yet she says I leave because you never asked me what I want.

So we'd never turn towards our primordiality and allow the primordiality to lead our movement in this life. We are always imposing a mental model upon that primordiality and expecting the primordiality to squeeze itself into this model. And it always the goddess exits and there are many other stories about the exiting of the Goddess.

Now the goddess herself is in yearning. So the fact that she falls in love with the mortal, here it is a mortal, but in some of the archetypal stories, it is the divine masculine. The fact that she also loves and is yearning. And so our primemordiality, the goddess, the waters of our depths, are also yearning for this union. And in a certain way, our yearning mirrors this yearning of our divinity, our primordiality of Earth of our body of the Goddess. And when we express that yearning, then we are mirroring, we are dancing, the dance of the Goddess is yearning, we're mirroring that yearning. And we come together in that mirroring and again, that the dance archetypal dance tradition many times is exactly doing this mirroring, the onging and the yearning, and the suffering of the goddess herself.

So there is a divinity about suffering, it is not just a human experience. It is not just a punishment that is meted out to us somehow, because we have come into body and the Divine is not embodied. Rather, it is an experience that is inherent in Reality, which includes the divine which includes consciousness, which includes primordiality. And so the suffering is also something of the Divine. And there are many poetic invocations about how the divine suffers how the divine longs both as the goddess as well as the the male deities, that the stories of their own longing for the lovers and indeed, in some of the ancient Vedic texts, there are exquisite poems about the longing of the Apsaras, the dancer, the archetypal dancers, and they speak about it, they say it is infused with memory.

The word for longing includes memory, it's a longing for something we remember, because we of course, we don't long and we don't yearn for something we don't know. So the fact that we have this yearning and longing inherently holds a memory and ancient memory of oneness. And so these Apsaras they speak of their suffering, they say, let me fling out this yearning. I don't want it in my body anymore. It is so unbearable that I just want to give it to other people let it go and punish somebody else. So there is a recognition that our suffering is this yearning, the separation that we feel is inherent. And there is an archetypal wisdom, it is a formed archetypally. And we are also given a way of being present to it because we can't deny it. We can't escape it except in, I think, in a delusional duality of the mind, but in reality, it is about how is this suffering part of the poetry and beauty of reality itself. So here is the end Notice again, suffering and poetry and beauty and dance and devotion.

In the dance text, there is this beautiful combination, where they say that an archetypal language and archetypal dance language comes from a coexistence of primordiality, which is that loin expression, which is how it is described in the text, that expression of the loin domains, coexisting with an enthronement which is devotion, we enthrone divinity, we enthrone a dimension of consciousness. Without that, it is impossible to encounter primordiality or suffering of that primordial experience or domain. And then we bring in an expression, it takes some technology of expression. But that expression must be facilitating a connectedness of these, all these disparate elements, it must facilitate a connectedness, it doesn't facilitate a deletion, or removal. But it must connect these disparate experiences, like I said, the suffering and the poetry and the Divinity, the enthronement and our elemental impulses. And so the technology is that which connects all these different elements.

This is an incident that happened when one of my offspring shared with me, their memory of an incident from their childhood, and it was completely different to how I remembered that incident. And when I heard this version, I was completely shocked and shattered. It was as if I was the tree that was simply uprooted and I crashed to the ground, or as if I was struck by a lightning bolt. I could say it was in my intimate world it was cataclysmic and we will come to the connection between that intimate experience of Cataclysm and a cataclysmic event in the next story, but I just want to share how this experience was the magnitude of it for me.

And as I was considering this incident and my response to it, in the in the days that followed, I began to find myself exploring it through dance. and through poetry. So in fact, even this talk about suffering came from was birthed from that incident. And what I realized is something about what I said before about the loin connections, and the location of suffering in the intimacy of those loin connections. It is not random or accidental that so much of the stories of archetypal suffering is located in those intimate connections between lovers the betrayal between lovers, the betrayal between a parent and a child, between siblings and those kinds of blood relationships, but not just blood relationships, the loin relationships because of that, there is a lot of archetypal narratives which are about betrayals between lovers. So that's what I call it that the loin connections.

