“On this dark planet Earth you will remain only a guest unless you continually practise dying and rebirth.” — Goethe

Over the course of life we gradually discover that the process of death and rebirth is repeated not once but many times. Again and again we enter the painful, defenceless, lonely state of the orphan, and eventually experience, with pain and suffering, the death of the self and of our past so that we may give birth to tomorrow and to a self that must necessarily be more complete than yesterday. Even if we resist this death, the passage of years will carry us toward it, and life will not spare us its suffering.

Aeschylus, the great Greek tragedian, announces this unavoidable suffering in words to this effect: “The one who learns must suffer. A suffering that, even in sleep, falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our absolute sorrow and despair and against our own wishes and desires, we discover the wisdom hidden within this endless suffering.”

The person who seeks truth courageously welcomes suffering on this path and stands face to face with the Self, crying out: “Destroy everything that I am and give me something better,” because they know that to give birth to what we can be but are not, we must be capable of stepping with open arms onto the path of the death of everything we presently are. Only the person who has accepted the suffering of death and descent into the underworld can experience the resurrection of their individuation.

“Orphanus Sum”—I am an orphan—is a phrase Carl Jung carved on a stone outside his home. Only someone ready to accept courageously responsibility for their loneliness and defencelessness, and the suffering of stepping onto the path of individuation, can attain the maturity to say “I am an orphan.”

The first part and introduction to Session Five begins with a review of the previous session and the orphan archetype. It considers why resurrection and rebirth became archetypes in the human mind, why rebirth is not separate from the cycle of life and death and the eternal opposition of order and chaos, and how this fundamental archetype has been reflected in myths, stories, legends, visual art, literature, and cinema.

I hope the first part of Session Five will be of interest and use to all friends and companions.

With thanks,
Aydin Areta
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtroYC_KGJU