And even if you think of the famous epics, in different cultures, it is often a cataclysmic event that is birthed in something that begins at an intimate level of some betrayal within a family that then escalates into this cataclysmic event. And of course, it may or it may not be that for all of us, when something happens, there is going to be an epic battle. But nevertheless, we can feel those epic proportions. And I don't feel that there is any meaningfulness to comparative scaling of suffering, that that lightning bolt or that cataclysmic impact of a suffering is an extremely intimate and personal thing. And I think that that's what those archetypal stories point to the continuum between those intimate betrayals, and it's mirroring in these cataclysmic events.

But this betrayal, of course, is also based on my own expectations and my own narratives, those things which I am looking for validation, and looking for affirmation were, the more I rely on those technocratic narratives of meaning and validation and approval, the more I will suffer, because inevitably, those things are going to be betrayed. So this betrayal, there is an inevitability about betrayal, not only in our usual ways of living, which are mind led ways of living. But of course, we also have the archetypal betrayal, which is the betrayal of our primordiality, the betrayal of the goddess herself. So and in fact, the two are almost enmeshed together. Because when we do the one thing it is because we are in betrayal of our primordiality. It is when we are disconnected from the sense of who we are, at that primordial level when we haven't explored and quiet into an expressed our primordial yearning, that we are what can I say we are connected or we are dependent on these mental narratives of meaning and purpose and validation. And it is almost as if there is an inevitability of those two betrayals being connected we will be betrayed by that domain because we have betrayed this other inquiry.

And this the centrality of betrayal is brought much more clearly. In the next story I'm going to share with you, which is the story about the deities Shiva, the god of dance, and his lover consort, called Sati. The story is that Sati was the daughter of a very powerful king, and she fell in love with Shiva who was a wild primeval Deity clad with snakes and animal skin and her father despised Shiva. He did not think that Shiva was worthy of his daughter and as he did not have their own status as this as the civilized King. So after the marriage, he estranged himself from the daughter, but of course Sati, the daughter didn't realize this

The father was, the father was holding a very important ceremony to which he had invited all the gods and all the kings of the land. And Sati was not invited. Because she had this faith in the absoluteness of this line relationship with her father she thought that he had simply forgotten or she thought he assumed that Sati didn't need an invitation. As Shiva knew better, and he advised her not to go. But Sati is, is a strong Goddess of her own, of her own accord. So she decided that she was going to go to the ceremony, Shiva didn't go with her, she go, she went alone. And when she reached there, her father humiliated her in front of the whole gathering, he insulted Shiva. And of course, he was also then insulting her own choice, and her love for Shiva, unable to bear this an enraged, grief stricken, betrayed by this humiliation, Sati immolates herself.

When Shiva hears this, he is, again overcome with betrayal, grief and rage. And he holds Sati’s body in his arms, and he explodes into dance here is the birth of this creative expression, it just emerges from him. And when he dances, he threatens to destroy all the universes. So the other deities come to him and they dismember this body he is holding, and the body falls down back into Earth. And every place part of the body falls, there is a temple to the Goddess that rises up where the goddess and Shiva are again honored, worshipped and celebrated.

This is such an exquisite story and it mirrors so much of what was happening in my own story that I shared with you. Because here is the betrayal which is very evident on all sides, this loin betrayal, on all sides, that is happening in the intimacy of this familial trio, the father, the daughter, and the son in law, the lover, this intimacy of these relationships is where this betrayal happens. And it explodes through this creative expression into something that is cataclysmic that is macrocosmic. But in bringing it into that archetypal level in making it something that is larger than just this asphyxiating intimacy, there is also a place for spaciousness, where things can be dismembered, that we don't have to hang on to this cloistered, intimate betrayal, but that it has an opportunity to, to break up to create some space to fall back to the earth to replant itself, and to re emerge. It's as if we surrender our suffering. And we, we express it as a divine suffering or an archetypal suffering, something of beauty of beauty of divinity, and in so doing, it's as if it replants and emerges as something else.

So the whole movement of suffering is completely nonlinear. And this is why I said at the beginning, that we can't bring a lens of necessarily of therapy and healing, which is always of course, and it must be about alleviation of suffering. Here, it is completely something other. There is something about that reimagining that expression, through very particular modalities, that poetic imagination, that poetic and archetypal expression of that experience that brings it space that gives it a spaciousness, and that replants it that re offers it into the earth back into that prime modality, and then it comes up as something else. Something that returns into the cosmos returns into the macrocosm. It may be that when we just simply write the poem something, I felt that in writing these poems in doing this talk in dancing, that something returns to that macrocosm. And even though, again, I don't have to know it in a linear way, as to what am I, what is it doing? Is it curing me of the suffering, or am I curing somebody else of the suffering, but my, my focus is on that expression of it, and attending to the expression of it, the suffering, and the beauty and the devotion and the dance, and just as Shiva was doing, and that, that falling to the earth will be done through that expression as it happened for him. And that returning as something that is worthy of devotional celebration, that will happen, we don't make that happen. It happens what we do, is that a poetic expression that poetic attending, which is, of course, the heart of an archetypal inquiry, or an archetypal intelligence.

I hope that this brings you some reflections on an approach to suffering that you may find worthy of exploring in your own lives. I just wanted to end by offering that this sense of betrayal, suffering, it's so important for me, in my experience, to not personalize it, it is not something that is unique to us, to each one of us, even though it is in a way because we do uniquely undergo these experiences, but we also know that everybody uniquely undergoes these experiences, that even the deities suffer. And that suffering co exists, if we are not suffering, because we are being punished, but because it is inevitable. It co exists with everything else, it co exists with enlightenment with peace, with enjoyment, it co exists. And that is archetype of suffering, it is suffering and everything else. And in that beautiful multi dimensionality of an archetypal positioning of suffering, we also sometimes come to the most moving and beauteous expressions, of life, of our lives of our embodied lives that is ever possible.

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Summary

• Embodiment, suffering, and transcendence. 0:16

o Padma Menon explores archetypal wisdom's view of suffering, sharing personal stories and the myth of Shiva and Sati.

o The speaker argues that the body is seen as the source of suffering because it is transient and unpredictable, leading to a fear of mortality.

o Many philosophies and spiritual traditions propose that transcending the body through practices like detachment or non-attachment can lead to immortality and decreased suffering.

• The connection between body, nature, and suffering. 6:26

o Speaker argues disconnection from body leads to brutality, rejects technocratic proposals for connection to nature.

o Speaker argues that rejecting or denying the body as an essential part of human experience can increase suffering, rather than decreasing it.

o Suffering is inherent in archetypal invocation and universal in life, but we can relinquish narratives to explore fully.

• The interplay between suffering and dance in archetypal traditions. 12:39

o Consciousness is both primordial and mental, with suffering rooted in separation.

o The speaker discusses the interplay between suffering and dance in archetypal traditions, emphasizing the importance of expression and poetic approach towards suffering.

o Speaker 1 describes the primordial yearning as a longing for the primordial oneness from which mental consciousness separated, and the need to return to that dance of lovemaking to restore harmony and balance.

o The speaker proposes that recognizing and turning towards this yearning can lead to moments that taste of the primordial dance, and the possibility of returning to that union time and time again.

• Archetypes, suffering, and connection. 20:53

o The goddess is in yearning, mirroring the yearning of our primordial ality and our body.

o The speaker reflects on the inherent suffering in reality, which is also a divine experience, and the longing for oneness that underlies it.

o Polly explores archetypal wisdom, suffering, poetry, and devotion through dance and expression.

• Intimate betrayals and cataclysmic events. 27:49

o Speaker shares personal story of shock and grief after child's memory of past incident differs from their own.

o Speaker reflects on archetypal stories of betrayal in intimate connections, from personal to cataclysmic.

o Betrayal is inevitable when disconnected from one's primordial identity, reliant on mental narratives of meaning and validation.

• Archetypal suffering and creative expression. 34:04

o Saudi, the goddess of her own accord, attends a ceremony her father had invited all gods and kings, despite Shiva's advice not to go.

o In front of the whole gathering, Saudi's father humiliates her and insults Shiva, leading to Saudi's immolation and Shiva's subsequent dance that threatens to destroy all universes.

o Poetic expression of betrayal and suffering reimagines and replants into the cosmos.

o Speaker reflects on suffering as inevitable, shared experience, and potential source of beauty and growth.